///Taking the Illusions Out of History-I would like to be able to love my country and justice///

Friday, January 17, 2003

January 18, 2003
Joe Millionaire for President
By FRANK RICH

Watching that noble doctor Bill Frist make his TV rounds last weekend — I know he's a saint because he keeps telling us so — I began to think I was going under general anesthesia. Here's a guy who dispenses bromides and palliatives for every troublesome topic, dishing out the spin so smoothly that you have to question your own grasp on reality. A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down? Dr. Frist, as he insists that we call him, gives us the whole bowl. "He's perfected that earnest, focused look that people want when they go to the doctor," one of his former medical colleagues told me this week. "It's as if you are the only person in the world."

It's a sham, of course, because the client who always comes first is Senator Frist's role model and patron in compassionate conservatism, George W. Bush. And so the good doctor congratulates himself for his good work on "H.I.V./AIDS in Africa," an admirable record indeed were it not for the unmentioned footnote that he knocked down his own Senate legislation earmarking $500 million for that cause by 60 percent after the White House jerked his chain. He promises to open up Medicare to private health plans without mentioning that much of his own fortune (in a blind trust, of course) derived from the for-profit Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), the medical giant founded by his father and brother.

Dr. Frist further suggests that that little Trent Lott nastiness is behind us now because Republicans are going to have "a dialogue on race . . . in a more visible, a more open way." The dialogue, we later learn, consists of (1) highly visible photo ops for Dr. Frist with black conservatives; (2) a spirited defense of the judicial nominee Charles Pickering's strenuous effort to reduce the sentence of a convicted cross-burning hoodlum; and (3) the White House intervention in the Supreme Court case challenging the University of Michigan's affirmative action program. (Will the administration also weigh in on the affirmative action programs for alumni children that have given every Bush family applicant a leg up at Yale?)

The doctor is very good at this game, but not yet nearly so sophisticated as the master. The White House has the bait-and-switch routine down to a science. As The Associated Press reported on Wednesday, Ari Fleischer just happened to announce that Mr. Bush would increase aid to Africa just before declaring the president's intention to intervene in the Michigan case — much as he had announced at the height of the Lott embarrassment that the president was looking forward to a trip to Africa. (That safari was quietly "rescheduled" to no fixed date when Mr. Lott stepped down three days later.) The Africa card is the Republicans' answer to the Democrats' race card, and once it had been played, the stage was set for Mr. Bush's "statement on affirmative action."

That statement contained so many sound bites lauding "diversity" — the word turned up as many as three times in a single breath — that the casual channel surfer might think the president was joining the Rainbow Coalition. Or forget that he presides over a party whose Congressional majority contains not a single black member, even in the House, where "diversity" could easily have been put into action, affirmative or otherwise, by recruiting a minority candidate for one of the many safe Republican districts.

The Bush rhetorical technique — of implying one thing while doing quite another — was first honed to perfection in the speech handing down the great stem-cell "compromise" of summer 2001. In his new and mostly worshipful memoir about Mr. Bush, "The Right Man," his former speechwriter David Frum describes the president's sleight-of-hand technique from the inside: "Because Bush summarized all points of view so sympathetically, he was able to win the support of his viewers for his own not at all middle-of-the-road position." What the speech did, in other words, was persuade inattentive listeners that the president was so sympathetic to scientific research and the ill that he couldn't possibly be throwing roadblocks in the way of potential cures for cancer, juvenile diabetes and Alzheimer's (as in fact he was).

It was only a few weeks after the stem-cell speech that 9/11 was upon us. Although that cataclysmic event is said to have changed George W. Bush as much as it supposedly changed so much else, it has not altered his brazen style. If anything, the midterm election has emboldened the White House to use fictional rhetoric to paper over harsher reality in almost every policy area it can.

Mr. Bush rolls out an economic plan that he says will help address joblessness, now at an eight-year high and growing, when in fact it's mainly a payday for those who collect dividend checks. Promising to speed the cleanup of corporate corruption, he accepts the resignation of Harvey Pitt, but two months-plus later Mr. Pitt is still on the job, working his will as the S.E.C. does some of its most crucial "reform" rule-making. Mr. Bush thumps as a hallmark of his education vision the No Child Left Behind Act, but his tight budget will leave states struggling to fulfill its alleged goals. Even Marvin Olasky, the Bush sycophant who wrote the book that inspired compassionate conservatism, said last month that while he awards the president an "A" for "setting the message" he gives him an "F" for his legislative follow-through.

But Mr. Olasky may not be the only one who is waking up to the ruse. The drop in Mr. Bush's poll numbers this week reminds us that anesthesia, no matter how well administered, eventually wears off. Affirmative action, judicial nominations, Enron and the rest are passionate issues for some, but war is a wake-up call for all. As the president keeps stamping his foot about Saddam Hussein, there is a dawning sensation that America is being held hostage by the administration idée fixe that is Iraq. It's a sword of Damocles hanging over our foreign policy, economy and national security alike.

The White House wants us to believe, as Dr. Frist reassured us last weekend, that North Korea is "an entirely, entirely different situation" from Iraq. Yes it is, not least because North Korea does not produce oil. But the two situations are now inseparable. Kim Jong Il may be crazy but he's not stupid. He bet the bank that Mr. Bush, for all his promises not to respond to nuclear blackmail, would do exactly that to avoid a distraction from Iraq. And so he called the president's bluff and will soon get his ransom. Mr. Bush's retreat all but invites other rogues to push us around, or worse, in this interregnum of vulnerability that his verbal bluster and tactical blundering has created.

Iraq's hammerlock on the economy is just as tight. We increasingly realize that no matter what Mr. Bush's tax-cutting plan, or any Democratic alternative, the economic issue du jour is not so much class warfare as warfare, period. No one believes the economy is going to expand as long as war clouds dampen the business environment. If the war drags on for months, recession could well follow.


Nor does anyone know what vanquishing Saddam and then governing Iraq will cost in either dollars or lives. Lawrence Lindsey, the chief White House economic adviser, was fired after he put the bill at $100 billion to $200 billion. But William Nordhaus, the Yale economist, puts the Lindsey estimate at the low end, with the high end being $1.6 trillion over a decade. Whatever the number, the cost of the war isn't being factored at all into the budget proposal the White House will send to Congress, according to USA Today. Yet even with that huge sum unaccounted for, the tax cuts and deficits are already so out of control that budgetary allotments for homeland security are being cut back. As for the American troops to be thrown at Saddam, remember those leaked Pentagon war plans from last summer that capped the total at 250,000? This week ABC's John McWethy reported that the number had escalated to 350,000 before the battle is even joined.

Mr. Bush's rhetoric says we can have it all — lower taxes, better schools, a war or two or three, civil defense — without pain. But the numbers don't add up, and when the expanded war becomes a reality, we'll see a bottom line that not even the smoothest politician's bedside manner can obscure.

While we wait, an anxious nation whiles away the time with "Joe Millionaire," a "reality" TV show in which a sweet-talking con man charms a bevy of credulous women into believing he will give them a fairy-tale ending. And why not? It's a perfect reflection of the reality of this moment, right down to its predictable, all too inevitable, denouement.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Permissions | Privacy Policy

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 9:39 PM

Wednesday, January 15, 2003

The Bush Cartel is Shivering In Its Boots About John Edwards: This is An Actual North Carolina GOP Alert Sent to a BuzzFlash Reader



Below is a copy of an actual GOP alert sent out by the North Carolina Republican Party.

It illustrates how frightened the GOP is of Edwards spoiling the Neo-Confederacy "Southern Strategy" that the Grand Hypocrisy Party (GHP) depends upon to win presidential elections.

Sincerely,

Buzz

* * *

Dear XXXX,

Senator John Edwards' (D-NC) latest effort to package himself as a "mainstream North Carolinian" is entirely contradicted by a four-year voting record that consistently puts ultra-liberal special interests ahead of the people he represents.

CNN's Candy Crowley: "I want to ask you, lastly, about the political spectrum and where you are on it. You are often described as having a liberal voting record. The liberal groups tend to give you high ratings. The conservative groups give you low ratings. Are you a liberal Democrat?

John Edwards: "I'm a mainstream North Carolinian. I think my views and my values represent the values of most people in this country." (CNN's Inside Politics, January 2, 2003)

Bill Cobey, Chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party had the following response: "Senator Edwards, your voting record does not lie. 'Mainstream North Carolinians' don't vote like Georgetown Liberals."

Edwards made similar assertions in 1998 when he promised the people of North Carolina that he would be a moderate voice in the U.S. Senate. Edwards' record, however, reveals the liberal truth:

Edwards' Voting Record Matches Those Of Senators Ted Kennedy And Hillary Clinton

From 1999-2002, Edwards Voted With Senator Ted Kennedy 90% Of The Time. (CQ Vote Comparison, CQ Online Website, www.oncongresscq.com, 106th and 107th Congresses)
From 2001-2002, Edwards Voted With Senator Hillary Clinton 89% Of The Time. (CQ Vote Comparison, CQ Online Website, www.oncongresscq.com, 107th Congress)
Edwards' Liberal Record On Business/Job Growth

Edwards Received A 0% Rating From The Small Business Survival Committee For His Voting Record In 2001. (Small Business Survival Committee Website, www.sbsc.org, accessed Dec.1, 2002)
Edwards Received A 17% Rating From The National Federation Of Independent Business For His Voting Record In 2001. (National Federation Of Independent Business, www.nfib.com, accessed Dec. 1, 2002)
Edwards' Liberal Record On Education

Edwards Voted Against The Creation Of A Demonstration Public School Choice Voucher Program For Disadvantaged Children. (Amendment to S. 1, Roll Call #179: Rejected 41-58: R 38-11; D 3-46; I 0-1, June 12, 2001)
In 2000, Edwards Voted Against The Creation Of Tax-Free Education Savings Accounts For Children To Be Used In The Payment Of Public Or Private School Tuition. (S. 1134, Roll Call #33: Passed 61-37: R 52-2; D 9-35, March 2, 2000)
Edwards' Liberal Record On Abortion

In June Of 2000, Edwards Voted Against Tabling An Amendment That Would Have Repealed The Ban On Privately Funded Abortions At Overseas Military Facilities. (Amendment to S. 2549, Roll Call #134: Passed 50-49: R 48-6; D 2-43, June 20, 2000)
In October Of 1999, Edwards Voted Against Passage Of A Bill To Ban Partial-Birth Abortions. (S. 1692, Roll Call #340: Passed 63-34: R 48-3; D 14-31; I 1-0, October 21, 1999)
Edwards' Liberal Record On Health Care And Social Issues

Edwards Called For A Federal Prescription-Drug Benefit And Lamented Over The Lack Of Universal Health Insurance For Children. "Moving to health care, Edwards - his words being recorded by a National Public Radio reporter sitting near his feet - again called for a federal prescription-drug benefit and decried the lack of universal insurance coverage for children. 'In America,' he intoned, 'that's wrong, and we need to do something about it.'" (Eric Dyer, "Testing The Waters?" [Greensboro] News & Record, June 23, 2002)
In 2001, Edwards Voted To Table An Amendment That Would Have Prohibited The Use Of Public Funds For Needle Exchange Programs In The District Of Columbia. (Amendment to H.R. 2994, Roll Call #328: Motion To Table Passed 53-47: R 5-44; D 47-3; I 1-0, November 7, 2001)
Edwards' Liberal Record On Taxes/Fiscal Responsibility

Edwards Voted Against President Bush's Bipartisan Tax Relief Package. (H.R. 1836, Roll Call #170: Passed 58-33: R 46-2; D 12-31, May 26, 2001)
Edwards Voted Against Permanent Repeal Of The Estate Tax. (H.R. 8, Roll Call #151: Failed 54-44: R 45-2; D 9-42, June 12, 2002)
In 2001, Edwards Voted Against A Capital Gains Tax Rate Reduction. (Amendment To H.R. 1836, Roll Call #115: Failed 47-51: R 40-8; D 7-43, May 21, 2001)
In 2000, Edwards Voted Against A Bill That Would Have Reduced Taxes On Married Couples. (H.R. 4810, Roll Call #215: Adopted 61-38: R 53-1; D 8-37, July 18, 2000)
In 2000, Edwards Voted Against A Temporary Suspension Of The Gasoline Tax. (S. 2285, Roll Call #80: Failed 43-56: R 43-12; D 0-44, April 11, 2000)
Edwards' Liberal Record On The Environment

Edwards Argued That President Bush's New Source Review Plan "Defies Common Sense." 'It defies common sense to me,' said Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C." (Karen Masterson, "Port Arthur Activist Testifies Against Easing Clean Air Laws," The Houston Chronicle, July 17, 2002)
AT ODDS WITH FELLOW DEMOCRATS

On Trade Promotion Authority

Edwards Disagrees With Kerry, Daschle And Lieberman On Trade Promotion Authority. Edwards voted against trade promotion authority, but Kerry, Daschle and Lieberman voted for it. (H.R. 3009, Roll Call #207: Passed 64-34: R 43-5; D 20-29; I 1-0, August 1, 2002)
On Common Sense Tort Reform

Edwards Disagrees With Lieberman On Tort Reform. Unlike his Senate colleague Lieberman, Edwards adamantly opposes liability limits and civil justice reform. (Jill Zuckman, "Medical Bill," Chicago Tribune, June 24, 2001; Senator Lieberman, Press Conference, July 15, 1999)
When Asked By Bob Novak, Edwards Could Not Recall A Single Conservative Position That He Has Taken On An Issue As Senator. "'I could give you an answer to that question if you give me a little time to think about it.' - Democratic presidential aspirant Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, asked by columnist Robert D. Novak in...the American Spectator to recall any conservative position he's taken in the U.S. Senate [Mr. Novak likens Mr. Edwards' plea to President Dwight D. Eisenhower's request in 1956 for a couple of weeks to report some accomplishment by Vice President Richard M. Nixon]." (John McCaslin, "Dependably Liberal," The Washington Times, October 15, 2002)

Who is John Edwards? Find out here.

Join the North Carolina Republican Party email list here.

Sincerely,

Bill Cobey
Chairman, North Carolina Republican Party


accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:04 PM

Airstrikes In Southern Iraq 'No-Fly' Zone Mount
Attacks' Growing Precision And Scope May Aid Invasion

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 15, 2003; Page A01


U.S. and British warplanes have bombed more than 80 targets in Iraq's southern "no-fly" zone over the past five months, conducting an escalating air war even as U.N. weapons inspections proceed and diplomats look for ways to head off a full-scale war.

The airstrikes have increased not only in number but in sophistication, with pilots using precision-guided bombs to strike what defense officials describe as mobile surface-to-air missiles, air defense radars, command centers, communications facilities and fiber-optic cable repeater stations.

On Monday, the heaviest day of bombing in at least a year, U.S. and British jets for the first time struck five targets, hitting an air defense command site at Tallil, 170 miles southeast of Baghdad, and four repeater stations in southeastern Iraq. Iraq says many of the attacks have been on non-military targets and have resulted in civilian deaths. The Iraqis said six people were injured in Monday's airstrikes, which they said included civilian targets in the southern city of Basra.

U.S. military officials said the attacks are initiated only in response to Iraqi fire. They said the increase mirrors an increase by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's forces in anti-aircraft and surface-to-air missile attacks on U.S. and British jets. But they acknowledged that military planners are taking full advantage of the opportunity to target Iraq's integrated air defense network for destruction in a systemic fashion that will ease the way for U.S. air and ground forces if President Bush decides war is the only option for disarming Iraq.

The aggressive tactics were ordered by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who disclosed in September that he had urged commanders to focus their retaliatory strikes not just on Iraqi radar and missile systems but also on air defense communications centers in an attempt to degrade Iraq's air defense network.

Last month, U.S. military officials acknowledged that they used an incident of Iraqi fire on jets patrolling the northern no-fly zone to justify a retaliatory strike in the south. The tactic represented another escalation of enforcement activity by the Bush administration.

"The Iraqi regime has increased its attacks on the coalition, so the coalition has increased its efforts to protect its pilots," said Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa. "Every coalition action is in direct response to Iraqi hostile acts against our pilots, or the regime's attempts to materially improve is military infrastructure south of the 33rd parallel."

Anthony H. Cordesman, a former defense official at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the increased U.S. air attacks are about far more than retaliation. "You enforce containment when you carry out these strikes, and you deter Iraq from any kind of military adventure," Cordesman said. "And when you conduct these strikes, you are preparing part of the battleground for a war. But it doesn't mean that you've gone to war, and it doesn't mean war is inevitable."

Degrading air defenses in southern Iraq, said Loren B. Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute with ties to defense contractors and the Pentagon, will enable the U.S. military "to send in almost anything its wants -- bombers, fighters and helicopters with Special Operations Forces." Freedom of movement across the border for U.S. aircraft would be especially important in a war against Iraq, Thompson said, since the Pentagon envisions flying thousands of troops into airfields inside Iraq aboard slow-moving C-17 transports.

Retired Air Force Col. John Warden, a key figure in planning the U.S. air campaign against Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, said every radar system and missile destroyed by U.S. aircraft will help war planners. "Anything that would need to be knocked out that is knocked out now saves some sorties once the war starts," Warden said. "I suspect some of the attacks are really just an intensification of the tit for tat that has gone on for a long time -- but with some obvious value in the event of a war."

The U.S. military established the no-fly zone over southern Iraq in 1991 and over northern Iraq in 1992 to enforce U.N. resolutions to protect Shiites and Kurds from attack by the Iraqi military and to keep Baghdad from moving its forces toward Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Over much of the past decade, U.S. and British warplanes have patrolled the zones and engaged in periodic airstrikes against Iraqi targets, but nothing on the scale of the past five months.

Virtually all of the attacks occur in the southern no-fly zone out of deference to Turkey, which allows U.S. and British aircraft to patrol the northern no-fly zone from Turkish bases and exercises some control over the operation.

The United Nations does not recognize the no-fly zones or the U.S. assertion that it is enforcing U.N. resolutions. Last fall, Russia's foreign ministry said escalating attacks by U.S. and British warplanes against Iraqi air defenses have made it more difficult for U.N. efforts to resume weapons inspections in Iraq.

Iraq says it fires at the aircraft because they are violating Iraqi airspace. "Not many people realize that a war has been going on for the last several years in the no-fly zone," Gen. Amir Saadi, a top Hussein adviser, said in a December interview. "The very people that Britain and the United States claim to be protecting, they're killing them, maiming them, depriving them of their normal livelihood and also destroying the infrastructure which is there to serve them."

U.S. military officials say they go to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. They would not comment on how much the attacks have degraded Iraq's air defenses. But they said Iraq continues to maintain "integrated" air defenses using new technology acquired in spite of weapons sanctions and tactics to avoid detection and attack.

Staff writer Bradley Graham contributed to this report.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 7:58 PM

Arms deals criticized as corporate US welfare

By Charles M. Sennott, Globe Staff, 1/14/2003

LONDON - After Lockheed Martin clinched one of its largest deals ever in Europe, Prime Minister Leszek Miller of Poland was taken for a spin last week in the same kind of F-16 fighter jet that his country is purchasing. He watched from the cockpit while a second F-16 performed rolls and tactical maneuvers for his benefit.

Consider this private air show a kind of customer perk, which the Pentagon confirmed was paid for by the US government at the end of a long marketing campaign by Lockheed. The US government also provided a $3.8 billion loan to Poland, on very favorable terms, to finance the purchase of 48 F-16s, which are manufactured in President Bush's home state of Texas.

When they meet at the White House today, Miller and Bush are sure to toast this huge deal. For Poland, the purchase is a matter of national pride, reflecting the country's recent military transformation as a new member of NATO. The deal highlights Bush's personal involvement in pushing for arms deals in which former East Bloc countries switch to American weapons systems.

But arms-industry watchdog groups say the cost of the private air show is just one example of the kind of corporate welfare that goes into these massive and complex business deals. These critics contend the prime minister's test flight raises the question of who is taking whom for a ride in such a massive arms deal.

''The Poland arms deal is corporate welfare at its finest,'' said Ivan Eland, a military analyst at the Cato Institute, a Washington-based, free-market policy group. ''The companies are private enterprises, but they are in effect wards of the state when the US government supports and underwrites the deals.

''There are all sorts of hidden subsidies that the US government gives to arms manufacturers, and the Polish prime minister's flight would be just one of them,'' he said.

Jose Ibarra, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed that the US government paid for the F-16s to be sent to Poland for the prime minister's flight. ''If the US government deems it in our national interest, we pay for it,'' he said.

Ibarra did not know the cost to taxpayers, but said, ''It ain't cheap, that's for sure.'' Having Air Force pilots take two fighter jets from the US airbase in Aviano, Italy, to Poland could run as high as hundreds of thousands of dollars, one US official estimated.

Washington's support helped Lockheed beat out the French Dassault Aviation offer of Mirage jets, as well as a Swedish-British consortium's offer of Grippen fighter jets, in what industry analysts say is the largest deal for a US arms manufacturer ever in Eastern Europe. The decision was announced Dec. 28 with little fanfare, and approval for the loan sailed through Congress.

In a shrinking and fiercely competitive arms industry in Europe, Lockheed's victory has sparked the ire of European economic ministers, especially the French. European critics have accused Poland of betraying their neighbors just after they were invited into the European Union. Some critics in Poland questioned the need for such weapons at all.

At the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit here in November, the industry battle for the Polish deal was underway behind the scenes. The summit brought seven new Eastern European and Baltic states into NATO and effectively redrew the military map of Europe, bringing the military alliance forged in the Cold War to the borders of Russia. Poland joined NATO in an earlier expansion, in 1998.

Bruce Jackson, director of a bipartisan, nonprofit advocacy group called the US Committee on NATO, had worked for at least six years for the enlargement of NATO and was in Prague celebrating the fruits of that hard work. For Jackson, who recently retired as vice president of Lockheed Martin, the expansion of NATO was more than just a dream of ''uniting Europe whole and free,'' as he put it. It was also helping to create a new market for the US arms manufacturer that had employed him.

And there may be more deals to be had among the new members of NATO admitted at the Prague summit. The Czech Republic, Romania, and other Eastern European and Baltic countries are now being courted by US arms manufacturers to upgrade their military capacity to be NATO ''interoperable.'' That means buying Western hardware to replace older equipment that countries of the former Soviet bloc used in the days of the Warsaw Pact. The transition to NATO often means buying American.

Jackson's advocacy work in the expansion of NATO and Lockheed's arms deal with Poland highlight the political and corporate linkages that make the NATO expansion both a matter of strategic significance for the United States and economic advantage for its arms manufacturers.

Jackson scoffed at critics' complaints that his political passions have anything to do with his former employer's interests. He said he believes that a stronger, bigger NATO means greater security for the United States. Officials from NATO, Poland, and Lockheed all said he carefully avoided lobbying for the company on the F-16 sale.

But William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the World Policy Institute who has researched the costs of NATO expansion to taxpayers, said, ''Arms manufacturers like Lockheed are looking to Eastern Europe as the last frontier to squeeze out big fighter jet deals, and they are looking to the US government to pick up the tab.''

Industry watchdogs like Eland and Hartung said the Polish arms deal shows how US taxpayers often end up subsidizing these sales, while arms manufacturers walk away with huge profits.

Richard Kirkland, Lockheed's vice president for corporate international business development, said that while the enlargement of NATO did present an important new market, it was a relatively modest one, compared to regions such as the Middle East and Asia.

The Polish sale was supported by the US government through the Pentagon's Foreign Military Financing fund, or FMF, Pentagon officials said. Poland will not have to make payments for eight years and will have at least 15 years to pay back the money at a level of interest which US government officials said they are not allowed to disclose.

The deals are structured around what are known as offset agreements, business arrangements that bring everything from production jobs to technology transfers to the purchasing country as an inducement. In the Polish arms deal, the offset agreements are said to be worth $6 billion to $9 billion.

Labor unions said the offsets encourage the export of jobs overseas. In the Polish deal, for example, the contract to build the F-16 engines was awarded to Pratt & Whitney of Connecticut, which US officials confirmed has agreed to assemble the engines in Poland.

To Hartung, Jackson embodies the link between politics and the arms industry on the road to enlarging NATO.

''You would like to think that the people deciding whether this [NATO expansion] is a good idea for the country would not be being led around by a person like Jackson, whose company has such a great financial interest in the expansion of NATO,'' Hartung said.

Jackson answered: ''The yellow journalism approach of trying to link American internationalists to venal financial motives is all rather depressing. ... I believe that democracy is worth defending. The Poles made the right decision, which will make the [NATO] alliance stronger and share the responsibilities of collective defense more equitably between the US and our European allies.''

Lockheed officials and Jackson himself say he was never a registered lobbyist on behalf of Lockheed. Lockheed also said that it never gave money to the US Committee on NATO, which Jackson helped found. And US and Polish officials said that Jackson, 50, was always careful about avoiding conflicts of interest in his dual roles.


This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 1/14/2003.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.


accesswater2030@yahoo.com 7:52 PM

Klein quotes the Indian physicist Vandana Siva, who elegantly explained mass rejection of World Bank projects as less a dispute over a particular dam or social programme and more a fight for local democracy and self-government. "The history of the World Bank," she said, has been "to take power away from communities, give it to central government, then give it to the corporations through privatisation."
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 7:46 PM

Fortress continents
The US and Europe are both creating multi-tiered regional strongholds

Naomi Klein
Thursday January 16, 2003
The Guardian

Well, it could have been true. That's what Senator Hillary Clinton had to say after finding out that five Pakistani men did not actually sneak into the US through Canada so they could blow up New York on New Year's Eve. Because they were never in the US at all, and they weren't terrorists, and the whole thing was dreamt up by a man who forges passports for a living.

At the height of the search for the professional liar's imaginary non-terrorists, Clinton had blamed Canada and its "unpatrolled, unsupervised" border. But even when the hoax came to light, Clinton didn't rescind the accusation. Because the Canadian border is so porous, she reasoned, "this hoax seemed all too believable".

It was, in other words, a useful hoax, helping US citizens to see how unsafe they really are. And that is useful, especially if you are among the growing number of free-market economists, politicians and military strategists pushing for the creation of "Fortress Nafta", a continental security perimeter stretching from Mexico's southern border to Canada's northern one.

A fortress continent is a bloc of nations that joins forces to extract favourable trade terms from other countries, while patrolling their shared external borders to keep people from those countries out. But if a continent is serious about being a fortress, it also has to invite one or two poor countries within its walls, because somebody has to do the dirty work and heavy lifting. It's a model being pioneered in Europe, where the European Union is currently expanding to include 10 poor eastern bloc countries, at the same time that it uses increasingly aggressive security methods to deny entry to immigrants from even poorer countries, like Iraq and Nigeria.

It took the events of September 11 for North America to get serious about building a fortress continent of its own. After the attacks, it wasn't an option for the US simply to build higher walls at the Canadian and Mexican borders; in the Nafta era, the business community wouldn't stand for it. General Motors claims that for every minute its fleet of trucks is delayed at the US-Canadian border, it loses about $650,000.

On the other US border, dozens of industries, from agriculture to construction, are reliant on "illegal" Mexican workers - a fact not lost on George Bush, who knows that, after oil, immigrant labour is the fuel driving the southwest economy. If he suddenly cut off the flow, the business sector would rebel. So what's a wildly pro-business, security-obsessed government to do?

Easy. Move the border. Turn the Mexican and Canadian borders into glorified checkpoints and seal off the entire continent, from Guatemala to the Arctic Circle. Bush officials don't talk much about the continental fortress, preferring terms like "North American area of mutual confidence". But a US-run security perimeter is precisely what is being built.

In the past year, Washington has pressured Canada and Mexico to harmonise their refugee, immigration and visa laws with US policies. And in July 2001, Mexico's president, Vincente Fox, introduced Plan Sur, a massive security operation on Mexico's southern frontier that immigration experts refer to as "the southern migration" of the US border. Under Plan Sur, the Mexican government has deported hundreds of thousands of mainly central Americans on their way to the US, with the US itself providing much of the funding. In one bizarre incident last year, Mexican guards caught a group of Indian refugees on their way to the US, bussed them to a squalid refugee detention centre in Guatemala, and Washington paid the cost ($8.50 a day per detainee).

Fox had hoped to be rewarded for policing the undeclared US southern border, and he used to have reason for optimism. As recently as September 6 2001, Bush was pledging to "normalise" the status of the roughly 4.5 million Mexicans living illegally in the US. After September 11, however, the status of these workers became even more precarious.

This points to another truth about fortress continents: being on the inside may be better than being locked out, but it's no guarantee of equal status. Washington is constructing a kind of three-tiered fortress in which the US rules by decree, Canada and Mexico serve as guards, and Mexican workers are banished to the continental equivalent of the servants' quarters.

Inside Fortress Europe, France and Germany are the nobility and lesser powers such as Spain and Portugal are the sentinels. Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary and the Czech Republic are the postmodern serfs, providing the low-wage factories where clothes, electronics and cars are produced for 20-25% of the cost to make them in western Europe. T
The huge greenhouses of southern Spain, meanwhile, have stopped hiring Moroccans to pick the strawberries. They are giving the jobs instead to white-skinned Poles and Romanians, while speedboats equipped with infra-red sensors patrol the coastline, intercepting ships of north Africans. Increasingly, the EU is making "repatriation agreements" an explicit condition of new trade deals. We'll take your products, the Europeans say to South America and Africa, as long as we can send your people back. What we are seeing is the emergence of a genuinely new new world order, one far more Darwinian than the first, second and third world. The new divisions are between fortress continents and locked-out continents. For locked-out continents, even their cheap labour isn't needed, and their countries are left to beg outside the gates for a half-decent price for wheat and bananas.
Inside the fortress continents, a new social hierarchy has been engineered to reconcile the seemingly contradictory political priorities of the post-September 11 era. How do you have airtight borders and still access cheap labour? How do you expand for trade, and still pander to the anti-immigrant vote? How do you stay open to business and closed to people? Easy. First you expand the perimeter. Then you lock down.

· This article first appeared in the Nation. Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and Fences and Windows

www.nologo.org


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 7:32 PM

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January 15, 2003
Transition in Senate Leads to Impasse and Accusations
By CARL HULSE


ASHINGTON, Jan. 14 — Republicans won control of the Senate on Nov. 5, but Democrats are not stepping aside easily.

What has traditionally been a routine transition of power has turned into a contentious battle as frustrated Republicans accused Democrats today of trying to block the new majority and stall its agenda.

"It is tantamount to an attempted coup right here on the floor of the Senate," said Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, as the two parties remained unable to reach a deal on reorganization after Republicans won a majority of 51 in last fall's elections. Without the agreements, Democrats remain in charge of committees.

Republican leaders said the impasse was disenfranchising the voters of 11 states that sent new senators to Washington since they could not yet be seated on any of the panels where most of the business is done. And they said it was blocking Congress from completing work on last year's spending bills, which will be contentious themselves because of planned reductions, as well as other legislative initiatives. It has also stalled hearings.

Democrats said they were simply insisting on the same near-equitable split of committee financing and office space that they gave Republicans when Democrats held the same two-seat margin of control in the last Congress.

"If it was good enough last year, it ought to be good enough this year," said Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader.

Republicans said Democrats were executing a strategy to deny the Republicans early legislative momentum and trying to use the impasse to win concessions on the handling of judicial nominations. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas cited an e-mail message from a Democratic leadership aide that predicted on Jan. 3 that efforts to shift power would be delayed.

"This is clearly an organized plan," Ms. Hutchison said.

After days of negotiations, Republicans chose to put more public pressure on Democrats to concede. Lawmakers and aides said the rancorous tone of the debate was certain to spill over into coming battles.

"No one can find an example of when the Senate has refused to recognize a new majority," said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the second-ranking Republican.

The majority leader, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, said a resolution he introduced today listing new Republican committee members "simply recognizes the fact that the Republicans won elections in November, that we are in the majority and that it is time for the United States Senate, both sides of the aisles, to make that clear."

As the Senate adjourned tonight, Dr. Frist said that negotiators made substantial progress despite the bickering today and that he hoped a vote could be held on the reorganization plan on Wednesday.

"I believe we are very, very close to working out an agreement," he said.

Democrats indicated they would block any resolution until the matter was resolved. They said that after the change in power caused by the defection of Senator James M. Jeffords of Vermont in 2001, it took a few weeks to work out the details. But Republicans said in that instance they turned over the committee gavels almost immediately.

The main issue is how financing will be divided among the majority and minority members of committees. Before the last Congress, the majority traditionally got two-thirds of the committee's allocation and the minority one-third, giving the ruling party an advantage in staff, research and other resources. With the Senate first split 50-50 in 2001 and then 51-49, the leaders negotiated a new arrangement that divided the resources to reflect the number of members in each camp. Mr. Daschle said that should now be the precedent, but Republicans appear to favor more of a 60-40 split.

Republicans also circulated a letter from Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee that urged Mr. Daschle to seek a set of conditions for judicial nominations as part of the negotiations. Mr. Santorum said the letter was evidence that Democrats were trying to use the organizing negotiations as a lever "to get their procedural agenda through, to try to slow up the nomination process, and potentially the legislative process."

Dr. Frist said the stalemate had left him "handcuffed" on the spending bills, which he had hoped to pass this week but might now be pushed into next week or longer.

Mr. Daschle and his colleagues have been critical of nearly $10 billion in reductions, including what they say is $1 billion from domestic security and $1.7 billion from education.

"We find this all the more egregious, cutting homeland security, cutting education, while the president espouses a `Leave No Millionaire Behind Act,' its so-called economic stimulus package," Mr. Daschle said.

Dr. Frist said details of the spending package were still being worked out. "Until we can get an appropriation bill or series of bills or omnibus bill or individual bills out there, I don't know what's in it," he said.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Permissions | Privacy Policy

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 7:15 PM

January 15, 2003

The United States of America has gone mad
John le Carré



America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.
The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.

The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.

But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer’s pocket? At what cost — because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane people — in Iraqi lives?

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.

Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I’m dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam’s downfall — just not on Bush’s terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.

The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.

God also has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men are equal in His sight, if not in one another’s, the Bush family numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas.

Care for a few pointers? George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company; 1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company. Dick Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with the Chevron oil company, which named an oil tanker after her. And so on. But none of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God’s work.

In 1993, while ex-President George Bush was visiting the ever-democratic Kingdom of Kuwait to receive thanks for liberating them, somebody tried to kill him. The CIA believes that “somebody” was Saddam. Hence Bush Jr’s cry: “That man tried to kill my Daddy.” But it’s still not personal, this war. It’s still necessary. It’s still God’s work. It’s still about bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed Iraqi people.

To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won’t tell us is the truth about why we’re going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil — but oil, money and people’s lives. Saddam’s misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn’t, won’t.

If Saddam didn’t have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart’s content. Other leaders do it every day — think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt.

Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, if he’s still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five minutes’ notice. What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is America’s need to demonstrate its military power to all of us — to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.

The most charitable interpretation of Tony Blair’s part in all this is that he believed that, by riding the tiger, he could steer it. He can’t. Instead, he gave it a phoney legitimacy, and a smooth voice. Now I fear, the same tiger has him penned into a corner, and he can’t get out.

It is utterly laughable that, at a time when Blair has talked himself against the ropes, neither of Britain’s opposition leaders can lay a glove on him. But that’s Britain’s tragedy, as it is America’s: as our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way. Blair’s best chance of personal survival must be that, at the eleventh hour, world protest and an improbably emboldened UN will force Bush to put his gun back in his holster unfired. But what happens when the world’s greatest cowboy rides back into town without a tyrant’s head to wave at the boys?

Blair’s worst chance is that, with or without the UN, he will drag us into a war that, if the will to negotiate energetically had ever been there, could have been avoided; a war that has been no more democratically debated in Britain than it has in America or at the UN. By doing so, Blair will have set back our relations with Europe and the Middle East for decades to come. He will have helped to provoke unforeseeable retaliation, great domestic unrest, and regional chaos in the Middle East. Welcome to the party of the ethical foreign policy.

There is a middle way, but it’s a tough one: Bush dives in without UN approval and Blair stays on the bank. Goodbye to the special relationship.

I cringe when I hear my Prime Minister lend his head prefect’s sophistries to this colonialist adventure. His very real anxieties about terror are shared by all sane men. What he can’t explain is how he reconciles a global assault on al-Qaeda with a territorial assault on Iraq. We are in this war, if it takes place, to secure the fig leaf of our special relationship, to grab our share of the oil pot, and because, after all the public hand-holding in Washington and Camp David, Blair has to show up at the altar.

“But will we win, Daddy?”

“Of course, child. It will all be over while you’re still in bed.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise Mr Bush’s voters will get terribly impatient and may decide not to vote for him.”

“But will people be killed, Daddy?”

“Nobody you know, darling. Just foreign people.”

“Can I watch it on television?”

“Only if Mr Bush says you can.”

“And afterwards, will everything be normal again? Nobody will do anything horrid any more?”

“Hush child, and go to sleep.”

Last Friday a friend of mine in California drove to his local supermarket with a sticker on his car saying: “Peace is also Patriotic”. It was gone by the time he’d finished shopping



accesswater2030@yahoo.com 6:47 PM

15 billion in profits vs. 1/2 billion savings on the backs of the people.-

GE Strike Marred By Worker's Death
Jan. 14, 2003


Thousands of striking workers at General Electric Co. kept up their two-day walkout to protest higher out-of-pocket health costs even as they mourned the death of a picket struck by a police car.

Union leaders said about 20,000 members of the International Union of Electronic Workers/Communications Workers of America and the Electrical Workers union took part in the walkout at 48 locations in 23 states. The affected plants manufacture everything from consumer appliances to jet engines.

At GE headquarters in Fairfield, Conn., company spokesman Gary Sheffer put the number of striking workers at about 17,500 and said GE was meeting the needs of its customers.

A few hours into the strike, Kjeston "Michelle" Rodgers, 40, was hit outside a GE plant in Louisville as the eight-year employee walked with a picket sign before daybreak. The car was from the police department in nearby Hollow Creek, officials said.

"The lady was out here doing something she believed in," said Dave Riddle, who was picketing at the same plant. "Rising health care in America is putting the crunch on everybody, and it cost her her life."

It is the first national strike at GE since 1969, when workers walked off the job for about 14 weeks.

The strike could be the first battle in a corporate war over health insurance costs, reports CBS News Correspondent Anthony Mason.

"It's a slap in the face we're seeing cutbacks in manpower, and now we're seeing cutbacks in benefits," said one union worker.

GE says those cuts will only cost the average worker $200 a year. The union says it will be double that and that GE can afford to absorb the cost:

"This is not, ladies and gentlemen, an American corporation that is hanging on by its fingernails," said union leader Edward Fire.

GE made more than $15 billion in profits last year. But the company says its annual health care premiums have soared by nearly half a billion dollars since 1999.

"Our profits went up about 7 percent in 2002. Our health care costs went up 14 percent," said Sheffer, the GE spokesman. "This is the most difficult cost issue that GE is facing as a company."

And GE is not alone. Nationally, employers' health care costs are skyrocketing, up more than 11 percent the past two years, according to a study by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation.

"These are the biggest increases we've seen in more than a decade," says the foundation's Drew Altman.

Altman says in a weak economy many companies have little choice.

"You can take it out of wages or you can take it out of benefits, or you can do both. But there's no place else to go. And employers have told us in overwhelming numbers to expect more of the same next year."



© MMIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.


accesswater2030@yahoo.com 10:36 AM

Tuesday, January 14, 2003

January 14, 2003
Italians alarmed at discovery of huge US munitions base
From Richard Owen in Pisa

ITALIANS, already nervous about war with Iraq, were stunned to learn yesterday that they are sitting on top of the biggest American ammunition dump outside the United States.
Camp Darby, which nestles in a thousand hectares of pinewoods on the Tuscan coast between Pisa and Livorno, is a storehouse for 20,000 tonnes of artillery and aerial munitions, 8,000 tonnes of high explosive and “enough equipment to arm an entire mechanised brigade of tanks and APCs”, according to a report.

It has emerged that the base was the main source of armaments used during the 1991 Gulf War and is expected to serve the same purpose in any new campaign. It also supplied 60 per cent of the ordnance — including nearly 4,000 cluster bombs — dropped on Serbia by Nato warplanes during the 1999 Kosovo campaign.

The report, issued by the Global Security Foundation in the United States and published yesterday in the respected daily Corriere della Sera, will bolster anti-war sentiment in Italy. The Berlusconi Government has offered the United States use of its bases and airspace, but opposition to war with Iraq is strong both on the Left and in the Roman Catholic Church.

A receptionist at the Hotel Mediterraneo, next to the base, said: “We knew that it’s a military base, but not that it has such a huge arsenal.”

“We are all afraid,” said a woman wheeling her baby son in a pushchair through the village of Stagno, which borders the camp. “The winds of war are blowing, and we feel very close to it here.”

The armaments are stored in 125 hangar-style buildings, which line the camp behind a seemingly endless green fence. The camp, set up in 1951, is named after General William Darby, an American special forces officer who died during the Allied liberation of Italy from Nazi occupation in 1945.

It is one of several US bases on Italian soil, including the airbases at Aviano in northern Italy and Sigonella in Sicily and the naval base at Naples, headquarters of the US Sixth Fleet and of Nato Southern Command.

Corriere della Sera said that Italians would be appalled to learn that two years ago underground bunkers at the base built in the 1970s and used to store munitions in controlled temperatures had begun to develop “structural problems”.

US Army engineers had used steel plates to reinforce the bunkers, but this had only made the situation worse. Cracks had widened and chunks of cement had fallen on the stored weapons and bombs. Twelve of the bunkers had been cleared of their contents, with extreme caution, with bomb squads removing 100,000 missiles and bombs and 23 tonnes of high explosive with the help of remote-controlled robots. The report said that it was a small miracle that nothing had gone wrong.

US officials emphasised that Camp Darby also had a humanitarian function, storing thousands of beds and tonnes of clothing for aid missions to the Balkans, Kurdish areas and Africa. It houses bulldozers and other heavy equipment for airlifting to areas of natural catastrophe. But the report said that “if necessary an entire US armoured brigade could leave Camp Darby for Kuwait without needing a change of socks — it would be equipped with everything from cannons to underwear.”










accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:12 PM

It make you wonder about our war posture 1/14/03
2002 Press Releases-from Haliburton

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 25, 2002

HALLIBURTON ENERGY SERVICES WINS MULTIPLE OFFSHORE KOREA CONTRACTS WITH THE KOREA NATIONAL OIL CORPORATION

DALLAS, Texas - Halliburton Energy Services, a business unit of Halliburton (NYSE: HAL), recently won several contracts with the Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC) to provide drilling fluids, drilling bits, coring services, MWD (measurement-while-drilling) and directional drilling operations, and bundled subsea well completion services. Contract work is scheduled to take place in the Donghae-1 Gas field offshore Korea, the country’s first commercial oil and gas development project. In the final planning stages, the project will consist of three subsea wells connected back to a production platform and pipeline to the gas plant onshore.

"Halliburton's ability to maximize the value of the reservoir with our leading-edge technologies and superior service quality, in addition to our record of safe working practices and stewardship of the environment, has allowed us the opportunity to work with KNOC on this first-ever development project in Korea," said Edgar Ortiz, chief executive officer, Halliburton Energy Services Group. "Korea is now developing its oil and gas reserves, and Halliburton is proud to be assisting in this effort."

Halliburton Energy Services will supply services from several different product service lines, including Completion Products and Services (CPS), Sperry-Sun, Baroid, Security DBS and Tools Testing and TCP to complete the subsea well project. Products and services include surface well testing and tubing-conveyed perforating equipment, SPTM tubing retrievable safety valves, directional drilling, MWD, and coring services, drilling fluids, custom designed bits, and in-house engineering support. The safety valves will be manufactured in Halliburton's Carrollton, Texas facility while all other CPS items will be manufactured in Jurong, Singapore.

Halliburton Energy Services provides products, services, and integrated solutions for oil and gas exploration, development, and production. Capabilities range from initial evaluation of producing formations to drilling, completion, stimulation, and well maintenance – for a single well or an entire field. With more than 300 service centers in more than 90 countries, Halliburton possesses the global perspective that is increasingly important for energy exploration and production.

Halliburton, founded in 1919, is one of the world's largest providers of products and services to the petroleum and energy industries. The company serves its customers with a broad range of products and services through its Energy Services Group and Engineering and Construction Group business segments.



accesswater2030@yahoo.com 7:23 PM

Monday, January 13, 2003

US Will Attack Iraq 'Without UN Backing'
By Toby Harnden
Daily Telegraph UK

Friday 10 January 2003

America will not delay a war with Iraq until the autumn and is prepared to launch military action against Saddam Hussein without further United Nations authorisation, a senior Bush administration adviser said yesterday.

Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board and a hawk whose views carry considerable weight, rejected suggestions from British ministers and senior Foreign Office officials that plans for an early war should be put on hold.

Mr Perle, who is close to Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, said he did not expect the UN Security Council to reach agreement on the use of force but had little doubt that George W Bush, the US president, would press ahead regardless and lead a coalition to victory.

"I'm assuming that we will not get a consensus on the Security Council but it may be possible to get it," he said. "It would be a great mistake to become dependent on it and take the view that we can't act separately.

"That would be an abrogation of the president's responsibility."

Mr Perle stressed that as an outside adviser he could not speak for the Bush administration. But with Mr Rumsfeld and his ally Vice-President Dick Cheney, now the driving force behind US foreign policy, his pronouncements have taken on increasing importance.

Mr Perle said inspectors would not find actual weapons in the face of Iraqi concealment. "If that's the test, we're never going to find a smoking gun," said Mr Perle.

He criticised Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, for his handling of the inspections. He said inspectors had mainly visited previously known sites.

"They are the last place you would expect Saddam to put something," Mr Perle said. "You would have to be a complete idiot to do that. The inspectors returning to known sites makes Blix look foolish."

The Swede "has a history from when he was head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and Saddam built a nuclear capability right under his nose", he added.

Mr Perle suggested that American patience with the UN inspections process was limited and closely linked to the military timetable that makes it very difficult to fight a war after March because of the searing heat.

He said: "If there's no change in Saddam's attitude I think there'll be a reluctance to continue this without a clear indication that our patience will be rewarded by a UN Security Council consensus.

"A consensus would be a useful thing and I think we'd be willing to wait a little longer to get it but not a long time."

Mr Perle said America had been right to go to the UN to seek Resolution 1441, passed unanimously in November, because it "produced a consensus in support of significant demands" but the UN had only a limited role in dealing with Saddam.

"The question now of course is whether the UN having done that [passed 1441] will insist that its demands be met or revert to its previous posture which was to pass resolutions but not take the actions necessary to ensure compliance with them."

He expressed doubt that Tony Blair had asked or would ask Mr Bush to delay war until the autumn and accused those who sought such a delay of being opposed to ousting Saddam in any event.

Although Mr Perle did not mention them, a number of US State Department diplomats are implacably opposed to war.

They were encouraged by the views of the ministers and the Foreign Office, reported in The Telegraph yesterday, as well as recent comments by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, that the chances of war were "60:40 against".

Mr Perle said: "There are nations on the UN Security Council against taking military action so they will try to slow any movement towards military action."

America and its allies, he insisted, already had the legal and moral justification for war. "We might be acting without a resolution from the UN authorising it but I think the administration can make a strong case that Saddam's defiance of a variety of resolutions passed previously could be understood to justify military action."

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)


© : t r u t h o u t 2002


accesswater2030@yahoo.com 9:49 AM

Sunday, January 12, 2003

A chilling specter
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 12, 2003


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

During war, the balance of power between the executive and the other branches of government is likely to shift. The president is certainly entitled to greater deference in making some types of national security assessments. But a federal appellate court on Wednesday went too far in granting executive-branch officials virtually unreviewable authority to hold, indefinitely and without access to counsel, an American captured in Afghanistan. The decision ignored the Constitution and relegated the courts to the role of rubber stamp.

In its 54-page opinion, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, widely viewed as the most conservative appellate bench in the country, gave a sweeping victory to those in the executive branch, such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General John Ashcroft and the president himself, who have been busily arrogating power. The unanimous court repeatedly declared that the president's warmaking powers in the Constitution allow the chief executive to make unilateral decisions without judicial interference -- even if those decisions conflict with the Bill of Rights. The decision demands a review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The case involves Yaser Esam Hamdi, who surrendered to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in late 2001. He was transferred to Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But when the government learned Hamdi, though raised in Saudi Arabia, was born in Louisiana and is probably an American citizen, he was sent to a naval brig in Norfolk, Va. Hamdi has been there since April. He has not been charged with a crime or allowed to communicate with his family or a lawyer, and the government claims it can hold him there indefinitely.

The government says Hamdi is an enemy combatant and as such has no right to challenge the legality of his confinement. In a two-page declaration, the government said Hamdi voluntarily joined the Taliban military and was carrying a rifle when he surrendered.

This is a central point. According to prior court rulings, the government may detain Hamdi without charge if he is deemed an enemy fighter. But what if Hamdi was in Afghanistan for a purpose other than taking up arms for the Taliban? In a letter to Congress, Hamdi's father said his son had gone to Afghanistan to do charity work, not fight. Isn't it the job of the courts to determine if the military's claims are accurate?

The 4th Circuit said, essentially, "no," that the courts are obliged during war to take the military's word for what occurs in an overseas theater of war. It refused to give the detainee any chance to rebut the military's version of the facts. Such due process may be impractical in the context of a foreign battlefield, but there is no practical impediment to it now that Hamdi is safely in U.S. custody.

The opinion did make one important distinction, emphasizing that the ruling's reach is limited to Americans who are combatants on foreign soil. The court explained that the same deference wouldn't be given the government for detentions made off the battlefield. It appeared to be telegraphing that cases such as that of Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber, who was picked up at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and has been held as an enemy combatant without charge, would be treated differently.

In spite of the court's exception, we are left with a chilling specter. The Departments of Justice and Defense claim that the battlefield for this war on terrorism is the entire world, and that the war will continue until the last person with evil intent toward the United States is captured. Now a federal appellate court has given the executive branch the power to imprison Americans on overseas battlefields for the duration of the war, without due process or judicial oversight. It is hard to imagine a ruling more antithetical to our constitutional traditions or the rule of law.

© Copyright 2001 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 3:27 PM

It is war on the poor and the middle class and they don't know it. My comment
... Bush's 'class warfare' dodge
By Ellen Goodman, 1/12/2003

I'M DELIGHTED that our commander in chief is warning the country to be wary of warmongers. It isn't what I expect from George W. Bush at this moment in time, but so it goes.

The problem is that the president is talking about domestic warfare, not international. He wants the role as peacemaker for civilian hostilities, not military.

The war games began even before he announced the $674 billion tax cut package. In a preemptive strike, he said that his opponents - those folks who think a tax break for the rich is, um, a tax break for the rich - would foment ''class warfare.''

Democrats then insisted that the president was the one who started it. Soon every kid in the political playground was accusing another of aggression and declaring their own pacifism.

There's something remarkable in the class-conflict consciousness. Class has become a dirty word in America unless it's ''middle class'' - a shrinking category in which most Americans swear they belong.

Through thick and thin, boom and bust, we tenaciously hold on to the belief that we are, fundamentally, a classless society. This self-image survives even though we have the most unequal distribution of wealth in the Western world. It survives even though 1 percent of us own 40 percent of the wealth. And even though there's less income mobility between generations in our country than in any other but South Africa and Great Britain.

The strength of that American belief in equality may sound like a delusion. Benjamin DeMott, who wrote ''The Imperial Middle,'' says, ''It's a terrible thing that we won't face up to the fact that we have a class system.'' But, at the same time, he adds, ''It's not a vice that makes people say `no' to class, it's a kind of virtue.''

He traces that virtue back to the country's origins. ''When the founders were at their best, when they were thinking about the Revolution and the goodness of people who made a sacrifice for something beyond themselves, they realized that it had something to do with the fact that this wouldn't be a class society like the old world.''

Talk of class warfare isn't always politically incorrect. During the last robber-baron era, Teddy Roosevelt spoke about the ''malefactors of great wealth.'' Populists preached against ''plutocrats,'' a moniker that doesn't trip off our lips a century later.

But we rarely hear anyone talk about the ''ruling class'' anymore. Al Gore may have talked about the ''people vs. the powerful.'' John Edwards now promises to be a ''champion for regular people'' against, presumably, irregular people. But Bush is considered to be a regular guy just for having a hamburger in Crawford, Texas. The only class he wants to talk about is the ''investor class.''

If politicians dodge charges of class warfare, Ralph Nader figures that it's because most citizens align themselves with the ''haves.'' ''So, they see the class warfare coming against them.''

Never, he says, underestimate the power of television to sell the story of the poor guy who becomes a basketball star, the winner who takes all. When voters were asked where they belong on the income pecking scale, 19 percent said they were in the top 1 percent of income earners. Another 20 percent said they expected to be there.

And did you wonder about the popularity of repealing the estate tax? Thirty percent of Americans think they'd have to pay death taxes, even though only 2 percent of estates fall in the taxable range.

It's the wide-eyed optimism of ''regular people'' who play the lottery when the odds are a million to one. It reminds me of the man who was told that an earthquake would leave one survivor in his town. ''Phew,'' he replied.

The Bush administration figures that the couple earning $40,000 who get a $1,333 tax cut won't begrudge a $10,244 tax cut to the couple earning $500,000. More to the point, they won't figure what they'll lose in federal programs. As for the folks too poor to pay taxes? These are, after all, the Americans that The Wall Street Journal called ''lucky duckies.''

Americans like thinking of ''us,'' not ''us and them.'' They believe in equality. They reject class and privilege. As DeMott says, that would be fine if equality were a guiding principle, something that required renewed commitment in every generation. But it's a scam if we think it's reality, a fanciful self-portrait that can't be criticized.

George W. describes himself as an opponent of class warfare. Well, of course he is. This plan would keep every, um, plutocrat in place. It's not peace at any price. It's peace at his price.

Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com.

This story ran on page D11 of the Boston Globe on 1/12/2003.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.




accesswater2030@yahoo.com 11:45 AM

The Bush administration is usually scapegoating Clinton.

washingtonpost.com
Bush Administration Shifts Blame for N. Korea Crisis
Clinton-Era Agreement Signed in '94 With Pyongyang Is Called Flawed

By Karen DeYoung and T.R. Reid
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 12, 2003; Page A22


A senior Bush administration official suggested yesterday that the nuclear crisis with North Korea was the predictable result of a flawed 1994 agreement signed by the Clinton administration with Pyongyang that "frontloaded all the benefits and left the difficult things to the end" -- for the next president.

The comments marked a sharp change of direction from the administration's insistence in recent weeks that only North Korea was to blame for the crisis. As recently as last week, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he gave "great credit" to the Clinton administration for freezing North Korea's plutonium enrichment program with the 1994 Agreed Framework.

The new formulation of blame coincides with a spate of accusations, some from strong administration supporters, that President Bush may have antagonized North Korea by labeling it part of the "axis of evil" and helped provoke the crisis.

That sentiment appeared to be echoed by North Korean officials meeting Friday and yesterday in Santa Fe with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D). Sources involved in those talks said North Korea's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Han Song Ryol, had said the Bush administration's tough policy toward North Korea was motivated primarily by Bush's desire to do the opposite of what his predecessor had done on foreign policy.

Han asserted that Pyongyang had been developing a working relationship with Washington toward the end of the Clinton era -- indeed, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Pyongyang just before President Bill Clinton left office -- but then faced a reversal of policy under Bush.

"They think the Bush people have closed the door on them just because Clinton had opened it," said someone involved in the Santa Fe talks.

But the senior Bush administration official said the "idea that the Agreed Framework was going along just fine" was a misperception. "We were getting to a crisis very quickly," the official said.

Under the accord, the United States agreed to move immediately toward a normalized political and economic relationship with North Korea. The Clinton administration agreed that within six months of the October 1994 accord, it would organize an international consortium and sign a contract to build light water nuclear reactors for North Korea. Until the construction was completed, the United States and its partners would supply North Korea with fuel oil shipments.

In exchange, North Korea agreed to freeze, within three months of signing, operations of its graphite-modulated nuclear reactor that the West believed it was using to produce weapons-grade plutonium. Pyongyang also agreed to submit the country to full International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards "when a significant portion of the LWR [light water reactor] project is completed, but before delivery of key nuclear components" for the facilities.

North Korea has admitted it was seeking weapons-grade material through another route, by secretly enriching uranium. With the foundation for the light water reactors poured last fall, the official said, "we were getting . . . to the end of the road. Maybe that is what caused the North Koreans to do what they did. . . . They weren't prepared to sign on to safeguards" that would uncover the secret program.

North Korea announced last week that it would put the frozen reactor at Yongbyon back into production, and said Friday it was withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty under which it had agreed not to produce nuclear weapons. Yesterday, Pyongyang said it would likely restart a suspended missile-testing program.

The administration official said yesterday's announcement, like the others, would bring no change in U.S. policy.

"The North Koreans are quite accustomed" to these tactics, the official said. "They threaten and blackmail, and people rush to deal with them. And then they keep their means of threatening and blackmailing. We will continue to consult with our allies in the region and demand that North Korea change its behavior before there are talks between the two governments."

The North Korean envoys meeting with Richardson in Santa Fe said they have tried for weeks to arrange talks with the administration but have been repeatedly rebuffed, people involved in the talks said.

Han, the deputy U.N. ambassador, asked Richardson to set up meetings with the administration to discuss Pyongyang's nuclear program. But he said no member of the U.S. mission to the United Nations would talk with them. U.S. officials have said they are willing to talk but will not enter into negotiations.

Richardson's aides said he had passed along the request for dialogue to Powell. In a statement issued after the Santa Fe talks, Richardson said, "Ambassador Han told me that North Korea has no intentions of building nuclear weapons."

The three days of talks that the New Mexico media dubbed the "Santa Fe Summit" came about because Han had come to know Richardson in the 1990s, when Richardson was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Three weeks ago, Han contacted his old acquaintance, who was elected in November to be New Mexico's governor. At a White House briefing for governors-elect in late December, Richardson mentioned Han's initiative to a White House official. Last week, Powell called Richardson and told him to set up a meeting.

Within hours, Han and another North Korean envoy, Mun Jong Chol, were on a plane bound for Santa Fe. Beginning with dinner Thursday night, the two spent nine hours in discussion with Richardson at the mauve adobe governor's mansion atop a red-stone bluff in the spare New Mexico desert.

Richardson, who said he repeatedly reported back to Powell on the talks, clearly savored the attention but took pains not to challenge the Bush administration's handling of the confrontation with North Korea. "I am not an official negotiator," he said. "I support the administration's policy."

But when the talks ended at midday Saturday, Richardson stepped out into a chilly snow storm to address reporters -- and seemed to challenge the White House.

"It is my hope we will see a direct dialogue soon," he said. "The ball is now in the Bush administration's court, and the North Koreans' court, to bring about a peaceful resolution through dialogue."

Reid reported from Santa Fe.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 11:29 AM

washingtonpost.com
U.S. Decision On Iraq Has Puzzling Past
Opponents of War Wonder When, How Policy Was Set

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 12, 2003; Page A01


On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 21/2-page document marked "TOP SECRET" that outlined the plan for going to war in Afghanistan as part of a global campaign against terrorism.

Almost as a footnote, the document also directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq, senior administration officials said.

The previously undisclosed Iraq directive is characteristic of an internal decision-making process that has been obscured from public view. Over the next nine months, the administration would make Iraq the central focus of its war on terrorism without producing a rich paper trail or record of key meetings and events leading to a formal decision to act against President Saddam Hussein, according to a review of administration decision-making based on interviews with more than 20 participants.

Instead, participants said, the decision to confront Hussein at this time emerged in an ad hoc fashion. Often, the process circumvented traditional policymaking channels as longtime advocates of ousting Hussein pushed Iraq to the top of the agenda by connecting their cause to the war on terrorism.

With the nation possibly on the brink of war, the result of this murky process continues to reverberate today: tepid support for military action at the State Department, muted concern in the military ranks of the Pentagon and general confusion among relatively senior officials -- and the public -- about how or even when the policy was decided.

The decision to confront Iraq was in many ways a victory for a small group of conservatives who, at the start of the administration, found themselves outnumbered by more moderate voices in the military and the foreign policy bureaucracy. Their tough line on Iraq before Sept. 11, 2001, was embraced quickly by President Bush and Vice President Cheney after the attacks. But that shift was not communicated to opponents of military action until months later, when the internal battle was already decided.

By the time the policy was set, opponents were left arguing over the tactics -- such as whether to go to the United Nations -- without clearly understanding how the decision was reached in the first place. "It simply snuck up on us," a senior State Department official said.

The administration has embarked on something "quite extraordinary in American history, a preventive war, and the threshold for justification should be extraordinarily high," said G. John Ikenberry, an international relations professor at Georgetown University. But "the external presentation and the justification for it really seems to be lacking," he said. "The external presentation appears to mirror the internal decision-making quite a bit."

Advocates for military action against Iraq say the process may appear mysterious only because the answer was so self-evident. They believe that Bush understood instantly after Sept. 11 that Iraq would be the next major step in the global war against terrorism, and that he made up his mind within days, if not hours, of that fateful day. "The most important thing is that the president's position changed after 9/11," said a senior official who pushed hard for action.

"Saddam Must Go"
A small group of senior officials, especially in the Pentagon and the vice president's office, have long been concerned about Hussein, and urged his ouster in articles and open letters years before Bush became president.

Five years ago, the Dec. 1 issue of the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, headlined its cover with a bold directive: "Saddam Must Go: A How-to Guide." Two of the articles were written by current administration officials, including the lead one, by Zalmay M. Khalilzad, now special White House envoy to the Iraqi opposition, and Paul D. Wolfowitz, now deputy defense secretary.

"We will have to confront him sooner or later -- and sooner would be better," Khalilzad and Wolfowitz wrote. They called for "sustained attacks on the elite military units and security forces that are the main pillar of Saddam's terror-based regime."

In an open letter to President Bill Clinton in early 1998, Wolfowitz, Khalilzad and eight other people who now hold positions in the Bush administration -- including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- urged Clinton to begin "implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power."

Many advocates of action were skeptical that Hussein could be contained indefinitely, even by repeated weapons inspections, and they viewed his control of Iraq -- and his possible acquisition of weapons of mass destruction -- as inherently destabilizing in the region. Many were also strong supporters of Israel, and they saw ousting Hussein as key to changing the political dynamic of the entire Middle East.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush and Cheney's position was not as clear-cut.

In an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," about one year before the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney defended the decision of George H.W. Bush's administration not to attack Baghdad because, he said, the United States should not act as though "we were an imperialist power, willy-nilly moving into capitals in that part of the world, taking down governments." In the current environment, he said, "we want to maintain our current posture vis-à-vis Iraq."

Bush, during the campaign, focused more on the dangers of nuclear proliferation than on the removal of Saddam Hussein. In a December 1999 debate among GOP presidential contenders, Bush backtracked when he said he'd "take 'em out" if Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Asked by the moderator whether he had said "take him out," Bush replied, "Take out the weapons of mass destruction."

"Transformed by Sept. 11"
In the early months of the Bush administration, officials intent on challenging Hussein sought to put Iraq near the top of the administration's foreign policy agenda. Many felt frustrated by the interagency debate. Defense officials seethed as the State Department pressed ahead with a plan to impose "smart sanctions" on Iraq and, in their view, threw bureaucratic roadblocks in the way of providing funds to the Iraqi opposition.

"Even relatively easy decisions were always thrown up to the presidential level," said a Defense official.

Meanwhile, at the White House, officials worked on refining the administration's Iraq policy, focusing especially on how to implement the official U.S. stance of "regime change" articulated by the Clinton administration. Bush was informed of the deliberations, but nothing had been settled when the terrorists attacked the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

"Certainly, different people at different times were arguing for a more vigorous approach to Saddam," one senior official said. "But nobody suggested that we have the U.S. military go to Baghdad. That was transformed by Sept. 11."

Iraq, and its possible possession of weapons of mass destruction, was on the minds of several key officials as they struggled to grapple with the aftermath of Sept. 11. Cheney, as he watched the World Trade Center towers collapse while he was sitting in front of a television in the White House's underground bunker, turned to an aide and remarked, "As unfathomable as this was, it could have been so much worse if they had weapons of mass destruction."

The same thought occurred to other senior officials in the days that followed. Rumsfeld wondered to aides whether Hussein had a role in the attacks. Wolfowitz, in public and private conversations, was an especially forceful advocate for tackling Iraq at the same time as Osama bin Laden. And within days, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice also privately began to counsel the president that he needed to go after all rogue nations harboring weapons of mass destruction.

But these concerns were submerged by the imperative of dealing first with Afghanistan. "I remember the day that we put the map on the table, and the color drained from everybody's face," one official said. "Afghanistan is not the place you would choose to fight."

The Pentagon, while it was fighting the war in Afghanistan, began reviewing its plans for Iraq because of the secret presidential directive on Sept. 17. On Sept. 19 and 20, an advisory group known as the Defense Policy Board met at the Pentagon -- with Rumsfeld in attendance -- and animatedly discussed the importance of ousting Hussein.

The anthrax attacks, which came soon after Sept. 11, further strengthened the resolve of some key administration officials to deal with Iraq. Cheney, in particular, became consumed with the possibility that Iraq or other countries could distribute biological or chemical weapons to terrorists, officials said.

Though Cheney's aides said the vice president has been consistently concerned about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, others perceived a shift. "To his credit, he looked at the situation differently after Sept. 11 than he did before," one senior official said.

Because the culprit behind the anthrax attacks has not been found, some administration officials still are convinced that Hussein had a role in the anthrax attacks. "It's hard to get away from the feeling that the timing was too much of a coincidence," one official said.

Officials close to the president portray the Iraq decision as a natural outgrowth of concerns Bush raised during the presidential campaign, and they say he very quickly decided he needed to challenge Iraq after the terrorist attacks.

But he didn't publicly raise it earlier because, in the words of one senior official, "he didn't think the country could handle the shock of 9/11 and a lot of talk about dealing with states that had weapons of mass destruction."

"What a Fixation"
In free-wheeling meetings of the "principals" during October and November, Rumsfeld and Cheney emphasized their suspicions of ties between rogue states, such as Iraq, and terrorists. Some of the conversations were prompted by intelligence, later discounted, that al Qaeda may have been on the verge of obtaining a "dirty bomb" that would spread radioactive material.

By early November, Wayne Downing, a retired Army general who headed counterterrorism in the White House, on his own initiative began working up plans for an attack of Iraq, keeping his superiors informed of his progress. A Pentagon planning group also kept hard at work on possible options.

"The issue got away from the president," said a senior official who attended discussions in the White House. "He wasn't controlling the tone or the direction" and was influenced by people who "painted him into a corner because Iraq was an albatross around their necks."

After some of these meetings at the White House, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, skeptical of military action without the necessary diplomatic groundwork, would return to his office on the seventh floor of the State Department, roll his eyes and say, "Jeez, what a fixation about Iraq," State Department officials said.

"I do believe certain people have grown theological about this," said another administration official who opposed focusing so intently on Iraq. "It's almost a religion -- that it will be the end of our society if we don't take action now."

"Axis of Evil"
Much of this activity -- and these concerns -- were hidden from the public eye. Bush barely mentioned Iraq in his address to the nation nine days after the Sept. 11 attacks. In fact, the administration did not publicly tip its hand until Bush made his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 2002. Even then, officials did their best to obscure the meaning of Bush's words.

Listing Iraq, Iran and North Korea, Bush declared, "States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred."

"I will not wait on events, while dangers gather," Bush warned.

State Department officials puzzled over drafts of the speech and ultimately concluded the words did not represent a policy shift, though some were worried the rhetoric would have diplomatic consequences. Powell "thought it rang an alarm bell since it would send waves out there to colleagues around the world," a State Department official said.

Powell expressed concerns about the language to the White House, he said. "But he didn't push it hard."

Briefing reporters at the White House, officials played down the importance of the "axis of evil." One senior White House official advised "not to read anything into any [country] name in terms of the next phase" of the war against terrorism. "We've always said there are a number of elements of national power" in the U.S. arsenal, the aide added, including diplomacy and sanctions. "This is not a call to use a specific element" of that power.

Yet, in this period, Bush also secretly signed an intelligence order, expanding on a previous presidential finding, that directed the CIA to undertake a comprehensive, covert program to topple Hussein, including authority to use lethal force to capture the Iraqi president.

Speculation continued to run high in the media that an attack on Iraq was imminent. But within the administration, some of the advocates were becoming depressed about the lack of action, complaining that it was difficult to focus attention on Iraq, especially as the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians spiraled out of control. In March, Cheney toured the Middle East on a trip dominated by questions from Arab leaders about the Israeli-Palestinian violence. But he also stressed the administration's contention that Iraq was a problem that needed to be addressed.

"I Made Up My Mind"
Then, in April, Bush approached Rice. It was time to figure out "what we are doing about Iraq," he told her, setting in motion a series of meetings by the principals and their deputies. "I made up my mind that Saddam needs to go," Bush hinted to a British reporter at the time. "That's about all I'm willing to share with you."

At the meetings, senior officials examined new but unconfirmed evidence of Iraq's programs to build biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and considered connections between Baghdad and Palestinian terrorism. They argued over which elements of the Iraqi opposition to back, ultimately deciding to push for unity among the exiles and within the U.S. bureaucracy.

By many accounts, they did not deal with the hard question of whether there should be a confrontation with Iraq. "Most of the internal debate in the administration has really been about tactics," an official said.

Powell sent his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, who had signed the letter to Clinton urging Hussein's ouster, to many of the meetings. As a way of establishing Powell's bona fides with those eager for action, Armitage would boast -- incorrectly, as it turned out -- that Powell first backed "regime change" in his confirmation hearings.

Serious military planning also began in earnest in the spring. Every three or four weeks, Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of U.S. Central Command, would travel to the White House to give Bush a private briefing on the war planning for Iraq.

On June 1, Bush made another speech, this time at West Point, arguing for a policy of preemption against potential threats. "If we wait for the threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long," Bush said. That month, two major foreign policy headaches -- a potential war between India and Pakistan and the administration's uncertain policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- were also resolved, freeing the White House to turn its full attention to confronting Iraq.

Only later did it become clear that the president already had made up his mind. In July, the State Department's director of policy planning, Richard N. Haass, held a regular meeting with Rice and asked whether they should talk about the pros and cons of confronting Iraq.

Don't bother, Rice replied: The president has made a decision.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 11:25 AM