[Peace-discuss] News notes 030427

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Notes on the week's news from the "War on Terrorism"
	for the AWARE meeting, Sunday, April 27, 2003

-- the anniversary of the explosion of the river boat Sultana on the
Mississippi near Memphis in 1865, in which about as many people died as
died from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 -- More than half of
them emaciated Union soldiers returning north after being released from a
Confederate prison camp.

	<http://www.eskimo.com/~recall/bleed/0427.htm>

THEME OF THE WEEK. "Personally, I don't much care if the U.S. reports
about weapons of mass destruction prove to be imaginary. Toppling
Hussein's regime was still right." --David Ignatius, Washington Post
columnist 0425

[1] THEY SEEK THEM HERE, THEY SEEK THEM THERE... The administration will
be tripling the size of the team searching for evidence of Iraq's WMD
program because the White House is concerned about the failure of
searchers to find any weapons thus far. One thousand scientists and
military personnel will be arriving in Iraq in the next few weeks to
interview Iraqi scientists and look around. [NYT 0427] According to the
Los Angeles Times, the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is a
mess. Disorganization, delays, and poor intelligence have slowed the hunt
... so much bickering among government agencies that an NSC staffer has
been assigned to mediate among the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency,
and other concerned agencies; only two mobile exploitation teams out of 20
are in the hunt; the teams lack transport helicopters and guards; and the
search for, and interrogation of, weapons scientists has been haphazard.
[LAT 0427]

[2] THE SMELL OF MENDACITY. "...a million Shi'ite pilgrims streamed toward
Karbala earlier this week, shouting "No to America, no to Saddam, no to
tyranny, no to Israel!" (slogans recorded by a reporter for Agence France
Presse) ... As for the Weapons of Mass Destruction, their non-appearance
has become a huge embarrassment for both Bush and Blair. Last Sunday's
British Independent carried the following huge frontpage banner headlines:
"SO WHERE ARE THEY, MR BLAIR? NOT ONE ILLEGAL WARHEAD. NOT ONE DRUM OF
CHEMICALS. NOT ONE INCRIMINATING DOCUMENT. NOT ONE SHRED OF EVIDENCE THAT
IRAQ HAS WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION IN MORE THAN A MONTH OF WAR AND
OCCUPATION" ... The days passed, and each excited bellow of discovery of
WMD caches on the road north from Kuwait yielded to disappointment. Then
came Judith Miller's story in the New York Times. The smoking gun at last!
Not exactly, as we shall see. But first a word about the reporter. If ever
someone has an institutional interest in finding WMD in Iraq it's surely
Miller, who down the years has established a corner in creaking Tales of
Terrorism, most of them bottle-fed to her by Israeli and US intelligence.
It was Miller who served up Khidir Hamza, the self-proclaimed nuclear
bombmaker for Saddam, later exposed as a fraud. It was Miller who last
year whipped up an amazing confection in the Times, blind-sourced from top
to toe, about a Russian biowar scientist (sounding suspiciously like Lotte
Lenya in From Russia With Love, and since deceased) ferrying Russian
smallpox to Saddam. At least the Times's headline writer tried to keep
things honest this time. "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, An Iraqi
Scientist Is Said to Assert." What did who say and who did the asserting?
It turns out that Miller, in bed with the entire 101st Airborne, had been
told by "American weapons experts" in a group called MET Alpha that they
have been talking to "a scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's
chemical weapons program," that the Iraqis destroyed chemical weapons days
before the war and that "Iraq had secretly sent unconventional weapons and
technology to Syria, starting in the mid-1990's, and that more recently
Iraq was cooperating with Al Qaeda." Now isn't that just what you'd expect
him to say? And if you were an Iraqi scientist looking for quick passage
out of Iraq to the USA, isn't that just what you would say, in a series of
unverifiable claims all fragrant to American nostrils? Miller does concede
that the MET Alpha group would not tell her who the scientist was, would
not allow her to question him (assuming it wasn't a "her," maybe Lotte
Lenya in a later incarnation) or do anything more than look at him from a
great distance as he stood next to what was billed to Miller as a dump for
"precursors" for chemical weapons. (Come to think about it, it's probably
a recycling facility for used cans of Roundup). Furthermore, she wasn't
allowed to write about the unnamed Iraqi scientist for three days, and
even then US military censors went over her copy line by line. What
convenient disclosures this Iraqi allegedly offers, tailor-made to
buttress Rumsfeld's fist-shaking at Syria and Bush and Powell's claims
that Saddam and Osama bin Laden worked hand in glove, a claim that
depended originally on an article by Jeffrey Goldberg in The New Yorker
last year. At least Goldberg talked to the man claiming Osama/Saddam ties,
although he made no effort to check the man's "evidence," subsequently
discredited by less gullible journalists. With Miller we sink to the level
of straight press handout. I guess Miller, who's apparently writing a
sequel to her last book, on bioterror, needs to stay on the good side of
MET Alpha..." [CP 0423]

[3] AND WE'LL KEEP THEM THERE UNTIL THEY TALK. The US military has
admitted that children aged 16 years and younger are among the detainees
being interrogated at its prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Lieutenant
Colonel Barry Johnson, a US military spokesman, yesterday said all the
teenagers being held were "captured as active combatants against US
forces", and described them as "enemy combatants". The children, some of
whom have been held at Guantanamo for over a year, are imprisoned in
separate cells from the adult detainees, Lt Col Johnson said. He would say
only that the teenagers are "very few, a very small number" and would not
say how old the youngest prisoner is. The US military confirmed their
presence yesterday after Australia's ABC television reported that children
were being held at Guantanamo, the controversial detention centre where
prisoners from the war in Afghanistan have been held by the US, in breach
of the Geneva conventions, for over a year. The news sparked outrage from
human rights groups already campaigning against the indefinite detention
of the roughly 660 males from 42 countries, held on suspicion of having
links to al-Qaida or Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime. They have not
been charged or allowed access to lawyers. "That the US sees nothing wrong
with holding children at Guantanamo and interrogating them is a shocking
indicator of how cavalier the Bush administration has become about
respecting human rights," said an Amnesty International spokesman,
Alistair Hodgett. Human Rights Watch said the US was exacerbating a
contentious situation. "[The detention of youths] reflects our broader
concerns that the US never properly determined the legal status of those
held in the conflict," said James Ross, legal adviser for Human Rights
Watch in New York. Lt Col Johnson said the juveniles were being held
because "they have potential to provide important information in the
ongoing war on terrorism". "Their release is contingent on the
determination that they are not a threat to the [US] nation and have no
further intelligence value." Lt Col Johnson said officials determined that
some detainees were younger than 16 during medical and other screenings
after their arrival in Cuba. He added that all the prisoners aged under 16
years were brought to Guantanamo after January 1 2002 - suggesting that
some were 15 or younger when they were first imprisoned. In September
2002, Canadian officials reported that a 15-year-old Canadian had been
captured on July 27 after being badly wounded in a firefight in eastern
Afghanistan. Canada's prime minister, Jean Chrétien said he was seeking
consular access to the boy. Last week, Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper
reported that the youth, now 16, is being held in Guantanamo and that US
officials have refused access to Canadian officials. The newspaper quoted
unidentified sources as saying that the youth allegedly threw a grenade
that killed Sergeant 1st Class Christopher James Speer, 28, of
Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Globe and Mail said US officials would want
to interrogate the Canadian because his father has been identified as a
senior financial leader of al-Qaida. Lawyers have blamed the indefinite
detentions for increasing depression and suicide attempts at the camp,
which received the first detainees in January 2001. According to the US
military, there have been 25 suicide attempts by 17 prisoners at Camp
X-Ray, with 15 attempts made this year. Just this Monday the US military
announced that one prisoner, who it said was under supervision in the
acute care unit of a new mental health ward, made a repeated suicide
attempt. [GUARDIAN 0423]

[4] WHY NOT? WE IMPRISON MORE OF OUR OWN CITIZENS THAN ANY OTHER COUNTRY.
At Guantanamo Bay hundreds of captives from the war in Afghanistan are
still being held indefinitely. The article's 20th paragraph says:
"Officials said only a small number of the detainees are members of
al-Qaida. The rest have either been determined to be nobodies, rounded up
in the chaotic aftermath of the war, or presumed to be nobodies whose
state has not yet been determined." [NYT 0424]

[5] HOW DARE YOU CALL US OCCUPIERS? The United States has reacted angrily
to comments made by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan in which
he reminded US forces in Iraq of their duties as an "occupying power" in
the country. Making his annual address to the Human Rights Commission in
Geneva Mr Annan said he hoped coalition troops would adhere to the Geneva
Conventions and accept their responsibility for the safety of the Iraqi
people. Only minutes after the secretary-general had finished speaking,
Kevin Moley, the US ambassador to the UN in Geneva, made his irritation
clear. He said that the US had repeatedly spelled out to Mr Annan and the
world that its troops were "in conformance and wanting to be in
conformance in every way with the Geneva Conventions". "Quite frankly, we
find it odd at best that the secretary-general would feel that he had to
bring this to our attention," Mr Moley said. [BBC 0424]

[6] WE'RE THE OCCUPIERS! On Wednesday, the U.S. military warned Iraqis
against unilaterally claiming authority in their country. "The coalition
alone retains absolute authority within Iraq," announced a top general 

warnings by U.S. forces in Iraq appeared aimed especially at an Iraqi
exile who has appointed himself "mayor" of Baghdad. The Times also says
that U.S. military officials in Iraq are getting a bit uncomfortable about
the activities of the Pentagon's favorite son, Ahmad Chalabi. Unnamed
military officials say they're considering either disarming Chalabi's
700-man force or putting them under U.S. command. [NYT 0424]

[7] UH-OH, ASHLEIGH BLURTS OUT THE TRUTH. War's sobering realities never
reached American TV screens during the recent U.S.-led invasion of Iraq,
according to NBC News correspondent Ashleigh Banfield. "We didn't see what
happen when Marines fired M-16s," Banfield said during an appearance today
at Kansas State University. "We didn't see what happened after mortars
landed, only the puff of smoke. There were horrors that were completely
left out of this war. So was this journalism? Or was this coverage?" On
the other hand, she said, many U.S. television viewers were treated to a
non-stop flow of images presented by "cable news operators who wrap
themselves in the American flag and go after a certain target
demographic." "It was a grand and glorious picture that had a lot of
people watching," Banfield said, "and a lot of advertisers excited about
cable TV news. But it wasn't journalism, because I'm not sure Americans
are hesitant to do this again -- to fight another war, because it looked
to them like a courageous and terrific endeavor." Banfield's appearance at
KSU's McCain Auditorium marked the 129th speech in the long-running Landon
Lecture series, which was established in 1966 by the late Kansas Gov.
Alfred M. Landon. In addition to her duties at NBC, Banfield also hosts
the popular MSNBC cable TV news show, "MSNBC Investigates." Until last
fall, Banfield anchored her own MSNBC news program, "Ashleigh Banfield: On
Location," a program that included a stop last summer in Manhattan, where
the Canadian-born host interviewed KSU experts who have developed methods
to protect the nation's food supply from potential bioterrorism threats.
Since 9-11, Banfield has frequently reported news stories relating to the
Bush administration's "war on terrorism" from the Middle East, including
Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel Syria and Lebanon. In her lecture, Banfield
noted inconsistences in the Bush administration's announced war aims in
Iraq, beginning with the original U.S. pre-war contention that Iraqi
tyrant Saddam Hussein's alleged stockpile of chemical and biological
weapons posed a serious international threat. "Conveniently, in the week
or two we were in there, it became a message of 'freeing the Iraqi
people,'" Banfield said. "That should have been the message early on, in
fact, six to eight months preceding this campaign, if we were trying to
win over the hearts of the Arab world." According to Banfield, U.S.
broadcasters do not accurately inform the American public of the basic
reason behind widespread Islamic distrust of the U.S. -- the American
government's continued unwillingness to treat Israelis and Palestinians as
equal partners in the future of Israel. "As a journalist, I have been
ostracized just from going on television and saying, 'Here's what the
leaders of Hezbollah, a radical Moslem group, are telling me about what is
needed to bring peace to Israel,'" she said. "And, 'Here's what the
Lebanese are saying.' Like it or lump it, don't shoot the messenger, but
that's what they do." An audience of about 500 attended Banfield's
lecture, the last event in this season's Landon Lecture series. [TOPEKA
CAPITAL-JOURNAL 0426]

[8] COLIN WAS LYING ABOUT THIS, TOO. The LAT fronts the first part of a
two-day evaluation of the capabilities and aspirations of Ansar al Islam,
the Iraqi Islamic group that U.S. officials have alleged is the link
between Saddam and al-Qaida. Documents from the Islamic group, visits to
its bases, and statements from its imprisoned militants led the LAT to
conclude-despite Secretary of State Powell's allegations that the group
wanted to export terrorism into the U.S.-Ansar al Islam was a fledgling
organization dedicated to fighting the Kurdish government in northern Iraq
and incapable of posing a real threat beyond its borders. [LAT 0427]

[9] WE'RE THE OCCUPIERS, BUT WE'LL HIRE LOCALS. The Bush administration is
plotting a new legal system in Iraq that could try hundreds of former
officials there of war crimes. The system would operate similar to
military tribunals and, according to U.S. officials, would be operated by
Iraqis, not Americans. [LAT 0427]

[10] ...OR OUTSOURCE IT. 150 Iraqi exiles hand-picked by the Pentagon are
on their way to Baghdad to aid in rebuilding the government there 
 the
team of Iraqi exiles, officially known as the Iraqi Reconstruction and
Development Council, was personally assembled two months ago by Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Yet great pains have been taken to make
sure the exiles are not viewed as "agents of America," the story says.
Members of the group, which include engineers, civil administrators, and
other professionals, are employed by a major defense contractor, SAIC, and
until recently, they were working out of office space in suburban
Virginia, not at the Pentagon. In Baghdad, they will report directly to
Jay Garner-the retired U.S. general who is now the top administrator in
Iraq-until the formation of an interim Iraqi authority in late May. [NYT
0426]

[11] DO YOU THINK SO? The administration seem to be "preparing the public
for the possibility that they might fail to find bombs, missiles and
artillery shells filled with chemical or biological agents, or to find
records or other evidence further linking Iraq to the al-Qaida terrorist
network." [WP 0426]

[12] COUNT THE PENTAGON SILVERWARE. Army Secretary Thomas E. White
suddenly resigned yesterday. White had been dogged by links to his former
employer Enron and had repeatedly clashed with Rumsfeld [WP 0426]

[13] NON-AGGRESSION? WE'D LOSE OUR BEST TRICK! North Korea is quoted as
saying that it indeed has nuclear weapons; a North Korean representative
may or may not have made threats to "test them, use them or export them."
The papers all have slightly different accounts of what happened in talks
among the U.S., China, and North Korea, but the Bush administration seems
to want to play "Cuban missile crisis" and is talking of everything from
military strikes to a blockade... [ALL 0425] NK wants the US to sign a
non-aggression treaty, but the US refuses. [NPR 0425]

[14] HOW MANY DEALS DID THEY DO? The surrender of Tariq Aziz, perhaps the
best-known Iraqi official apart from Saddam Hussein, was negotiated over
the course of four satellite-phone conversations between U.S. officials
and an "American citizen who is a friend of Mr. Aziz and his family" ...
U.S. officials asked that the source "not disclose his identity, as he
also is negotiating the surrender of other high-level Iraqis." Better yet,
this talkative American said he spoke to a high-ranking Iraqi who claimed
to have seen Saddam a couple of days ago, although no independent
confirmation was possible. [WSJ 0425]

[15] WE'RE THE OCCUPIERS (III). The self-proclaimed mayor of Baghdad
continued grandstanding yesterday, touring hospitals, water facilities,
and neighborhoods like a "big-city mayor," [NYT 0425] The US arrested him
on Sunday.

[16] THE US IS AGAINST INTERFERENCE... Iran disputes U.S. claims it is
"interfering" in Iraq. At a press conference in Tehran with his French
counterpart, Iran's foreign minister said, "It is very interesting that
the Americans have occupied Iraq but they accuse Iraq's neighbor of
interfering in its affairs." Also buried in the 10th paragraph of that
piece is Iran's announcement that it has released the five remaining Jews
imprisoned there since 2000 on charges of spying for Israel. [LAT 0425]

[17] WHY NOT? WE IMPRISON MORE OF OUR OWN CITIZENS THAN ANY OTHER COUNTRY
(II). Attorney General John Ashcroft overruled an appellate panel of
immigration judges with his decision that the U.S. has the right to detain
illegal immigrants indefinitely. [WP 0425]

[18] ROB FROM THE POOR, GIVE TO THE RICH. The IRS plans to ask more than 4
million working poor people for much more exhaustive proof in order to
claim a tax credit [even though] IRS figures that show the government
loses far more money in underreporting from rich people than it does in
payments to poor ones. "If they give you money, they want an exact
accounting for it," a former IRS commissioner told the NYT. "If they don't
collect the money, then they really don't care." [NYT 0425]

[19] THAT WAR DISTRACTS US FROM, UH, SPENDING... The New York-based
Conference Board said its Index of Leading Economic Indicators, which
measures where the economy is headed in the next three to six months, fell
by 0.2 percent last month to 110.6. That ... followed a revised drop of
0.5 percent in February ... Conference Board economist Ken Goldstein
raised concern over a possible slowdown in consumer spending, which
accounts for two-thirds of all economic activity. "In addition to
intensified nervousness over oil prices, war, and the potential of a
terror attack, it is the more fundamental plummeting of consumer
expectations that raises the specter of a fall-off in consumption
growth,'' he said. Ed Peters, chief investment officer at PanAgora Asset
Management in Boston, agreed the war was ``a drag on the economy'' in
March, but he believes consumer consumption will remain on track now that
the battle appears over. ``People have been worried about that for a long,
long time. As long as unemployment stays below 6 percent, there isn't
really a big problem with consumer spending,'' he said. "It got soft
mostly because of the war. People got caught up watching the war, instead
of doing what Americans are supposed to be doing -- spending.'' Some had
hoped the end of the war would motivate businesses to make big capital
investments, but the Conference Board warned that history may repeat
itself. ``A decade ago, the end of fighting (in the Persian Gulf War)
didn't deliver much impetus to the domestic economy,'' Goldstein said.
``As was the case then, an end to the fighting may do little to change
trends in the U.S. economy.'' The Index of Leading Economic Indicators,
which includes 10 components, stood at 100 in 1996, its base year. For
March, half of the factors rose, such as stock prices and manufacturers'
new orders for consumer goods and materials. The negative contributors
were a drop in building permits and real money supply, higher average
weekly unemployment claims and lower consumer expectations. [NYT 0421]

[20] BUT LIKE TONY SOPRANO WE ALWAYS HAVE A LITTLE EXTRA FOR OUR FRIENDS.
Following talks over the weekend between Israeli and U.S. delegations, the
agreement granting Israel $9 billion in U.S. loan guarantees is expected
to be signed this week, Israel Radio reported on Sunday. [HAARETZ 0427]

[21] NOW IT CAN BE TOLD, BY THE NETWORKS.  To build its case for war with
Iraq, the Bush administration argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of
mass destruction, but some officials now privately acknowledge the White
House had another reason for war -- a global show of American power and
democracy. Officials inside government and advisers outside told ABCNEWS
the administration emphasized the danger of Saddam's weapons to gain the
legal justification for war from the United Nations and to stress the
danger at home to Americans. "We were not lying," said one official. "But
it was just a matter of emphasis." Officials now say they may not find
hundreds of tons of mustard and nerve agents and maybe not thousands of
liters of anthrax and other toxins. But U.S. forces will find some, they
say [OR WE'LL PUT IT WHERE IT CAN BE FOUND, LIKE AN EASTER EGG FOR A SLOW
CHILD]. On Thursday, President Bush raised the possibility for the first
time that any such Iraqi weapons were destroyed before or during the war.
If weapons of mass destruction were not the primary reason for war, what
was? Here's the answer officials and advisers gave ABCNEWS. The Sept. 11,
2001, attacks changed everything, including the Bush administration's
thinking about the Middle East - and not just Saddam Hussein.  Senior
officials decided that unless action was taken, the Middle East would
continue to be a breeding ground for terrorists. Officials feared that
young Arabs, angry about their lives and without hope, would always
looking for someone to hate - and that someone would always be Israel and
the United States. [BUT NOW THEY CERTAINLY WON'T FEEL THAT WAY.] Europeans
thought the solution was to get a peace agreement between Israel and the
Palestinians. But American officials felt a Middle East peace agreement
would only be part of the solution [--A PART WE WON'T DO]... [ABC NEWS
0425]

[22] WELL-TRAINED REPORTERS IGNORE THESE LIES (SEE THE THEME OF THE WEEK).
The Times's [UK] foreign editor launches an unusually damning attack on
Geoff Hoon, the [UK] defence secretary, today. Describing his statements
on the BBC Today programme yesterday as "fabulously implausible", Bronwen
Maddox says the government is having trouble justifying its prewar claim
that Iraq was ready to launch weapons of mass destruction at 45 minutes'
notice. "It is an understatement to say that the failure to find such
weapons is an embarrassment for the British and American governments," she
writes. "The most plausible account so far is the one given by Robin Cook"
- who, of course, resigned over the government's decision to go to war -
"in his resignation speech. This is that Iraq certainly made highly
unpleasant weapons but not in large enough quantities or at a level of
readiness to warrant the term 'mass destruction'." [TIMES/UK 0425]

[23] WE AIN'T LEAVIN'. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy
Franks, the top war commander, met with officials in the United Arab
Emirates yesterday on the first stop of a tour of the region, then made
clear American military forces were not going to leave any time soon.
[NEWSDAY 0428]

  ==============================================================
  Carl Estabrook
  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [MC-190]
  109 Observatory, 901 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana IL 61801 USA
  office: 217.244.4105 mobile: 217.369.5471 home: 217.359.9466
  <www.carlforcongress.org>
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