[Peace] News notes for May 26 [part 2 of 2]

[C. G. Estabrook]

[continued from part 1]

WHAT THE RIGHT-WING FAZ LEFT OUT, IN THE LAST STORY: the unfurling of an
anti-war banner by some German MPs, and the drafting in of retired
politicians to fill the gaps left by the 80 MPs who refused to attend Mr
Bush's speech. [GUARDIAN]

BUSH ACTUALLY SEEMS TO HAVE THREATENED THE GERMANS WITH HIS FRIENDS THE
RUSSIANS. An irreverent left-leaning German newspaper published a blank
front page on Friday under the headline "Bush's historic speech" to mock
the U.S. president's address in the Reichstag on Thursday. The
Tageszeitung, a leading voice for left-wing critics of George W. Bush's
policies throughout Germany, said in a page three editorial the advance
billing that the speech to parliament in Berlin would be "historic" was
far off the mark. "Bush didn't have to come to Berlin for this speech,"
the Berlin-based Tageszeitung wrote. "What he said yesterday he's already
said often enough in Washington. Most Europeans hope that a war can be
avoided. Bush's visit to Berlin didn't contribute a single bit to his
understanding." Bush, confronted by big anti-American protests in Berlin
over U.S. policies ranging from Iraq to the environment, warned that the
United States and its 18 fellow NATO members were vulnerable to more
attacks like those of September 11. [REUTERS]

FRIDAY, MAY 24, 2002

THERE'S LESS HERE THAN MEETS THE EYE: SEE THE ARTICLE AT THE END OF THESE
NOTES. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a historic treaty
Friday to cut their respective nuclear arsenals by two-thirds over 10
years. [CBC]

WHAT SEEMS REALLY TO HAVE BEEN AT STAKE IN MOSCOW. Bush will tell Putin
that a decision on designating Russia a "market economy," which would
benefit Russian exporters, could come next month. Putin had hoped that
Bush would make the announcement himself during his visit to Moscow, where
on Friday the leaders will sign a treaty slashing U.S. and Russian
long-range nuclear arsenals by two-thirds. Instead, U.S. officials said
Bush would tell his Russian counterpart -- a key ally in the war on
terrorism -- that the country's economic status was still under review at
the U.S. Commerce Department and that a decision was likely to come in
June. Declaring Russia a market economy would put a U.S. seal of approval
on its economic reforms since the collapse of the Soviet Union and provide
some momentum to Moscow's bid to join the World Trade Organization. It
would also be of real dollar-and-cents importance to Russia exporters
because of U.S. trade laws that make it easier for the Commerce Department
to impose steep anti-dumping and countervailing duties on "non-market
economies." Supporters of the change have been encouraged by the Commerce
Department's recent decision to reclassify Kazakhstan, a former Soviet
republic, as a market economy. The Commerce Department has done the same
for Hungary, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Poland and Latvia
since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and is weighing requests from
Ukraine and Moldova as well as Russia. Putin had also hoped that
Washington would lift three-decade-old "Jackson-Vanik" trade restrictions
to mark Bush's visit. But rather than scrapping the restrictions, the U.S.
Senate on Wednesday adopted a non-binding resolution calling for the
United States to establish permanent normal trade relations with Russia
"in an appropriate and timely fashion." "This is a strange decision,"
Putin said on Thursday. "People who regard our relations not as
U.S.-Russian but U.S.-Soviet still wield a lot of power in the United
States." [REUTERS]

...AND THE WAR ON TERRORISM, OF COURSE. Six Russian servicemen died in
separatist Chechnya over the past day, an official said Thursday, while a
new poll indicated deepening doubts among the public over the once widely
supported war ... In a poll by the Public Opinion Fund, just 24 percent of
the respondents said the Chechen conflict should be solved through
military action, while 20 percent said force should not be used and that
independence should be granted to Chechnya. The current war had high
public support when it began in September 1999 following incursions by
Chechnya-based rebels into neighboring Dagestan and after some 300 people
were killed in apartment explosions blamed on the rebels ... Russian
troops withdrew from Chechnya in 1996 after rebels fought them to a
standstill in 20 months of battles. [AP]

INTERESTING ANALYSIS FROM 'TRADITIONAL' PARTY. "About A New Stage Of
National Treachery" (Statement of Gennady Zyuganov, Chairman of the
National Patriotic Union of Russia, Chairman of the Central Committee,
Communist Party of the Russian Federation.) "The Kremlin is preparing a
large-scale national treachery. The president of the Russian Federation
Mr.Putin during the US president Mr.Bush's visit to Russia is going to
sign a treaty on reduction of strategic nuclear potentials to 1700 - 2200
warheads. In fact Mr.Putin is going to destroy strategic forces created by
two generations of our compatriots. Nearly one third of the USSR national
income was annually invested into their creation. The people sacrificed
consciously as they were sure of the need to guarantee the country's
safety. The people wanted to be sure that June, 1941 would never repeat.
However Mr.Putin is moving now towards liquidation of the foundation of
Russian defense capability."

NO ONE IMAGINED. A contingency plan from 11 months before September 11
dealt with a passenger plane crashing into the Pentagon as part of a
terrorist attack - directly contradicting President Bush's assertion that
the US security services had no anticipation of civil airlines being used
as offensive weapons. In an eerily prophetic passage from the "Mass
Casualty Exercise" report - complete with a mocked-up picture of airline
wreckage in the Pentagon - the text states: "The fire and smoke from the
downed aircraft billows from the courtyard." [MIRROR UK]

WHO DO YOU TRUST? The US justice department is now investigating claims
that some of the hundreds of Middle Eastern men detained in America since
the attacks have been "hit and abused" by prison warders - with two now on
hunger strike in protest against their treatment. [GUARDIAN UK] *OR* The
interrogation of Taliban and Al-Qaeda detainees at the American military
base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has turned into a politically correct farce
because of Washington's fear of the human rights lobby. [TIMES UK - RUPERT
MURDOCH'S PAPER]

POLITICS IN EUROPE. An official European Union report criticizes the media
for "demonising refugees and asylum seekers", thereby "legitimising racism
and xenophobia." [GUARDIAN]

THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC POSITION (III). The Senate Judiciary Committee
approved the nomination of Judge D. Brooks Smith to a federal appeals
court yesterday with the crucial help of three Democrats who defied an
intense lobbying campaign against the nomination by a coalition of liberal
interest groups. Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), Herb Kohl (D-Wis.)
and John Edwards (D-N.C.) joined the panel's nine Republicans in voting
for the nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit,
handing President Bush an important victory in the ongoing battle over the
makeup of the federal judiciary ... Yesterday Biden said, "I'd like to
vote against this guy" but "I don't have a sufficient reason" to do so. He
said he would impose tougher standards for Supreme Court nominees.
[EDWARDS IS THE GUY BEING GROOMED BY THE DEMS TO BE PRESIDENT, AS CARTER
AND CLINTON WERE: NEW YORK DLC TYPES SEEM TO THINK ONLY A SOUTHENER WILL
DO.] [WP]

THERE'S "SUFFICIENT REASON," AS BIDEN WELL KNEW. The Senate Judiciary
Committee is expected to vote this week on President Bush's nomination of
Judge D. Brooks Smith to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in
Philadelphia . We have serious concerns about Judge Smith's interpretation
of the Constitution, his fairness in employment discrimination and other
cases against large companies, and his judicial ethics. We urge the
committee to reject his nomination. As a trial judge, Judge Smith has been
reversed by the Third Circuit, the court he now seeks to join, more than
50 times. Too often it has been for wrongly dismissing the claims of
workers and consumers. In one overturned ruling, he threw out an age
discrimination case filed by a factory worker on timeliness grounds.
Although the worker had made the 300-day deadline from the time he was
dismissed, Judge Smith counted back from the day he had received a poor
performance evaluation. In another case in which he was reversed, Judge
Smith was too quick to throw out a suit by the parents of a 15-month-old
child who choked to death on what the parents alleged was a dangerous toy.
He has taken an extremely narrow view of Congress's power to legislate
under the Commerce Clause, which has often been used to pass laws
protecting civil rights. If the Commerce Clause were reduced to what Judge
Smith says the founders intended, little more than an authorization to
"eliminate trade barriers," blacks, women and other groups that have
relied on the protections afforded them under the mainstream
interpretation of the clause would be stripped of important rights.
Equally troubling is Judge Smith's expansive reading of the Fifth
Amendment's takings clause, which is increasingly popular with property
owners challenging health and safety and environmental regulations. In a
case involving the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act, Judge Smith
ruled that forcing a company to pay benefits that retired miners had
rightfully earned would constitute an illegal taking of the company's
property, an interpretation other courts have roundly rejected. Judge
Smith's record also contains significant ethical lapses. One case that he
presided over for a time, and issued orders in, involved a bank in which
his wife was an officer and in which he and his wife had $100,000 or more
in stock. Under federal law he had an obligation to recuse himself, since
his impartiality "might reasonably be questioned." [NYT]

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT (BUT NOT MADE UP).  On Tuesday
and Wednesday, May 28-29, "Campaign ExxonMobil" will debut in Dallas to
target the corporation with the claim that it is destroying the
environment by exploring by drilling for, producing, and ultimately
selling two forms of energy on which every one of us depends, gas and oil.
Other allegations will include gay and human rights abuses. What we will
witness is the usual theatre of the absurd staged by the lunatics of the
far left led by self-anointed, radical environmentalists. They will be
joined by trade unionists, self-described anarchists, gay and animal
rights groups, semi-professional agitators, and fellow travelers whose
grasp of reality is limited to angry slogans and sound bites. Designed to
have the maximum media value, those kiddies in the streets of Dallas will
put on a good show and many of those reporting it are not likely to use
the words like "leftists" or "anarchists." Instead, they will be described
as "activists" or even "environmental advocates." In this way, many
Americans will be kept in the dark about their true agenda. Among the
scheduled events is a "mock trial" to convict the company of "crimes
against humanity and the environment." Give me a break! "Campaign
ExxonMobil" actually began on May 1st with a bogus "analysis" issued by
Claros Consulting of London, England, claiming that ExxonMobil's
"emissions imprint" (whatever that is?) on the environment is such that,
surely shareholders will demand they stop selling gas and oil, thus
driving the value of the energy giant's book value into the cellar. This
is not going to happen. For the record, ExxonMobil has been conserving so
much energy in their refineries and chemical plants that these facilities
are 37% more efficient than 25 years ago. The company has been expanding
co-generation facilities and been researching new energy systems that have
much lower carbon emissions and increased fuel efficiency. When you employ
more than 1,500 PhD's and depend on scientific and technological
excellence to stay competitive, you tend to be on the cutting edge of such
things. Those PhDs, by the way, are part of a company with 98,000
employees in 200 countries and territories around the world. In the US
alone, there are some 14,000 EM service stations. More to the point,
ExxonMobil has been an excellent investment for its shareholders,
consistently outperforming the S&P 500 for more than three decades. As for
their shareholders, the target of "Campaign ExxonMobil", they have
overwhelmingly voted against various Green proposals in the past. And
rightly so. Does this matter to the dunces in the streets of Dallas? What
they think they know is that ExxonMobil's "emissions imprint" will bring
about global warming. What they refuse to acknowledge and what is rarely
reported is that the Earth hasn't warmed so much as one degree Fahrenheit
in more than a half century. Climate records indicate, in fact, a slight
cooling. "Campaign ExxonMobil" is sponsored and funded by the usual cabal
of eco-gangsters such as Greenpeace, the Green Party, Ralph Nader's PIRG,
and other enemies of corporate America. The real money will come from
foundations such as Rockefeller, Hewlett, Packard, and Pew. Based on the
riches of their founder, all capitalists to their toes, they have been
taken over by directors who have turned their vast wealth against the
engines of capitalism. They oppose free enterprise, progress, and the
freedoms that Americans have sometimes given their lives to defend. You
can expect to see members of the Ruckus Society on hand. This group,
funded in large part by billionaire Ted Turner, has trained thousands to
show up in places like Quebec or Seattle to rant, rage, battle with police
and trash local businesses in their quest to seek publicity for their
extreme left agenda. According to U.S. News and World Report, one of the
leaders of Ruckus is Mike Roselle, an Earth First! radical and
self-proclaimed revolutionary who, in 1995, said of his environmentalism,
"this is Jihad, pal. There are no innocent bystanders, because in these
desperate hours, bystanders are not innocent. We'll broaden our theater of
conflict." One can only hope the public will recognize these morons for
the bugs on the backside of progress that they are. The time is long
overdue for people to begin to understand that these malcontents and
America-bashers are the problem, not ExxonMobil, a company that funds
school and community programs, tiger conservation programs and numerous
other civic causes. The leftist loonies of the environmental movement are
beginning to wear out their welcome. Think about that the next time you
drive into a service station and say, "Fill'er up!" [By Alan Caruba,
founder of 'The National Anxiety Center,' a "clearinghouse for information
about scare campaigns designed to influence public opinion and policies"
www.anxietycenter.com.]

A LITTLE POLLING... A recent poll found that only four in ten Americans
know that a majority of countries disapprove of the US Middle East policy.
Only one in three are aware that more Palestinians than Israelis have died
in the current conflict.

...AND A LITTLE ECONOMICS. The "heavily indebted" poor nations of the
world are in fact financing the massive US deficit, says a report
published by the New Economics Foundation. The US has built up a massive
external debt of $2.2 trillion - almost equal to the combined debts of all
developing countries, $2.5 trillion the US pays only $20bn per annum to
service this debt, while poor countries are crippled by more than $300bn
in debt service payments in effect, the developing world is financing the
US's massive accumulated deficits by capital flight and by the forced
holding of dollar reserves poor countries borrow funds from the US at
rates as high as 18% while at the same lending to the US (through the
purchase of Treasury bonds) at rates as low as 3%. They are forced to
purchase Treasury bonds to maintain excessively high levels of reserves as
insurance against speculation and financial instability.) The report shows
that for many countries "capital flight" is just the flip side of external
debt. If capital flight were to be included in official statistics, then
at least 25 African countries would be net creditors to the West.

SATURDAY, MAY 25, 2002

SUE THE BASTARDS. San Francisco area attorney Stanley Hilton this week
filed a $7 billion lawsuit on behalf of a handful of attack victims'
relatives claiming that America's leader failed to carry out his
constitutional duties. Hilton also named top members of the Administration
for failing to carry out their duties to protect the United States. The
suit claims the President 'allowed' September 11th to happen. [DRUDGE]

NO ONE ELSE EVER DID THAT, RIGHT?  Putin defended the nuclear know-how
Russia is providing Iran. "The US has taken a commitment upon themselves
to build similar nuclear power plants in North Korea." The U.S. questions
Iran's need for a nuclear power plant. "It's interesting that Iran, which
is not a country with an energy shortage, would spend large sums
developing a nuclear power capacity," an administration official. [NYT]

HE CAN'T TALK AND CHEW GUM. Russian state television played and replayed
footage of Bush chewing gum upon entering the meeting and then spitting it
into his hand. Bush raised his objections to Russian actions in Chechnya.
"The experience in Afghanistan has taught us all that there's lessons to
be learned about how to protect one's homeland and, at the same time, be
respectful on the battlefield." [WP]

DOES A CONGRESSMAN SLEEP EASIER? DC has sorry record on homicide inquiries
According to a Washington Post series in December 2000, "Fifteen hundred
murders have gone unsolved over the past decade. Nearly two-thirds of the
homicides that occurred in 1999 remained unsolved at that year's end, the
poorest performance in the last 10 years. A year-long Washington Post
investigation has found that in D.C. more and more murders are going
unsolved, and many cases have fundamental flaws.

SUNDAY, MAY 26, 2002

NOW THEY TELL US. The FBI added to a flurry of recent terrorism alerts by
unveiling an "intelligence update" that urges US law enforcement agencies
to watch out for terrorists using planes for attacks.

MORE WOT. Israel pressed ahead with its policy of raids in autonomous
Palestinian areas, leaving a woman and her 12-year-old niece dead in the
Gaza Strip and sweeping the West Bank town of Tulkarem for militants ...
The troops had been hunting members of Palestinian militant groups in the
area since Friday, with one soldier killed and two others wounded, one
seriously, in a shoot-out. The soldiers clashed with members of the
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat's Fatah group, at the entrance to the Tulkarem refugee camp, the
security sources said. Six Palestinians, including a woman, were also
wounded in the exchange of gunfire, according to Palestinian hospital
sources ... Meanwhile, a Palestinian baby boy also died Saturday after his
mother was forced to give birth at an Israeli army checkpoint near
Bethlehem, medical sources said ... The latest raids and arrests come
after a guard at the Studio 49 discotheque in Tel Aviv noticed a suspect
car heading for the entrance of the club late Thursday and opened fire on
the driver, after which there was a huge explosion. The occupant of the
car was killed and five bystanders injured in the blast, claimed by the
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which has defied a demand by Arafat to stop
anti-Israeli attacks. A day earlier, a 16-year-old Brigades suicide bomber
-- the youngest ever -- from a village near Bethlehem, hit Rishon Letsion,
a Tel Aviv suburb rocked by a human bomb only two weeks earlier, killing
himself and two Israelis and injuring more than 30. And it came less than
a day after a bomb exploded under a tanker truck at Israel's main fuel
depot near Tel Aviv. The Brigades claims prompted Arafat's party to
distance itself from the its radical offshoot, saying "Fatah has no link
with the statements published by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades." Its
attacks followed the killing of three of its members in the West Bank by
Israeli tank fire in what was alleged to be a targeted assassination.

	* * *

Published on Saturday, May 25, 2002 in the lndependent/UK There Is A
Firestorm Coming, And It Is Being Provoked By Mr Bush by Robert Fisk

So now Osama bin Laden is Hitler. And Saddam Hussein is Hitler. And George
Bush is fighting the Nazis. Not since Menachem Begin fantasized to
President Reagan that he felt he was attacking Hitler in Berlin - his
Israeli army was actually besieging Beirut, killing thousands of
civilians, "Hitler" being the pathetic Arafat - have we had to listen to
claptrap like this. But the fact that we Europeans had to do so in the
Bundestag on Thursday - and, for the most part, in respectful silence -
was extraordinary.

I'm reminded of the Israeli columnist who, tired of the wearying
invocation of the Second World War to justify yet more Israeli brutality,
began an article with the words: "Mr Prime Minister, Hitler is dead." Must
we, forever, live under the shadow of a war that was fought and won before
most of us were born? Do we have to live forever with living, diminutive
politicians playing Churchill (Thatcher and, of course, Blair) or
Roosevelt? "He's a dictator who gassed his own people," Mr Bush reminded
us for the two thousandth time, omitting as always to mention that the
Kurds whom Saddam viciously gassed were fighting for Iran and that the
United States, at the time, was on Saddam's side.

But there is a much more serious side to this. Mr Bush is hoping to corner
the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, into a new policy of threatening
Iran. He wants the Russians to lean on the northern bit of the "axis of
evil", the infantile phrase which he still trots out to the masses. More
and more, indeed, Mr Bush's rhetoric sounds like the crazed videotapes of
Mr bin Laden. And still he tries to lie about the motives for the crimes
against humanity of 11 September. Yet again, in the Bundestag, he insisted
that the West's enemies hated "justice and democracy", even though most of
America's Muslim enemies wouldn't know what democracy was.

In the United States, the Bush administration is busy terrorizing
Americans. There will be nuclear attacks, bombs in high-rise apartment
blocks, on the Brooklyn bridge, men with exploding belts - note how
carefully the ruthless Palestinian war against Israeli colonization of the
West Bank is being strapped to America's ever weirder "war on terror" -
and yet more aircraft suiciders. If you read the words of President Bush,
Vice-President Dick Cheney and the ridiculous national security adviser,
Condoleezza Rice, over the past three days, you'll find they've issued
more threats against Americans than Mr bin Laden.

But let's get back to the point. The growing evidence that Israel's
policies are America's policies in the Middle East - or, more accurately,
vice versa - is now being played out for real in statements from Congress
and on American television. First, we have the chairman of the US Senate
Foreign Relations Committee announcing that Hizbollah - the Lebanese
guerrilla force that drove Israel's demoralized army out of Lebanon in the
year 2000 - is planning attacks in the US. After that, we had an American
television network "revealing" that Hizbollah, Hamas and al- Qa'ida - Mr
bin Laden's organization- have held a secret meeting in Lebanon to plot
attacks on the US.

American journalists insist on quoting "sources" but there was, of course,
no sourcing for this balderdash, which is now repeated ad nauseam in the
American media. Then take the "Syrian Accountability Act" that was
introduced into the US Senate by Israel's friends on 18 April. This
includes the falsity uttered earlier by Israel's Foreign Minister, Shimon
Peres, that Iranian Revolutionary Guards "operate freely" on the southern
Lebanese border. Now there haven't been Iranian Revolutionary Guards in
Lebanon - let alone the south of the country - for 18 years. So why is
this lie repeated yet again?

Iran is under threat. Lebanon is under threat. Syria is under threat - its
"terrorism" status has been heightened by the State Department - and so is
Iraq. But Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister held personally
responsible by Israel's own inquiry for the Sabra and Shatila massacre of
1,700 Palestinians in Beirut in 1982, is - according to Mr Bush - "a man
of peace". How much further can this go? A long way, I fear.

The anti-American feeling throughout the Middle East is palpable. Arab
newspaper editorials don't come near to expressing public opinion. In
Damascus, Majida Tabbaa has become famous as the lady who threw the US
Consul Roberto Powers out of her husband's downtown restaurant on 7 April
. "I went over to him," she said, "and told him, 'Mr Roberto, tell your
George Bush that all of you are not welcome - please get out'." Across the
Arab world, boycotts of American goods have begun in earnest.

How much longer can this go on? America praises Pakistani President
Musharraf for his support in the "war on terror", but remains silent when
he arranges a dictatorial "referendum" to keep him in power. America's
enemies, remember, hate the US for its "democracy". So is General
Musharraf going to feel the heat? Forget it. My guess is that Pakistan's
importance in the famous "war on terror" - or "war for civilization" as,
we should remember, it was originally called - is far more important. If
Pakistan and India go to war, I'll wager a lot that Washington will come
down for undemocratic Pakistan against democratic India.

Across the former Soviet southern Muslim republics, America is building
air bases, helping to pursue the "war on terror" against any violent
Muslim Islamist groups that dare to challenge the local dictators. Please
do not believe that this is about oil. Do not for a moment think that
these oil and gas-rich lands have any economic importance for the
oil-fueled Bush administration. Nor the pipelines that could run from
northern Afghanistan to the Pakistani coast if only that pesky Afghan loya
jirga could elect a government that would give concessions to Unocal, the
oddly named concession whose former boss just happens to be a chief Bush
"adviser" to Afghanistan.

Now here's pause for thought. Abdelrahman al-Rashed writes in the
international Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat that if anyone had said prior
to 11 September that Arabs were plotting a vast scheme to murder thousands
of Americans in the US, no one would have believed them. "We would have
charged that this was an attempt to incite the American people against
Arabs and Muslims," he wrote. And rightly so.

But Arabs did commit the crimes against humanity of 11 September. And many
Arabs greatly fear that we have yet to see the encore from the same
organization In the meantime, Mr Bush goes on to do exactly what his
enemies want; to provoke Muslims and Arabs, to praise their enemies and
demonize their countries, to bomb and starve Iraq and give uncritical
support to Israel and maintain his support for the dictators of the Middle
East.

Each morning now, I awake beside the Mediterranean in Beirut with a
feeling of great foreboding. There is a firestorm coming. And we are
blissfully ignoring its arrival; indeed, we are provoking it.

	* * *

Bush's Nuclear Treaty 'About As Useful As a Sieve Is for Containing Water'

WASHINGTON - May 23 - Friday's nuclear arms reductions treaty signing with
Russia will allegedly reduce the number of nuclear weapons from
approximately 7,000 weapon apiece to between 1,700-2,200 apiece. President
Bush has hailed this treaty as "liquidat(ing) the legacy of the Cold War."

"Instead of liquidating the nuclear legacy President Bush is, at best,
only rearranging it," said Kevin Martin, executive director of Peace
Action. "His treaty doesn't require any weapons to be destroyed, merely
set aside in storage where they will be vulnerable to theft or rogue use.
Past performance and the Bush administration's penchant for unilateralism
indicates that the majority of the weapons eliminations promised under the
treaty will never come to pass."

Because there is no timeline or enforcement protocol for weapons
elimination, each country can take up to ten years and do little or no
actual weapons elimination. The treaty also allows for either country to
withdraw from the treaty-for any reason, including non-compliance-on three
months notice.

"The most direct route to a nuclear weapon would be to buy or steal one.
Putting Russian nuclear weapons in storage instead of destroying them will
make that poorly guarded arsenal even more attractive to terrorists and
rogue nations," continued Martin.

"This agreement is further flawed for the obvious opportunities that it
misses. It does not take the remaining weapons off hair-trigger alert-the
most obvious way to thwart an accidental launch. It also fails to deal
with the thousands of smaller, tactical weapons that are particularly
vulnerable to theft. Finally, there will remain a massive overkill
capacity in the form of up to 2,200 strategic nuclear weapons on each
side-dangerously in excess of what could be construed as needed for
deterrence.

"Far from ending the threat of nuclear war, President Bush is giving that
threat new life. The recently leaked Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) pointed
toward a more useable nuclear force. The Senate is currently debating the
Administration's request for $15.5 million to research 'robust nuclear
earth penetrators' -- new nuclear weapons the administration would
potentially use in hopes of destroying hardened and deeply buried targets.
By developing such a weapon, the administration puts the U.S. on the path
to restarting nuclear testing-ending the moratorium put in place by the
President's own father.

"How is developing new nuclear weapons liquidating the legacy of the Cold
War?" asked Martin. "Even at the height of the Cold War, the nuclear
arsenal was meant to be used only as a deterrent, not as a usable weapon.
The only way to 'liquidate the legacy of the Cold War'-and to address the
number one threat to U.S. and world security, the proliferation of weapons
of mass destruction-is for the U.S. to get serious about eliminating the
scourge of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth.

"If the intent of this treaty is to contain the nuclear threat, it will be
about as useful as a sieve is for containing water," concluded Martin.
[PEACE ACTION (the merger of Sane and The Nuclear Freeze), the nation's
largest peace and disarmament organization. Web site:
http://www.peace-action.org]

	--END--