This is interesting.......

• duotiga83

  27 Mar 03, 20:45

  Street fighting looms as biggest challenge of war
  March 26 2003
  
  Precision bombing and lightning-fast tank columns got US-led forces within kilometres of Baghdad, but now they are days - perhaps hours - from the hardest task: brutal combat measured block by block in a maze of city streets.
  
  There are no surgical strikes when ground troops battle head to head in an urban setting, experts say.
  
  "Baghdad is the target. You have to have the city to win the war," said Pat Garrett, an associate analyst at GlobalSecurity.org. "US forces have trained for urban warfare, but the biggest difference from their training is that now there will be thousands of civilians in the fighting zone."
  
  Combat in an urban centre like Baghdad - a sprawling city of about five million people with multi-storeyed buildings and narrow streets and alleys - could negate the coalition's dramatic advantage in war technology.
  
  If Iraqi forces lace themselves among civilians, "smart" bombs like the Joint Direct Attack Munition or Tomahawk cruise missile will have little value unless coalition forces want to kill hundreds or even thousands of civilians, along with the enemy combatants. That reduces the conflict to something decidedly low-tech.
  
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  "It's easy to set up tank traps. Snipers will be around every corner, and air power will have limited use," Garrett said. "Thermal targeting won't work around corners and JDAMs aren't going to be as efficient in a densely populated civilian area.
  
  "Fighting in the city is a great equaliser."
  
  Echoes of Mogadishu and Hue
  
  The US military need look back only a decade. The last major urban battle involving US troops occurred at Mogadishu, Somalia, in October 1993 in what was the most violent US combat since Vietnam.
  
  A planned 90-minute operation by US Army Rangers and Delta Force operators to seize a Somali warlord collapsed into a 17-hour firefight. A helicopter crash led to an ambush by Somali militiamen armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.
  
  Eighteen Americans were killed, and 84 were wounded. Up to 1,000 Somalis died in the incident, which became the platform for a nonfiction best seller and the movie, Black Hawk Down.
  
  In Vietnam, US Marines and Army units fought the battle of Hue over four weeks of brutal street combat in early 1968. The 480 Marine casualties included 42 deaths; Vietnamese losses exceeded 5,000.
  
  The Vietnam experience led American military planners to create Military Operations on Urbanised Terrain training as part of the regimen for infantry units.
  
  The Joint Readiness Training Centre at Fort Polk, Louisiana, offers the largest single MOUT centre, a six km by eight km replication of a third-world village.
  
  During regular training sessions at Fort Polk, combat units from the Army, Air Force and Navy engage in realistic combat by OPFORS - opposition forces - personnel.
  
  "MOUT training involves simulated assaults and counterattacks within an abandoned urban setting," Garrett said. "Nothing in their training prepares them for the scale of combat in one of the largest cities in the world."
  
  Data suggests some MOUT training reflects casualty rates of 30 to 60 per cent.
  
  "I have no doubt the US will win the battle for Baghdad," Garrett said. "But at what cost? It depends on how far the Iraqis are willing to go. With the disregard for human life that the Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard have shown, this could turn into another Grozny or Stalingrad."
  
  Saddam Hussein has made the difficulties of fighting in the urban landscape a key element of his military strategy, said Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
  
  "If Saddam chooses to retreat into more densely populated areas, he will make it harder for the US to use armour, air and helicopter mobility, and he can make much more use of his forces."
  
  Last September, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told British authorities, "People say to me, 'You are not the Vietnamese. You have no jungles or swamps to hide in.' I reply, 'Let our cities be our swamps, and our buildings our jungles."'
  
  Pentagon officials have said they will rely on coordinated air and ground attacks on command centres, supply depots and command and control facilities in and around Baghdad to end the war quickly without extensive street-by-street fighting that could send military and civilian casualties skyrocketing.
  
  Combat in the city greatly increases the risks that coalition military and Iraqi civilian casualties will swell to unacceptable levels in widespread destruction that would lessen American support for the war while increasing Hussein's hold on his regime.
  
  "This is going to get a lot harder," General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a television interview. "Anybody that thinks this is going to be quick and easy is wrong."
  
  According to military analysts, five divisions of Iraq's Republican Guard encircle Baghdad.
  
  In the city, an inner ring of about 15,000 members of the Special Republican Guard - a fierce security force established to personally defend Hussein - will be joined by the Saddam's Fedayeen, fanatical paramilitary loyalists about 30,000 strong and specially trained in street fighting.
  
  The lessons of real-time urban fighting began in the battle for An Nasiriyah, a key southern Iraqi city on the road to Baghdad that Marines are calling "Ambush Alley" for the prolonged firefights with Iraqi irregulars and Fedayeen elements.
  
  In the first day of battle, the deadliest of the war so far, 10 Marines were killed and more than 50 were injured. Iraqis accused US-led forces of killing or injuring scores of civilians. Marines countered that Iraqi fighters used civilians as shields, pushing women and children into the streets to drive up the body count. They also said Iraqi men leapt out of buses and taxis to shoot at them.
  
  "It's not pretty," Chief Warrant Officer Pat Woelhof said. "It's not surgical. You try to limit collateral damage, but they want to fight.
  
  "Now it's just smash-mouth football."
  
  KRT
  
  http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/26/1048653749593.html
• duotiga83

  27 Mar 03, 22:31

  http://slate.msn.com/id/2080736
  
  Why Are U.S. Troops Wearing Dark-Green Camouflage?
  By Brendan I. Koerner
  Posted Wednesday, March 26, 2003, at 12:11 PM PT
  
  Despite the desert conditions of the Iraqi campaign, many American soldiers are sporting deep-green combat fatigues. Why are some troops donning woodland camouflage?
  
  According to published reports, the Pentagon simply goofed by not anticipating the demand for sand-colored desert fatigues, formally known as battle-dress uniforms. When Army and Marine units were preparing for deployment, several discovered that they lacked enough desert BDUs to outfit each soldier with the requisite three outfits. The UPI reports that the Army's 4th Infantry Division, headquartered at Fort Hood, Texas, chose to dress all its troops in the more traditional green fatigues—commonly referred to as woodland BDUs—rather than have only some don desert dress. Homogeneity is generally preferred among military commanders.
  
  Units that departed for the Middle East earlier this year were promised fresh BDUs upon arrival, but shipments have been slow to arrive; support commanders are reporting that they're already out of desert fatigues. The Pentagon's Defense Supply Center in Philadelphia has ordered manufacturers to increase production of desert camouflage at the expense of woodland BDUs.
  
  A dearth of appropriately stealthy uniforms was also a problem during Gulf War I, as many U.S. troops were forced to wear dark green. The Pentagon learned at least one lesson from the 1991 conflict, however: The Marines' anti-chemical-weapons suits, known as Mission-Oriented Protective Posture clothing, used to only be available in woodland patterns. The latest MOPP gear features a three-color desert design.
  
  Military leaders insist that the shortage of desert BDUs will not affect the safety of American soldiers. They point out that Iraq's terrain is not entirely Sahara-like, and that green camouflage may actually work better near the banks of the Euphrates River, where vegetation and mud are present.
  
  Bonus Explainer: The Pentagon is not alone in its camouflage foibles. The Canadian military was heavily criticized for dispatching troops to Afghanistan in woodland dress during Operation Enduring Freedom. Earlier this month, Canada's red-faced Defence Department officially put a "rush" on an order for desert BDUs, which will be sent to the 2,000 peacekeepers the country has committed to Afghanistan.
  
  
• duotiga83

  27 Mar 03, 22:40

  If Bush Intends to Be Headman of Global Village, Villagers Need a Say
  
  Johannesburg, Mar 26, 2003 (Business Day/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) -- THE pervasive nature of the global village is not to be underestimated. A man was complaining about a priest's failure to call for prayers for the end of the war waged by US President George Bush on Iraq. The occasion was a funeral service in a village in the deep rural areas of Bomvanaland near the Wild Coast of the Transkei.
  The man warned we should not be lulled into a false sense of security merely because the war is taking place in faraway lands. Someone reminded us of the aeroplane that flew above the area the previous night.
  
  Nodding, an old man murmured he had never seen an aeroplane with an umbrella before. The latter could have been referring to a parachute, but no one could give an explanation for the low-flying aeroplane.
  
  It became evident that these villagers were fully aware of the implications of the war on their own lives.
  
  The price of food was going to rise again because the oil price was bound to go up. It seemed to be an accepted fact that the objective of the war was the removal of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his replacement by a leader to be approved by Bush.
  
  With the military might of the US so awesome, the intervention of God in the conflict would be the only solution hence the villager's complaint that the priest should have called for prayers for an end to the war.
  
  The US, under Bush, has become a law unto itself. Bush has declared himself the global village headman, with his fellow British descendents, Tony Blair and John Howard of Britain and Australia, his subheadmen. Having illegally usurped the power of the United Nations (UN), the three men believe they bear the responsibility to relieve Iraqis of their president by invading their land, destroying property, driving them from their homes and killing a number of them.
  
  I have not heard the people of Iraq requesting the UN to help them oust their president. They did not ask the US, Britain or Australia to do so either.
  
  Blair and Howard were elected to rule the people of Britain and Australia. When the US voters could not decide between Al Gore and George Bush the judges of the State of Florida appointed Bush. None of them was elected to rule Iraq or other states.
  
  A village headman is elected by the people over whom he is to rule. If Bush wants to be the global village headman, the villagers should have a say in the formulation of the system which endows him with power to run their lives.
  
  If being US president empowers Bush to rule the world, every global villager must have a say in his election. This principle should also apply to those aspiring to be subheadmen.
  
  There is also the matter of people who always threaten the spilling of blood if they cannot get their way. Such people never talk of the shedding of their own blood but that of "their people". The people who die or get injured in such conflicts are never given a say on whether they are prepared to lay down their lives for the leader's cause.
  
  Not so long ago a traditional leader, involved in an impossible campaign to rid his district of stock theft, was rallying his men ahead of a raid in a village infested with stock thieves. A man suspected of working in cahoots with the thieves inquired if the leader would lead the raid, as the prior leader had done. He was taken aback to hear of the preparedness of the leader to do so. That particular raid was a success.
  
  It would be a measure of a warmonger's integrity to expose himself to some of the danger he seeks to place at the door of those tasked to fight. Perhaps, in the course of the bombardment of Iraq and the killing of its people, the global village headman and his subheadmen will pay a visit to the troops on the front lines.
  
  It is doubtful, though, that such an act of selfless courage would be forthcoming from the self-appointed saviours of Iraq. These are the people who, together with the UN, correctly called for the dispossession of Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, including antiaircraft missiles with which Iraq could defend itself. At a stage when there appeared to be no evidence of such weapons, the village headman sent in his impis.
  
  The last time I heard of a similar strategy was when King Dingane disarmed Piet Retief and his men and went on to kill the hapless men. We cannot put it beyond the Bush administration not to plant the prohibited weapons and then pretend to have unearthed them.
  
  One would have expected Secretary of State Colin Powell to show UN arms inspectors evidence he claimed to have, for proper investigation. Instead, he showed it to the security council as justification for an attack.
  
  If Saddam assumed power by illegitimate means he does not deserve to be the Iraqis' leader. They should remove him. If they cannot they should seek aid from legitimate regional or global bodies. If those fail them, they have no reason to exist, and all we can do is pray for divine intervention.
  
  Holomisa (A! Dilizintaba) is an ANC MP and president of the Congress of Traditional Leaders of SA. He writes in his personal capacity.
  
  by Holomisa A! Dilizintaba
  
  Copyright Business Day. Distributed by All Africa Global Media(AllAfrica.com)
  
  http://www.zawya.com/Story.cfm?id=085u1968&Section=Main&page=Home&channel=All%20Arab%20News&objectid=2A17E941-F5E0-11D4-867D00D0B74A0D7C
• duotiga83

  27 Mar 03, 22:41

  Tony Blair's plane hit by lightning
  The Jerusalem Post
  
  27 March 2003
  
  The plane carrying British Prime Minister Tony Blair to a meeting with President Bush was struck by lightning as it approached the United States on Wednesday, a reporter on board said.
  
  No injuries or damage were reported.
  
  Britain's Press Association news agency said Blair's chartered British Airways Boeing 777 was struck by a lightning bolt as it approached Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland at about 10,000 feet. It landed 20 minutes later, at 5:05 p.m.
  
  Jon Smith, a Press Association reporter traveling with Blair, reported that the bolt hit the jet's left wing.
  
  The plane did not change course or descend and the pilot reassured passengers that "there's nothing to worry about."
  
  Blair's 10 Downing Street office said it was not aware of the incident.
  Blair flew on to the presidential retreat at Camp David for a working dinner with Bush.
  
  The two leaders will meet against Thursday to discuss the war in Iraq and plans for the country's future
  
• duotiga83

  27 Mar 03, 22:48

  A showcase for Rumsfeld's vision of warfare
  By Jeffrey Donovan
  
  WASHINGTON - United States officials are calling the war in Iraq a battle unlike any other in history. In the first few days of fighting, US-led forces sought to eliminate key Iraqi leadership targets in Baghdad and elsewhere. The tactic followed a months-long psychological-warfare campaign aimed at persuading Iraqi officers to surrender without a fight.
  
  For a moment at least, observers speculated that the war could be brief and virtually bloodless, especially if initial reports that US bombing had killed or injured Iraqi President Saddam Hussein proved true.
  
  On March 22, US General Tommy Franks boasted during a briefing at his base in Qatar that the US was waging a brand new kind of war. "This will be a campaign unlike any other in history a campaign characterized by shock, by surprise, by flexibility, by the employment of precise munitions on a scale never before seen, and by the application of overwhelming force," Franks said.
  
  But expectations of a quick, mostly "clean" war culminating in a swift surrender by Iraq appeared to vanish by the next day, when allied forces suffered their worst losses of the brief campaign, and the novel US military strategy was suddenly being tested against mounting casualties and stiff resistance from Iraqi forces.
  
  The loss of at least 12 US troops in fighting in southern Iraq - with another 12 listed as missing - raised questions about a military strategy that has targeted the Iraqi regime in an effort to minimize civilian casualties and spare infrastructure that will be needed for post-war reconstruction.
  
  Analysts say that the strategy bears all the hallmarks of US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's bid to revolutionize US military capabilities through "new thinking" on the battlefield, such as coupling the latest high-tech weaponry with psychological warfare and traditional means of fighting.
  
  Radek Sikorski, a former deputy defense minister and foreign minister of Poland, is an analyst at Washington's American Enterprise Institute. He said that the current US strategy, so different from the initial massive bombing of the first Gulf War in 1991, is mostly the brainchild of Rumsfeld. "I think it's been as flexible as the technology allows, which seems to defy the old saying that 'generals always fight the previous war'. In this case, the 'revolution in military affairs' that Donald Rumsfeld went to the Pentagon to enforce has actually happened," Sikorski said.
  
  Indeed, to achieve their goals, coalition forces have used precision bombing of Iraqi military and government targets, coupled with a ground attack from Kuwait in the south that has brought them to the outskirts of Baghdad.
  
  Robert Hutchinson is a founder and spokesman for the British defense publication Jane's Defense Weekly. He said that Rumsfeld's approach is, indeed, novel and that the defense secretary's plans have prevailed at the Pentagon over those of senior military officers who argued for sending in far greater numbers of ground troops.
  
  Rumsfeld's strategy contrasts sharply with the "Powell Doctrine" - named after US Secretary of State Colin Powell - which states that Washington should never go to war unless it uses "overwhelming force" to achieve its goals. Hutchinson describes the difference between that idea and Rumsfeld's approach. "I think the US defense secretary believes more in light forces, making surgical strikes, than the heavy-armored offensive across a broad front. But behind it all probably lies a desire by the US and the British to give the Iraqis time to depose of Saddam themselves, rather than the coalition forces doing it by force of arms," Hutchinson said.
  
  Yet widespread Iraqi surrenders have so far not panned out as military planners had hoped, especially in the Shi'ite south, where there is strong anti-Saddam sentiment. The result is that the coalition faces potentially prolonged and costly battles for the total control of key cities, such as Basra and Nassiriya.
  
  If that happens, analysts say that allied forces could be tested further, since they are tethered to a potentially vulnerable single line of supplies coming in from Kuwait. And Iraqi civilians could pay a higher price if coalition forces have to widen their bombing targets in a bid to take control of the cities.
  
  Meanwhile, there are warnings that a humanitarian crisis is looming in the south, where fighting has delayed entry of much-needed aid. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has called for urgent action to get water to Basra's residents. The city's main water-treatment plant has been disabled because of a power outage. Washington is promising to deliver aid as soon as it secures Iraq's ports, supply routes, and population centers that were bypassed by invading forces.
  
  Finally, there's Baghdad. With no sign of Iraq's leadership capitulating in the capital, US and British forces have struck Iraqi Republican Guards defending the approaches to Baghdad. Some analysts warn that the battle for Baghdad may prove to be prolonged and bloody.
  
  But while US and British military officials are generally upbeat about progress to date, even supporters of Rumsfeld's new vision of warfare, the so-called "revolution in military affairs" caution that the war is still far from won.
  
  Jeffrey Ranney is a military expert with Federal Resources, a defense consultancy in northern Virginia outside Washington. Ranney, an expert on the new war doctrine, says that he believes the single most innovative aspect of the coalition strategy is its clear intent to use a variety of means - psychological and military - to achieve an "effect", in this case, the capitulation of large parts of the Iraqi regime.
  
  Coupled with real-time communications in all aspects of the battle, Ranney said that the Iraq war appears to be a step toward Rumsfeld's vision of what the battlefield of the future may look like. But he insisted it's still far too early to predict an outcome. "We're only into the fifth day here," he said. "We don't know if we've won. We don't know [if] this strategy of the one long line from the coast up to Baghdad - whether that supply line will hold or not. If it turns out it doesn't hold, then we're all going to be saying what a terrible strategy that was. So I would hold judgment as to whether this is the better strategy because we don't know yet. It's too early."
  
  Copyright (c) 2002, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC 20036
  
  http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EC27Ak04.html
• duotiga83

  27 Mar 03, 22:49

  Following What Flag?
  by William Norman Grigg
  
  There are two very troubling ways in which the U.S. military campaign against Iraq is unique.
  
  First, "Operation Iraqi Freedom" is an undeclared war against a regime that has not attacked us, poses no credible military threat to us, occupies not a single millimeter of foreign territory, and rules over a country that itself has been occupied for more than a decade.
  
  Second, this is -- to the best of our knowledge -- the first "war" in our nation's history in which American troops will not be fighting under the Stars and Stripes. According to the March 20th International Herald Tribune, U.S. troops poised at the Kuwait-Iraq border have been forbidden to display "regimental, state or even the American flagÂ…. Officials say the flag could give the citizens of Iraq the wrong idea about the convoys of artillery, ammunition and soldiers. They are not, these officials say, an army of conquest, intent on claiming Iraqi land or treasure for the United States, but a liberation force. They are concerned that streams of American flags would be seen as provocative."
  
  How "streams of American flags" would be more provocative than, say, attacking Iraq's capital city with a cluster of cruise missiles, the article did not explain. Nor did the article explain why displaying the Stars and Stripes would detract from the image of American troops as liberators: No concerns of that sort prevented our flag from flying over American troops who liberated Nazi-occupied France during World War II.
  
  Many front-line soldiers were understandably upset by this order -- which, as professional soldiers, they dutifully carried out. Major General David Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, insisted that removing our national symbol from forward-deployed units is "`the right thing to do' as a way of underscoring the American commitment to regime change for security and human rights, and not to seizing the country," commented the Herald Tribune.
  
  Which is to say that displaying the U.S. flag is not appropriate because this is not an American military mission -- but one undertaken on behalf of the UN-led "international community."
  
  This point is so obvious that Rush Limbaugh can see it, despite being shrouded in a haze of petty partisanship. "We are going with the total sanction of the United Nations, they just don't want to admit it," Limbaugh observed during a March 20th critique of an anti-war speech by Senator Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.).
  
  In his March 18th letter to congressional leaders signaling that the attack would begin, President Bush stated that "reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither (A) adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding IraqÂ…."
  
  Of course, the "threat" posed by Iraq, as defined by the Bush administration, is the regime's persistent defiance of UN Security Council resolutions. In other words, our national security supposedly depends on making sure that the UN's "words mean something," as President Bush has repeatedly stated.
  
  Conservative defenders of the president's policy toward Iraq really need to make up their minds: Is the UN an entirely illegitimate, anti-American body? If so, it makes no sense at all to justify the administration's war on Iraq by invoking UN resolutions.
  
  Those same conservatives should also ask themselves the following question. If President Bush can legitimately commit our nation to war against Iraq on his say-so, in what fundamental way is our political system different from that headed by "President" Saddam Hussein -- who can also commit his nation to war on his say-so?
  
  It's true that we enjoy freedoms and prosperity denied to the long-suffering Iraqis. But as Abraham Lincoln pointed out, giving a single man the power to plunge a nation into war results in "the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressionsÂ…."
  
  Much is owed to the American fighting men presently on the front lines in the Persian Gulf. Deferring momentarily the question of the wisdom of the Bush administration's policy, our fighting men deserve to know that the American people are behind them. But in matters of war, only Congress -- not the president -- can speak on behalf of the American people. Congress cravenly avoided acting on that responsibility last October, choosing instead to enact an anodyne resolution of "support" for the president in any decision he would make to take our nation to war.
  
  Our troops also deserve to fight under the Stars and Stripes. Yes, our troops have flown our flag to demoralize our enemies and to hearten our allies. But it is displayed primarily for the benefit of those who have shouldered the burden of fighting and winning our nation's wars.
  
  Sending our men into battle without our nation's flag proves decisively that this is not our nation's war.
  
  http://www.thenewamerican.com/focus/iraq/030320.htm
• duotiga83

  27 Mar 03, 22:59

  Importing Terrorism
  by William Norman Grigg
  
  The U.S. government has thrown open our borders to potential Iraqi terrorists disguised as refugees.
  
  On the eve of war with Iraq, federal agents swept through the country in pursuit of suspected Iraqi and al-Qaeda "sleeper cells" — small groups of saboteurs waiting orders to commit terrorist acts.
  
  According to the March 5th Los Angeles Times, U.S. intelligence officials had "credible information" that Iraqi terrorist cells had been dispatched around the globe. "The concern is not that there is a credible Iraqi military threat," commented one official. "We are concerned about the increased likelihood of terrorist attacks."
  
  NBC News reported on March 6th: "The FBI is conducting an intensive hunt for potential ‘sleeper cells’ of Iraqi agents planted to strike in the event of war.... At least 70 Iraqi nationals are under active surveillance … and agents have spread out to interview thousands of Iraqi men in an attempt to track down hundreds who came to the United States and disappeared."
  
  This sweep actually began in January, as FBI agents fanned out to interrogate an estimated 50,000 Iraqis residing in the United States. Aziz al-Taee, chairman of the Iraqi-American Council, reported that the FBI was "asking if anybody knows someone who worked with Saddam. They asked about a list of some who have vanished. They are asking about terrorist cells."
  
  Many or even most of the estimated 300,000 Iraqi-Americans and resident aliens are law-abiding people who fled SaddamÂ’s brutal reign, which UN sanctions have exacerbated by targeting the civilian population while leaving the dictator unmolested. It is reasonable to believe, however, that SaddamÂ’s intelligence apparatus seeded that population with terrorists as a way of retaliating against the U.S., should the Gulf War resume.
  
  In fact, we know for certain that the Iraqi refugee population contains highly trained assets of the Iraqi military, including the vaunted Republican Guard. We know this because Washington brought them here.
  
  At the end of the first Gulf War in 1991, the first Bush administration began a program, which the Clinton administration continued, to resettle thousands of Iraqi POWs in the United States at taxpayer expense. "According to the State Department, the former prisoners were conscripted into the Iraqi Army against their will and have now been classified by international agencies [meaning the UN] as refugees who face persecution by Iraqi President Saddam HusseinÂ’s regime if they return home," reported the August 25, 1993 Washington Post.
  
  When news leaked of the $70 million resettlement effort, a bipartisan group of 75 congressmen sent a letter of protest to the White House. "We find it disturbing that American taxpayers must fund the travel of former Iraqi soldiers (who took up arms against our own soldiers) to the U.S.," declared the letter. "Ironically, we provide the [Iraqi POWs] with welfare services while asking our own veterans and service personnel to bear the burdens of deficit reduction."
  
  Alluding to propaganda leaflets used to encourage Iraqi soldiers to surrender, Congressman Clifford Stearns (R-Fla.) wryly commented: "When we dropped those leaflets on the Republican Guard, we did not include a plane ticket to Middle America and welfare entitlement benefits. When those guys realized the war was lost, they changed into civilian clothes and surrendered, and now weÂ’re rolling out the red carpet."
  
  Hitting up taxpayers to subsidize former Iraqi troops is outrageous. Bilking taxpayers to support potential Iraqi terrorist agents is potentially suicidal — and Saddam’s intention to infiltrate terrorists into this country was well known more than a decade ago. The Washington Post reported on January 28, 1991 that, according to "highly classified U.S. intelligence reports," Saddam Hussein had "dispatched more than 100 terrorists, both experienced and novice, to try to infiltrate the United States." Some might contend that the presence of Iraqi "sleepers" in our nation justifies a "preemptive" war with Iraq. But if defending our country is the object, our efforts should focus on rolling up terrorist networks here, beginning with Iraqi suspects brought here by our own government.
  
  IraqÂ’s OKC Connection?
  
  Among the dubious, taxpayer-supported Iraqi refugees was Hussain Al-Hussaini, one of several hundred former Iraqi soldiers — including Republican Guard cadres — who took up residence in Oklahoma. Several eyewitnesses to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing placed Al-Hussaini in the company of executed terrorist Timothy McVeigh on the morning of that atrocity (see "OKC’s Mideast Connection" in our September 14, 1998 issue).
  
  While Al-Hussaini insists that he was an innocent refugee seeking asylum from SaddamÂ’s vicious regime, he admitted in an interview with the Oklahoma Gazette that he had belonged to the elite Republican Guard before emigrating in 1992. (According to one intelligence report, Al-Hussaini served in the GuardÂ’s Hammurabi Division, the same division that arch-terrorist Ramzi Yousef also reportedly served in. Yousef came to the U.S. around the same time in 1992 to mastermind the first World Trade Center bombing.) After working at BostonÂ’s Logan airport, Al-Hussaini moved to Oklahoma City, where he lived with several other Iraqi soldiers. One of his OKC roommates, Ali Al-Sidii, confirmed in a 1998 interview with this magazineÂ’s William F. Jasper that he (Al-Sidii) had served with Al-Hussaini in SaddamÂ’s army during Desert Storm.
  
  Al-Hussaini, Al-Sidii, and other young Iraqi men worked for, and lived in houses owned by, Dr. Samir Sharif Khalil, a convicted felon who served prison time for insurance fraud and was investigated by federal authorities as far back as the 1970s because of alleged ties to terrorists. ItÂ’s possible that Al-Hussaini defected legitimately. But U.S. intelligence officials have acknowledged that Saddam may have planted terrorists in U.S.-supported resistance groups.
  
  The March 11, 1998 New York Times reported: "Six Iraqis who worked in concert with the CIA in failed plots against Saddam Hussein have been declared threats to U.S. national security in a court ruling so secret that their lawyers cannot read it." That ruling, handed down by a federal immigration judge, reported the Times, described the Iraqis as "a danger to the national security of the United States" based on secret evidence provided by FBI agents.
  
  One of the Iraqis, Ali Yasin Mohammed Karim, worked with the CIA-created Iraqi National Congress in northern Iraq. "We came to this land legally, on account of the U.S. government, and they put us in jail," protested Karim. Once again, in the murky netherworld of CIA-sponsored "resistance" groups, itÂ’s difficult to distinguish friend from foe. But one clear-cut case is that of Ramzi Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Yousef claimed to be a member of an anti-Saddam resistance group when he entered the United States on an Iraqi passport in 1992.
  
  Acting on behalf of bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, Yousef devised a plan called "Operation Bojinka," which called for simultaneously bombing 11 U.S. civilian airliners, and using an airplane in a suicide bombing attack on CIA Headquarters. In the aftermath of 9-11, the Filipino police and intelligence officials who had broken up the "Bojinka" plot — and shared their intelligence with the FBI — described it as the first draft of the Black Tuesday attack. (See "Could We Have Prevented the Attacks?" in our November 5, 2001 issue.)
  
  Bin LadenÂ’s Balkan Buddies
  
  Intriguingly, the term "Bojinka," meaning "loud bang," is neither Arabic nor Tagalog (a Filipino dialect), as one might suspect. Instead, it is a Serbo-Croatian term with Turkish roots — a small but potentially significant connecting link to the Balkans, a region now infested with radical Muslim terrorist cells loyal to both Osama bin Laden and revolutionary Iran. Following the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the Serbian province of Kosovo was turned into a UN-supervised radical Muslim enclave under the rule of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In February 1998, Robert Gelbard, the Clinton administration’s special envoy for Kosovo, told Agence France Presse that the KLA "is, without any questions, a terrorist group."
  
  Ralf Mutschke, assistant director for InterpolÂ’s Criminal Intelligence Directorate, pointed out in December 2000 congressional testimony: "In 1998, the U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization, indicating that it was financing its operations with money from the international heroin trade and loans from Islamic countries and individuals, among them allegedly Osama bin Laden." Mutschke pointed out that bin Laden lent the KLA one of his military commanders, who led "an elite KLA unit during the Kosovo conflict."
  
  On August 24, 1998, shortly after U.S. cruise missiles struck purported bin Laden assets in Sudan and Afghanistan, the terror chieftain’s World Islamic Front (WIF) issued a communiqué urging its followers to "direct your attacks to the American army and her allies, the infidels." The KLA was among the al-Qaeda-connected groups to which that directive was issued. Nonetheless, in late 1998, the Clinton administration repealed its description of the KLA as a terrorist group, and began to supply it with assistance and training via the CIA.
  
  By any definition, the KLA must be considered one of the most loathsome terrorist groups in existence. In the March 28, 1999 New York Times, Balkans correspondent Chris Hedges pointed out that the groupÂ’s leadership echelons were occupied by "diehard Marxist-Leninists (who were bankrolled in the old days by the Stalinist dictatorship next door in Albania)" as well as descendants of World War II-era fascist militias.
  
  Writing in the May-June 1999 issue of Foreign Affairs, Hedges pointed out that the KLAÂ’s ideology displays "hints of fascism on one side and whiffs of communism on the other," and its leadership includes the heirs and descendants of "the Skanderbeg volunteer SS division raised by the Nazis Â… [who] took part in the shameful roundup and deportation of [KosovoÂ’s] few hundred Jews during the Holocaust."
  
  While bin Laden and the CIA collaborated to train the KLAÂ’s military personnel, the groupÂ’s chief source of revenue was the international heroin trade. In 1994, when the KLA was an embryonic menace, FranceÂ’s Observatire Geopolitique Des Drogues (a counter-narcotics bureau working with the European Commission) reported that "heroin shipment and marketing networks are taking root among ethnic Albanian communities in Albania, Macedonia, and the Kosovo province of Serbia, in order to finance large purchases of weapons destined Â… for the brewing war in Kosovo."
  
  Pascal Auchlin of SwitzerlandÂ’s National Center for Scientific Research corroborated that analysis: "Here and in a half-dozen other Western countries, there is now an antÂ’s trail of individual drug traffickers that leads right to Kosovo."
  
  The Balkan connection reaches into Albanian expatriate communities in the United States. According to an essay published by criminologist Gus Xhudo in the Spring 1996 issue of Transnational Organized Crime, Albanian mobsters have been involved in "drug and refugee smuggling, arms trafficking, contract killing, kidnaping, false visa forgery, and burglary." Between 1985 and 1995, wrote Xhudo, "authorities estimated that 10 million U.S. dollars in cash and merchandise had been stolen from some 300 supermarkets, ATM machines, jewelry stores, and restaurants" by Albanian gangsters, a healthy cut of which was sent to fund the KLAÂ’s terror campaign.
  
  During the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, thousands of refugees from Kosovo arrived in the United States. At the same time, thousands of Kosovo Albanians living in U.S. cities enlisted in the KLA. The April 20, 1999 Washington Times reported that the call to enlist in the KLA "is considered obligatory for all men ages 18 to 55. Only those who are sick or who can contribute financially to the KLA are considered exempt." Albanian émigrés from Philadelphia, Detroit, New York, Chicago, and other U.S. cities repaired to the KLA banner, joining thousands more from Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and other European nations.
  
  Little attention was paid to this now largely forgotten display of the KLAÂ’s potential strength as an al-Qaeda fifth column within the United States. Immediately following 9-11, intelligence analyst Yossef Bodansky, author of Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, told THE NEW AMERICAN that the KLA and its allies in the Albanian Mafia compose a vital part of bin LadenÂ’s terrorist apparatus within the United States.
  
  "The role of the Albanian Mafia, which is tightly connected to the KLA, is laundering money, providing technology, safe houses, and other support to terrorists within this country," Bodansky explained to THE NEW AMERICAN. "This isn’t to say that the Albanians themselves would carry out the actual terrorist operations. But there are undoubtedly ‘sleeper’ agents within the Albanian networks, and they can rely upon those networks to provide them with support. In any case, a serious investigation of the Albanian mob isn’t going to happen, because they’re ‘our boys’ — they’re protected."
  
  Courting Disaster
  
  Seeking to justify aggressive war against Iraq, President Bush and his supporters insist that action must be taken to preempt the potential threat posed by SaddamÂ’s "weapons of mass destruction." The alternative, we are constantly reminded, could be a biological, chemical, or even nuclear terrorist strike on an American city.
  
  Introducing the doctrine of military "preemption" during a June 1, 2002 West Point address, President Bush stated: "We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge." This might include action to uproot terrorist networks "in 60 or more countries," predicted the president — beginning, of course, with Iraq.
  
  This will certainly keep our troops busy overseas. Among them will be tens or perhaps even hundreds of thousands of reservists called up from the ranks of state and local law enforcement personnel, who might otherwise be helping to expose and shut down terrorist networks planted in this country with the invaluable help of Washington, D.C. If, God forbid, another incident of mass terrorism decimates an American city, it will likely be the handiwork of enemies brought within our gates — and perversely protected — by our own government.
  
  http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2003/04-07-2003/vo19no07_terrorism.htm
• duotiga83

  27 Mar 03, 23:00

  Recycling Radicalism
  by William F. Jasper
  
  The militants running the "anti-war" demonstrations are following a plan to organize, mobilize, radicalize, militarize, and globalize.
  
  Is America on the brink of another violent epoch of 1960s-style upheaval and polarization? Will riots and violent street demonstrations erupt in your city? Will our country be torn by on-going strife and renewed bouts of terrorism? The dials are being preset, it appears, for precisely those outcomes. The growing mobilization of "peace" demonstrators and the steady radicalization of the movement is a dark portent of coming ill.
  
  Following the same 1960s formula of "organize, mobilize, radicalize, and militarize," todayÂ’s supposed anti-war leaders are preparing tens of thousands of new recruits to "man the barricades" and serve as cannon fodder in an escalating round of revolutionary violence. This should come as no surprise, since the key organizers of these events are veteran radicals of the Vietnam War eraÂ’s turbulent demonstrations. As we will show, many of these individuals are actually hard-core Communists with long records of sedition, treason, terrorism, and aiding AmericaÂ’s enemies.
  
  The violence that erupted during the February 16th demonstrations in San Francisco foreshadows things to come. A reported 200,000 demonstrators came out to what was, for the most part, a peaceful rally, featuring lots of singing, tie-dyed sandalistas, and Kumbaya vibes. Actor/activist Danny Glover, serving as master of ceremonies, provided star power, along with singer and longtime radical activist Bonnie Raitt. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, about 1,000 of the demonstrators broke off from the main gathering to rampage through a shopping district, smashing windows, starting fires, spraying graffiti, taking over traffic intersections and cable cars, blocking the municipal rail, and combatting the police. Two police officers were reported injured and taken to San Francisco General Hospital. Forty-six rioters were reported arrested — 28 men and 18 women.
  
  This is not an isolated incident; the "peace" activists have been refining and escalating their violent organizing tactics since their wildly successful "Battle in Seattle" in December 1999. At that time, the masses of street demonstrators were purportedly opposing the sovereignty-destroying World Trade Organization (WTO). That wasnÂ’t the real reason at all, as subsequent events proved. After capturing world attention with violent riots, the demonstration organizers, including 1960s radical Ralph Nader and his lieutenant, Lori Wallach, called not for abolishing the WTO, but for expanding its powers.
  
  Crushing Sovereignty
  
  This apparent contradiction did not surprise us; neither did it surprise those in the know on the other side. Leftist one-worlder Robert Wright, a senior editor for The New Republic, wrote approvingly of this about-face in a cover story entitled, "America is surrendering its sovereignty to a world government. Hooray." The Left, you see, is not against globalization so long as itÂ’s based on the socialist model.
  
  Wright notes in his article: "Much power now vested in the nation-state is indeed starting to migrate to international institutions, and one of these is the WTO." He saw this as a very good thing. He also appreciated that "Nader and most of the Seattle left would gladly accept a sovereignty-crushing world body if it followed the leftist model of supranational governance found in the European Union." "Indeed," said Wright, "it was partly to please the Seattle activists that President Clinton espoused a future WTO whose member nations would meet global environmental and labor standards or else face sanction."
  
  Mr. Nader and his Citizen Works organization are now trying to pull the same kind of reversal with their phony opposition to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a regional government trap to be patterned after the European Union. They are also key players in the current anti-war demonstrations, along with many of their fellow anti-WTO, anti-FTAA cohorts. And they are once again using the demonstrations to push the world government bandwagon, this time through appeals to further empower the UN.
  
  Now, the violence that produced the Seattle "concessions" from Clinton and the WTO for Nader and associates had been provided by carefully trained, highly organized shock troops obviously connected to the eventÂ’s organizers, even though their ties were somewhat camouflaged to maintain deniability. The organizers claimed that the rioters were independent anarchists. These black-clad "anarchists" have appeared over and over again to help instigate riots at demonstrations from Seattle to San Francisco, New York to Washington, D.C., and London to Rome, Berlin, Paris, Genoa, etc. This follows the same game plan used by many of these aging radicals during their rampages in the 1960s and Â’70s: maintain a public facade of moderation and nonviolence while coordinating activities with more militant allies that encourage the mainstream demonstrators to drift steadily to the more violent fringes.
  
  One of the main anarchist groups operating at the Seattle melee and other violent venues is the Ruckus Society, which boasts many ties to so-called mainstream organizations, such as Greenpeace, NaderÂ’s Citizen Works, and the Council on Foreign Relations. With generous funding from Ted Turner, Jane Fonda, and Ben Cohen (of the Ben & JerryÂ’s ice cream fortune), the Ruckus terrorist operatives have been able to run sophisticated schools and camps training thousands of activists in "direct action" tactics. Ruckus alumni formed the core of what Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney called "a cadre Â… of criminal conspirators" who "go in and cause mayhem." Commissioner TimoneyÂ’s officers had experienced the Ruckus violence up close at the 2000 Republican National Convention. Yet, despite its record, Ruckus is welcome in the so-called peace movement and is listed as a member of organizing coalitions like International ANSWER, United For Peace, Global Exchange, and Peace Action.
  
  Tinsel Town Facade
  
  The public, however, rarely sees the radical face of the peaceniks, as represented by Ruckus and the many Communist groups dominating the movement. Instead, they are given a rotating stage of Hollywood pop icons serving as front men for the militants: Danny Glover; Sean Penn; Woody Harrelson; Susan Sarandon; Martin Sheen; Matt Damon; Robin Williams; Sarah Jessica Parker; etc.
  
  Aging activists of the old Hollywood Left — "Hanoi Jane" Fonda, Ed "the Red" Asner, Barbra Streisand, Robert Redford, Norman Lear — are also active in the new crusade, but they have yielded the limelight to a younger set of pampered radicals. Together with a phalanx of professional revolutionaries, college professors, and socialist millionaire moguls, they are building the "peace" effort into a virulently anti-American youth movement. They intend for this growing fifth column to complete the destructive revolution they launched a generation ago.
  
  We saw a glimpse of this revolution on February 15th and 16th, when millions of demonstrators in hundreds of cities around the world suddenly materialized in mass protests against U.S. plans to invade Iraq. "An unprecedented wave of anti war demonstrations swept the globe on Feb. 15," the PeopleÂ’s Weekly World, official newspaper of the Communist Party USA, boasted, "as an estimated 11 million demonstrators poured into the streets, determined to block the Bush administrationÂ’s drive to war against Iraq." Unprecedented? Hardly. We have seen similar global spectacles many times in the past. The major mediaÂ’s reporters and commentators are drawing the obvious comparisons to the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of the 1960s and Â’70s, of course.
  
  One of the major surprises concerning media coverage of the current demonstrations is the resurrection of the long-lost "C" word: Communist. Amazingly, the Red records of some of the leading organizers are finding their way into the news. Throughout the Vietnam War and into the "nuclear freeze" and "anti-missile defense" campaigns of the 1980s, the Communist leadership and direction of the "peace" movement was transparent and thoroughly documented — but almost never reported in the major media. The peaceniks were cast perennially as idealistsic pacifists, even though their leaders were Communist party officials and fellow travelers who openly sided with the Communist Vietcong, killing American soldiers. Even many self-styled conservatives backed off of the issue, fearful of being smeared with the "McCarthyite" label if they pointed out the obvious connections. Then came Gorbachev; Communism supposedly collapsed and died. For the past decade, in liberal Democrat and conservative Republican circles, it has been considered not only passé but downright gauche to use the "C" word.
  
  Red Encore
  
  But the Reds are back again, leading the marches and demonstrations. ItÂ’s the raging topic on talk radio. Even some liberal-left commentators are admitting the connection. Veteran leftist David Corn of the ultra-left Nation magazine was recently on FOX TVÂ’s OÂ’Reilly Factor, pointing out that one of the main groups organizing the anti-war marches, International ANSWER, is dominated by the Workers World Party, a gang of hard-core Communists.
  
  On February 13th, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on a Rush Limbaugh excoriation of the demonstrators. "ItÂ’s beyond me how anybody can look at these protesters and call them anything other than what they are: anti-American, anti-capitalist, pro- Marxists and communists," Limbaugh had said. The "furor" over the Red connection, the newspaper noted, "stems from the link between International ANSWER and the extreme left-wing Workers World Party." Said the Chronicle:
  
  The Workers World Party and Richard Becker, a party leader and leader of International Answer, have defended Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, Kim Jong Il of North Korea, Milosevic — who is on trial at the Hague for war crimes — and Chinese leaders who put down the 1989 "counter-revolution" in Tiananmen Square.
  
  Although the Chronicle got Mr. BeckerÂ’s first name wrong (itÂ’s Brian, not Richard), it did accurately state some of the groupÂ’s positions. The Workers World Party (WWP) website claims that the group is composed of "independent Marxists who respect the struggles for self-determination and progress of oppressed nations." Oppressed nations like, say, North Korea? The problem is that the WWP slavishly sides with North KoreaÂ’s oppressor, Communist dictator Kim Jong Il. Last year Becker, a member of the WWP secretariat, was a guest of "Uncle Kim" for a glorious propaganda tour of that wretched "Peoples Republic."
  
  Laboring with Becker at International ANSWER is Deidre Griswold Stapp, editor of Workers World newspaper. Stapp was trained in Cuba in the 1960s and Â’70s as a member of the Venceremos Brigades, an important adjunct of FidelÂ’s Tri-Continental terrorist training apparatus.
  
  Becker, Stapp, and their comrades at the WWP are unreconstructed, unapologetic, hard-core Communists. They split off from the Trotskyite terrorist Socialist Workers Party in 1959 over minor ideological differences but have yielded none of their radical edge. They steadfastly support the most vicious Red dictators, including Fidel Castro in Cuba, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and the murderous Communist regimes in China and Vietnam. Their website exults that the 1975 Communist takeover of Vietnam (and the ensuing genocidal bloodbath) was a "liberation" in which "U.S. imperialism suffered its most outstanding defeat in history."
  
  With a pedigree like that, not many Americans will confuse the WWP with the American Legion or the VFW. But Brian Becker is a director of International ANSWER, the principal coalition spearheading the anti-American "peace" efforts. And other WWP Reds are conspicuous in the coalitionÂ’s activist leadership as well. Obviously, this plays havoc with the peaceniksÂ’ attempts to paint themselves as a broad alliance of ordinary folks. So the tack they have adopted is to claim that International ANSWER is just one of many umbrella organizations promoting the demonstrations and the WWP is but one of many diverse groups within the International ANSWER coalition. The major mediaÂ’s ranks are amply stuffed with left-wing activists and sympathizers who have largely cooperated in this ruse. ("Just a few of those WWP fanatics, nothing to get too worked up over.")
  
  Unfortunately, many of the pro-war conservative critics have aided this ploy by focusing almost exclusively on the WWP connection to the demonstrators. But the WWP is not International ANSWER’s only Red problem, and International ANSWER is not the only group or coalition in the peace movement. In fact, as during the Vietnam War era, today’s organized anti-war menagerie is dominated by hard-core Communists — and even convicted terrorists — including many with longtime ties to the Soviet KGB and Cuban DGI.*
  
  Most conservative critics also have failed to note a trait common throughout the radical peacenik movement: a slobbering affection for the UN that matches their loathing of America.
  
  Ramsey Clark, the founder of International ANSWER, for instance, declares: "Only firm opposition to war can serve and save the United Nations. The peoples and nations of the world are looking to the United Nations to prevent the United States from waging a war of aggression against Iraq."
  
  The Move On coalition is telling its people to ask Senate and House members to sign a "‘Dear Colleague’ letter asking the President to let the U.N. Inspectors do their job."
  
  United For Peace urges its activists to flood Congress with calls of support for a Senate resolution that "calls on the president to support the United Nations weapons inspection program."
  
  Win Without War is telling its legions to flood Congress with the message that "Supporting the current UN disarmament mission in Iraq is critical."
  
  Meanwhile, Peace Action proclaims:
  
  The US must do its part to strengthen international legal systems in order for them to be as effective as possible. This means immediately paying US back dues to the United Nations (UN) and working through the UN to strengthen international laws on terrorism and the means to enforce them. The US should also support the International Criminal Court (ICC)....
  
  Reviewing these groupsÂ’ literature reveals that their revolutionary leaders are laboring in giddy anticipation of the day when the U.S. will be submerged in, and totally subservient to, the United Nations. What will come as a shock to many is that, all the furious rhetoric notwithstanding, the position of these radicals is not that much different from that of the Bush administration. And for that important story, we direct the reader to the article beginning on the next page.
  
  http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2003/03-24-2003/vo19no06_radicalism.htm
• duotiga83

  27 Mar 03, 23:04

  It's the UN, Stupid!
  by William Norman Grigg
  
  The military campaign in Iraq is intended to validate, rather than vanquish, the UN
  
  "This war is all about UN resolutions," observed radio commentator Rush Limbaugh on March 14th. Perhaps the most influential of the Bush administration's media flacks, Limbaugh somehow lurched into the truth about the administration's policy toward Iraq. Rather than defying the UN to protect America's interests, President Bush is putting the U.S. military into the service of resolutions the world body is too timid or impotent to enforce.
  
  For decades, the UN and its supporters -- particularly Secretary General Kofi Annan -- have complained that the organization is crippled by the reluctance of its member states to provide it with adequate money and manpower. The Bush administration has taken essentially the same position regarding the UN's approach to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. With the UN hamstrung by divisions in the Security Council, it falls to the United States and its "coalition of the willing" to enforce the UN's will by disarming Iraq.
  
  "I understand the wars of the 21st century are going to require incredible international cooperation," stated the president during his March 16th press conference in the Azores. "And the UN must mean something. Remember Rwanda, or Kosovo. The UN didn't do its jobÂ…. [A]ll of us need to step back and try to figure out how to make the UN work better as we head into the 21st century."
  
  Historically, the conservative critique of the UN has been that it should not do what it claims the power to do -- namely, enforce the will of the "international community" regarding disarmament, environmental regulations, and so forth. Under Bush, there has been a dramatic revision in the conservative party line: Now the UN is being criticized for failing to carry out the tasks it has set itself. The "problem," in other words, is that the UN has too little power, so the president is willing to lend it some of ours.
  
  Astonishingly, the mainstream Right, which is understandably furious at our foreign enemies, and hopelessly besotted with George W. Bush, has unwittingly bought this bill of goods. Republican party loyalists, some, but not all "Religious Right" activists, "Freepers," "Ditto-heads," and other movement conservatives have embraced the new line with the dutiful fervor of North Korean cadres parroting the latest pronouncements from Kim Jong Il.
  
  Quo Warranto?
  
  At no time during the build-up to military action against Iraq has the president sought a declaration of war. However, on occasions too numerous to list, the president has claimed authority from the UN to conduct a military strike for the purpose of disarming Iraq.
  
  "In the case of Iraq, the Security Council did act, in the early 1990s," stated the president in his March 17th televised address. "Under Resolutions 678 and 687 -- both still in effect -- the United States and our allies are authorized to use force in ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destructionÂ…. On November 8th, the Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441, finding Iraq in material breach of its obligations, and vowing serious consequences if Iraq did not fully and immediately disarm."
  
  According to Mr. Bush, "This is not a question of authority, it is a question of will" -- and he indicted "some permanent members of the Security Council" who opposed military action to enforce the UN's decrees. "These governments share our assessment of the danger, but not our resolve to meet it." The United States and its coalition partners, however, are ready and willing "to enforce the just demands of the world. The United Nations Security Council has not lived up to its responsibilities, so we will rise to ours."
  
  As in scores of previous speeches, President Bush's March 17th address depicted the United Nations -- not the U.S. Congress -- as the body that authorizes him to commit our nation to war. He did make mention of last November's congressional measure "to support the use of force against IraqÂ…." But that resolution was not a declaration of war -- a fact recognized by congressional allies of the administration, who actually killed a proposed declaration in committee.
  
  Some of President Bush's conservative defenders cite the 1952 Supreme Court decision Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer, in which Justice Robert Jackson wrote: "When the President acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress, his authority is at its maximum, for it includes all that he possesses in his own right plus all that Congress can delegate."
  
  But Congress does not have the power to amend the Constitution by legislation, and such an amendment would be necessary in order to re-allocate war powers from the legislative to the executive branch. The framers of our constitution strictly and purposefully separated the power to declare war from the president's role of conducting war. Giving the president the power to declare war would co-mingle powers the constitution keeps separate.
  
  Furthermore, Congress cannot "delegate" a power it does not possess -- in this case, the power to commit our nation to upholding UN decrees. Last October's use of force resolution supposedly authorized President Bush "to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to Â… enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq."
  
  In other words, Congress -- like the president -- was deferring to the Security Council as if it were the world's highest authority. They were not declaring war in the name of the sovereign people, as the Constitution dictates; instead, they were placing our government, and our nation's wealth and the irreplaceable blood of our fighting men, at the disposal of the UN.
  
  "Law" in the New World Order
  
  Writing shortly after the 1991 Gulf War, legal scholar Charles Rice of Notre Dame Law School, gravely observed: "One of the first fruits of the new world order is the informal amendment of the Constitution so as to require the United States to act as the policeman of the new world. Ever so gradually, our Congress is allowing UN dictates to supplant the U.S. Constitution." What began gradually with the first Bush administration has dramatically accelerated under the second.
  
  Speaking to reporters just hours before the president's prime time address on March 17th, Secretary of State Colin Powell declared: "We believe and I think you've also heard an opinion from British legal authorities within the last 24 hours that there is sufficient authority in [UN Security Council Resolutions] 1441, 678 and 687 Â… for whatever military action might be required."
  
  While Secretary Powell pointedly cited "British legal authorities" to justify war against Iraq, he did not so much as mention the U.S. Constitution, or the United States Congress, as the proper source of authority. Asked by one reporter if there was "Anything you'd have done differently" in the build-up to war, Powell replied: "The focus, really, was at the UN in New York, not, you know, a lot of other places. That's where we had to concentrate our effort."
  
  Since our nation became entangled in the UN more than five decades ago, we have fought three major undeclared wars, and won none of them. If Iraq is the apocalyptic menace the Bush administration describes, a declaration of war is not only proper but indispensable -- particularly as a means of conveying to our troops the unambiguous support of the American people, as expressed through their elected representatives.
  
  But the administration has never deigned to request such a declaration, and its congressional minions, as noted above, are just as disinclined to propose one.
  
  During a June 7, 1995 debate over the War Powers Act, several Republican congressional leaders expressed contemptuous disdain for the constitutional requirement that Congress declare war. Representative Henry Hyde (R-IL), who sponsored a measure to repeal the War Powers Act (which permits, but limits, the supposed authority of a president to conduct undeclared wars), candidly denounced the Constitution for its "obsolescence":
  
  "I think it is a fact of modern history that declarations of war are gone. I think they are anachronistic .... Clearly the Constitution assigns the declarations of war function to Congress and only to Congress. But declaring war has consequences in a technologically advanced world that nobody wants to face .... Instead what you do is you call it a police action, as we did in Korea, or you call it something else, but you do not formally take that giant leap of declaring war.
  
  Rep. Hyde reportedly expressed the same views during committee debate over a proposed declaration of war last October. Whence comes the notion that the gravest power conferred on Congress by the Constitution -- that of committing our nation to war -- is "obsolete"? This perverse idea is another product of our nation's involvement in the UN.
  
  On December 20, 1945, President Harry Truman signed the United Nations Participation Act of 1945 (UNPA), which authorizes the U.S. President to "negotiate a special agreement or agreements with the Security Council" concerning the use of American military personnel and facilities for UN "peacekeeping" and "peace enforcement" missions. The measure also specifies that "The President shall not be deemed to require the authorization of the Congress" to make American troops and assets available to the Security Council. In essence, the UNPA acts as a perpetual declaration of war, supposedly entitling the president to deploy American troops anywhere in the world under the color of UN authority.
  
  The implications of that act were discussed at length during final congressional debate over the UNPA on December 18, 1947. Representative Pete Jarman (D-Ala.), who volubly supported the measure, admitted: "After the Congress ratifies the agreement signed by the President with the Security Council those troops are at the disposal of the Security Council. Neither the President nor the Congress can prevent their use."
  
  Several critics of UNPA emphatically condemned this proposed surrender of congressional authority. Representative John Robison (R-Ky.) prophetically observed that "this measure before us is violative of the Constitution of the United States, which expressly provides that Congress alone shall have the power to declare war .... [I]f this measure is adopted, Congress will not be called upon in the future to declare war as provided in the Constitution." Representative Frederick Smith (R-Ohio) concurred: "This measure strikes at the very heart of the Constitution. It provides that the power to declare war shall be taken from Congress and given to the President. Here is the essence of dictatorship, and dictatorial control over all else must inevitably tend to follow."
  
  Clearly, the actions of President Bush and his colleagues validate the concerns expressed decades ago by critics of our nation's UN entanglement. Behind all of the anti-UN bluster coming from the President's media allies, the administration is steadily working to empower the UN, rather than to eradicate it. The future may hold serious systemic changes in the world body, such as elimination of the Security Council veto (which would have dire implications for our national interests).
  
  But as Secretary of State Powell told reporters on March 17th, "The UN is an important institution and it will survive, and the United States will continue to be an important member of the United Nations and its various organizations." And by doing so, our prosperity, liberty, and national independence will continue to suffer.
  
  http://www.thenewamerican.com/focus/iraq/030318.htm
• duotiga83

  27 Mar 03, 23:10

  Face recognition gets lift, U.S. says
  
  By Paul Festa
  Staff Writer, CNET News.com
  March 25, 2003, 6:54 PM PT
  
  Spurred by two federal antiterrorism statutes, the Commerce Department has released a study showing that face-recognition technology is hitting its stride.
  The Face Recognition Vendor Test 2002 (FRVT 2002) looked at 10 companies' work on face recognition and said they had made "significant advances" on the state of the art.
  
  "The performance results...show an improvement in the capabilities of the face-recognition systems over the last two years," concludes the report released this month. "On comparable experiments in...2000, there has been a 50 percent reduction in error rates."
  
  The team that produced the report included a slew of government agencies. Evaluators included scientists from the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which issued the report; the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Defense Department's Counterdrug Technology Development Program Office. Other sponsors of the report include the Justice Department's National Institute of Justice, the State Department, the Transportation Security Administration and the FBI.
  
  NIST said it had performed the study in response to two federal laws--the USA Patriot Act and the Enhanced Border Security Act--that were passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
  
  The study, which matched 121,589 images of 37,437 people drawn from the State Department's Mexican nonimmigrant visa archive, evaluated how well the various commercially available systems verified identity, identified unknown faces and detected people on a "watch list."
  
  The systems were able to verify a person's identity 90 percent of the time, with a 1 percent error rate. That's about as well as 1998 vintage fingerprinting technologies, NIST said.
  
  The new study looked at demographic factors for the first time. Men were easier to identify than women, and older people easier than younger.
  
  Another crucial variable turned out to be whether people were being identified indoors or outdoors. Indoor environments, where lighting is more easily controlled, provide results that are twice as reliable.
  
  In a mandated report to Congress on the test results, NIST recommended that face-recognition technologies be combined with fingerprinting technologies for greater accuracy.
  
  The vendors evaluated in the study were AcSys Biometrics, Cognitec Systems, C-VIS Computer Vision und Automation, Dream Mirh, Eyematic Interfaces, Iconquest, Identix, Imagis Technologies, Viisage Technology and VisionSphere.
  
  The report singled out a technology called three-dimensional morphable modeling, which fits a 3-D model to a facial image taken from the side, and then turns that image into a frontal shot. NIST said this technology could "significantly improve nonfrontal face recognition."
  
  The accuracy of face recognition from video sequences, by contrast, was only marginally better than from still images, said NIST.
  
  NIST said it had developed an XML-based evaluation protocol and scoring suite for the report that would be useful for both face-recognition tests and other evaluations of biometric technologies.
  
  http://news.com.com/2100-1028-994111.html?tag=fd_top
• duotiga83

  28 Mar 03, 21:00

  Basra: Media Confusion During War
  
  Stratfor Intelligence
  Mar 27, 2003 - 1940 GMT
  
  Summary
  
  The questions surrounding a massive breakout of Iraqi troops from the southern city of Basra and a potential southern thrust by columns of Iraqi armor toward the Al Faw Peninsula are finally being answered. As the fog of war lifts from the port city, it is useful to review the situation as it unfolded -- as a case study of perception versus reality in wartime and how the two diverge. It particularly highlights the media's role in intensifying confusion about what is happening on the battlefield.
  
  Analysis
  
  British Challenger tanks reportedly engaged 14 Iraqi T-55s and some associated armored personnel carriers outside Basra on March 27, destroying all the tanks. According to Iranian media, however, only two of the Iraqi tanks were destroyed and the remainder of the armor withdrew back into Basra. This was the third attempt in two days by small groups of Iraqi armored vehicles to break out of the southern city.
  
  The column of about 20 vehicles, however, was a far cry from the 120 tanks rolling south from Basra that had filled international media reports for much of the previous day.
  
  Basra also has been the site of serious confusion over reports of a massive anti-government uprising, which British forces reportedly were supporting and supplying with backup firepower. The reports were denied by Iraqi media and later downplayed by British officials, who called the situation "uncertain."
  
  The confusion in both cases -- and the tenacity of the media and government and military officials in sticking to the stories long after it was clear they were premature and suspect -- offers a useful study of the "fog of war" and an opportunity to pick apart the difference between perception and reality in wartime.
  
  It has become crystal clear that there is neither a massive civilian uprising inside Basra, nor was there a massive thrust of 120 Iraqi tanks heading south out of the city to engage the British forces on the Al Faw Peninsula. Rather, as British military officials have now said, there was scattered civil unrest in Basra -- a city where much of the water supply has been cut -- and there were several isolated attempts by small groups of Iraqi armor to break out of the city.
  
  These may also have been attempts to probe the British defensive line -- as is occurring south of Baghdad, where similar reports of thousand-strong columns of Iraqi armor pouring southward to engage U.S. troops have been degraded to columns of light vehicles with infantry and irregular forces probing U.S. advanced units.
  
  The initial reports of a massive armored thrust out of Basra stirred suspicion and disbelief, as it seemed illogical for Iraqi commanders to leave the relative safety of the city and expose the bulk of their forces to coalition airpower. If there is one thing that every Iraqi military officer learned in 1991, it is to stay off the roads if at all possible, or face overwhelming airpower. And while they may have been counting on the cover from dust storms and darkness to shield them from coalition attacks, driving south onto the peninsula -- where they would end up trapped -- seemed another tactical mistake.
  
  Now, there were several possible explanations for the reported Iraqi movements. First, their commanders were not very bright or were extremely overconfident -- not mutually exclusive characteristics. Second, they were trying to link up with irregular forces on the peninsula to disrupt coalition control of port facilities and needed large forces to break through. Finally, the initial reports could have been false.
  
  It is clearer now that the latter was the case. But as information trickles out from coalition officials, international media outlets and other sources, a more complete picture emerges.
  
  The initial reports of 120 tanks heading south from Basra was accurate at the time of issuing: An embedded reporter was present with command units when radar operators reported a significant column of vehicles moving from the city. The estimates of 70-120 Iraqi armored vehicles then were relayed to the media and the military, where paraphrases and misinterpretation of the preliminary data led to widespread reports of 120 Iraqi tanks barreling down on British positions on the Al Faw.
  
  After review, military officials cautioned against accepting those numbers as fact, even as the story gained wider attention. Despite the sheer audacity or blatant stupidity of such a massive armored push down a narrow causeway -- in close range of coalition aircraft and artillery -- reports of the 120-strong tank column continued to spread, no matter that the initial "fact" contradicted the reality of the situation.
  
  It took hours for media and even military press liaisons to finally begin downplaying the initial report, even after the British forces encountered only small breakout attempts -- the most noticeable being that the initial encounter with the "120" tanks proved to be just three tanks.
  
  Neither the media nor the military are entirely to blame for the confusion, which U.S. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks credited at the daily CENTCOM press briefing in Doha on March 27 as a symptom of the "fog of war." But it does show the necessity of gauging the veracity of information rather than accepting all reports at face value. Reports of only limited attempts to break out of Basra were published alongside other reports of coalition aircraft attacking 120 armored vehicles south of the city.
  
  In short, what happened was that an embedded reporter heard the initial intelligence report that a large column of Iraqi vehicles was moving south out of Basra. This was relayed back to the major networks -- which all began covering each other's coverage -- and military officials, following the news from the front, picked up on it as well. Despite attempts by some elements of the British and U.S. military to downplay the reports, which already had proved unreliable, the story of 120 tanks heading hot and heavy toward light British positions in the south continued to circulate -- long after it became clear that groups no larger than 20 armored vehicles had slipped out of the city to the south under cover of sandstorms.
  
  This is a key danger faced by analysts: Because the original source was an embedded reporter, his story was believed long after logic and the evidence showed a very different situation. And, as Richards Heuer wrote in Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, "Impressions tend to persist even after the evidence that created those impressions has been fully discredited."
  
  And this is the fog of war. Facts are a time-sensitive commodity based on the most immediate information and impressions. Reality, however, cuts through the fog -- testing the latest information against logic, additional evidence and common sense.
  
• duotiga83

  28 Mar 03, 21:00

  Today: March 28, 2003 at 0:25:11 PST
  
  Bush's Wartime Style Echoes Best, Worst
  By RON FOURNIER
  ASSOCIATED PRESS
  
  WASHINGTON (AP) -
  
  After ordering U.S. military commanders to target Saddam Hussein in the first air strikes of the war, President Bush has given them authority to attack the Iraqi leader again without his prior approval.
  
  Those loose rules of engagement for Saddam are typical of how Bush manages war, aides say: He makes the big political decisions and signs off on grand battlefield strategies, but tries not to meddle in combat tactics.
  
  It's too early to declare how he stacks up against America's wartime presidents, but those who study such things say they already see the lessons learned from several predecessors reflected in Bush's style.
  
  He delegates like Ronald Reagan, only dips into details that used to obsess Lyndon Johnson and turns in times of trouble to those who served his father - Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.
  
  "The trick is to set big goals and make the political decisions and leave it to the military guys to do the shooting because they know what they're doing and civilian leaders don't," said Ken Mayer, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
  
  "But the line between what a president should and should not do is going to be blurry in some cases," he said. "There is no rule book on how to lead a nation into war."
  
  With history and instinct his only guides, Bush began the nation's march toward Baghdad on March 19 when he signed off on a broad, flexible strategy and mission for war. He left it up to the military to decide the time and place for the attacks to begin.
  
  But hours later, U.S. intelligence got a rare fix on Saddam's location. The commander in chief decided he couldn't pass up the chance. War couldn't wait.
  
  He ordered the strike on Saddam.
  
  In the week since, Bush has allowed the war's on-scene commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, to make key battlefield decisions, often on a moment's notice, as the military leadership tries to keep pace with events. For example, Franks shifted resources to help seize Iraq's oil fields when the precious assets became vulnerable early in the fight, White House officials said.
  
  They said Franks, not necessarily Bush, would decide whether to take another shot at Saddam if the chance presented itself. It is Franks, not Bush, who responds to scores of combat scenarios and surprises - from bad weather to ambushes from Iraqi soldiers dressed as civilians.
  
  The bigger decisions rest with Bush.
  
  If Turkey decides to deploy troops in northern Iraq, officials said, the president would determine the U.S. response. Denounce the action? Apply economic pressure? Add troops to the region? The president tells advisers what he wants done, and they carry it out.
  
  Who rebuilds Iraq - and how it is done - are questions left to heads of state. Indeed, the president and British Prime Minister Tony Blair discussed that issue during their two-day Camp David summit this week but reached no resolution.
  
  They also will review military plans. After all, history shows that presidents and prime ministers can't help themselves.
  
  Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill famously pored over maps at the White House during World War II. But the U.S. president and British prime minister worried mostly about the decisions of historic magnitude - FDR resolving to concentrate on Germany first, both resolving that the war must end with unconditional surrender.
  
  President Truman inherited the atomic bomb program and used it to conclude the war. Later, in the Korean War, he refused to take the fight to China.
  
  President Lincoln agonized over each telegraph dispatch that spit out word from Gettysburg and other killing fields. He hired and fired generals, demanding that each be more aggressive than the last.
  
  Johnson's micromanaging famously drove him to pick targets in Vietnam.
  
  In the Afghanistan war, Bush's first, the commander in chief got knee-deep in a few tricky details. His wish to get certain things back to normal, including commercial flights back into the air, was premature. He promised to pick off all the terrorist-harboring states one by one; that led him to Saddam's doorstep, but is Iran or North Korea next?
  
  Bush peppers his generals with broad questions about tactics. Do you have what you need to win? Are you confident you can do it? Are humanitarian supplies getting in?
  
  The last question is asked at nearly every gathering of the Iraq war council. Aides say it reflects America's altruism, but critics wonder whether Bush's rush to flood Iraq with food, water and medicine - part of a broader political strategy to build support at home and abroad - could complicate the military mission.
  
  He has ordered his generals to take great care to avoid civilian casualties. That may save lives, but historian John Mueller, who studies wartime presidents at Ohio State University, said the policy is tantamount to picking targets for the military.
  
  "Johnson did no worse," he said.
  
  --
  
  http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-me/2003/mar/28/032805268.html
• duotiga83

  28 Mar 03, 21:03

  Posted on Fri, Mar. 28, 2003
  
  Saddam's support startles McEntire pilot
  169th Fighter Wing members enjoy amenities of life in Qatar between missions
  By PAUL WACHTER
  Staff Writer
  
  Capt. "Auto," a McEntire Air National Guard Station F-16 pilot flying over Iraq, is surprised at Iraq's continued resistance.
  
  "I'm surprised the regime has so much support from the Iraqi people," the captain, who asked only to be identified by his call sign, said Thursday. "It could be over a lot faster if people weren't willing to fight and die for (Saddam Hussein).
  
  "I'm surprised so many are willing to go down with a sinking ship."
  
  "Auto" and another 169th Fighter Wing member spoke with The State from Qatar. Both said McEntire personnel were focused on the mission. They're also enjoying the amenities -- such as cable and Internet access -- that weren't as readily available during Desert Storm.
  
  "We have cable and Internet access, so it's easy to stay in touch with your family and stay on top of what's going on," said Auto. "It makes it a lot easier being over here."
  
  So far, Auto said, the air campaign has been less intense than Desert Storm. But the 169th has been busy, "flying every kind of mission associated with the F-16."
  
  Auto said none of the 169th's 15 jets had been damaged by Iraqi fire. "We seen them shooting stuff at us, but none of it has come anywhere close to any of our aircraft."
  
  Staff Sgt. Allison, who also asked her last name be withheld, provides administrative support for the 169th's operations. She was too young to serve in Desert Storm but has been deployed to Qatar before. Since then, there have been a lot of improvements at the base, she said.
  
  "Our tents are a lot nicer, we have beds and mattresses, rather than cots and there's better food and night life -- they show movies every night."
  
  Allison said the amenities allow soldiers to concentrate harder on their job when they're working. "If you relax more on your off-time, and take your mind off what's going on for a while, then it allows you to be more focused when you're on duty," she said.
  
  Though she's 500 miles from the front line, Allison said the realities of war are brought home to her each time one of the 169th's pilots takes off.
  
  "You see these people, who have held up their right hands and sworn to defend the country, take off and they could die. It scares you a little bit."
  
  Allison said the main adjustment she's had to make in Qatar was getting used to sleeping around so many people and so much activity.
  
  "At home, you get used to the sounds and routines, and it's easy to sleep. Here, you're sleeping in a tent with a lot of people and there's all these different sounds all the time."
  
  But, she said, she's getting used to it. "Thankfully, females don't snore that much."
  
  http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/5501684.htm
• duotiga83

  28 Mar 03, 21:49

  I refused to help Bush In Iraq: India's Prime Minister
  
  Hundustimes
  Amitabh Srivastava
  Patni (Satna), March 27
  
  Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Thursday told the media how George Bush thrice sought his help in the war on Iraq, and how he refused the American President.
  
  "The US President George Bush has spoken to me three times saying that India must help the USA as Sadaam Hussein had left him with no option but to go for the attack," he told journalists after a dedication programme of the Chakara Nala Patni Watershed Management Plan prepared by the Deendayal Research Institute run by Nanaji Deshmukh here.
  
  Vajpayee told Bush that India believed war was not a solution to any problem and so could not help. India is also trying to consolidate the support of many countries to prevent escalation of the battle between US and Iraq, Vajpayee said.
  
  "I have written to the heads of many countries including China, Russia, France and USA as we are very seriously concerned with this war which goes against the United Nations," Vajpayee said.
  
  Vajpayee has said in in an all-party meeting that though India does not support the war, there is no need for harsh words.
  
  He also asked the people of the country to be prepared for adverse repercussions of the war between US and Iraq, which will have repercussions on India.
  
  Asked about the killing of 24 Pandits in Pulwama, the the Prime Minister said this was an act of desperation by terrorists.
  
  
• duotiga83

  28 Mar 03, 22:07

  Bush order covers Internet secrets
  
  By Declan McCullagh
  Staff Writer, CNET News.com
  March 26, 2003, 12:11 PM PT
  
  President Bush has signed an executive order that explicitly gives the government the power to classify information about critical infrastructures such as the Internet.
  Bush late Tuesday changed the definition of what the government may classify as confidential, secret and top-secret to include details about "infrastructures" and weapons of mass destruction. The new executive order also makes clear that information related to "defense against transnational terrorism" is classifiable.
  
  In his executive order, which replaces a 1995 directive signed by President Bill Clinton, Bush said that information that already had been declassified and released to the public could be reclassified by a federal agency. Clinton's order said that "information may not be reclassified after it has been declassified and released to the public."
  
  David Sobel, general counsel to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said it was unclear why the Bush administration decided to include the term infrastructure. An existing category of scientific, technological or economic matters relating to national security might have covered information about the Internet and other critical infrastructures, Sobel said.
  
  "It's a mystery to me why there was a feeling that the old order needed to be revised and expanded," Sobel said.
  
  The definition of what may be properly classified typically becomes an issue when a lawsuit is filed under the Freedom of Information Act seeking to force the government to divulge documents that it claims are secret and properly classified. Bush's decision gives the U.S. Justice Department, which defends agency classification decisions in court, more leeway in fighting such lawsuits.
  
  Clinton's 1995 order said one of the seven categories of information that could be classified was: "vulnerabilities or capabilities of systems, installations, projects or plans relating to the national security."
  
  Under Bush's order, that definition has been expanded to: "vulnerabilities or capabilities of systems, installations, infrastructures, projects, plans or protection services relating to the national security, which includes defense against transnational terrorism."
  
  Steven Aftergood, an analyst at the Federation of American Scientists who tracks government secrecy, says the change in definitions "creates an opening that could be exploited in the future, but in practice the previous policy would have permitted much of the same thing."
  
  http://news.com.com/2100-1028-994216.html?tag=fd_ots
• duotiga83

  28 Mar 03, 22:09

  Hollywood backs away from helping Bush with war in Iraq
  Thu Mar 27, 4:39 PM ET
  
  LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Hollywood is refusing to be drafted to help the administration of President George W. Bush (news - web sites) sell its stance on the US-led war in Iraq (news - web sites), it was reported.
  
  The US cinema industry's top lobbyist Jack Valenti, has told Washington that Tinseltown won't go into battle to promote the US point of view as it did after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on American targets.
  
  After the strikes, Hollywood -- encouraged by the White House -- scrambled to form a special war committee, which is headed by Valenti and which quickly produced several public service announcements and movie trailers boasting America's best qualities.
  
  But Motion Picture Association of America president Valenti warned in Washington on Wednesday that producing films touting the war in Iraq would be explosive as many Hollywood personalities are virulently opposed to the conflict.
  
  "We don't need to do PSAs (public service announcements) and all that blather," he told industry bible Daily Variety in an interview published Thursday.
  
  But, he said, show business can play a different role in the conflict by providing US troops in the Middle East with copies of Hollywood movies for soldiers to watch.
  
  "Only a deficient American wouldn't want to support them," he said. "So how best to support them? Offer them what they want?" he said adding that PSAs were not appropriate because "troops don't see the PSAs, for goodness sakes."
  
  Valenti said he would not ask his committee to take action on what role it should have until the situation in the Gulf became clearer.
  
  "Is this going to be a long war, or a short war? Right now, these guys don't have time to watch movies. Once they are encamped and doing nation-building, these servicemen will want DVDs and videocassettes."
  
  The MPAA sent films out to US troops in Afghanistan (news - web sites) after the United States launched a stinging attack on the country in 2001 to oust the fundamentalist Taliban regime and al-Qaeda terrorists sheltering there.
  
  Hollywood's top movie studios are all members of the MPAA which is an influential industry lobbying group.
  
  http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030327/ts_afp/iraq_war_hollywood_030327213909
• duotiga83

  28 Mar 03, 22:16

  Perish the thought of Pax Americana
  
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  
  I DO not scare easily. However, US Secretary of Defence Ronald Rumsfeld gives me sleepless nights every time I see him on television. He seems even more deluded than US President George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney.
  
  When France and Germany objected to the headlong rush to war by the US, he dismissed them as being "old Europe" and presumably irrelevant. I shuddered. I knew for certain then that the whole world was in trouble and that we were on the brink of a war that could escalate into a world war.
  
  If Iraq's oil and strategic geographical situation rather than its unconfirmed possession of weapons of mass destruction can land it with a full-scale illegal invasion, there is nothing stopping the US from invading Syria, Iran, Venezuela or North Korea.
  
  The notion of a Pax Americana seems so unreal and out of place in a world that is civilised, but like Hitler's mad dreams of an Aryan empire, for Bush and Rumsfeld, it is feasible. For one who has rather unkindly been called Bush's puppy, British Prime Minister Tony Blair must be sniffing the possibility of a revival of the once powerful British empire.
  
  Future generations may well ask: how did it come to pass that one country, which is so powerful, could allow itself to be led by a group of people who have been so corrupted by power that they have sent hundreds of thousands of Americans to their death and plunged the whole world into the chaos that necessarily accompanies war?
  
  The more I see Rumsfeld the more I am reminded of the mad scientist character in Stanley Kubrick's brilliant film, Dr Strangelove. Peter Sellers played all three main characters in this satire about an accidental nuclear attack.
  
  However, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush are merely following a long tradition of old men (past conscription age) with adolescent fantasies of war games with hi-tech military gadgets.
  
  As Bob Dylan sang in Masters of War they are not loath to "hide in their mansions while young people's blood flows out of their bodies and is buried in the mud".
  
  During Richard Nixon's presidency, one of his officials threatened that the next little country that tried to take on the US would be bombed back to the Stone Age. Nixon was given to similar outbursts. A confidante of his was quoted in the press after the Watergate scandal as saying that when asked what to do about a particular country whose name I cannot remember (it could have been Vietnam), Nixon shouted "nuke them".
  
  Then there was Gen Alexander Haig who briefly served as secretary of state under Ronald Reagan. He seemed as determined as Rumsfeld to wage war, except he was not as lucky as Rumsfeld and couldn't find a credible excuse to test all the wonderful military hardware the US has. The world can be grateful his stint as secretary of state was brief. If he is still alive he must be envious of Rumsfeld.
  
  In a war such as this, journalists moving around with the US military become willing participants in the major propaganda war that seeks to legitimise what is essentially a gratuitous, cowardly war that will surely mark the beginning of the end of the US domination of the world, even as they declare their victory over the people of Iraq.
  
  I can imagine that if Stanley Kubrick was alive, he might have been tempted to make another film even more sardonic than Dr Strangelove.
  
  The final scene would be of Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney, flanked by the CEOs of oil and defence corporations marching into Baghdad on the corpses of Iraqi civilians singing merrily, Oh what a lovely war. CNN would faithfully record the song and the dances. The corpses of the Iraqis would be a background prop.
  
  Qunta is a partner in the law firm Qunta Incorporated.
  
  Mar 28 2003 06:57:54:000AM Business Day 1st Edition
  
  Friday
  28 March 2003
  
  http://www.bday.co.za/bday/content/direct/1,3523,1314994-6096-0,00.html
• duotiga83

  28 Mar 03, 22:30

  Bush's Wartime Performance Under Scrutiny
  2 hours, 28 minutes ago
  
  By RON FOURNIER, AP White House Correspondent
  
  WASHINGTON - After ordering U.S. military commanders to target Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) in the first air strikes of the war, President Bush (news - web sites) has given them authority to attack the Iraqi leader again without his prior approval.
  
  Those loose rules of engagement for Saddam are typical of how Bush manages war, aides say: He makes the big political decisions and signs off on grand battlefield strategies, but tries not to meddle in combat tactics.
  
  It's too early to declare how he stacks up against America's wartime presidents, but those who study such things say they already see the lessons learned from several predecessors reflected in Bush's style.
  
  He delegates like Ronald Reagan (news - web sites), dips into details that used to obsess Lyndon Johnson and turns in times of trouble to those who served his father — Dick Cheney (news - web sites), Colin Powell (news - web sites) and Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites).
  
  "The trick is to set big goals and make the political decisions and leave it to the military guys to do the shooting because they know what they're doing and civilian leaders don't," said Ken Mayer, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
  
  "But the line between what a president should and should not do is going to be blurry in some cases," he said. "There is no rule book on how to lead a nation into war."
  
  With history and instinct his only guides, Bush began the nation's march toward Baghdad on March 19 when he approved a broad, flexible strategy and mission for war. He left it up to the military to decide the time and place for the attacks to begin.
  
  But hours later, U.S. intelligence got a rare fix on Saddam's location. The commander in chief decided he couldn't pass up the chance. War couldn't wait.
  
  He ordered the strike on Saddam.
  
  In the week since, Bush has allowed the war's on-scene commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, to make key battlefield decisions, often on a moment's notice, as the military leadership tries to keep pace with events. For example, Franks shifted resources to help seize Iraq (news - web sites)'s oil fields when the precious assets became vulnerable early in the fight, White House officials said.
  
  Bush, who gets briefed at least twice a day about the war, rarely watched television coverage of the bombing of Iraq.
  
  Aides said Franks, not necessarily Bush, would decide whether to take another shot at Saddam if the chance presented itself. It is Franks, not Bush, who responds to scores of combat scenarios and surprises — from bad weather to ambushes from Iraqi soldiers dressed as civilians.
  
  Bush sees his job as the war's chief communicator — victory will come "no matter how long it takes," he said Thursday. And the biggest decisions are his.
  
  If Turkey decides to deploy troops in northern Iraq, officials said, the president would determine the U.S. response. Denounce the action? Apply economic pressure? Add troops to the region? The president tells advisers what he wants done, and they carry it out.
  
  Who rebuilds Iraq — and how it is done — are questions left to heads of state. Indeed, the president and British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) discussed that issue during their two-day Camp David summit this week but reached no resolution.
  
  They also reviewed military plans. After all, history shows that presidents and prime ministers can't help themselves.
  
  Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill famously pored over maps at the White House during World War II. But the U.S. president and British prime minister worried mostly about the decisions of historic magnitude — FDR resolving to concentrate on Germany first, both resolving that the war must end with unconditional surrender.
  
  President Truman inherited the atomic bomb program and used it to conclude the war. Later, in the Korean War, he refused to take the fight to China.
  
  President Lincoln agonized over each telegraph dispatch that spit out word from Gettysburg and other killing fields. He hired and fired generals, demanding that each be more aggressive than the last.
  
  Johnson's micromanaging famously drove him to pick targets in Vietnam.
  
  In the Afghanistan (news - web sites) war, Bush's first, the commander in chief got knee-deep in a few tricky details. His wish to get certain things back to normal, including commercial flights back into the air, was premature. He promised to pick off all the terrorist-harboring states one by one; that led him to Saddam's doorstep, but is Iran or North Korea (news - web sites) next?
  
  Bush peppers his generals with broad questions about tactics. Do you have what you need to win? Are humanitarian supplies flowing?
  
  The last question is asked at nearly every gathering of the Iraq war council. Aides say it reflects America's altruism, but critics wonder whether Bush's rush to flood Iraq with food, water and medicine — part of a broader political strategy to build support at home and abroad — could complicate the military mission.
  
  He has ordered his generals to take great care to avoid civilian casualties. That may save lives, but historian John Mueller, who studies wartime presidents at Ohio State University, said the policy is tantamount to picking targets for the military.
  
  "Johnson did no worse," he said.
  
  http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=540&ncid=703&e=1&u=/ap/20030328/ap_on_re_mi_ea/war_bush_as_commander
• duotiga83

  29 Mar 03, 13:24

  13:55 2003-03-28
  
  Le Figaro: Coalition Troops Have Committed HitlerÂ’s Mistake
  
  Tactical errors the allied troops committed in the first days of the Iraqi war are a serious problem to the key operation, attack on Baghdad. As FranceÂ’s influential newspaper Le Figaro reported Thursday, excessive extension of the US/UK troops on the territory of Iraq is their main problem.
  
  The newspaper cited experts from the France Ministry of Defense who required anonymity. They say, the US troops have rushed toward the Iraqi capital and now they are extended for hundreds of kilometers on the territory of the country. Under these conditions, centers of resistance may emerge at the rear of the attacking troops. The French military say if a counter-attack is delivered by Iraqis in the enemyÂ’s rear, some vanguard groups of the US/UK troops will be cut off from their rear formations. Le Figaro mentions that for this very reason the German army was defeated in the Soviet Union in 1941-1942.
  
  At present, the allied troops are far from successful realization of its plans to seize Baghdad, French experts say. They add, the coalition troops didnÂ’t expect resistance of the Iraqi troops would be so stiff. Realization of the US war plan is impeded by the fact that operations are mostly held not in the desert, but close to cities which makes the Iraqi defence more steadfast. Besides, 50 thousand of US soldiers who were planned to attack Iraq from Turkey havenÂ’t got a permission from Ankara on deployment on the Turkish territory. That is why they will be able to reinforce the US army in Iraq only in a week.
  
  The French military think that all troubles the allied troops suffer in Iraq are explained with the haste the Pentagon made when it decided to wage a ground attack without prior air strikes against selected objects on the Iraqi territory. As Le Figaro emphasizes, during the 1991 Desert Storm Americans delivered mass air strikes against the territory of Iraq which made the ground stage of the war operation a success. But this time, the US/UK troops entered the Iraqi territory on the second day of the war.
  
  As a high-ranking French army officer says, the US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld understands that the USA cannot leave Iraq without triumph as it would be treated as humiliation for America. He adds, this is the reason why the Pentagon is persuading the public opinion that the war will be long and will entail considerable losses.
  
  PRAVDA.Ru
  
  Translated by Maria Gousseva
  
  Read the original in Russian: http://war.pravda.ru/main/2003/03/28/48987.html
  
  http://english.pravda.ru/war/2003/03/28/45193.html
• duotiga83

  29 Mar 03, 16:07

  Saddam Survives With Simpler Weapons
  30 minutes ago
  
  By The Associated Press
  
  The ruler accused of making "weapons of mass destruction" is harrying the world's most sophisticated military with the 21st century equivalent of sticks and stones: guns and grenades used as weapons of mass obstruction
  
  Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has hammered away at assertions that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was a global threat arming himself with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, turned his ire on Iraq (news - web sites)'s conventional arms on Friday.
  
  He slammed Syria for supplying Saddam Hussein with equipment that the Iraqi ruler is using guerrilla-style to inflict casualties and slow the U.S.-led invasion force's march to Baghdad.
  
  "We have information that shipments of military supplies have been crossing the border from Syria into Iraq, including night vision goggles," Rumsfeld said. "We consider such trafficking as hostile acts and will hold the Syrian government accountable for such shipments."
  
  Saddam has been known to use illegal shipments of crude oil both to raise money and to barter for supplies, and the authoritative industry journal Oil Daily said last month that Syria planned to import 230,000 barrels of Iraqi oil in March.
  
  Yet Iraq is also known to have had at least 40 conventional weapons plants operating since the 1991 war. Though Saddam has yet to unleash any deadly diseases or poison gases, he's had enough bullets and bodies for a guerrilla campaign that so far has kept him undefeated, a propaganda victory in itself.
  
  "Now it's easier for Saddam's people to say look, `The Americans can be beaten," said Richard K. Betts, a former National Security Council and Senate intelligence staffer.
  
  "We've given him all the time in the world to get ready. I've called this the most telegraphed punch in military history. It's no wonder he's come up with some tricky things."
  
  The 1991 Persian Gulf war (news - web sites) and subsequent UN trade sanctions have left Saddam with a ragtag army with little air support, obsolete battle tanks and few missiles. He's concentrated his power in the cities, where Iraqi reliance on small arms and rocket-propelled grenades will further level the playing field.
  
  The prolonged fighting in Basra, the second-largest Iraqi city, is an example of the Iraqi strategy of digging into urban areas to make it easier to resupply troops and to maximize the effectiveness of inferior arms.
  
  "The Republican Guard dug in around Baghdad will be well supplied with ammunition," said William Hopkinson, an analyst with the Royal Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
  
  "I don't think they will run out of ammunition in the next week or two," he said. "Eventually...they will run out, but one can't rely on that as a way forward."
  
  A siege of Baghdad is a nightmare scenario for the Americans and their allies. Small groups of guerrillas can wreak havoc for years.
  
  "You don't need big weapons to hold up and make difficult an advance on the city," Betts said. "If somebody shoots at you from a building, do you go into the building and try to get the sniper--or just level the building?"
  
  The prospect of mass civilians deaths from combat, hunger and disease would be a devastating blow to the United States' embattled global image.
  
  The last time U.S. troops captured a city was during World War II, the German town of Leipzig. It wasn't easy. "My father was blown off a tank," said Betts. "I think the Americans were less judicious about civilian casualties in 1945."
  
  Rumsfeld's assertion that Syria was smuggling war materiel to Iraq is not exactly a new revelation. The UN weapons inspection report from January also said Iraq was flouting the global embargo by importing weapons, though it could find no evidence of biological or chemical weapons smuggling.
  
  Smuggling is a way of life in Iraq, which has to resupply on the sly, said Maj. Charles Heyman, editor of Jane's World Armies. "I think it's just part of his procurement policy for everyone--paramilitary, Republican Guard, everyone."
  
  Iraq has roughly 380,000 troops and 650,000 reserves, according to Jane's. One of the pillars of the armed forces is its vast human intelligence network, making word of mouth an effective communications method.
  
  http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=540&ncid=736&e=3&u=/ap/20030329/ap_on_re_mi_ea/war_oil_for_guns
• duotiga83

  29 Mar 03, 16:12

  Bush Gets Graphic in War of Words
  39 minutes ago
  
  By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
  
  WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) is waging battle against Iraq (news - web sites) with dark, sometimes macabre, words — "murderous," "brutal," "cruel" — to shape public opinion about the war at home and abroad.
  
  The president has been demonizing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) for months, but recently he has used particularly graphic language to denounce the Iraqi regime. The more explicit the message, apparently, the more shock value it has.
  
  At Camp David this week, Bush told this story: "We had reports the other day of a dissident who had his tongue cut out and was tied to the stake in the town square. He bled to death. That's how Saddam Hussein retains power."
  
  That same day, on Capitol Hill, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters the same story about the bleeding man in the square. Neither Bush nor Rumsfeld elaborated on the claim.
  
  A U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Friday "there have been credible reports" about the Iraqi dissident whose tongue was slashed.
  
  "No doubt his intelligence agencies send him graphic anecdote after graphic anecdote, so he has plenty of material," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
  
  In a recent radio address, Bush's message included this: "We know from human rights groups that dissidents in Iraq are tortured, imprisoned and sometimes just disappear; their hands, feet and tongues are cut off; their eyes are gouged out; and female relatives are raped in their presence."
  
  The president has incriminated Saddam's family as well: "His sons are brutal, brutal people," Bush told a news conference at Camp David that was telecast around the world. "I'm not surprised to know that regular army forces are trying to desert, but get blown away by fellow Iraqi citizens."
  
  In peacetime, the appropriateness of telling gory stories might be questioned. But in times of war, world leaders are given more latitude, said communications specialist Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
  
  "Bush wants to revivify the notion that Saddam is evil," she said. "That is particularly critical when the country is taking casualties."
  
  She thinks the graphic sections of Bush's speeches are aimed at the American people, to rally the nation during wartime. But it also serves to give Bush cover when the war is over, she said.
  
  The administration has stated three objectives for taking military action: protecting America from terrorists, preventing Iraq from using weapons of mass destruction and liberating Iraqis from a repressive regime.
  
  "You want to have grounds to stand on if some of your grounds erode," she said. "If ultimately this war comes to conclusion with no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the argument that will stand will be that this was a person who tortures his own people."
  
  Sometimes stories about atrocities, however, prove false.
  
  A decade ago, Americans preparing for their first war against Iraq were shocked when a Kuwaiti girl, testifying before Congress, said she saw Iraqi soldiers occupying her country take infants off of their respirators and let them die.
  
  The story quickly became part of the first President Bush's campaign to win public support for the war. "Babies pulled from incubators and scattered like firewood across the floor," he said.
  
  Only after the war did the story fall apart and the witness' true identity — the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the United States — become known.
  
  White House spokesman Ari Fleischer (news - web sites) on Friday said Bush has been talking for months about atrocities the United States believes Iraq has committed. Bush isn't doing it to justify the war to the American people, he said.
  
  "I think it's part of describing the horrible reality that Saddam Hussein is putting people through," Fleischer said. "It's important always to speak out on behalf of those who seek liberty."
  
  Part of the tough talk is just "Bush being Bush," said Stephen Hess, senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. The other reason is to keep the public focused on the reasons America is at war.
  
  "Everything in terms of public opinion is working in his favor," Hess said. "Presumably, he wants to continue to be in that position."
  
  http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=544&ncid=703&e=6&u=/ap/20030329/ap_on_go_pr_wh/war_of_words