1 November 2004

Hell to Pay in Iraq: Insurgents Call the Shots
Whoever wins, the road ahead in Iraq is rough. Both Bush and Kerry have plans that depend on newly trained Iraqis. But insurgents are killing recruits, and infiltrating the forces.
By Rod Nordland, Babak Dehghanpisheh and Michael Hirsh
Newsweek, 8 November issue
EXCERPT: Now the Marines and their Iraqi protegés are gearing up for the biggest offensive in Iraq since April. Barring an unexpected breakthrough in talks with local leaders, a long-awaited attack on the insurgent strongholds of Fallujah and neighboring Ramadi may come as early as this week, shortly after the American presidential election. Fighting is expected to continue at least until December, U.S. officials say. In recent weeks American military trainers have been frantically trying to assemble sufficient Iraqi troops to assist in the assault. And they are praying that the soldiers perform better than last April, when two battalions of poorly trained Iraqi Army soldiers refused to fight. The insurgents struck first last week. On Saturday, a convoy of Marines was moving into position around Fallujah when a suicide bomber drove into them. The explosion killed eight, bringing the war's total to nearly 1,120 American dead. And so the bloody battles of the Iraq war‹which never quite ended‹are about to start up again in full force. Much depends on the new offensive. If it succeeds, it could mark a turning point toward Iraqi security and stability. If it fails, then the American president will find himself in a deepening quagmire on Inauguration Day. The Fallujah offensive "is going to be extremely significant," says one U.S. official involved in the planning. "It's an attempt to tighten the circle around the most problematic areas and isolate these insurgents." But it will also be "the first major test" of the new Iraqi security forces since the debacle in April, says Michael Eisenstadt, an Iraq expert at the Washington Institute. Their performance, he says, will "provide a key early indicator of the long-term prospects for U.S. success in Iraq." For months the American people have heard, from one side, promises to "stay the course" in Iraq (George W. Bush); and from the other side, equally vague plans for gradual withdrawal (John Kerry). Both plans depend heavily on building significant Iraqi forces to take over security. But the truth is, neither party is fully reckoning with the reality of Iraq‹which is that the insurgents, by most accounts, are winning. Even Secretary of State Colin Powell, a former general who stays in touch with the Joint Chiefs, has acknowledged this privately to friends in recent weeks, NEWSWEEK has learned. The insurgents have effectively created a reign of terror throughout the country, killing thousands, driving Iraqi elites and technocrats into exile and scaring foreigners out. "Things are getting really bad," a senior Iraqi official in interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's government told NEWSWEEK last week. "The initiative is in [the insurgents'] hands right now. This approach of being lenient and accommodating has really backfired. They see this as weakness."
BushWhackedUSA note: Although Newsweek and Colin Powell may feel that Kerry has not accounted for the fact that insurgents are winning, a quick examination of the Kerry campaign web site reveals otherwise.

Iraq Hotel Explosion Kills at Least 15
Associated Press, 31 October 2004
An explosion hit a hotel Sunday in the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit killed 15 Iraqis, police and hospital officials said. Dr. Hassan al-Juburi, director of the Tikrit Teaching Hospital, said the blast happened at 8:00 p.m. at the Sunubar Hotel, he said. Eight others were seriously wounded in the explosion, including two policemen. All the victims were Iraqi, he said. Al-Juburi said he did not know what had caused the blast. A police official confirmed the incident and said the explosion might have been caused by a projectile. He had no further details. Tikrit, about 80 miles north of Baghdad, is the hometown of former leader Saddam Hussein.

100,000 Lives: The Cost of War
By Jeremy Laurance and Colin Brown
The Independent (UK), 30 October 2004
EXCEPRT: The first scientific study of the human cost of the Iraq war suggests that at least 100,000 Iraqis have lost their lives since their country was invaded in March 2003. More than half of those who died were women and children killed in air strikes, researchers say. Previous estimates have put the Iraqi death toll at around 10,000 - ten times the 1,000 members of the British, American and multi-national forces who have died so far. But the study, published in The Lancet, suggested that Iraqi casualties could be as much as 100 times the coalition losses. It was also savagely critical of the failure by coalition forces to count Iraqi casualties.

Why Didn't We Attack Sweden?
By Paul Street
ZNet, 31 October 2004
EXCERPT: What do Osama bin-Laden and the owners and top editors of the gigantic corporate media outlet the Chicago Tribune have in common? They both want George W. Bush to return for a second term. The Tribune¹s masters want Bush back because they are Republicans who see the Crawford Chickenhawk and his jingoist, ultra-regressive "posse" as more consistent with their interests and world view than the smarter corporate imperialist from Massachusetts and the (more liberal) people around the second candidate. Osama wants Bush back because Dubya's imperialist wars on Afghanistan and especially Iraq, initially launched in the name of a "Crusade" (smart, George), have been a recruiting dream for extremist "anti-American" Islam, creating untold masses of enlistees in the war on the West and especially on the US. My sense is that bin-Laden's speech was distributed at this historical juncture partly with the expectation that it would give Bush a needed boost.

Codependent No More
Can Bin Laden keep Bush in office?
By William Saletan
Slate, 30 October 2004
EXCERPT:  Well, it took him long enough, but Osama Bin Laden has finally repaid his debt. Maybe just in time.
The debt is to President Bush, who has spent the three years since the Afghan war doing everything he could, inadvertently, to help Bin Laden. He let Bin Laden get away, turned our attention to Saddam Hussein, and conducted both prewar diplomacy (if I may use that word) and the postwar occupation of Iraq in a manner perfectly calculated—or rather, not calculated—to discredit the United States and piss everyone off. Bin Laden couldn't have scripted it better.
It wasn't scripted, of course. Bush would gladly kill the leaders of al-Qaida with his bare hands. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he'd gladly do to them what he did to the North Vietnamese: send somebody else to kill them. Anyway, with the worst intentions, Bush did Bin Laden the best favor.
Now Bin Laden is returning the favor with poetic symmetry. With the worst intentions, he's brought Bush the best possible October surprise, short of turning himself over to the NYPD. Bin Laden would like to see Bush thrown out of office, like that Spanish prime minister with the mustache who served as our beard for the Iraq invasion. If Bush loses, Bin Laden thinks he'll have another scalp to hang on his wall, or cave, or whatever it is. He'll claim to have brought down the president.
...That's the story of Bush. Clear intentions, lousy judgment, counterproductive results. I love his intentions as much as I hate Bin Laden's, but the two men turn out to be well-matched. Bin Laden pisses people off and drives them into the arms of Bush. Bush pisses people off and drives them into the arms of Bin Laden. Bush keeps Bin Laden in business; Bin Laden keeps Bush in office. With clear intentions and lousy judgment, Bin Laden has shown up on the eve of our election, full of the same impenetrable self-assurance Pat Robertson noticed in Bush. No doubt Bin Laden hopes to assist, or at least take credit for, the president's defeat. And no doubt the results will be counterproductive. I just hope they aren't counterproductive enough, because this is one codependent relationship the world can't afford.

Towers of Beirut
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 31 October 2004
EXCERPT: The horrible Israeli siege of Beirut in summer of 1982, which lasted for weeks, involved the brutal and indiscriminate bombing of the city. Many of the "towers" that were destroyed contained hundreds of innocent Beirutis. Sharon's proposed puppet ruler, Bashir Gemayyel, used to keep posters of Hitler in his locker at college. He was promptly assassinated and the whole scheme fell apart. The invasion killed some 18,000 persons, half of them innocent civilians. During this period Sharon turned the task of guarding the disarmed and helpless Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps over to his allies, the fascist Phalangist paramilitary. The latter promptly murdered hundreds of defenseless Palestinians.

Does Anyone Outside the United States of America Want this Man to be the Leader of the Free World for Another Four Years?
Sunday Herald, 31 October 2004
EXCERPT: George W Bush promised he would be a president of ‘unity’, writes James Cusick, but instead his war against terror has turned most of the world against him and left his own country bitterly divided
The “international community” is a popular phrase in both the White House and Downing Street. It lends gravitas to global concern. Tony Blair uses it when he needs rescuing on foreign policy. George W Bush says it when he needs Tony Blair. But in four years of Bush in the White House the view of the actual “international community” has mattered little. The United States – and by association the United Kingdom – is isolated and mistrusted and the real “communité internationale” is praying for regime change on Tuesday.
In January 2001, as Bush was sworn into office, the promises he made were very different. He described his foreign policy aims as “humble” and claimed he was a “uniter, not a divider”. Margaret Thatcher said much the same thing when she quoted St Francis outside Number 10 after her first election triumph. Neither was successful at living up to their stated aims.
Although Bush arrived in the White House as damaged goods – put in place by the casting vote of the US Supreme Court after the legal dogfight with Al Gore – his lack of legitimacy didn’t seem to bother him. Gore had received more votes, but due to the US electoral college system Bush became the president .
What few analysts predicted was the extent of the political and economic experimentation that would follow. The administration Bush appointed, his advisers, and those organisations who had put him into the White House, were, in hindsight, all the clues needed. A neoconservative ideology-in-waiting had been plotting in Washington since the end of the Reagan presidency. The neocon apostles, followers and would-be thinkers were dismissed variously as cranks and suspect intellectuals whose ideas would remain locked in the barely-read pages of right-wing journals. Reagan had tried some of them, and they hadn’t worked. The others were outcasts, resigned to waiting for events that would lend them credence. Then the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York were attacked.

30-31 October 2004

Mainstream Media Distorts and Ignores Clear Evidence
Disproving Bush Claims About Missing High Explosives

Article reprinted in full...
FAIR Media Advisory:
Media Missing the Evidence on Missing Explosives
Reports ignore videotapes that debunk administration claims
Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, 29 October 2004
When the New York Times reported on Monday (10/25/04) that over 300 tons of high-explosive materials appeared to be missing from an Iraqi weapons facility, it was no surprise that the Bush administration and conservative pundits would quickly challenge the story. But recent reporting has taken this spin as proof that the facts of the story are in dispute-- even though new evidence disproves the administration's rebuttals.
On October 28, ABC affiliate KSTP released footage that was shot by its embedded reporters on April 18, 2003, showing members of the 101st Airborne Division searching the Al Qaqaa bunkers. Clearly visible on the tape are containers marked with labels that indicate the barrels contained the high explosives in question. ABC World News Tonight broadcast the footage on October 28, noting that soldiers opened the bunkers that had been sealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), discovered the high explosives, and then left those bunkers open and unguarded. Given that the tape was shot nine days after the fall of Baghdad, it would appear to prove that at least some of these explosives were looted after the U.S. invasion-- a scenario that is consistent with statements from Iraqi officials and witnesses to the looting (Agence France Presse, 10/27/04; New York Times, 10/28/04). As ABC's Martha Raddatz put it, "It is the strongest evidence to date the explosives disappeared after the U.S. had taken control of Iraq."
On the other hand, on the same day the Pentagon released satellite images that they claim show vehicles near some of the bunkers at the Al Qaqaa site on March 17, 2003. That would seem to be an attempt to bolster the administration's claim that the explosives were removed by Saddam Hussein prior to the U.S. invasion, though there is no evidence that the trucks did anything at all with the explosives in question. Indeed, the fact that trucks were in the vicinity of bunkers that contained large amounts of battlefield weapons (in addition to the high explosives) just before a war seems hardly newsworthy. Certainly the presence of trucks near the bunkers does nothing to undermine the footage of explosives in the bunkers days later.
But despite their dubious relevance, the Pentagon images-- along with the White House's continued criticism of Kerry for bringing up the issue at all-- seemed to leave some news outlets uncertain about the facts. A subhead above a Los Angeles Times story read, "Reporters Taped Troops Apparently Finding Munitions. A Pentagon Photo Implies Otherwise." The actual article, however, noted that the Pentagon photos implied very little: "The photograph reveals little about the fate of the 377 tons of explosives, part of an estimated 600,000 tons of explosives believed to have been scattered throughout Iraq at the time."
And even though ABC's network newscast had broadcast the KSTP footage, ABC's Ted Koppel reached a very different conclusion on the Nightline broadcast later that evening (10/28/04). Koppel explained that "a friend" in the military had reminded him that he was actually at Al Qaqaa during the war, and that "my friend, the senior military commander, believes that the explosives had already been removed by Saddam's forces before we ever got there. The Iraqis, he said, were convinced that the U.S. was going to bomb the place." For some reason, the theory advanced by his military friend was apparently more credible to Koppel than the television footage ABC had aired hours earlier that debunked his thesis.
Instead of reporting on this newly discovered footage from Al Qaqaa, the Washington Post (10/29/04) pursued a different angle: "This week's assertions by Sen. John F. Kerry's campaign about the few hundred tons said to have vanished from Iraq's Qaqaa facility have struck some defense experts as exaggerated." The story's point, that the invasion allowed vast quantities of weapons to be looted all over Iraq, would hardly seem to undermine Kerry's critique of the Bush administration.
Ignoring the evidence released the day before that explosives were on site after the fall of Baghdad, the Post instead reported that "Pentagon officials, reconstructing a timeline of what might have occurred at Qaqaa, believe they have narrowed the window for the disappearance to a two-month period between mid-March 2003, when the IAEA verified its seals were still in place, and May 2003, when U.S. military search teams arrived at the site and found it had been looted, stripped and vandalized." If the Post had reported on the KSTP footage, though, the paper would have been able to shut much of the Pentagon's "window."
Not surprisingly, Fox News Channel continued to aggressively challenge the explosives story, even after the KSTP footage surfaced. On Special Report (10/28/04), anchor Brit Hume told viewers that "officials cite further evidence the material had been moved before U.S. troops arrived"-- apparently a reference to the inconclusive Pentagon satellite images. Special Report did not even mention the KSTP footage. But Fox campaign reporter Carl Cameron claimed that the news of the day was damaging to the Kerry campaign, since "the Iraqi explosives may have disappeared before the invasion, undercutting Kerry's attack on the president." Cameron added, "The Democrat hoped the explosive story would be explosive. But the president is already calling it a dud, accusing Kerry of saying anything to get elected."
The Los Angeles Times followed a similar tack with an article (10/29/04) headlined "Munitions Issue Cuts Both Ways." The only evidence the paper found to support the idea that the issue would be harmful to Kerry were the claims of White House strategist Karl Rove, Bush communications director Nicolle Devenish and George W. Bush.
That the subject of a scandal gets to decide how important it is is an odd notion-- but many journalists seemed to put more faith in administration pronouncements than in videotaped evidence. [BWUSA emphasis]
SEE ALSO:
Reporter Saw Insurgents Loot Qaqaa Arms Depot
By Katrin Bennhold International Herald Tribune
IHT, 30 October 2004
EXCERPT: A French journalist who visited the Qaqaa munitions depot south of Baghdad in November last year said she witnessed Islamic insurgents looting vast supplies of explosives more than six months after the demise of Saddam Hussein's regime. The account of Sara Daniel, which will be published Wednesday in the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, lends further weight to allegations that American occupying forces in Iraq failed to protect hundreds of tons of munitions from extremists plotting attacks against their own troops. Much of the controversy has centered around the disappearance of about 380 tons of the powerful HMX explosive. The material, which had been monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency before the war and subsequently sealed in bunkers by its inspectors, was reported missing by Iraqi officials earlier this month. Daniel, who spent nearly two hours at Qaqaa with a group that has since become known as the Islamic Army of Iraq, could not confirm seeing buildings that carried the agency's seal or explosives that were marked to be of the HMX variety. But her report is one of terrorists having easy access to a vast weapons inventory. "I was utterly stupefied to see that a place like that was pretty much unguarded and that insurgents could help themselves for months on end," Daniel said on Friday. "We were there for a long time and no one disturbed the group while they were loading their truck."

Suicide Attack Kills 8 Marines Near Baghdad
By EDWARD WONG
NYT, 30 October 2004
EXCERPT: Eight marines were killed and nine others wounded west of the capital when a suicide car bomb rammed into their convoy on Saturday, military officials said, making it the deadliest day here for the American forces in half a year. The explosion took place near Abu Ghraib, a prison 15 miles west of Baghdad used by the Americans to hold detainees, said Capt. Bradley Gordon, a Marine spokesman. The military said in a terse written statement that the marines killed were conducting "increased security operations." Marines have been engaged in a variety of operations in rebellious Anbar Province, which encompasses the parched lands of western Iraq and includes the provincial capital of Ramadi and the insurgent stronghold of Falluja. In the capital, a powerful car bomb exploded outside the offices of Al Arabiya, a prominent Arab satellite news network, killing at least 7 people and injuring 16 others, hospital officials said. People at the scene said insurgents drove a car packed with explosives up to the office building in Mansour, an affluent neighborhood west of the Tigris River that has recently been plagued by violence.

Some support the troops, some don't...
Along With Prayers, Families Send Armor
By NEELA BANERJEE and JOHN KIFNER
NYT, 30 October 2004
EXCERPT: When the 1544th Transportation Company of the Illinois National Guard was preparing to leave for Iraq in February, relatives of the soldiers offered to pay to weld steel plates on the unit's trucks to protect against roadside bombs. The Army told them not to, because it would provide better protection in Iraq, relatives said. Seven months later, many of the company's trucks still have no armor, soldiers and relatives said, despite running some of the most dangerous missions in Iraq and incurring the highest rate of injuries and deaths among the Illinois units deployed there. "This problem is very extensive," said Paul Rieckhoff, a former infantry platoon leader with the Florida National Guard in Iraq who now runs an organization called Operation Truth, an advocacy group for soldiers and veterans. Though soldiers of all types have complained about equipment in Iraq, part-timers in the National Guard and Reserve say that they have a particular disadvantage because they start off with outdated or insufficient gear. They have been deployed with faulty radios, unreliable trucks and, most alarmingly for many, a shortage of soundly armored vehicles in a land regularly convulsed by roadside attacks, according to soldiers, relatives and outside military experts. After many complaints when the violence in Iraq accelerated late last year, the military acknowledged there had been shortages, in part because of the rapid deployments. But the Army contends that it has moved quickly to get better equipment to Iraq over the last year. "War is a come-as-you-are party," said Lt. Gen. C. V. Christianson, the Army's deputy chief of staff for logistics, in an interview yesterday. "The way a unit was resourced when someone rang the bell is the way it showed up. ..."If we're one of the richest nations in the world, our soldiers shouldn't be sent out looking like the Beverly Hillbillies," said the mother of one soldier in the unit, who, like many parents, asked not to be identified for fear of repercussions for their children. According to figures compiled by the House Armed Services Committee and previously reported in The Seattle Times, there are plans to produce armor kits for at least 2,806 medium-weight trucks, but as of Sept. 17, only 385 of the kits had been produced and sent to Iraq. Armor kits were also planned for at least 1,600 heavyweight trucks, but as of mid-September just 446 of these kits were in Iraq. The Army is also looking into developing ways to armor truck cabs quickly, and has ordered 700 armored Humvees with special weapons platforms to protect convoys.

Pentagon Extends Tours of Duty for About 6,500 U.S. Soldiers
By THOM SHANKER
NYT,29 October 2004
EXCERPT: The Pentagon has ordered about 6,500 soldiers in Iraq to extend their tours, the first step the military has taken to increase its combat power there in preparation for the January elections, senior Defense Department officials said Friday. About 3,500 members of the Second Brigade of the First Cavalry Division will stay in Iraq two months longer than initially ordered, and about 3,000 soldiers assigned to headquarters and support units of the First Infantry Division will have their tours extended by two and a half weeks. While Pentagon officials and military officers previously had left open the possibility that additional troops would be required to battle a tenacious insurgency ahead of the elections, they had also expressed hopes that new Iraqi security forces or foreign units might fill the need. The decision to extend the stay of American forces in Iraq at a time when replacement troops also are arriving means a significant increase in the overall American combat presence for the first time since the summer. No other extensions have been approved, and no units now preparing for Iraq duty have been ordered to speed up their departure, according to Pentagon and military officials. But senior Defense Department officials said they had considered plans that would allow the American military in Iraq to quickly increase its forces by as many as three brigades - a total of as many as 15,000 troops, the combat power of a traditional Army division - but that no steps had been taken other than the extensions discussed Friday.

Halliburton Faces UK Investigation for Bribery
US vice-president mired in claims of bribery and corruption against his former company in four countries
The Guardian (UK), 30 October 2004
EXCERPT: British authorities have opened a new front in the widening investigation into allegations of bribery at Halliburton, the American oil services business, while it was being run by the US vice-president, Dick Cheney. The Guardian has learned that the Serious Fraud Office has joined the international effort at the request of the US Department of Justice in Washington. French and Nigerian officials are already involved in the inquiry. Halliburton has become a political liability for the Bush administration as the US prepares to vote in presidential elections next week. The company, one of the chief government contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been dogged by controversy, which includes claims of White House favouritism in awarding the firm billions of dollars of contracts without being forced to bid and Pentagon allegations that the firm has massively overcharged for its work. It emerged late on Thursday that the FBI had launched an inquiry into how Halliburton secured contracts in Iraq, so far worth almost $9bn.
SEE ALSO: Serious Fraud Office to look into payments of $180m (Guardian)

Will There Be a War Against the World after November 2?
By John Pilger
Information Clearing House, 28 October 2004
EXCERPT: For Kerry, like Nixon, the message is that he is not a wimp. Nothing in his campaign or his career suggests he will not continue, even escalate, the 'war on terror', which is now sanctified as a crusade of Americanism like that against communism. No Democratic president has shirked such a task: John Kennedy on the cold war, Lyndon Johnson on Vietnam. This presents great danger for all of us, but none of it is allowed to intrude upon the campaign or the media 'coverage'. In a supposedly free and open society, the degree of censorship by omission is staggering.The New York Times, the country's liberal standard-bearer, having recovered from a mild bout of contrition over its abject failure to challenge Bush's lies about Iraq, has been running tombstones of column inches about what-went-wrong in the 'liberation' of that country. It blames mistakes: tactical oversights, faulty intelligence. Not a word suggests that the invasion was a colonial conquest, deliberate like any other, and that 60 years of international law make it 'the paramount war crime', to quote the Nuremberg judges. Not a word suggests that the American onslaught on the population of Iraq was and is systematically atrocious, of which the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was merely a glimpse. The coming atrocity in the city of Fallujah, in which British troops, against the wishes of the British people, are to be accessories, is a case in point. For American politicians and journalists - there are a few honourable exceptions - the US marines are preparing for another of their "battles". Their last attack on Fallujah, in April, provides a preview. Forty-ton battle tanks and helicopter gunships were used against slums. Aircraft dropped 500lb bombs: marine snipers killed old people, women and children; ambulances were shot at. The marines closed the only hospital in a city of 300,000 for more than two weeks, so they could use it as a military position. When it was estimated they had slaughtered 600 people, there was no denial. This was more than all the victims of the suicide bombs the previous year. Neither did they deny that their barbarity was in revenge for the killing of four American mercenaries in the city; led by avowed cowboys, they are specialists in revenge. John Kerry said nothing; the media reported the atrocity as 'a military operation', against 'foreign militants' and 'insugents', never against civilians and Iraqis defending their homes and homeland. Moreover, the American people are almost totally unaware that the marines were driven out of Fallujah by heroic street fighting. Americans remain unaware, too, of the piracy that comes with their government's murderous adventure. Who in public life asks the whereabouts of the 18.46 bn dollars which the US Congress approved for reconstruction and humanitarian aid in Iraq? 
SEE ALSO: In Pictures: Falluja Digs for Its Dead (Al Jazeera)

Holy Zarqawi
Why Bush let Iraq's top terrorist walk.
By Daniel Benjamin
Slate, 29 October 2004
EXCERPT: Why didn't the Bush administration kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi when it had the chance? That it had opportunities to take out the Jordanian-born jihadist has been clear since Secretary of State Colin Powell devoted a long section of his February 2003 speech to the United Nations Security Council. In those remarks, which were given to underscore the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, Powell dwelt at length on the terrorist camp in Khurmal, in the pre-invasion Kurdish enclave. It was at that camp that Zarqawi, other jihadists who had fled Afghanistan, and Kurdish radicals were training and producing the poison ricin and cyanide. Neither the Khurmal camp nor the surrounding area were under Saddam's control, but Powell provided much detail purporting to show Zarqawi's ties to the Baghdad regime. His arguments have since been largely discredited by the intelligence community. Many of us who have worked in counterterrorism wondered at the time about Powell's claims. If we knew where the camp of a leading jihadist was and knew that his followers were working on unconventional weapons, why weren't we bombing it or sending in special operations forces—especially since this was a relatively "permissive" environment? ...What seems evident is that the administration viewed Zarqawi as a lower-tier concern, despite his well-known history of running an Afghan terrorist training camp and conducting terrorist operations in Europe. The White House was unwilling to divert any effort from the buildup for war in Iraq to this kind of threat.

Warming Trend in Arctic Is Linked to Emissions
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
NYT, 29 October 2004
EXCERPT: The first thorough assessment of a decadeslong Arctic warming trend shows the region is undergoing profound changes, including sharp retreats of glaciers and sea ice, thawing of permafrost, and shifts in ocean and atmospheric conditions that are likely to harm native communities, wildlife, and economic activities while offering some benefits, as well. The report, while noting that conditions in the far north have varied naturally in the past, says the current shifts match longstanding scientific projections that the Arctic should be the first place to feel the impact of rising atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases from smokestacks and tailpipes. It adds that the warming and other changes are likely to accelerate in this century because of the ongoing buildup in greenhouse gases. Prompt efforts to curb such emissions could slow the pace of change sufficiently to allow communities and wildlife to adapt, the report says. But it also stresses that some further warming and melting is unavoidable given the centurylong buildup of the long-lived gases, mainly carbon dioxide. "These changes in the Arctic provide an early indication of the environmental and societal significance of global warming," the executive summary of the report says. The study, called the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, was commissioned four years ago by the eight nations with Arctic territory - Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Russian Federation, Sweden and the United States - and conducted and reviewed by 250 scientists and representatives of six organizations representing Arctic native communities. ...And it concludes that the consequences of the fast-paced Arctic warming have global reach, in part as sea levels rise in response to the accelerated melting of Greenland's two-mile-high sheets of ice. There have been continuing disagreements between American officials and other participants over the report's contents and timetable. Last year, for example, the State Department distributed a document to representatives from the other Arctic countries saying that it opposed having the technical experts draw conclusions about policies on greenhouse gases or other related factors until the scientific findings had been reviewed by the eight participating governments. A copy was provided to The New York Times by a person involved in the project who criticized the delay in considering the implications of the climate shifts. The document said this was "a fundamental flaw" in the process. The implications of the findings could not be legitimately considered before the scientific assessment was completed and governments needed to have the right to suggest changes. [BWUSA emphasis]

29 October 2004

Bush In Deep Al Qaqaa

Embedded Reporter's Video Proves Missing Explosives Were At Al Qaqaa After the Invasion
Minneapolis/St.Paul 5 Eyewitness News, 28 October 2004

EXCERPT: A 5 Eyewitness News crew in Iraq shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein was in the area where tons of explosives disappeared, and may have videotaped some of those weapons. The missing explosives are now an issue in the presidential debate. Democratic candidate John Kerry is accusing President Bush of not securing the site they allegedly disappeared from. President Bush says no one knows if the ammunition was taken before or after the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003 when coalition troops moved in to the area. Using GPS technology and talking with members of the 101st Airborne Division, 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has determined the crew embedded with the troops may have been on the southern edge of the Al Qaqaa installation, where the ammunition disappeared. The news crew was based just south of Al Qaqaa, and drove two or three miles north of there with soldiers on April 18, 2003.
SEE ALSO:
Video Shows G.I.'s at Weapon Cache
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
and DAVID E. SANGER
NYT, 29 October 2004
EXCERPT: A videotape made by a television crew with American troops when they opened bunkers at a sprawling Iraqi munitions complex south of Baghdad shows a huge supply of explosives still there nine days after the fall of Saddam Hussein, apparently including some sealed earlier by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The tape, broadcast on Wednesday night by the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis, appeared to confirm a warning given earlier this month to the agency by Iraqi officials, who said that hundreds of tons of high-grade explosives, powerful enough to bring down buildings or detonate nuclear weapons, had vanished from the site after the invasion of Iraq. The question of whether the material was removed by Mr. Hussein's forces in the days before the invasion, or looted later because it was unguarded, has become a heated dispute on the campaign trail, with Senator John Kerry accusing President Bush of incompetence, and Mr. Bush saying it is unclear when the material disappeared and rejecting what he calls Mr. Kerry's "wild charges." Weapons experts familiar with the work of the international inspectors in Iraq say the videotape appears identical to photographs that the inspectors took of the explosives, which were put under seal before the war. One frame shows what the experts say is a seal, with narrow wires that would have to be broken if anyone entered through the main door of the bunker. The agency said that when it left Iraq in mid-March, only days before the war began, the only bunkers bearing its seals at the huge complex contained the explosive known as HMX, which the agency had monitored because it could be used in a nuclear weapons program. It is now clear that program had ground to a halt. The New York Times and CBS reported on Monday that Iraqi officials had told the agency earlier this month that the explosives were missing, and that they were looted after April 9, 2003, the day Baghdad fell. ..."The photographs are consistent with what I know of Al Qaqaa," said David A. Kay, a former American official who led the recent hunt in Iraq for unconventional weapons and visited the vast site. "The damning thing is the seals. The Iraqis didn't use seals on anything. So I'm absolutely sure that's an I.A.E.A. seal." [BWUSA emphasis]
SEE ALSO:
Game, Set, Match
Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo, 28 October 2004
EXCERPT: They got caught with a screw-up, their response was to lie, smear, obfuscate and bamboozle. And now the unimpeachable evidence is out. It captures the administration's whole record on Iraq, only fast-forwarded and telescoped into four days as opposed to four years.Here's former weapons inspector David Kay on Aaron Brown this evening delivering the news ...

SEE ALSO:
The WMD-Lite Scandal
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times, 28 October 2004
EXCERPT: Whether it was poetic justice or yet one more instance of hubris, in the end there was indeed an "October surprise". Call it the WMD-lite scandal: the disappearance of 380 tons of dual-use explosives in Iraq. Certainly Republican Machiavelli-in-charge Karl Rove didn't see this surprise coming - hitting the Bush administration like a jet converted into a missile. Now the neo-cons and Pentagon civilians are scrambling like mad trying to cover US President George W Bush's back and defuse yet another spectacular blunder. ...So this is the crucial point in the whole affair: the Pentagon - as well as the IAEA - knew the 380 tons were stored at al-Qaqaa, but US troops didn't make any move to search for them or secure them, because this was not a priority at the time. This week White House spokesman Scott McClellan all but admitted that securing Iraq's oil fields and the Ministry of Oil was a much higher priority than securing 345,000kg (760,000 pounds) of the most powerful non-nuclear explosives around (less than one pound blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland). In itself, this admission blows up the Bush administration's whole case for invading Iraq, weapons of mass destruction (WMD). There was indeed a "window of opportunity" of less than four weeks between the last IAEA inspection, in early March 2003, and the storming of Baghdad, in early April, when the explosives could have been looted. But Iraqis conclusively deny this possibility. Mohammed al-Sharaa, now in the Science Ministry and someone who worked with UN weapons inspectors under Saddam Hussein, said "it is impossible that these materials could have been taken from this site before the regime's fall". He said he and all other relevant officials had been under orders by Saddam's regime since early March to make sure "not even a shred of paper left the sites". The Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) former weapons inspector in Iraq, David Kay, also weighed in, saying that looting while Saddam was in power would have been highly implausible. Kay told CNN: "I find it hard to believe that a convoy of 40-60 trucks left that facility prior to or during the war, and we didn't spot it on satellite or UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle]. That is because it is the main road to Baghdad from the south, a road that was constantly under surveillance. I also don't find it hard to believe that looters could carry it off in the dead of night or during the day and not use the road network."

Removed with surgical precision...
100,000 Civilians Died Because of Iraq War, Hopkins Study Says
Bloomberg.com, 28 Oct 2004
EXCERPT: About 100,000 civilians have died as a result of the war in Iraq, according to research from Johns Hopkins University. The findings are the first scientific study of the effects of war on Iraqi citizens, according to the Lancet medical journal, which is publishing the research. The study, based on a survey comparing mortality rates in Iraq during the 15 months before and 18 months after the March 2003 invasion, found violence was the leading cause of death after the invasion. The majority of the civilian deaths were women and children, said the study, led by Hopkins' Les Roberts. Most of the casualties occurred after the end of major hostilities in May 2003, researchers said in the study. Observations suggest that civilian deaths since the war are mostly caused by air strikes, the survey said. Two-thirds of the deaths were in the insurgent-held Sunni Muslim Iraqi city of Fallujah, the study said. ``Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths, and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths,'' Roberts said in the study.
SEE ALSO:
The War In Iraq: Civilian Casualties, Political Responsibilities (The Lancet.com) (pdf file)

No Change in US Torture Policy
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, 28 October 2004
EXCERPT: The United States has failed to change its policies meaningfully on the treatment of prisoners, opening the door to repeats of abuses like those at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and making an independent probe into torture by the US military essential, says a leading human-rights group. In a 200-page report released on Wednesday, London-based Amnesty International (AI) stressed that without such an investigation and the clear, unequivocal rejection by US officials of torture and ill-treatment of prisoners, "the conditions remain for further abuses to occur".

F.B.I. Investigating Contracts With Halliburton
By ERIK ECKHOLM
NYT, 29 October 2004
EXCERPT: The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating whether the Army's handling of a large Iraq contract with the Halliburton Company violated procurement rules, according to lawyers for an Army official who made the charges of improprieties. F.B.I. agents have requested an interview with the official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, the chief of contracting with the Army Corps of Engineers, on her allegations regarding a 2003 contract with Halliburton to repair Iraqi oil fields, her lawyer, Michael D. Kohn, said in an interview yesterday. Ms. Greenhouse, in an Oct. 21 letter to the acting Army secretary, charged that officials had shown favoritism toward Halliburton, the Houston-based conglomerate formerly led by Vice President Dick Cheney, in the awarding and oversight of the oil contract. She also said officials at the Army Corps of Engineers had tried to remove her as chief contract monitor after she raised persistent questions about Halliburton contracts. The Army says it has referred her letter to the Pentagon's inspector general for review. The oil contract was awarded in early 2003 without competition to the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, as the American-led invasion of Iraq began, and was initially for five years and up to $7 billion. Ms. Greenhouse argued that if the press of war required granting an award without competition, its duration should be restricted to one year. After a public outcry over the large contract with Halliburton, the Pentagon did cut short the agreement after less than a year and $2.4 billion in expenditures and put the remaining work out for bid. One aspect of the company's performance - the importation of high-priced fuels into Iraq soon after the invasion - had already attracted the attention of Pentagon auditors, who say the government may have been overcharged by $61 million. The F.B.I. has been investigating those charges and has collected documents from the Washington and Texas offices of the Army Corps of Engineers as well as from KBR.
SEE ALSO:
Halliburton Hit with Multiple Lawsuits
By David Phinney
CorpWatch, 27 October 2004
EXCERPT: Companies working in support of U.S. troops in Iraq are hauling Houston-headquartered defense contractor, Halliburton, into U.S. federal court with claims that the company stiffed them for hundreds of millions of dollars after they provided essential services in the war effort. The latest lawsuit, filed October 26 by the law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld, charges that Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), has refused to pay $20.4 million for food services and other work near the city of Tikrit in 2003 provided by the Kuwait Company for Process Plant Construction & Contracting (KCPC) and the Morris Corporation of Australia for several months after the invasion of Iraq. The complaint follows swiftly on the heels of an October 15 lawsuit, filed by the law firm of Hogan & Hartson, on behalf of the Kuwaiti construction company, La Nouvelle, which demands of more than $224 million for similar services the firm performed in Iraq and Kuwait as a subcontractor to KBR.

28 October 2004

Liberated Iraqis Wish the Same for Americans
Public Opinion Poll Indicates Iraqis Favor Kerry over Bush in U.S. Presidential Race
By Greg LaMotte
Voice of America, 26 October 2004
EXCERPT: A new public opinion poll shows more Iraqis favor Democratic challenger John Kerry than President Bush, who launched the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. But more than half of the 2,000 peopled polled throughout Iraq don't care who wins the U.S. presidency in next week's election. The new survey of Iraqi public opinion was conducted last week by Iraq's Center for Research and Strategic Studies in Baghdad.  The group, which has been operating in Iraq for about a year, says its latest survey indicates that among Iraqis with a preference, Mr. Kerry leads President Bush by 6.5 percentage points.  The poll has a margin of error of four percent. But the director of the center, former Iraqi exile Sadoun al-Dulame, says 58 percent of the respondents said they don't care who wins the U.S. presidential election.
SEE ALSO: Reasons to Vote for Bush (Village Voice)

After U.S. Invasion
4 Iraqis Tell of Looting at Munitions Site in '03
By JAMES GLANZ and JIM DWYER
NYT, 28 October 2004
EXCERPT: Looters stormed the weapons site at Al Qaqaa in the days after American troops swept through the area in early April 2003 on their way to Baghdad, gutting office buildings, carrying off munitions and even dismantling heavy machinery, three Iraqi witnesses and a regional security chief said Wednesday. The Iraqis described an orgy of theft so extensive that enterprising residents rented their trucks to looters. But some looting was clearly indiscriminate, with people grabbing anything they could find and later heaving unwanted items off the trucks. Two witnesses were employees of Al Qaqaa - one a chemical engineer and the other a mechanic - and the third was a former employee, a chemist, who had come back to retrieve his records, determined to keep them out of American hands. The mechanic, Ahmed Saleh Mezher, said employees asked the Americans to protect the site but were told this was not the soldiers' responsibility. The accounts do not directly address the question of when 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives vanished from the site sometime after early March, the last time international inspectors checked the seals on the bunkers where the material was stored. It is possible that Iraqi forces removed some explosives before the invasion. But the accounts make clear that what set off much if not all of the looting was the arrival and swift departure of American troops, who did not secure the site after inducing the Iraqi forces to abandon it. "The looting started after the collapse of the regime," said Wathiq al-Dulaimi, a regional security chief, who was based nearby in Latifiya. But once it had begun, he said, the booty streamed toward Baghdad.
SEE ALSO:
White House Spin Doctors Kicking Up Lots of Dust
Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo, 27 October 2004
EXCERPT: The folks at the White House were caught completely flat-footed by this whole story. It's not something that they or the civilian mis-planners of the war ever gave much thought to. But now they realize that the way they can get out of this is to find some way to show that the stuff wasn't there when they arrived. So first they try with the NBC story. And when that falls apart they move on to this story. But it doesn't really hold up either. Later Di Rita brought out the then-commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division (the first troops on the scene) who said that in the weeks after April 3rd when his troops came through the area on the way to Baghdad it would have been "very highly improbable" that anyone could have put together a convoy to haul the stuff away because the two roads through the area were choked with US military convoys bringing men and materiel into the country. Perhaps small-scale looting, he said, but not a major operation. On the face of it, that sounds persuasive. But then former weapons inspector David Kay was on CNN just a short time later saying that he can't believe it could have happened in the short time window before or during the war either -- which is just what Di Rita is trying to suggest. And it has to be one of the other.
SEE ALSO:
Deadly Dual Use Explosives Missing: Part Deux
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 27 October 2004
EXCERPT: The politicization of news in the United States has reached such an embarrassing point that what Vice Presidential candidate Dick Cheney thinks about what was going on in Iraq in April of 2003 is being reported by the press in an article on the weapons' disappearance, even though he was not there and knows nothing about it and speaks in the subjunctive. The proper journalistic judgment on such a statement? Treat it on the op-ed page but keep it away from news sections unless the story is on Cheney's claims in his speeches.
SEE ALSO:
Soldiers Who Entered Site of Missing Iraq Explosives Conducted only Cursory Search: Commander
Agence-France Presse, 28 October 2004
EXCERPT: US soldiers who first entered a site from which nearly 400 tons of high explosives have been reported missing conducted only a cursory search after capturing it because their priority was to continue the march on Baghdad, their commander said Wednesday. Colonel David Perkins, at the time the commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, said the soldiers saw some conventional munitions and a white powdery substance that was tested because of fears of chemical agents. Besides testing the substance, which proved negative for chemical or biological agents, the soldiers did not do a detailed inventory of what they found during the little more than two days they were at the site from April 3 to April 6, 2003, he said.

Missing Explosives Add Fuel to Iraqi Fire
By Robert McMahon
Asia Times, 27 October 2004
EXCERPT: For the second time this month, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has notified the United Nations Security Council about the loss of sensitive weapons material formerly under its supervision in Iraq, an issue that has made its way onto the US presidential campaign trail. IAEA director Muhammad el-Baradei sent the Security Council a letter this week alerting it to a message from the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology. The ministry reported that more than 340 metric tons of highly explosive material - known as HMX, RDX, and PETN - had been stolen. HMX is powerful enough to ignite the fissile material in an atomic bomb and set off a nuclear chain reaction. HMX and RDX are also key components in powerful plastic explosives such as C-4 and Semtex. The ministry's message to the IAEA said the material was looted after April 9, 2003, "due to lack of security". The material was sealed and tagged by the IAEA at the al-Qaqaa military facility prior to the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told reporters that the whereabouts of the material is unknown. "This isn't the first time that the IAEA has reported that material or equipment under IAEA watch had been looted or gone missing. In fact, just two weeks ago Dr el-Baradei reported to the Security Council that on many sites we had observed whole buildings being stripped completely and dismantled and the contents within having gone missing," Fleming said.
The first report to the Security Council was based on agency monitoring of Iraq mainly through satellite surveillance. US officials said at the time they had taken measures to improve security, helping Iraqi officials put new controls in place prohibiting the export of items related to weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
US State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said it has been a challenge to safeguard Iraq's many weapons sites. "We, from the very beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, did everything we could to secure arms caches throughout the country. But given the number of arms and the number of caches and the extent of militarization of Iraq, it was impossible to provide 100% security for 100% of the sites," Ereli said. The latest report was made public by the agency following an article about the missing explosives in Monday's New York Times citing Iraqi, US, and UN officials. Bush administration officials have since stressed that no nuclear material was involved, but said they are treating the report seriously. But weapons experts say the explosive material stored at al-Qaqaa was widely known to be part of Iraq's nuclear program.

Provincial Capital Near Falluja Is Rapidly Slipping Into Chaos
By EDWARD WONG
NYT, 28 October 2004
EXCERPT: The American military and the interim Iraqi government are quickly losing control of this provincial capital, which is larger and strategically more important than its sister city of Falluja, say local officials, clerics, tribal sheiks and officers with the United States Marines."The city is chaotic," said Sheik Ali al-Dulaimi, a leader of the region's largest tribe. "There's no presence of the Allawi government," he added, speaking of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. While Ramadi is not exactly a "no go" zone for the marines, like the insurgent stronghold of Falluja 30 miles to the east, officers say it is fast slipping in that direction. In the last six weeks, guerrillas have stepped up the pace of assassinations of Iraqis working with the Americans, and marine officials say they suspect Iraqi security officers have been helping insurgents to attack their troops. Reconstruction efforts have ground to a halt because no local contractors are willing to work. Most of the military's resources are channeled into controlling a bomb-infested, four-and-a-half-mile stretch of road that runs through downtown and connects two bases. Insurgents pop out of alleyways, mosques and a crowded market and fire at marines at will, then disappear when the Americans give chase.

Bush Failed in Solemn Duty to Order Americans to Their Death Only if There is No Other Choice
By David Corn
TomPaine.com, 27 October 2004
EXCERPT: Before the invasion, Bush said the primary reason for war was to address the "direct," "immediate" and "gathering" threat Saddam Hussein's regime presented. And Iraq was such a threat, Bush asserted, because it possessed biological and chemical weapons and a revived nuclear weapons program and because it was "dealing" with Al Qaeda. None of that has proven true. The Duelfer report concludes that Hussein had neither WMDs nor any active WMD programs (and that Hussein's WMD programs were in a state of decay--that is, de-gathering). The 9/11 Commission and the CIA found no evidence of an operational relationship between Hussein's government and Al Qaeda. There was no pressing threat that required a war. There was plenty of time to pursue other options. In fact, the inspections and sanctions had worked. These days, Bush hails the war in Iraq as an essential part of an overall crusade to bring democracy and freedom to the Middle East. But that is not how he sold the invasion originally. The main reason for which those two men--and others--have died was bunk. Bush failed the most solemn obligation of his office: to order men and women to their death for good cause and only if there is no other choice. I confess: I find it increasingly difficult to be civil about this. I certainly can argue politely and passionately with conservatives about welfare reform, school choice, faith-based initiatives, tax cuts, antiballistic missile defense. I can see how people of good faith might disagree in good faith over these contentious issues. But I am losing my patience with anyone who refuses to acknowledge that Raheen Heighter, Irving Medina and many others died under George Bush's false pretenses. And given that the war in Iraq was indeed an elective war, I want to grab advocates of the war by the lapel and say, "Unless you're willing to put your butt--or that of a precious son or daughter--in an unreinforced Humvee in Iraq, why should anyone die for your and Bush's assertion that the war in Iraq is essential for America's safety?"

UN Finds US Human Rights Violations in Afghanistan
By Edith Lederer
Associated Press, 26 October 2004
EXCERPT: A U.N. human rights expert criticized the U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan for violating international law by allegedly beating Afghans to death and forcing some to remove their clothes or wear hoods. Cherif Bassiouni, a law professor at DePaul University in Chicago who is the U.N. Human Rights Commission's independent expert on human rights in Afghanistan, said in a report Monday to the U.N. General Assembly that the coalition should be "a role model" for Afghan authorities -- but it often is not. "When they engage in practices that violate or ignore the norms of international human rights and international humanitarian law, they establish a double standard, enabling the continuation of abuses by various domestic actors," he said. But Bassiouni blamed warlords, local commanders, and drug traffickers for most of the rights violations and stressed that "the absence of security has a direct and significant impact on all human rights." "The coalition forces, which at one time could have marginalized these warlords, did not do so, and even worked with them to combat the Taliban regime and to pursue al-Qaida," he said. "This situation contributed to the entrenchment of the warlords."

How Bush blew it in Tora Bora
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times, 26 October 2004
EXCERPT:
"And again, I don't know where he is. I - I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him." - President George W Bush, March 13, 2002
"Gosh, I don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. That's kind of one of those exaggerations." - President Bush, October 13

"Now my opponent is throwing out the wild claim that he knows where bin Laden was in the fall of 2001 and that our military passed up the chance to get him in Tora Bora. This is an unjustified criticism of our military commanders in the field." - President
Bush, October 25

So where is the October surprise? The US presidential election is less than a week away, and still he refuses a great Hollywood-style entrance - or a Lazarus-like resurrection from his cave. The whole world is asking: where is Osama bin Laden?

Back to Archive Index