15 January 2004

Iraqi Civilians Increasingly Killed by Accidental US Gunfire
By Firas al-Atraqchi
YellowTimes.org, 14 January 2004
EXCERPT: Innocent Iraqi civilians are being shot at, bombed, and killed at a quickening pace in recent weeks, but not by Saddam or "terrorist" forces. U.S. soldiers, increasingly nervous and afraid of imminent attack, have systematically followed a "shoot first, investigate later" policy. Last week, three men and a nine-year-old child were killed when their car was fired on by a heavy-caliber machine gun in Tikrit. U.S. forces immediately denied any involvement and instead insisted it was the work of Iraqi insurgents who targeted the car. When another passenger who survived the assault fingered the Americans, U.S. command still denied any involvement. The Iraqi police chief, General Mazhar Taha al-Ganaim, told Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera that he was "100 percent" sure it was U.S. forces that committed the crime.

Hussein Warned Iraqis to Beware Outside Fighters, Document Says
By JAMES RISEN
New York Times, 14 January 2004
EXCERPT: Saddam Hussein warned his Iraqi supporters to be wary of joining forces with foreign Arab fighters entering Iraq to battle American troops, according to a document found with the former Iraqi leader when he was captured, Bush administration officials said Tuesday. The document appears to be a directive, written after he lost power, from Mr. Hussein to leaders of the Iraqi resistance, counseling caution against getting too close to Islamic jihadists and other foreign Arabs coming into occupied Iraq, according to American officials. It provides a second piece of evidence challenging the Bush administration contention of close cooperation between Mr. Hussein's government and terrorists from Al Qaeda. C.I.A. interrogators have already elicited from the top Qaeda officials in custody that, before the American-led invasion, Osama bin Laden had rejected entreaties from some of his lieutenants to work jointly with Mr. Hussein.

Last Copter Out of Baghdad: Bush Flees Iraq Mess
By Rick Perlstein
Village Voice, 14 January 2004
EXCERPT: George Bush is selling out Iraq. Gone are his hard-liners' dreams of setting up a peaceful, prosperous, and democratic republic, a light unto the Middle Eastern nations. The decision makers in the administration now realize these goals are unreachable. So they've set a new goal: to end the occupation by July 1, whether that occupation has accomplished anything valuable and lasting or not. Just declare victory and go home. The tyranny of Saddam Hussein will be over. But a new tyranny will likely take its place: the tyranny of civil war, as rival factions rush into the void. Such is the mess this president seems willing to leave behind in order to save his campaign.
MUSIC VIDEO: Thanks for the Memories, Saddam (Bush Flash)
SEE ALSO: Political Cartoon: Black Hawk Up (Guardian)
SEE ALSO: Overdue Reversal on Iraq (LATimes)
SEE ALSO: US Military Suicide Rate Increases (Al Jazeera)
SEE ALSO: Pollack: White House's 'Rush to War was Reckless' (CSM)

Kennedy Slams Bush for Iraq Invasion
CNN, 14 January 2004
EXCERPT: U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, an elder statesman among liberal Democrats, slammed President Bush and his administration for going to war in Iraq based on political considerations. In a speech Wednesday, Kennedy said the decision to invade Iraq was grounded in the "gross abuse of intelligence," an "arrogant disrespect for the United Nations" and the GOP's desire to seize control of both houses of Congress in 2002.
SEE ALSO: Can We Keep Iraq from Coming Apart? (Newsweek)

Human Rights Group says U.S. Military May Have Committed War Crimes in Iraq
JIM KRANE
San Francisco Chronicle, 13 January 2004
EXCERPT: A top human rights group Tuesday accused the U.S. military of committing war crimes by demolishing homes of suspected insurgents and arresting the relatives of Iraqi fugitives. The military denied the charges by Human Rights Watch, saying it only destroyed homes that were being used to store weapons or as fighting positions, adding that all Iraqis detained were suspected of taking part in attacks on coalition forces. The New York-based human rights group said American soldiers demolished at least four Iraqi homes for no apparent military reason other than to punish the families of anti-U.S. guerrilla suspects. "Troops are entitled to suppress armed attacks, but they can only destroy a civilian structure when it is being used in an attack," Kenneth Roth, the group's executive director, said in a statement. "These demolitions did not meet the test of military necessity."

Singling Out Israel
By Mitchell Plitnick
ZNet, 14 January 2004
EXCERPT: Because of the particular place Israel holds in its relationship with the United States, it gets more visible coverage than other issues. Naturally, this highlights its activities, and people see a great deal more about Israel in their newspapers and on their televisions than they do about critical issues in Chechnya, Turkey, or the Western Sahara, for example. The obvious religious implications of that part of the world cannot be ignored. The central place Jerusalem holds in Judaism, Islam and Christianity is surely a factor. The mention of battles in Bethlehem stirs the hearts of many Christians, just as conflict in Hebron does for Jews. And religion is not the only raw nerve Israel touches. Israel's definition of itself as a Jewish state similarly stirs deep emotions among much of the world. Centuries of persecution of Jews and the heightened consciousness over the past few decades of the horrors of the Holocaust cause a great deal of very appropriate guilt. This can be expressed as either support for Israel no matter what or a good deal of uneasiness and defensiveness in dealing with it. For others, Israel stands as an anachronistic example of a discriminatory ethnic state, which elevates the rights of some people above others simply by virtue of their religion. While those who hold this view would surely be aware that Israel is hardly unique in this regard, they would also point out that such a state is in direct contradiction to Western principles of democracy. Israel, which promotes itself as "the only democracy in the Middle East" is naturally looked at more closely when it violates human rights. Jews have long presented and been perceived as a people with a traditional and ancient ethical code. Thus, for some, Israel is given the benefit of the doubt, while others, including a great many Jews, expect Israel to meet the standards our own history and culture have set over the centuries. In either case, this leads to increased scrutiny of Israel's actions.
SEE ALSO: Living War: Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon (ZNet)

14 January 2004

Clashes Rise in Southern Iraq
Jobless Protesters Confront Ukrainian Troops and Local Police
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post, 14 January 2004
EXCERPT: Officials and witnesses said at least a dozen civilians and police were injured Tuesday, the fifth day of anti-government protests since Jan. 6 in southern Iraqi cities with largely Shiite Muslim populations. The southern Shiites were systematically repressed during the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, and until recently they largely supported the U.S.-led invasion and the appointed interim government. But in the past week, protests have broken out in the cities of Kut, Amarah and Basra. There were also several violent incidents in the capital Tuesday. After a roadside bomb blew up an Army vehicle, killing one soldier, U.S. troops fired on a car, killing a man and a 10-year-old boy. Two mortars exploded near the central Baghdad Hotel, incinerating several cars. The southern demonstrations coincided with a growing split between U.S. officials and a prominent Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who demanded Monday that direct elections be held soon. U.S. authorities plan to hold regional caucuses to choose a national assembly but do not want to schedule elections until mid-2005.
SEE ALSO: White House Rethinks Iraq Plan (Guardian)
SEE ALSO: Why Iraq Was a Mistake (Minneapolis Tribune)
SEE ALSO: Bush Deals With Foreign Policy Disasters at Americas Summit (Guardian)

 AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
Richard Perle v. Paul Krugman: A Debate On The War On Terror
Democracy Now, 13 January 2004
EXCERPT:
PAUL KRUGMAN: Let me just come back. We have got an elusive target here. One hand we have strong statements. On the other hand, you -- we see Mr. Perle saying, if you talk about anything concrete that might actually involve risk, at least not really advocating that, except as a last resort. Still, what it comes down to is a very broad definition of enemy, a very broad definition of what is a kazistelli for the United States. I'm happy with the view that we should not be viewing Saudi Arabia as an ally. I think that something -- a definition that leads you to say that France, which we have disagreements with, but which in a fundamental way shares our most important values, is not an ally. There's got to be something wrong with that world view.
SEE ALSO: Perle's [Lack of] Wisdom (TP)
SEE ALSO: War's Preachers: Neocons Wrong and Running Scared (TP)
SEE ALSO: High Price for Bad Advice (TP)
SEE ALSO: US opens new front in war on terror by beefing up border controls in Sahara (Guardian)

Logical Media Lunacy
By David Edwards
Media Lens via ZNet, 12 January 2004
This article examines the strange workings of corporate and mainstream media in Britain, which bears striking similarities to the American media, as well. "It is vital that we be trained to tolerate absurdity in this way," writes Edwards. "The media's self-appointed task of attempting to reconcile our leaders' actions with the libertarian values they claim to uphold requires frequent resort to what we have called Logical Media Lunacy. Logical Media Lunacy involves ignoring known facts and documented history, and violating elementary norms of rational debate to the point of insanity, but in a way that consistently benefits powerful interests. Thus media performance might be likened to a series of insane fits of irrational behaviour - but with every 'fit' nevertheless manifesting a consistent pattern benefiting the same vested interests in the same way."

Professor (Major) Nagl's War
By PETER MAASS
New York Times Magazine, 11 January 2004
EXCERPT: ''Total war means you use all the elements of national power,'' he told me recently. ''It's at the grass-roots level that you're trying to win. You can kill enemy soldiers -- that's not the only issue. You also need to dry up their support. You can't just use the military. It's got to be a constant din of propaganda; it's got to be economic support; it's got to be elections. As long as you only go after the guy with the weapon, you're missing the most important part.'' Ignoring the civic side of counterinsurgency has been likened to playing chess while your enemy is playing poker. Though this truism is now well known in the military, Nagl acknowledges that it is not being applied in Iraq as well as it could be. The civic chores are supposed to be shouldered by the American-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority, led by L. Paul Bremer III, but the C.P.A. remains isolated and rather inept at implementation. Its presence is minimal outside Baghdad, and even in the capital the C.P.A.'s thousands-strong staff spends much of its time in the so-called Green Zone, in and around Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace, behind elaborate rings of security and far removed from Iraqi civilian life. Some of the staff are on 90-day tours: they arrive; they learn a little; they leave. On the few occasions when C.P.A. officials venture outside the compound, they are usually escorted by G.I.'s or private guards. ...Given the weakness of the C.P.A., Nagl and other soldiers are effectively in charge not only of the military aspects of the counterinsurgency but also of reconstruction work and political development.
 AUDIO LINK
Interview with Peter Maass, Journalist
Fresh Air with Terry Gross, NPR, 13 January 2004
In this week's New York Times Magazine cover story (Sunday, Jan. 11) he writes about Maj. John Nagl, a professor at West Point and a counterinsurgency expert who is putting into practice for the first time his theories about counterinsurgency. He is in Iraq with a tank battalion in the Sunni Triangle.

Bush Team Revising Plans for Granting Self-Rule to Iraqis
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
New York Times, 13 January 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration, seeking to overcome new resistance on the political and security fronts in Iraq, is revising its proposed process for handing over power to an interim Iraqi government by June 30, administration officials said Monday. Officials held a round of urgent meetings in Washington and Baghdad in the wake of the rejection on Sunday by a powerful Shiite religious leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, of the administration's complex plans to hold caucuses around the country to select an interim legislature and executive in a newly self-governing Iraq. Officials say they are responding to the cleric's objections with a new plan that will open the caucuses to more people and make their inner workings more transparent. Administration officials also expressed concern about a separate part of Ayatollah Sistani's statement on Sunday that demanded that any agreement for American-led forces to remain in Iraq be approved by directly elected representatives. Those twin setbacks raise questions about who would have to reach an agreement with the United States that would allow more than 100,000 American troops to remain in the country after power is handed over to the Iraqis this summer. The administration has not yet begun negotiating such an agreement with its handpicked Iraqi authorities. Such negotiations — in which the American military is expected to ask for wide latitude in its counterinsurgency efforts — could be much tougher if they have to be carried out with Iraqis who are directly elected.

U.N. to Assess Security Before Returning to Iraq
By WARREN HOGE
New York Times, 13 January 2004
EXCERPT: The United Nations said today that it had decided to dispatch security advisers to Baghdad to study safety provisions in preparation for a possible early return of staff members to Iraq. Kieran Prendergast, the undersecretary general for political affairs, told American Ambassador John D. Negroponte in a letter that a four-member team of military and security experts would be sent to the Iraqi capital within two weeks. The move could be a first step in the world body's reconsidering its determination to delay returning to Iraq until the scheduled July 1 transfer of power to Iraqis from the Provisional Coalition Authority, which represents the United States and the other occupying forces. "The return to Iraq of United Nations international staff is contingent in part on acquiring and upgrading suitable working and living accommodations and enhancing security arrangements," Mr. Prendergast's letter read. "In that connection, there is an early requirement to strengthen our liaison with the coalition forces so that the United Nations is able, among other things, to supervise facilities upgradings and other security enhancements from a safe interim location in Baghdad."

13 January 2004

War College Study Calls Iraq a 'Detour'
Institute's report warns anti-terror campaign may launch 'open-ended and gratuitous conflict.'
By Chuck Neubauer and Ken Silverstein
LA Times, 12 January 2004
EXCERPT: A report published by the Army War College criticizes the Bush administration's global war on terrorism as "unfocused" and contends that the war in Iraq is "unnecessary" and a "detour" that has diverted attention and resources from the threat posed by Al Qaeda. The report warns that the administration's global war on terrorism may have set the United States "on a course of open-ended and gratuitous conflict with states and non-state entities that pose no serious threat to the United States." The report by Jeffrey Record, a visiting research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College, calls for downsizing the war on terrorism and focusing instead on the threat from Al Qaeda, the terror network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as well as other sites around the world. "The global war on terrorism as presently defined and conducted is strategically unfocused, promises much more than it can deliver, and threatens to dissipate U.S. military and other resources in an endless and hopeless search for absolute security," Record wrote, concluding his 56-page monograph. "The United States may be able to defeat, even destroy, Al Qaeda, but it cannot rid the world of terrorism, much less evil." Record calls the war in Iraq "an unnecessary preventative war" that has "diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland against further assault by an undeterrable Al Qaeda." The Iraq war was a "detour" from the war on terrorism, he said. [The report can be found on the Internet at http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pubs/2003/bounding/
bounding.pdf] ...Record, a former staff member for the Senate Armed Services Committee, has written six books on military issues. He also teaches at the Air Force's Air War College in Montgomery, Ala. Daniel Benjamin, a member of the National Security Council staff in the late 1990s, said, "The criticism does not seem out of line with many of the conversations I have had with officers in every branch of the military."
SEE ALSO: Army Study Criticizes War on Terror (Washington Post)

Dumb Question: How did this one fly under the radar of American corporate media?
Blair Admits Weapons of Mass Destruction May Never Be Found
By Sarah Hall, Richard Norton-Taylor and Julian Borger
Guardian (UK), 12 January 2004
EXCERPT: Tony Blair yesterday signalled that weapons of mass destruction may never be found in Iraq, in his first admission of fallibility over the central justification he gave for going to war with Iraq. In his most downbeat assessment of the contentious issue so far, the prime minister said he did not know whether WMD would be unearthed, and conceded that this flew in the face of widespread initial expectations. "I do not know is the answer," he admitted. "I believe that we will but I agree there were many people who thought we were going to find this in the course of the actual operation ... We just have to wait and see".

Bush Team Revising Plans for Granting Self-Rule to Iraqis
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
New York Times, 13 January 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration, seeking to overcome new resistance on the political and security fronts in Iraq, is revising its proposed process for handing over power to an interim Iraqi government by June 30, administration officials said Monday. Officials held a round of urgent meetings in Washington and Baghdad in the wake of the rejection on Sunday by a powerful Shiite religious leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, of the administration's complex plans to hold caucuses around the country to select an interim legislature and executive in a newly self-governing Iraq. Officials say they are responding to the cleric's objections with a new plan that will open the caucuses to more people and make their inner workings more transparent.

With Friends Like These, U.S. Enemies Don't
Seem As Bad
by Ivan Eland
Independent.org (The Lighthouse), 13 January 2004
EXCERPT: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan didn't make President Bush's "axis of evil" list, but that omission says more about the inconsistency of U.S. foreign policy than it says about the state of freedom in those countries. Not only is each of these countries a member of the "axis of dependency" in U.S. foreign policy in the Muslim world, each poses a danger to peace in their respective regions. "Pakistan, a U.S. 'friend,' may be the most dangerous country on the planet," writes Ivan Eland, director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at the Independent Institute. "It is believed to have between 24 and 48 nuclear weapons -- as opposed to North Korea's estimated handful -- that could easily fall into the hands of radical Islamists if the unstable government of Pervez Musharraf falls." Saudi Arabia and Egypt, of course, are the home countries of al-Qaeda's leaders; they are also corrupt "tyrannies that likely have unconventional weapons programs, commit gross human rights abuses against their people and have therefore spawned radical Islamist terrorists." Yet the Bush administration stays silent about these major faults. Concludes Eland: "The Bush administration's rhetorical justifications for invading Iraq (after the threat from Iraq's unconventional weapons was debunked) were to end a brutal regime and set an example to inspire the 'democratization' of the Middle East. But continued Bush administration support for equally
brutal, but 'friendly,' regimes reveals the hypocrisy of those justifications and the
emptiness of the administration's goal of spreading democracy."

Troops Disperse Iraqis Rioting for Food
Associated Press via Yahoo! News, 12 January 2004
EXCERPT: Ukrainian soldiers fired into the air Monday to disperse hundreds of Iraqis who rioted for jobs and food as a second southern Shiite Muslim city was rocked by unrest ‹ a barometer of rising frustration with the U.S. led-occupation in a region of Iraq considered friendly to the Americans.
SEE ALSO: Numbers of Soldiers Killed as Vague as Reasons They Died (TP)
SEE ALSO: 750 War Veterans Urge Bush to Support Troups (VFCS)
SEE ALSO: Report Links Vaccines to Gulf War Syndrome (Guardian)

World Trade Body in Bed With Big Business
Common Dreams, 12 January 2004
EXCERPT: Business leaders will gather in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos from January 21 to 25 for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), for the first time since global trade talks collapsed last September. In the preceding days (January 16-21), tens of thousands of civil society representatives meet for the World Social Forum, held this year in Mumbai. The World Economic Forum, which paved the way for the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO), this year hosts selected WTO members for closed-door meetings aimed at trying to kick start trade negotiations following the dramatic collapse of trade talks in Cancun, (Mexico) in September 2003. Corporate interests are at the core of the Davos gathering and this year business leaders are stepping up their efforts to expand the remit of the WTO and gain access to new markets.

Information Warfare or Yesterday's News?
By Pratap Chatterjee
CorpWatch.org, 6 January 2004
EXCERPT: Zainab Abdul Hameed trudges back from her daily visit to the oil ministry in Baghdad. She is waiting for news on two fronts but has nothing to report today. Her assignment is to check on the electricity situation but she is also waiting to hear if she still has a job. "No news today, but maybe tomorrow," she tells us cheerfully. Nine months after the ousting of Saddam Hussein, Iraq's basic infrastructure is a shambles despite billions of dollars spent to fix it: Baghdad continues to suffer through ten hours of power cuts a day. "We are free to report whatever we want," says Hameed. "It's not like under Saddam Hussein when we had to report what the government told us to say." To get back to work at the Iraqi Media Network's Al Iraqiya radio and television station, run by a California-based multinational named Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Hameed has to walk through a maze of barbed wire, concrete barricades and three body searches run by the Florida National Guard and ISI, a private Iraqi security company. Her office is on the third floor of the Baghdad convention center where the United States military holds press conferences about the occupation of her country. The fact that the Al Iraqiya's main office is right above the military is no coincidence - the military is their only funder but the reporters say that the money is about to be cut off. At the final checkpoint outside the entrance to the corridor of offices that houses Al Iraqiya's offices, she passes a television that is almost always tuned to either Al Jazeera or Al Arabiya, the popular Middle Eastern satellite channels that are their main rivals.

Neo-conservatism, Hardcore
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, 12 January 2004
EXCERPT: If hardcore neo-conservatives Richard Perle and David Frum had their way, the Bush administration would be issuing ultimatums on virtually a daily basis. In their new book, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, Perle, the well-connected former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, and Frum, a former White House speechwriter, call for the administration to, among many other things: Actively promote, presumably through direct action, the secession of the oil-rich eastern province of Saudi Arabia, unless the Saudi government provides its "utmost cooperation in the war on terror."
Cut off the flow of oil (from Iraq) and arms supplies to Syria, and pursue suspected "terrorists" into its territory, unless Damascus implements a thoroughgoing "Western reorientation" of its policies, economy and political system.
Prepare to launch preemptive strikes against North Korea's nuclear facilities (although "we do not know where all these facilities are"), unless Pyongyang "immediately surrenders all of its nuclear material, closes its missile bases and agrees to the permanent presence of international inspectors".
Explicitly reject the jurisdiction of the United Nations Charter, unless it is amended to accommodate Washington's new strategic doctrine of "preemption".
Help "dissidents" overthrow the government of Iran - "the regime must go".

12 January 2004

North Korea Urges U.S to Accept Nuke Freeze
By HANS GREIMEL
AP, 11 January 2004
EXCERPT: A day after showing American delegates its "nuclear deterrent," North Korea marked the anniversary of its withdrawal from an international nuclear treaty by resolving to bolster its defenses against a possible U.S. attack. Yet as the communist North kept up its typically harsh anti-American rhetoric on Sunday, North Korea's official KCNA news agency also urged Washington to accept Pyongyang's offer of a freeze on its program as a first step toward resolving the crisis over its atomic weapons programs.

Bush Sought to Oust Hussein From Start, Ex-Official Says
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
New York Times, 12 January 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush was focused on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq from the start of his administration, more than seven months before the terrorist attacks that he later cited as the trigger for a more aggressive foreign policy, Paul H. O'Neill, Mr. Bush's first Treasury secretary, said in an interview broadcast on Sunday. "From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," Mr. O'Neill said in an interview with the CBS program "60 Minutes." Mr. O'Neill, who was dismissed by Mr. Bush more than a year ago over differences on economic policy, said Iraq was discussed at the first National Security Council meeting after Mr. Bush's inauguration. The tone at that meeting and others, Mr. O'Neill said, was "all about finding a way to do it," with no real questioning of why Mr. Hussein had to go or why it had to be done then. "For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap," Mr. O'Neill said. Mr. O'Neill gave the interview to "60 Minutes" to promote a new book, "The Price of Loyalty," by Ron Suskind. Mr. O'Neill cooperated extensively on the book, turning over 19,000 documents from his two years as Treasury secretary, including transcripts of National Security Council meetings, Mr. Suskind told "60 Minutes." ...A White House spokesman, Ken Lisaius, said on Sunday night that the administration "simply is not in the business of doing book reviews."

Direct Election of Iraq Assembly Pushed by Cleric
By EDWARD WONG
New York Times, 12 January 2004
EXCERPT: The most influential Shiite cleric in Iraq said Sunday that members of an interim assembly must be chosen through direct elections, putting at risk White House plans to transfer sovereignty to Iraqis by July 1. His statement came despite continuing efforts to change the cleric's mind on the subject. The cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued an edict in late June that urged Iraqis to press for general elections and that forced American officials to scrap their original plans for writing a constitution.
SEE ALSO: Iraq Cleric Warns of More Violence if Poll Not Held (Reuters)

Iraqi Kurds Scorn US Autonomy Offer
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
The Independent, 11 January 2004
EXCERPT: Kurds in Iraq have rejected a US-backed plan for very limited autonomy in the north of the country, which has enjoyed a status close to independence for more than a decade. "It gave us even less than Saddam Hussein offered us in the past," a Kurdish leader said yesterday.

Demonstrations Resume in Iraq, Day After Deadly Clash
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, 11 January 2004
EXCERPT: AMARAH, Iraq (AP) -- Impatience with Iraq's occupying forces boiled over Sunday as unemployed Iraqis pelted British troops with stones and a top Shiite Muslim cleric demanded the country's next parliament be elected -- a position at odds with American plans. Also Sunday, a U.S.-backed Iraqi politician said an ongoing purge of members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party had pushed 28,000 Iraqis from their jobs, with a similar number expected to follow. In the southern city of Amarah, waves of protesters -- some armed with sticks and shovels -- rushed British troops guarding the city hall, a day after clashes here killed six protesters and wounded at least 11. The British drove the crowd back from the compound, which also houses the U.S.-led occupation force and the 1st Battalion of Britain's Light Infantry. Homemade bombs exploded during the melee, but not injuries were reported. ``We are trying to permit a peaceful protest but prevent loss of life or damage to property,'' said British Maj. Johnny Bowron. Tensions in Amarah, 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, erupted Saturday after hundreds of Iraqis gathered to complain that authorities had not kept a promise to give them jobs. On Sunday, demonstrators said they were looking to avenge those killed Saturday. Demonstrators sent a representative to talk to British and Iraqi officials, who promised them 8,000 jobs, according to witnesses. But protesters said a similar promise made weeks before had not been fulfilled. Prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Saddam's security forces were the biggest employer in this city of 400,000.

Six Iraqi Protesters Killed During Clash
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG
AP, 10 January 2004
EXCERPT: British soldiers and Iraqi police clashed Saturday with armed, stone-throwing protesters in southeastern Iraq (news - web sites), killing six people. U.S. officials acknowledged American soldiers mistakenly killed two Iraqi policemen after they failed to identify themselves to a patrol.

Rules of Engagement: Videotape Shows U.S. Helicopter Crew Firing on Suspected Iraqi Insurgents
By Martha Raddatz
ABC News, 9 January 2004
EXCERPT: Graphic video footage from the gun camera of a U.S. Apache helicopter provides a window into the rules of engagement that often determine life and death in Iraq. The video, obtained by ABCNEWS, shows grainy images of three Iraqis on the ground handling a long cylindrical object that the helicopter pilots believe is a weapon. The pilots, from the Army's 4th Infantry Division, ask their commanders for permission to engage, then take the three men out one by one, using the Apache's devastating 30 mm cannons.

Attacks Raise Fresh Doubts Over Afghan Elections
By Mike Collett-White
Reuters, 11 January 2004
EXCERPT: A spate of deadly attacks has cast fresh doubts over Afghanistan's ambitious plan to hold its first ever free elections in June, fueling fears they will be hijacked by Islamic militants and strongmen. Political analysts say President Hamid Karzai is under pressure from his backers in Washington to hold the vote as soon as possible, so it can be touted as a foreign policy victory by President Bush as he seeks re-election in November. But the consequences could be seriously damaging for Afghanistan, they warn. "It is far too soon," said Ahmed Rashid, an Afghan expert based in Pakistan. "I think they should be postponed for at least a year, perhaps until Spring 2005." Karzai vowed on Saturday to contest the presidential election and reiterated that he aimed to hold it as planned in June. But in a situation with clear lessons for another post-war scenario in Iraq, violence in Afghanistan is already having a negative impact on preparations for the vote.

Overnight, a Towering Divide Rises in Jerusalem
By JAMES BENNET
New York Times, 12 January 2004
EXCERPT: With a towering concrete slab lowered almost tenderly into a ragged street, Israel began drawing a hard line around Jerusalem on Sunday, walling it off from Abu Dis, an Arab village joined to the city for generations. The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians can look like the stalest of stalemates, a furious standoff that defies measurement and maybe even change. But in this crowded neighborhood of east Jerusalem, the city's Arab section, there was something monumental, even defining, about the 30-foot slab descending from the twilight, just after a muezzin called the sunset prayer over the crane's roar. Israel has begun work on other sections of the Jerusalem barrier, which it says is a necessary bulwark against suicide bombers. But it has not built in such a busy area or so close to Jerusalem's center and holy sites.

Chavez Calls Condoleezza Rice an "Illiterate" Following Sharp Criticism
AFP to My Yahoo! , 10 January 2004
EXCERPT:
CARACAS - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez dismissed US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) as a "true illiterate" for accusing him of not playing a constructive role in Latin America. Chavez said he asked Cuban leader Fidel Castro (news - web sites) to mail to Rice samples of books that Venezuela is using, with Cuban support, for literacy education, to "see if she learns to respect the dignity of the people and learns a bit about us."  Speaking at an official event in Caracas, Chavez said that Rice "fired her unworthy artillery against our people" by saying that he should not oppose the referendum that seeks to oust him from power. In Washington on Friday, Rice said that "there are roles that Venezuela has played that have not been very helpful." Rice cited tensions between Venezuela and neighboring Colombia as well as Chavez's good relations with Castro, who has outlasted successive US presidents for four decades.

U.S. Seeks to Revive Stalled WTO Talks
By Mark Felsenthal
Reuters, 11 January 2004
EXCERPT: U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick on Sunday urged members of the World Trade Organization (news - web sites) to restart stalled international trade talks, a U.S. official said. Zoellick, in letters sent to the almost 150 countries that belong to the trade organization, said the United States was prepared to make a serious effort to get talks going, the official said.  The U.S. trade ambassador believes no trade deal can be sealed without complete elimination of agricultural export subsidies, the official added, a position that would put it at odds with the European Union.

10-11 January 2004

Ex-Treasury Secretary: U.S. Planned Iraq War Pre-9/11
By SCOTT LINDLAW
Associated Press, 11 January 2004
EXCERPT: Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill contends the United States began laying the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq just days after President Bush took office in January 2001 - more than two years before the start of the U.S.-led war that ousted Saddam Hussein. "From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," O'Neill told CBS's "60 Minutes" in an interview to be aired Sunday night. The official American government stance on Iraq, dating to the Clinton administration, was that the United States sought to oust Saddam. But O'Neill, who was fired by Bush in December 2002, said he had qualms about what he asserted was the pre-emptive nature of the war planning.

Protesters Stone British and Iraqi Forces
And Danes find possible mustard gas shells
AP, 11 January 2004
EXCERPT: Hundreds of Iraqis hurled stones at baton-wielding British soldiers Sunday in the southeastern town of Amarah, witnesses said, a day after clashes killed six protesters and wounded at least 11. Protesters demanding jobs tried to rush the troops guarding the city hall, but the British drove the crowd back from the compound, which also houses the U.S.-led occupation force and the 1st Battalion of Britain's Light Infantry.
On Saturday, the Danish military said its engineering troops and Icelandic de-miners found artillery shells near Quarnah, north of Basra, which may contain chemical blister agents. The shells were wrapped in plastic but some had leaked and they appeared to have been buried for at least 10 years, the statement said. The shells were sent for further testing to determine if they contained chemical weapons, banned in Iraq under U.N. resolutions.

Iraqis Want Annan to Mediate With U.S., Ease Transition Pangs
By Maggie Farley, Times Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times, 9 January 2004
EXCERPT: Iraqi leaders have been urging U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to oversee parts of the country's political transition and even help override U.S. plans for transferring power to Iraqis. During the last 10 days, an Iraqi Governing Council president and the country's most influential religious leader have asked for U.N. help in negotiating a security agreement to keep U.S. forces in Iraq, and for an alternative plan to the U.S. blueprint for transferring power.

Governing Council Parties Are Said to Back Broad Autonomy for Kurds
By EDWARD WONG
New York Times, 10 January 2004
EXCERPT: The major political parties of the Iraqi Governing Council agreed at a meeting with Kurdish leaders on Thursday evening and Friday morning that the northern Kurdish region should keep much of the autonomy that it has held for the last 12 years, a senior Kurdish official said. That includes allowing the region to remain together as one political body in a federalist system rather than dividing it up into several provinces, as some American officials had proposed, said the Kurdish official, Barham Salih, prime minister of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two governing political parties in the Kurdish area. Support of Governing Council members for broad Kurdish autonomy conflicts with the plans of the Bush administration, which is seeking to force Kurdish leaders to compromise on their demands for autonomous powers under the new government. L. Paul Bremer III, the top American administrator in Iraq, has met twice with Kurdish leaders, including Mr. Salih, in the last eight days to ask them to withdraw some requests, only to be rebuffed.

Free-Market Iraq? Not So Fast
By DAPHNE EVIATAR
New York Times, 10 January 2004
EXCERPT: There is no doubt about American intentions for the Iraqi economy. As Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, "Market systems will be favored, not Stalinist command systems." And so the American-led coalition has fired off a series of new laws meant to transform the economy. Tariffs were suspended, a new banking code was adopted, a 15 percent cap was placed on all future taxes, and the once heavily guarded doors to foreign investment in Iraq were thrown open. In a stroke, L. Paul Bremer III, who heads the Coalition Provisional Authority, wiped out longstanding Iraqi laws that restricted foreigners' ability to own property and invest in Iraqi businesses. The rule, known as Order 39, allows foreign investors to own Iraqi companies fully with no requirements for reinvesting profits back into the country, something that had previously been restricted by the Iraqi constitution to citizens of Arab countries. In addition, the authority announced plans last fall to sell about 150 of the nearly 200 state-owned enterprises in Iraq, ranging from sulfur mining and pharmaceutical companies to the Iraqi national airline. But the wholesale changes are unexpectedly opening up a murky area of international law, prompting thorny new questions about what occupiers should and should not be permitted to do. While potential investors have applauded the new rules for helping rebuild the Iraqi economy, legal scholars are concerned that the United States may be violating longstanding international laws governing military occupation.

Group of Private U.S. Experts Visits North Korea Nuclear Plant
By JIM YARDLEY
New York Times, 10 January 2004
EXCERPT: "We did go to Yongbyon," John W. Lewis, a Stamford University professor who led the delegation, said at an impromptu news conference at the Beijing airport. "We are a private delegation. We were not there to negotiate. We were not there to be inspectors." American intelligence experts say they believe that some spent nuclear fuel at Yongbyon may have been reprocessed into weapons-grade plutonium. Professor Lewis declined to provide details about the visit because he said members of the delegation wanted first to brief the United States government. But he said he and others in the group were likely to speak publicly about their trip in the coming days. ...He was joined at the news conference by Dr. Siegfried Hecker, an expert on nuclear weapons and a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Professor Lewis said two senior staff aides to members of the Senate Foreign Relations committee had also accompanied the delegation to Yongbyon. He said the North Korean government had allowed the delegation to interview a range of scientific, military and economic officials and had granted all requests it made for the trip.

Latin American Allies of U.S.: Docile and Reliable No Longer
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
New York Times, 9 January 2004
EXCERPT: The United States, which has often viewed most nations of Latin America as reliable and docile allies, is increasingly facing resentment over security and trade policies that some of them view as inimical to their interests. When President Bush travels to Mexico next week to confer with leaders from throughout the hemisphere, he will meet a more assertive Latin America. It is a region that spurned Washington on the war in Iraq, is demanding better treatment for immigrant workers and continues to block a hemispheric trade agreement that some nations, led by Brazil, view as unfair. ...In Latin America, there was broad, popular resistance to an American strategy that was seen as unilateral and pre-emptive. Ill will from that standoff lingers, both in Latin America and in the United States, which has long taken regional support for granted. Gabriel Marcella, a Latin America expert at the United States Army War College, said that Latin Americans "were asked by the United States to support a preventive war." "They did not," he said. "The ugly head of unilateralism seemed to reappear." Peter Hakim, the president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a forum for hemisphere leaders, said: "I don't think you can overestimate the damage to the U.S.-Mexican relations. No relationship was more damaged, with the possible exception of France." ...Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, who served as Mexico's ambassador to the United Nations throughout the debate on war in Iraq, gave a speech in November that asserted that the United States sought a subservient relationship with Mexico. "It sees us as a backyard," he said. Mr. Aguilar Zinser was promptly fired, Mexican officials said — under pressure from the United States.

9 January 2004

U.S. Misrepresented Iraqi Threat, Says Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire, 8 January 2004
EXCERPT: Starting in 2002, the Bush administration misrepresented the Iraqi WMD threat and may have unduly influenced related intelligence work, scholars from a major think tank here said today. They charged U.S. officials with endeavoring to justify attacking Iraq in the absence of an imminent threat from the country or any demonstrated link to al-Qaeda (see GSN, Jan. 7). In a new report, Joseph Cirincione, Jessica Mathews and George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recommend the United States and the United Nations take steps to determine conclusively what was known before the war about Iraq’s weapons, how policy-makers influenced and used intelligence and whether international measures against Iraq before the war were effective. The report consolidates and analyzes unclassified information on intelligence, statements by Bush administration officials and evidence found in Iraq during and since the war. The authors conclude that although Iraq presented a “long-term threat that could not be ignored,” the country’s WMD programs “did not … pose an immediate threat to the United States, to the region or to global security” (see GSN, Oct. 3, 2003). Calling for a revision of the U.S. pre-emption doctrine, the authors write, “In the Iraqi case, the world’s three best intelligence services” ― those of the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel ― “proved unable to provide the accurate information necessary for acting in the absence of imminent threat.”
SEE ALSO: Report: White House 'Systematically Misrepresented' Prewar WMD Claims (by Jim Lobe at Antiwar.com)
SEE ALSO: Powell Admits No Hard Proof in Linking Iraq to Al Qaeda (NYT)
SEE ALSO: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Report
SEE ALSO:  AUDIO LINK  Bush Calls Off Search Party, (Rothschild, Progressive Magazine)
MP3 file (1mb)
RealAudio file (1mb)

"Cheap lies and grotesque self-deception"
A Facade of Reason Supports an Unreasonable Bush Administration Policy
Discussions and reviews on Richard Perle and David Frum's book,  An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror.
American Enterprise Institute promotion:
EXCERPT: An End to Evil will define the conservative point of view on foreign policy for a new generation--and shape the agenda for the 2004 presidential-election year and beyond. With a keen insiders' perspective on how our leaders are confronting--or not confronting--the war on terrorism. ...Among the topics this book addresses:

• why the United States risks its security if it submits to the authority of the United Nations
• why France and Saudi Arabia have to be treated as adversaries, not allies, in the war on terror
• why the United States must take decisive action against Iran--now
• what to do in North Korea if negotiations fail
• why everything you read in the newspapers about the Israeli-Arab dispute is wrong
• how our government must be changed if we are to fight the war on terror to victory--not just stalemate
• where the next great terror threat is coming from--and what we can do to protect ourselves

 AUDIO LINK
'How to Win the War on Terror'
NPR's Morning Edition, 8 January 2004
 AUDIO LINK
Interview with David Frum and Richard Perle.
Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air
SEE ALSO: Advance Praise for ‘An End to Evil’
by Karen Kwiatkowski
SEE ALSO: Hawks Demand an End to All Evil, and Maybe France, Too (Sydney Morning Herald)
SEE ALSO: Hawks Tell Bush How to Win War on Terror (The Telegraph via TruthOut.com)

Sistani Renews Call for General Elections This Spring
Blog Entry at JaunCole.com, 8 January 2004
EXCERPT: (Grand Ayatollah Ali) Sistani has renewed his call for general elections this spring instead of the elections based on American-appointed provincial councils. Sistani said that the latter "does not guarantee at all the representation of the Iraqis in a just fashion in the interim national parliament." Sistani told CNN that he had been assured that fair and transparent elections could be held this spring. He still wants a UN commission to come to Iraq and to work toward free general elections. Failing that, he said that the UN commission should work with Iraqis to find a viable, and still democratic, alternative.

Kurds' Wariness Frustrates U.S. Efforts
Reluctance to Yield Autonomy Brings Prospect of Two Governments in Iraq
By Robin Wright and Alan Sipress
Washington Post, 9 January 2004
EXCERPT: The United States faces the prospect of two governments inside Iraq -- one for Kurds and one for Arabs -- after so far failing to win a compromise from the Kurds on a formula to distribute political power when the U.S. occupation ends, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, twice met with the two main Kurdish leaders over the past week to urge them to back down from their demands to retain autonomy, according to U.S. officials. But in a new setback for U.S. plans in Iraq, the Kurds have not budged. They insist on holding on to the basic political, economic and security rights they have achieved during a dozen years of being cut off from the rest of Iraq during Saddam Hussein's rule. "They have a strong hand and they're playing it," a senior administration official said. Creation of an autonomous Kurdish region, with its own militia, represents one of the biggest fears about the ethnically diverse nation -- a problem that Washington thought had been averted before U.S. intervention.

Power Plays Over Constitution Threaten Afghan Elections
by Jim Lobe
Antiwar.com, 9 January 2004
EXCERPT: Political power plays at the just-concluded assembly to write a new constitution for Afghanistan raise serious question about whether the country can hold free and fair elections as scheduled later this year, say rights groups and other experts. While praising the inclusion of women's rights in the new charter, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said political intimidation, vote-buying and a lack of transparency characterized key parts of the three-week loya jirga, or grand assembly, which put the finishing touches on and approved the country's charter. Also, a number of provisions in the document were sufficiently vague to raise concerns about how they would be enforced in practice, the group added. "Human rights protections were put on paper," said John Sifton, HRW's researcher on Afghanistan. "But there were a lot of missed opportunities and complaints and corruption during the convention," he added in a statement. Some of the same critiques were leveled by Anatol Lieven, a Central Asian specialist with the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Two-State Mideast Solution Only Way Forward -Powell
By Arshad Mohammed, 1/8/2004
Reuters, 9 January 2004
EXCERPT: Secretary of State Colin Powell on Thursday dismissed Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie's suggestion the Palestinians may seek equal rights with Israelis in one state if Israel absorbs some West Bank areas.
At a news conference, Powell reiterated the U.S. view that a two-state solution is the only way forward in the Middle East and said the sole way to achieve that was for Qurie to crack down on Palestinian militants.

Group Slams U.S. 'Disinformation' Against Venezuela
Reuters, 9 January 2004
EXCERPT:
CARACAS, Venezuela  - A group of African-American activists including actor Danny Glover on Thursday criticized what they called a U.S. government and media "disinformation" campaign against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's leftist government. The delegation from the TransAfrica Forum, which studies African-American issues, began a week-long visit to Venezuela that included talks with political leaders and visits to schools and social programs in the racially mixed South American nation. At a news conference in Caracas, Glover, an opponent of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Washington's trade embargo against communist Cuba, joined other members of the delegation in criticizing the treatment of Venezuela by the U.S. media and government officials.

8 January 2004

U.S. Withdraws a Team of Weapons Hunters From Iraq
By DOUGLAS JEHL
New York Times, 8 January 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration has quietly withdrawn from Iraq a 400-member military team whose job was to scour the country for military equipment, according to senior government officials. The step was described by some military officials as a sign that the administration might have lowered its sights and no longer expected to uncover the caches of chemical and biological weapons that the White House cited as a principal reason for going to war last March. A separate military team that specializes in disposing of chemical and biological weapons remains part of the 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group, which has been searching Iraq for more that seven months at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. But that team is "still waiting for something to dispose of," said a survey group member. Some of the government officials said the most important evidence from the weapons hunt might be contained in a vast collection of seized Iraqi documents being stored in a secret military warehouse in Qatar. Only a small fraction have been translated.

I.M.F. Report Says U.S. Deficits Threaten World Economy
By ELIZABETH BECKER and EDMUND L. ANDREWS
New York Times, 7 January 2004
EXCERPT: With its rising budget deficit and ballooning trade imbalance, the United States is running up a foreign debt of such record-breaking proportions that it threatens the financial stability of the global economy, according to a report made public today bythe International Monetary Fund. In nearly 60 pages of carefully worded analysis, the report sounded a loud alarm about the shaky fiscal foundation of the United States, questioning the wisdom of the Bush administration's tax cuts and warning that large budget deficits posed "significant risks" not just for the United States but for the rest of the world. The report warned that the net financial obligations of the United States to the rest of the world could equal 40 percent of its total economy within a few years — "an unprecedented level of external debt for a large industrial country" that it said could play havoc with the value of the dollar and international exchange rates. The dangers, according to the report, are that the United States' voracious appetite for borrowing could push up global interest rates and thus slow down global investment and economic growth.

U.S. Helicopter Crashes in Iraq, Killing at Least Eight
By JOHN F. BURNS
and KIRK SEMPLE
New York Times, 8 January 2004
EXCERPT: An American military helicopter crashed in Iraq today killing all eight people on board, the American military said. The helicopter, a UH-60 Black Hawk, came down south of Falluja, a city 35 miles west of Baghdad that has been the scene of heavy resistance to the American-led occupation.

Mortar Attack Injures 35 U.S Soldiers
MSNBC, 7 January 2004
EXCERPT: Thirty-five U.S. soldiers were wounded Wednesday in a mortar attack on a U.S. base west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.Six mortar rounds struck about 6:45 p.m. (10:45 a.m. ET) at Logistical Base Seitz, the military said in a statement. The wounded soldiers were from the 3rd Corps Support Command. "The wounded soldiers were given first aid and have been evacuated from the site for further medical treatment," the statement said. No further details were given.

More Deadly Than Gas: Depleted Uranium
When this war ends, George Bush will have caused the poisoning of hundreds of thousands more humans than he said Saddam Hussein poisoned.
By Frederick Sweet
Intervention Magazine, 6 January 2004
EXCERPT:  In its 110,000 air raids against Iraq, the US A-10 Warthog aircraft launched 940,000 depleted uranium shells, and in the land offensive, its M60, M1 and M1A1 tanks fired a further 4,000 larger caliber also uranium shells. The Bush administration and the Pentagon said, there is no danger to American troops or Iraqi civilians from breathing the uranium oxide dust produced in depleted uranium (DU) weapons explosions. DU is the waste residue made from the uranium enrichment process. This radioactive and toxic substance, 1.7 times as dense as lead, is used to make shells that penetrate steel armor.

Detained, Bludgeoned and Electrocuted Into a Coma
By Dahr Jamail
Information Clearing House, 7 January 2004
EXCERPTS: Sadiq Zoman Abrahim, 55 years old, was detained this past August in Kirkuk by US Soldiers during a home raid which produced no weapons. He was taken to the police office in Kirkuk, questioned by the Americans there, then transferred to Kirkuk Airport Detention Center. It was from this detention center he was transferred to Tikrit Airport Detention Center. While in this detention center Mr. Abrahim managed to find a man who was about to be released, and have him pass on to his family information about where he was. It was from this place that the Americans transferred him, comatose, to the hospital in Tikrit. ... Even if the worst case scenario was true: that Mr. Abrahim was an active member of the resistance and/or a high ranking Ba¹ath Party member, does this justify being tortured by electrical shock and being bludgeoned into a coma? 

GIs in Iraq Scoff at Re-Enlistment Bonus
AP, 7 January 2004
EXCERPT: At a checkpoint on the barren plain east of Baqouba, word of a new U.S. Army plan to pay soldiers up to $10,000 to re-enlist evoked laughter from a few bored-looking troopers. "Man, they can't pay me enough to stay here," said a 23-year-old specialist from the Army's 4th Infantry Division as he manned the checkpoint with Iraqi police outside this city 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

Kurds Start to Rock the Boat
By Charles Recknagel
Asia Times, 7 January 2004
EXCERPT: One reason is Kurdish unhappiness with the economic and political upheavals in much of the country. Amitay (Mike Amitay of the Washington Kurdish Institute in Washington DC) says many Kurds feel they need autonomy to protect the relative stability and economic prosperity they have enjoyed since breaking away from Saddam-controlled Iraq in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War. "I think the Kurds have determined at this point that they need to essentially function or promote their political agenda separate from the wider agenda - that is quite confused - being considered for the whole of Iraq," Amitay said. Amitay also says that the Kurds feel they must act now, while the Coalition Provisional Authority still retains political control over the country. He says some Kurdish leaders feel they can win backing from the US because of Washington's interest in rapidly and smoothly turning over power and because of the aid the Kurdish factions have given US forces.

Iraq's Arsenal of WMD Ambitions
Since Gulf War, Nonconventional Weapons Never Got Past the Planning Stage
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post, 7 January 2004
EXCERPT: But investigators have found no support for the two main fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new ones. In public statements and unauthorized interviews, investigators said they have discovered no work on former germ-warfare agents such as anthrax bacteria, and no work on a new designer pathogen -- combining pox virus and snake venom -- that led U.S. scientists on a highly classified hunt for several months. The investigators assess that Iraq did not, as charged in London and Washington, resume production of its most lethal nerve agent, VX, or learn to make it last longer in storage. And they have found the former nuclear weapons program, described as a "grave and gathering danger" by President Bush and a "mortal threat" by Vice President Cheney, in much the same shattered state left by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s. A review of available evidence, including some not known to coalition investigators and some they have not made public, portrays a nonconventional arms establishment that was far less capable than U.S. analysts judged before the war.

Bechtel Wins Its Second Big Contract for Iraq
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
New York Times, 7 January 2004
EXCERPT: For the second time in nine months, the engineering company Bechtel National, the government contracting arm of the Bechtel group, has won a large government contract to help restore power, water and other essential services in Iraq. Officials from the United States Agency for International Development said Tuesday that the deal could be worth as much as $1.82 billion over two years. It follows the awarding of a $1 billion contract for similar work over 20 months that Bechtel won in April.