About 1,000 American troops backed by attack helicopters mounted a dawn assault on a string of mountain villages and caves in southeastern Afghanistan today, sending a forceful message to militants here that coalition forces would not be slackening their pace as the war in Iraq gets under way.Special Forces and a battalion from the 504th Parachute Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division, were dropped into the region at 6 a.m. from Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters, a military spokesman said today. Apache attack helicopters provided security, he said.
The operation, named Valiant Strike, was aimed at several villages and caves in the Sami Ghar mountain range, in the Maruf district of Kandahar province, some 20 miles from the Pakistani border. "There are suspected people in the area," said Master Sgt. Richard Breach, a spokesman at the coalition headquarters here at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul.
Intelligence had led American forces to watch the area and they then caught radio intercepts of people in the caves communicating with each other, the senior spokesman, Col. Roger King, said at a morning briefing. [...]
Military officials insisted the timing of today's raid, on the first day of airstrikes against Iraq, was purely coincidental. But Sergeant Breach agreed that American forces were also sending a message to any terrorists or militants opposed to the American presence in Afghanistan. "We are showing them we are still out to win this war on terror," he said.
The commander of American forces in southern Afghanistan, Lt. Col. John Campbell, said in a recent interview that he was acting aggressively against any opposition forces to show that the United States would not lose focus in Afghanistan while it wages war in Iraq.
U.S. intelligence officials believe Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, possibly accompanied by one or both of his powerful sons, was still inside a compound in southern Baghdad early yesterday when it was struck by a barrage of U.S. bombs and cruise missiles.But intelligence analysts in Washington and operatives working in the region were not certain whether the Iraqi leader was killed or injured or escaped the attack, according to senior Bush administration officials, who worked yesterday to analyze a videotape of an appearance by Hussein broadcast on Iraqi television within hours of the pre-dawn bombardment.
"The preponderance of the evidence is he was there when the building blew up," said one senior U.S. official with access to sensitive intelligence. The official added that Hussein's sons, Qusay and Uday, may also have been at the compound. "He didn't get out" beforehand, another senior official said of the Iraqi president.
A third administration official said "there is evidence that he [Hussein] was at least injured" because of indications that medical attention was urgently summoned on his behalf. The condition of Hussein's sons, and any others who may have been at the compound, was also unknown, officials said.
While U.S. intelligence monitored Iraqi government communications and movements yesterday to pick up signs of Hussein's fate, the administration's attention was focused on the television appearance by Hussein in which he stated yesterday's date and made reference to "dawn" and an attack by the United States.
Officials said they were not surprised by the broadcast because they had information that the Iraqi leader had recorded several statements earlier in the week in anticipation of a military strike shortly after the expiration of a U.S. deadline for Hussein and his sons to leave the country.
THE Sun hit Paris yesterday to show the world our disgust at the cowardice of President Jacques "The Worm" Chirac for wriggling out of his responsibilities to the West.We took copies of a French edition of our newspaper labelling Chirac as Saddam Hussein's whore.
Describing his actions as those of a "Paris harlot", The Sun argued he was as big a threat to the civilised world as Iraq's tyrant.
Sadly but predictably, the poor, misled French people backed their spineless president to the hilt. [...]
[A]ngelique Bienassis, 19, said: "You cannot call Chirac a harlot. That is so offensive to the French people. Whatever his faults he is our protector."
US defence sources say 12 Americans and four Britons are killed when a US helicopter comes down, apparently over Kuwait, in what is believed to be an accident.
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Marine Chopper Crash Kills 16 in Kuwait Yahoo! News)
A U.S. Marine helicopter crashed in Kuwait Thursday, killing all 16 American and British soldiers aboard, military officials said.The crash of the CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter killed 12 U.S. and 4 British soldiers, officials said.
The seizure of Basra would be a stunning psychological blow to Saddam Hussein's regime, depriving him of his third largest city and giving the Allies a huge
strategic advantage.Basra opens up the route to Baghdad, 350 miles to the north-west. Once the Iraqi 3rd Corps defending the area is routed, there are no other forces before the capital. The approaches to Baghdad up the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates are wide open.
Basra is the largest city in southern Iraq. Situated on the west bank of Shatt Al-Arab, 35 miles from the Gulf it is the main gate to the outside world. The main port of Iraq, it is the terminal point for oil pipelines, and petroleum refining is a major industry.
The seizure of Basra and the ports to its south opens up a new and much shorter supply route for troops occupying the south of Iraq.
By grabbing Iraq's only access to the Gulf it will allow the coalition forces to bring in reinforcements directly rather than through the overcrowded and more distant ports in Kuwait.
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Marines drive to Basra is key to decisive victory (JACK FAIRWEATHER AND JIM MCBETH, 3/21/03, The Scotsman)
Saddam Hussein's eldest son Uday suffered a cerebral hemorrhage this morning. According to Iranian news agency IRNA, Uday was involved in a fight with his father's body guard last night.There is no information about Uday's current condition. Saddam Hussein's aides are refusing to confirm this information although they admit that a fight did indeed take place in Saddam's palace.
WAR is a last resort, and always should be. So no-one can take any pleasure in the events now unfolding in Iraq. Those who reject war on any grounds whatsoever will not be assuaged. But those who see armed force as sometimes - regrettably - required to maintain security, or defend human rights, will find that the situation unfolding in Iraq justifies their position. Yesterday, as the liberation of Iraq began, the crumbling Saddam Hussein regime fired salvoes of missiles at Allied troop concentrations in Kuwait. It was the most eloquent admission by the Iraqi dictatorship that it had been taking the UN weapons inspectors for a ride for the last three and a half months.Under UN Security Council Resolution 687, passed in 1992, Saddam should have destroyed his Scud and long-range missiles. Clearly, he did not. Under Resolution 1441, he was to declare where the remaining missiles were. Clearly, he did not. Some of yesterday?s attacks may have been made using the new al-Samoud rockets which the UN inspectors also wanted destroyed. Saddam prevaricated and only let 70 be sawn up. He went slow on destroying the rest, though they could all have been dispatched in a day. Now they are being used to try to kill British service men and women.
The moral of this sordid tale, as the fighting escalates in Iraq, is that Saddam Hussein is a proven liar. He will not disarm peaceably. He will not obey UN resolutions. He never has done. He never will. His regime can only be disarmed by force.
Over the last few weeks, the geopolitical west of the cold war has collapsed before our eyes.... But we can already see three broad ideas competing for the succession to the cold war west. I'll call them the Rumsfeldian; the Chiraco-Putinesque; and the Blairite.The Rumsfeldian idea - if idea is not too dignified a word - is that American might is right. It's right because it's American.... If some allies want to come along to help, that's fine. If they don't, then you find "work-arounds".... Meanwhile, you carry on offending all your potential allies with clumsy remarks.
The Rumsfeldian vision is half right and therefore all wrong....
The Chiraco-Putinesque idea - if idea is not too dignified a word - is that American might is, by definition, dangerous.... The diplomatic battle over the last few weeks, with the Franco-German-Russian (-Chinese) continental alliance pitted against the American-British-Spanish (-Australian) maritime one, made me think again of the war of super blocs in George Orwell's 1984. He called them Eurasia and Oceania.
The Chiraco-Putinesque vision is half right and therefore all wrong....
That leaves Blairism. Blair's idea is that we should re-create a larger version of the cold war, transatlantic west, in response to the new threats we face.... Yes, Europeans should worry about US unilateralism, but, he told the Commons, "the way to deal with it is not rivalry but partnership. Partners are not servants but neither are they rivals"....
Blair's idea is completely right.... Blair himself made two major mistakes over the last year. The first was not to do more last September to try to bring Europe to speak "with one voice".... The second was to forget that partnership also involves sometimes saying "no"....
I am totally convinced that the Blairite vision of a new postwar order of world politics is the best one available on the somewhat depressed market of world leadership.
Ash also fails to recognize the tension in his insistence that Blair should be willing to "say no" to one partner but "speak with one voice" with other partners. According to Ash's own principles, if European nations aren't free to say "no" to one another, then they are not "partners." Thus a European partnership should not be expected to "speak with one voice."
The idea of a new transatlantic alliance to fight terrorism is attractive if it is a real alliance of committed nations. But it appears that such an alliance must exclude France, and will therefore divide the Europe that the Ash thinks should "speak with one voice." Blair has recognized this conflict. I wonder how long it will take the British intelligentsia to do so?
Why are the lights on in Baghdad? Check your CNN images--the city is now being bombarded from the air, and yet street lights and building lights glisten. Traditionally, cities being bombed turn off all their lights. In World War II, air-raid wardens walked the streets of London, pounding on the doors of anyone with a light visible or whose windows were not covered by black-out curtains. Yet Baghdad tonight is alight.Maybe nobody's running the show; early indicators are that Iraqi leadership is already collapsing. Or maybe this is devilishly clever.
Torn by a deep and bitter split over Iraq, the leaders of Europe came together today to struggle with how to restore unity among themselves and with the United States, even to the point of offering to participate in Iraq's post-war reconstruction.While no one would have planned it this way, the 15 leaders of the European Union gathered in Brussels for a long-scheduled quarterly summit on the very day that the war against Saddam Hussein was launched, and the Europeans were distracted by television reports on the United States-led attack on Iraq.
Never before in the history of the European Union have its members had to grapple with two more different impulses on foreign policy. There is deep resentment among most of them that the United States waged war without the legality of international cover, despite their individual and collective appeals; at the same time, there is the sense that if the United States is the victor - as anticipated - the Europeans will have been on the wrong side of the war and as a group had better reposition themselves to be part of a post-war reconstruction. [...]
The European Commission chief, Romano Prodi, meanwhile, called on the member countries to pull together, saying, "We cannot rely on others to defend our richness, wealth and security."
The vision-challenged opponents of the war against the terror masters, those who have been saying that you can't fight Saddam and terrorism at the same time, got bad news today from Baghdad. It turns out that our surgical strike on Wednesday night - the one aimed at the "top leadership" of Saddam's little hell-between-two-rivers - got an unexpected bonus: a terrorist from the Palestine Liberation Front. And the good news comes not from the Pentagon but from the PLF itself.According to UPI, the Palestine Liberation Front said Thursday one of its guerrillas was killed during the U.S. missile strikes on Iraq. A PLF statement released in the southern city of Sidon (Syrian-occupied Lebanon) identified the slain guerrilla as 1st Lieutenant Ahmed Walid Raguib al-Baz who was killed early Thursday "while confronting the treacherous U.S. air bombardment on Iraq."
I don't know anything about the late Mr. Al-Baz, but I know all too much about the PLF and its evil leader, Abu Abbas. This was the group that organized the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro back in the mid-1980s. They segregated the American passengers from the rest, and then courageously pushed an American Jewish paraplegic in his wheelchair, Leon Klinghoffer, into the Mediterranean. We tried to have Abu Abbas arrested in Italy, but he escaped through Yugoslavia to Yemen.
The PLF has long been one of the most lethal Palestinian terrorist groups, and achieved notoriety for its high-tech killings. Recently, Abu Abbas had come to live in the Palestinian Authority, but when Israel moved against the terrorists there he ran away - to Baghdad. The PLF has been one of the main conduits for Iraqi money to Palestinian suicide bombers.
The FBI was hunting Thursday for a suspected al-Qaida operative with pilot training who may be in the United States and planning a “major attack,” senior counterterrorism officials told NBC News. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said authorities fear the man could be “another Mohammed Atta.”THE OFFICIALS sent out a nationwide bulletin to police urging them to be on the lookout for Adnan G. el-Shukrijumah, who recently was using the alias Jaafaral al-Tayyar. The bulletin said word of his plans was based on information obtained from recently captured al-Qaida operatives.
“The United States has information indicating he may be involved in al-Qaida and may pose an imminent threat to U.S. interests at home or overseas,” the bulletin said.
The officials who spoke with NBC News said el-Shukrijumah was known to have been in the United States since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, living for a time in Miami. His whereabouts now are not known.
The officials said they had no specific information about what el-Shukrijuman, nicknamed “Jaafaral the Pilot,” may be planning, but they said his pilot training raises the possibility that he might be planning an airborne attack similar to that carried out by Atta, the ringleader of the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.
Saturday's show at the Warfield in San Francisco a Pretenders concert, but it was really the in-your-face Chrissie Hynde show in every way, shape and form.Lead singer Hynde was in a razor-tongued mood, whether the topic was war, sports, dancing, her own sex appeal, meat, or what the crowd looks like. She nearly picked a fight and openly coveted love from a biker.
And what the heck -- since she was there with three guys toting instruments, there was even some music.
That part of the show was occasionally inspired, hot, passionate, flawless and sexy. After nearly a quarter-century, Hynde's voice is still a sneer wrapped in cool velvet. Seeing her front and center wearing a black T-shirt, jeans, her trademark black bangs and a Telecaster is like witnessing a rock 'n' roll monument. For lovers of real rock, it's the equivalent of a political junkie standing on the steps of the Capitol.
And speaking of politics ... Hynde is a tad anti-war. She's anti lots of stuff, and isn't afraid to growl about them all every time the music stops.
"Have we gone to war yet?" she asked sarcastically, early on. "We (expletive) deserve to get bombed. Bring it on." Later she yelled, "Let's get rid of all the economic (expletive) this country represents! Bring it on, I hope the Muslims win!"
When a crowd member responded to that inflammatory statement, Hynde stormed the mic, roaring, "Shut your face!" Glaring, she held out the mic toward the fan as longtime drummer Martin Chambers stood up behind her, ready to rumble. "You come up to the mic and say something, smart guy," she snarled. "What do you want to talk about?"
As we begin the war, this metaphor seems to have stood up fairly well, though Saddam ain't no Frank Miller.
Are the Dixie Chicks victims of a right-wing conspiracy?That's what their manager, Simon Renshaw, has told country music stations being pressured to drop the Chicks' music after lead singer Natalie Maines criticized President Bush last week.
In an e-mail to stations distributed by Sony Music, their label, Renshaw says the protest has been orchestrated by the Free Republic (www.freerepublic.com) , a Web site "for independent, grassroots conservative, " according to founder Jim Robinson of Fresno, Calif. The Web site also alleges that recent anti-war protests are "communist-organized demonstrations."
"Your company is being targeted by a radical right-wing online forum," Renshaw says in the e-mail. "You are being `Freeped,' which is the code word for an organized e-mail/telephone effort attempting to solicit a desired response."
On March 10, Maines told a London audience: "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."
Yemen[...] Ma'rib's ratty streets smell of urine and petrol. The city swarms with young men, often in their early teens and with bad teeth and skin discolorations, riding around in pickup trucks, armed with knives and AK-47s. The knives are jambiyahs. Blunt and difficult to remove from their sheaths, they are rather impractical as ready weapons, and instead symbolize the stabilizing influence of tribal custom in Yemen-the social glue that keeps the rate of random crime low. The AK-47 is another matter. "Once you have a gun, why bother to learn to read and write?" a Yemeni soldier said to me, after I had asked a particularly hostile knot of young men if they attended school. They did not.
Estimates of the number of fire-arms within Yemen's borders go as high as 80 million-four for every Yemeni. Their availability, along with perhaps the largest al Qaeda presence anywhere outside the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, threatens to transform the small-scale tribal fighting that has plagued Yemen for centuries into a debilitating anarchy. Indeed, the high walls, the concertina wire, and the proliferation of armed guards in Sana'a indicate the level of apprehension felt by both the Yemeni government and the foreign community here.
Keep in mind that terrorism is an entrepreneurial activity, dominated by enterprising self-starters. An American military expert told me, "In Yemen you've got nearly twenty million aggressive, commercial-minded, and well-armed people, all extremely hard-working compared with the Saudis next door. It's the future, and it terrifies the hell out of the government in Riyadh." [...]
President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a former army lieutenant colonel, has ruled first North Yemen and then unified Yemen since 1978. By most accounts, his government controls the main roads, oil fields, and pipelines; but significant patches of the countryside, especially the desert regions near the Saudi border, such as Ma'rib, al-Jawf, and Sa'da, stand largely ungovernable. Traveling around Yemen, one can see why this situation obtains. I sat at many crowded local road stalls where every man or boy not only had an AK-47 but didn't put it down even while eating. Nevertheless, President Saleh may be doing better than the Turks or the British before him in extending control over this country. [...]
Al Qaeda's attacks on the USS Cole, in Aden Harbor in 2000, and on the French tanker Limburg, off the Yemeni coast in 2002, may have perplexed some Western observers. After all, the bombings should have served to bring the United States and France, two bickering allies in the anti-terror coalition, closer together. But al Qaeda knew exactly what it was doing. Without Saleh, Yemen would be a conveniently chaotic, culturally sympathetic base for al Qaeda, much more useful than non-Arab, geographically peripheral Afghanistan. Saleh's regime is not necessarily weak: its security and party apparatus provide an institutional basis for power rare in twentieth-century Yemen. But a substantial reduction in government revenues, which are Saleh's main tool to placate hostile sheikhs, could still destabilize his regime. Some informal estimates suggest that the attacks have reduced the amount of cargo arriving in Aden by 75 percent, and that $25 million a month is being lost in the container trade. And war-risk-insurance premiums for ships calling at Yemeni ports are already six times the worldwide average. [...]
Eritria
Whereas Yemen's streets and shops are plastered with photos of President Saleh (whose cult of personality is mild compared with those of other Arab and African leaders), one never sees such photos of the Eritrean President, Isaias Afewerki, the veritable founder of this country. For decades Afewerki led a low-intensity guerrilla movement that finally wrested independence from Ethiopia in 1991. "Photos of me would create an air of mystery and distance from the people," he told me in December. "It's the lack of photos that liberates you. I hate high walls and armed guards." While other leaders in the region live inside forbidding military compounds, Afewerki lives in a modest suburban-style house and greets people in his secretary's office, which sits at the end of an undistinguished corridor. He moves around the capital in the passenger seat of a four-wheel-drive vehicle, with only one escort car, stopping at red lights. Western diplomats here say they have seen him disappear into large crowds of Eritreans without any security detail at all. "It's easy to put a bullet in him, and he knows it," one foreign diplomat said to me.
Security, which consumes the Western diplomatic and aid communities in Sana'a (and everywhere else in the Middle East), is barely an issue in Asmara, Eritrea's capital. Despite its tattered storefronts, Asmara not only is one of the cleanest capital cities in Africa but also may be the only capital south of the Sahara where one can leave the car doors unlocked or prowl the back streets at all hours without fear of being robbed, even though the police are barely in evidence. American, Israeli, and other resident diplomats and aid administrators in Eritrea move freely around the country without guards or other escorts, as if they were at home.
Desperately poor and drought-stricken, with almost three quarters of its 3.5 million inhabitants illiterate, Eritrea nonetheless has a surprisingly functional social order. Women run shops, restaurants, and hotels; handicapped people have shiny new crutches and wheelchairs; people drive slowly and even attend driving school; scrap-metal junkyards are restricted to the urban outskirts; receipts are given for every transaction; there are few electricity blackouts from sloppy maintenance or badly managed energy resources. Foreign diplomats in Asmara praise the country's lack of corruption and its effective implementation of aid projects. Whereas rural health clinics in much of Africa have empty shelves and unexplained shortages of supplies, clinic managers in Eritrea keep ledgers documenting where all the medicine is going.
An immense fish farm near the port of Massawa testifies to Eritrea's ability to utilize foreign aid and know-how. The 1,500-acre complex channels salt water from the Red Sea, purifies it, and then uses it to raise shrimp in scores of circular cement tanks. The nutrient-rich excess of that process is used for breeding tilapia, a freshwater fish. The remaining waste water is pumped into asparagus and mangrove fields and artificially created wetlands. Though the operation was initially overseen by a firm from Phoenix, Arizona, and for a time employed an Israeli consultant, the consultant is now only rarely used. The Eritreans themselves run the operation in every respect.
Such initiative and communal discipline are the result of an almost Maoist degree of mobilization and an almost Albanian degree of xenophobia-but without the epic scale of repression and ideological indoctrination that once characterized China and Albania. The Eritrean xenophobia and aptitude for organization are, as Eritreans never cease to explain, products of culture and historical experience more than they are of policy choices. Eritrea never had feudal structures, sheikhs, or warlords. Villages were commonly owned and were governed by councils, or baitos, of elders. "It was not a society deferential to individual authority," I was told by Yemane Ghebre Meskel, the director of President Afewerki's office, "so we didn't need Marxist ideology to achieve a high stage of communalism." Wolde-Ab Yisak, the president of the University of Asmara, observed, "Communal self-reliance is our dogma, which in turn comes from the knowledge that we Eritreans are different from our neighbors."
A number of commentators and politicians have been hand wringing over the cost of the war and subsequent infrastructure repair in Iraq. They point to cost estimates in the $200 to $300 billion range as being possibly dangerous to the U.S. economy and to the Federal budget. Of course, they generally neglect to point out that these cost estimates are the undiscounted sums of multi-year outlays. Also, they neglect to mention that these are gross, not net, estimates (for example, the military gets paid whether it is fighting in Iraq or stationed in Germany).But these systematic cost overestimates are reduced to mere quibbles amongst the green eyeshade accounting crowd compared to the true cost / benefit calculation that should, and is, being made by the marketplace. That marketplace is, of course, the U.S. stock and other markets.
Over the last five days as it became apparent that President Bush had reached the conclusion that the U.N. peace process was not going to work and that the U.S. was going to have to disarm Saddam by force, markets have rallied. Over the last five days, the U.S. stock market has risen by more than 8%. The market capitalization of the stock market five days ago was approximately $11 trillion. Now it is about $900 billion higher.
Hypothetically speaking, suppose investors cashed that gain in at the long-term capital gains tax rate. Then the Federal government gets an immediate cap gains tax payment of $180 billion. That would surely pay for most, if not all, of the discounted present value of Iraq war and reconstruction expenditures.
But, as they say on TV, that is not all you get! Oil prices have also come down over the last five days from $38 to about $30 per barrel. The U.S. imported 3.4 billion barrels of crude oil last year. An $8 drop in oil prices translates into $27 billion per annum in reduced costs for imported oil. That saving alone would pay for most, if not all, of Iraq’s annual reconstruction expenses.
But that is not all! The reduction in uncertainty over the last five days has caused a rally in the corporate bond market. Ford Motor Co. bond yield spreads, for example have tightened by 20 basis points. This eases the financing burden on U.S. companies as well as handing bondholders a substantial (taxable) capital gain. Based on the market cap of the fixed income market and the average spread tightening over the last five days,
investors have gotten a capital gain of about $160 billion.But that is not all! Whether they liked it or not, our European "allies" have also benefited from the U.S. decision to disarm Iraq and from lower oil prices. Over the last five days, the French CAC and the German DAX stock price indices have rebounded sharply. This provides a clear example of the "free rider" problem. At least we cannot claim that these government’s anti-war positions were motivated by a desire to increase investor wealth.
The bottom line is that, setting aside all the non-monetary national security benefits associated with disarming Iraq, it is clear to me that this action is being priced in securities markets around the world as hugely beneficial. Those who worry about the direct dollar cost of war and reconstruction are missing that point.
Now let us pray for the men, women and children in harm’s way in Iraq.
"I am being told by several senior officials not to take that taped speech Saddam gave last night as proof that he survived the attack," CBS NEWS reporter David Martin said on air."They say the evidence that put him in the bunker last night was very reliable, and they are confident that the cruise missiles and bunker-busting bombs that were fired at that bunker last night hit the target. So now, intelligence experts are studying the tape to determine if it is really Saddam, or a body double which he is known to use from time to time. And they are running a computerized voice analysis, comparing that speech with known recordings of Saddam's voice. But that's a process that takes awhile. So we may not have a quick answer."
"There is considerable belief in this government that they may, in fact, have gotten Saddam."
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Bush Administration Questions Hussein Video: White House Says Tape Offers No 'Immediate Conclusions' (Mike Allen, March 20, 2003, Washington Post)
The White House today questioned the authenticity of a videotape showing Saddam Hussein speaking a few hours after the cruise missile strikes that opened the war in Iraq."We have reached no conclusions about that tape or about who's on the tape or when it was taped," press secretary Ari Fleischer said.
Former White House aide Karen P. Hughes, now a $15,000-a-month consultant to the Republican National Committee, has been playing a key role in advising President Bush and the administration on a communications strategy for the Iraq war.Hughes flew with Bush on Air Force One to the Azores on Sunday and helped to draft his speech to the nation delivered Monday night. Hughes briefed reporters in the White House on Monday in advance of Bush's speech, saying he would offer exile as the only option to avoid an attack. And Hughes, who officials say has worked from the White House for the past week, has played a key role in developing the administration's plan for a coordinated communications strategy during the Iraq war.
The arrangement has prompted accusations from Democrats and government watchdog groups that the role of Hughes improperly blends politics and government business. Democrats complain that the presence of Hughes gives an inherently political tinge to the war effort. "George Bush should be focused on winning this war and making sure our troops are safe, not on how his partisan campaign hacks are going to score political points in the aftermath," said David Sirota, [partisan campaign hack] for Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee.
Although it was overshadowed by the beginning of war, on Capitol Hill Wednesday there was a major escalation in the conflict between Senate Democrats and the White House over the president's judicial nominees.The escalation had nothing to do with the ongoing Democratic filibuster over appeals-court candidate Miguel Estrada. Instead, it involved a Democratic decision to block, and, at least for the moment, kill a total of four Bush nominees to the federal courts of appeals.
Acting in concert, Michigan Democratic Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow told the Judiciary Committee they will block the nominations of Richard Griffin, David McKeague, Susan Bieke Neilson, and Henry Saad to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. In addition, Levin and Stabenow said they will block the nomination of Thomas Ludington to a seat on the U.S. District Court. That means the two senators are attempting to kill every Bush nominee from the state of Michigan.
Levin and Stabenow stopped the nominations by returning negative blue slips, which are the documents in which senators indicate approval or disapproval of judicial nominees from their home states.
Blue slips are a Senate custom with a long and controversial history, but both parties concede it is nearly impossible for a nominee of either party to win confirmation over the objections of both of his or her home-state senators. That means the nominations of Griffin, McKeague, Neilson, Saad, and Ludington are effectively dead.
It was an extraordinary move on the part of Levin and Stabenow, a kind of Wednesday-night massacre that sent Republicans scrambling to research whether such wholesale obstruction had any precedent in Senate history, and what a GOP response might be.
The move is all the more remarkable because much of the Sixth Circuit is in what the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts calls a "judicial emergency." The court normally has 16 members, but half of those seats are now empty.
Maybe the Iraqis and other Arab people are just folks - regular people who want to live in harmony with their neighbors near and far. And maybe not.Maybe Iraq and the broader Arab world have ancient values and beliefs that are hostile to America's. Maybe Arab men - who still practice honor killings against their wives and daughters, even in "moderate" countries like Jordan - do not want to release the creative gifts of women. Maybe the venerated spiritual leaders of the Arab world regard Western democracy as an offense against the laws of the Koran and "human liberty" as infidel code words for ungodly license.
Maybe the men made rich by their associations with Saddam and other dictators are not interested in creating a free-market economy. Maybe the secular political class of Baghdad - and Damascus and Cairo - regards domestic repression as preferable to American intervention for any reason whatever.
Maybe the mass of uneducated Arabs are profoundly loyal to tribal traditions and uninterested in attaining newfangled liberties. In short, perhaps the Arabs in Iraq and elsewhere have the governments they deserve. The next few months will clarify the issue.
Bringing liberty to the people of Iraq would be a fine thing. Still, it is not the main thing. The goal of this war is to establish and enforce the new Golden Rule of the post-post-Colonial world order inaugurated in September 2002: Sovereignty is not an inalienable right.
From now on, self-determination will belong to those people whose basic ethos and instincts do not pose a mortal threat to the United States, its interests and allies. The Iraqis and the other Arab nations may pass that test, or they may fail it. Once Saddam is gone, we will begin to find out.
Our standard must be that sovereignty and self-determination are dependent on leaders and peoples exercising those rights responsibly. They are not absolute and they diminish rapidly if you become a threat not merely to your own citizens but to the citizens of other nations.
In his first news conference on Tuesday, China's new Premier Wen Jiabao insisted on a political solution for the crisis in Iraq, and the same afternoon Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan underscored that China was working and hoping for a solution within the framework of the United Nations. In fact China's position since the beginning has been consistent: it wanted to achieve a solution, no matter which one, by going through the Security Council, where it holds the important and prestigious veto power.But US President George W Bush's war ultimatum to Saddam bypassed a vote at the UN and the UN was de facto defeated. It was a major setback for China, which had been betting heavily on the United Nations. Bush's ultimatum underscored a major turning point in the diplomacy of the United States, which had declared war without UN approval for the second time. The first time it was in Kosovo under president Bill Clinton, and so the trend is definitely bipartisan: the United States is willing to work within the framework of the United Nations only if doing so fits US interests, and it refuses to be constrained by the UN straitjacket.
China still argues that the majority of countries in the world favor working within the United Nations, where they have representation, and even the US has no interest in doing without the UN altogether, as it is a useful arena to exercise its global diplomacy. But the truth is that the interest of a weak majority doesn't count as much as that of a strong minority.
Throughout the nineteenth century, China's emperors had watched as foreigners encroached further and further upon their land. Time and again, foreigners forced China to make humiliating concessions. Foreign regiments, armed with modern weapons, consistently defeated entire imperial armies. Now, as a new century was about to begin, Tsu Hsi, empress dowager of the Ch'ing Dynasty, searched for a way to rid her empire of foreign parasites. . . .Down below, Orrin posts an article quoting various representatives of the Arab Street as confidently predicting victory for Iraq. In effect, they are saying that Allah will bring victory by defeating any American who sets foot on Iraqi soil. It struck me that this is a strain of defeatism. Even the Arab Street knows that Arab bravery and feats of arms stand no chance against the US military. Their only hope is a miracle. This put me in mind of the Boxer Rebellion, briefly described above.
While the outside powers bickered over who would control China, Tsu Hsi issued an imperial message to all the Chinese provinces.The present situation is becoming daily more difficult. The various Powers cast upon us looks of tiger-like voracity, hustling each other to be first to seize our innermost territories. . . . Should the strong enemies become aggressive and press us to consent to things we can never accept, we have no alternative but to rely upon the justice of our cause. . . . If our . . . hundreds of millions of inhabitants . . . would prove their loyalty to their emperor and love of their country, what is there to fear from any invader? Let us not think about making peace.In northern Shandong province, a devastating drought was pushing people to the edge of starvation. Few people there were thinking about making peace. A secret society, known as the Fists of Righteous Harmony, attracted thousands of followers. Foreigners called members of this society "Boxers" because they practiced martial arts. The Boxers also believed that they had a magical power, and that foreign bullets could not harm them. Millions of "spirit soldiers," they said, would soon rise from the dead and join their cause.
Their cause, at first, was to overthrow the imperial Ch'ing government and expel all "foreign devils" from China. The crafty empress, however, saw a way to use the Boxers. Through her ministers, she began to encourage the Boxers. Soon a new slogan -- "Support the Ch'ing; destroy the foreigner!" -- appeared upon the Boxers' banner.
In the early months of 1900, thousands of Boxers roamed the countryside. They attacked Christian missions, slaughtering foreign missionaries and Chinese converts. Then they moved toward the cities, attracting more and more followers as they came. Nervous foreign ministers insisted that the Chinese government stop the Boxers. From inside the Forbidden City, the empress told the diplomats that her troops would soon crush the "rebellion." Meanwhile, she did nothing as the Boxers entered the capital.
Although there are important differences between the Boxer Rebellion and Al Queda, the similarities are obvious. A species of fundamentalism born out of grinding poverty and despair. Hatred of the foreigner seen not only as the cause of this misery but also because he sets an unbearable example. Hatred of the non-fundamentalist government seen as contributing, or at least not opposing, the humiliation of a people that should, by rights, control the world. The cynical use of this movement by that government, until it gets out of hand. Finally, the triumph of a modern military over the deluded masses.
If this is a legitimate precedent, the news is not entirely good. The West put down the Boxer Rebellion and, in so doing, destroyed the power of the Imperial government. As the Imperial government was corrupt, tradition bound and incapable, this was a good thing. The Chinese Republic, which eventually came into being, was better, but not much and the lot of the average Chinese did not change. Eventually, the resentment, the humiliation, the poverty (and a good dollop of Communist treachery) led to the establishment of the People's Republic, which was a tragedy for China from which it has yet to recover.
Can a people vote away their democratic rights?...But while the legitimacy of Napoleon's overwhelming results in 1802 and 1804 [plebiscites making him "First Consul-for-Life"] may justifiably be doubted, Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein seemed to win plenary powers fair and square on Sunday.... [Was] it, as the Vienna-based Council of Europe warned rather darkly this week, "a serious step backwards"?...
While Sunday's referendum gave the prince an absolute veto over legislation, the right to dismiss the parliament, and immunity from Liechtenstein's courts, voters did not give up the democratic ghost altogether. A petition of 1,500 signatures (admittedly, nearly 5% of the population and over 7% of the voters) is sufficient to force a further referendum on the prince's role.
It's ... not clear that statelets like Liechteinstein have all that much to gain from ... parliamentary rule. In the 1990s, constitutional reform in Andorra imbued the local assembly with all the powers of a full-fledged government, which promptly went about putting up taxes and expanding the state. Given the alternatives, beneficent constitutional monarchy doesn't seem entirely bad.
Charles I of England once said that liberty consists of having government under those laws by which one's lives and one's goods may be most one's own. By those standards, Liechtenstein is doing pretty well, especially compared to some of the more traditionally democratic, but more socialist, countries around it. If its citizens think Prince Hans-Adam II is best-equipped to continue that trend of thriving, who are we to argue?
Earlier this week, in a letter to the Herald, I offered one long-shot possibility of getting directly through to the White House: a viewer boycott of the Oscars.Perhaps the idea wasn't as far-fetched as some critics tried to make out.
The US, for all its military might, has a political system that makes it very vulnerable to protest campaigns which target any of its major industries. The entertainment industry is certainly among the most influential of those.
The Academy Awards broadcast is traditionally the most widely watched of all American television shows. If there was clear evidence of a drop in ratings attributable to anti-war sentiment, it would send a symbolic message to the bosses of the big studios, networks and pop music companies.
They would begin to realise that an unpopular war has the potential to threaten billions of dollars in overseas profits, and they would make sure that message was passed on quickly to the politicians who represent them. [...]
Only within the US entertainment industry do Australians really count. The amount of money earned here from American-made television programs, movies and CDs happens to be very significant on a per capita basis, placing us among the top overseas consumers.
A symbolic switch-off of such product surely seems an easy enough gesture to make for any motivated anti-war protester, and the economic impact locally would be minimal.
Could such a campaign work? The major US TV networks and studios are prone to panic over any issue that looks like impacting on profits.
A celebrity who makes some impromptu pro-abortion comment risks being fired on the spot for offending advertisers. So, too, the industry is vulnerable to a president who enrages millions of foreign consumers by declaring a war with no clear explanation.
The Hollywood moguls would soon enough let their displeasure be known to the West Wing.
Have we really reached the stage where Australians, as much as they admire Americans, need to contemplate a symbolic boycott to express their grave concerns about US foreign policy?
Sadly, there appear to be few other options in a situation where Washington claims to act as the ultimate guardian of free nations everywhere, yet leaves millions of free-world citizens virtually disenfranchised because they have no voice in US politics.
Sources suggested the attack on Saddam might have been a set-up by US "black operations" units.It was claimed the Americans had faked a story yesterday that Iraqi deputy premier Tariq Aziz had defected.
Saddam was forced to scotch the rumour by ordering Aziz to appear at a news conference.
Observers said US intelligence could have tracked Aziz after his TV appearance, using him to lead them to Saddam.
"God, you are almighty, you are capable of turning this (war) against" the Americans, said Bashir el-Afesh as he finished his prayers in Cairo.Kamal Abou Ayta, an Egyptian political activist who has organized anti-war protests in Cairo, called the attack "illegitimate."
"I believe that American soldiers whenever they step on Iraqi soil, they will be defeated," Abou Ayta said in an interview. "I am sure of that."
Egyptian newspapers planned extra editions Thursday. In the Lebanese capital, papers pushed back deadlines to include war news and appeared on newsstands.
Early morning anti-war protests where reported at Cairo University and Al-Azhar University — at the latter, a venerable Islamic institution in Cairo, students chanted: "Patience, patience, oh Bush, tomorrow the Muslims will dig your grave."
While many European leaders remain deeply fearful of the fallout from a war with Iraq, many Arab leaders in the Middle East began several weeks ago to adjust to what they perceive to be a new reality. They stopped trying to prevent the war and instead began signaling that they wanted neither to be on the wrong side of the conflict nor on the wrong side of the U.S.--or our broader agenda in the region.Consider Egypt's press, which has been emphasizing that Saddam Hussein is bringing the conflict on himself. In his trip to Berlin, Hosni Mubarak emphasized to his hosts that it was time to get the conflict over and remove Saddam. In Washington, a high-level Egyptian delegation made it clear recently that they would not oppose us and, in anticipation of our emphasis after the war, also suggested that Egypt did have a serious, if measured, approach to internal reform.
The Saudis, though more circumspect on the war, have also indicated a greater willingness to permit U.S. operations out of the kingdom during the conflict. Crown Prince Abdullah is now openly calling for a new charter on reform to be adopted by the Arab League. Both the Egyptians and Saudis seem to have anticipated President Bush's speech in which he proclaimed that the liberation of Iraq might be a springboard to broader transformations in the region. And both seem to see the way the wind is blowing in the area--and they intend, at least tactically, to be on the right side of those winds.
They are not the only ones. Jordan publicly announced that an American contingent would come to the country to man Patriot missile batteries. Can anyone doubt that the Jordanian government was making a statement about where it was lining up in the event of war with Iraq? Contrast this posture with Jordan's posture during the Gulf War 12 years ago.
Syria's behavior is even more surprising. Not only has it been restraining Hezbollah of late, but as if to convey that it will not be a problem, Syria has withdrawn 4,000 troops from Lebanon.
The International Monetary Fund, the Washington-based bank set up to police the financial globe and assist the Third World, yesterday made the startling admission that the policies it has been pursuing for the last 60 years do not often work.In a paper that will be seized on by IMF critics across the political spectrum, leading officials reveal they can find little evidence of their own success.
Countries that follow IMF suggestions often suffer a "collapse in growth rates and significant financial crises", with open currency markets merely serving to "amplify the effects of various shocks".
Kenneth Rogoff, the IMF chief economist who is one of the report's authors, called the findings "sobering".
A recent study by the United Nations reported that the 47 poorest countries in the world - the biggest recipients of loans from the IMF and the World Bank - are poorer now than they were when the IMF was founded in 1944.
Iraq retaliated Thursday against the opening stages of the U.S.-led war to topple Saddam Hussein's regime, launching missiles at U.S. troop positions in Kuwait.CBS News Correspondent David Martin reports three missiles were launched. Patriot anti-missile batteries intercepted one missile, and the others were believed to have crashed. No injuries were reported and there was no indication that chemical or biological material was involved.
There were conflicting reports on what type of missiles were launched. One appeared to be a surface-to-air missile that had been converted to hit ground targets, perhaps an Al Samoud 2 missile — one of the type that Iraq had started to destroy.
In another possible attack, a small airplane crashed while attempting to fly from Iraq to Kuwait.
American troops went on alert two separate times, donning gas masks and protective suits twice and then receiving the "all clear." Air raid sirens wailed repeatedly in Kuwait City as officials warned that some Iraqi missiles might be aimed there.
The United States is offering Colombians $300,000, a U.S. visa and a new life in America for information leading to the rescue of three U.S. military contractors captured by rebels last month.Authorities Tuesday began distributing color fliers outlining the offer, complete with pictures of a jetliner, a visa application and a clean, modern metropolis lying along azure waters -- presumably an American city.
The Americans were captured by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- known as the FARC -- Feb. 13 after their U.S. government plane went down in rebel territory during an intelligence mission. A fourth American and a Colombian on the plane were killed near the scene.
The U.S. State Department years ago classified the FARC as a terrorist group, but the U.S. Embassy denied that the offer of the money -- equal to more than a lifetime's pay for many Colombians -- and the hard-to-get U.S. visa is tantamount to negotiating with terrorists.
Shortly before 4 p.m. yesterday, Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet offered President Bush the prospect -- improbable to the point of fantasy, yet suddenly at hand -- that the war against Iraq might be transformed with its opening shots. The CIA, Tenet said, believed it had a fix on President Saddam Hussein.Hussein and others in "the most senior levels of the Iraqi leadership," ordinarily among the most elusive of men, had fallen under U.S. surveillance. The intelligence was unforeseen and perishable, presenting what one administration official called "a target of opportunity" that might not come again. Not only did the agency know where Hussein was, Tenet said, but it also believed with "a high probability" that it knew where he would be for hours to come -- cloistered with advisers in a known private residence in southern Baghdad.
Bush listened calmly -- as his aides portrayed the scene -- as Tenet described the sources and limits of his information, the likelihood that it was true and the length of time Hussein could be expected to spend at the site before moving to his next refuge. The Iraqi president, a man of many palaces, avoids them at moments of maximum risk. There was no guarantee at all, Tenet said, that his whereabouts would be pinpointed again.
For the next three hours, Bush and his senior national security advisers tore up the carefully orchestrated schedule of violence that the U.S. Central Command had honed for months. Those present in the Oval Office, officials said, included Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
When Bush signed the launch order at 6:30 p.m., it had a hastily prepared insert. The first shots would strike through the roof and walls of an anonymous Baghdad home and deep beneath it in hopes of decapitating the Iraqi government in a single blow.
"If you're going to take a shot like this, you're going to take a shot at the top guy," said a government official with knowledge of the sequence of events. "It was a fairly singular strike."
MORE:
Bid to assassinate Saddam : Missile attack on Iraqi leader á Bush: 'early stages' of invasion á 170,000 troops on border (Julian Borger and James Meek, March 20, 2003, The Guardian)
The United States attempted to kill Saddam Hussein with a cruise missile attack in the early hours of this morning, in what President George Bush said were the "early stages" of a US-British invasion of Iraq.A sombre President Bush told the American people in a TV broadcast minutes after the blast: "This will not be a campaign of half measures and we will accept no outcome but victory."
A blast was reported in the Baghdad outskirts a little less than two hours after a US-imposed deadline for President Saddam to leave the country expired. It was followed by anti-aircraft fire rising into the pre-dawn sky over Baghdad just before 6am local time (3am GMT)
Pentagon officials said up to two dozen cruise missiles had been launched from ships in the Gulf and the Red Sea in a "decapitation attempt" - an assassination attempt against the Iraqi leader himself and his sons and lieutenants.
It was unclear whether the attack had been successful. A few minutes after the attack, Iraqi radio issued a statement attributed to his son, Uday Hussein, saying : "God protect us from foreign aggressors."
U.S. air attacks against Iraq on Thursday were aimed at control and command centres and, if successful, might "radically" change the nature of the war, a U.S. spokesman said."These strikes are being characterised as a decapitation targeted at command and control nodes. If successful, it will radically change the way we do things," U.S. spokesman Marine Colonel Chris Hughes told Reuters.
U.S. bombs and cruise missiles hit Baghdad at dawn as the United States launched a war to topple President Saddam Hussein.
U.S. officials in Washington said earlier that the Thursday morning air raids were aimed at senior Iraqi leadership targets near Baghdad. They did not name the targets.
Hughes indicated that targets in the south of Iraq had also been hit. He added that he now expected a lull in the attacks.
The U.S. government has obtained potentially valuable new information on Iraq's biological and chemical weapons programs in recent days from scientists and intelligence agents confronted outside Iraq with threats that failure to cooperate could mean unpleasant consequences when Baghdad falls, according to two U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the effort.In a top-secret adjunct to an openly reported diplomatic initiative, U.S. and allied intelligence services summoned scores of Iraqi operatives in foreign capitals to present a stark choice. They were told "they could either 'turn,' " said one official, using an expression for switching sides, or be expelled back to Iraq "to enjoy your very short stay in Baghdad."
Another official with access to written accounts of the conversations said the Iraqis were told that when the United States sorts friends and enemies after toppling President Saddam Hussein, "they'll be putting themselves and their families at the mercy of the new Iraqi government."
The State Department announced on March 6 that it had asked 60 friendly governments to expel alleged Iraqi intelligence operatives who lived abroad under diplomatic or commercial cover. Spokesman Philip Reeker portrayed the request as routine. But behind the announcement was Operation Imminent Horizon, in which Iraqis were pressured to provide information about the weapons programs and Iraqi operational plans. Among the nations that helped with the expulsions and recruiting efforts were Romania, Hungary, Australia and Sweden, officials said.
The Defense Department is racing to integrate the new leads into an extremely risky and ambitious disarmament mission. The quality of intelligence on Iraqi chemical, biological or nuclear weapons could not only determine the threats facing U.S. troops on the battlefield in the days ahead, but also could become a factor in conclusions around the world about whether the war was necessary.
U.S. planners are urgently focused on the speedy capture of Iraqi scientists and identification of suspected weapons sites, to prevent attacks on U.S. forces and preserve evidence of proscribed programs. But they are also wary of booby traps and the possibility that small U.S. disarmament teams could be overwhelmed if they outrun friendly ground forces.
AFTER a protracted two-day debate on the Iraq war, the Senate has voted to bring Australian troops back home immediately. Labor, Australian Democrats, Australian Greens and independents Brian Harradine and Meg Lees joined forces to support the motion Iraq was being invaded without UN Security Council authorisation.Australian troops should be withdrawn and returned home immediately, the senators said.
On Aug. 25, 2002, e-mail went from the director general of CIS Paris to Qilu Chemicals in China regarding a preliminary order: "We are about to have one of our affiliates open a L/C [Letter of Credit] for an initial order of 20,000 kg. of sealant type HTBP-III. . . . The drums should have a label mentioning the nature of the goods, same as your sample: `modified polybatadiene [sic] sealant type III,' it is not necessary that the label shows the name of your company."Ten days later, on Sept. 4, this response came from Qilu: "Thank you for your order to our HTPB-III! We just have sent a 40-foot container to Tartous (Syria) last month. I am not sure whether the container is in your warehouse now." A month later, Qilu sought a "formal order."
A Times colleague in Paris visited CIS early last week. The director, Jean-Pierre Pertriaux, acknowledged the documents but said someone else had filled the order. I duly reported his denial.
Mr. Pertriaux has since written to me to denounce my column as "mostly imagination and slander." He argues, in a rambling fashion, "About HTPB, one of the uses of this chemical is as a binder for rocket propellant, one of the possible rocket style is long-range missile, which I personally know for sure the Iraqis do not have (the CIA know it still better): so the supply of HTPB is legal, it is not forbidden by the UN except for a use which does not exist, though it is unpleasant if you plan to invade Iraq and do not want to face field rockets or anti-tank weapons."
But what about those e-mail notes? "My company never supplied HTPB to Iraq (but it considered this eventuality) we know the Chinese QiLu company, they boasted to have shipped HTPB to promote their business but never actually did."
Then, "leaving you a chance to show that you distorted the truth, but did not organize a lie," the French broker pointed elsewhere: "Three shipments (totaling 115.8 tons) have actually been made from USA via Jordanian traders."
He didn't name the supposed suppliers, but I was able to check his assertion that "the supply of HTPB is legal" with an assistant secretary of state, John Wolf. "All military-related sales to Iraq are banned by several U.N. resolutions," countered Mr. Wolf, the man in charge of our nonproliferation bureau. "This is rocket fuel you're talking about. The fact that Iraq was permitted to have missiles in the sub-150-kilometer range does not therefore allow the import of such fuel. Any sale to Iraq, except for humanitarian goods, requires the approval of the U.N. sanctions committee." The U.S. is on that committee and never approved such a sale.
About 1,000 U.S. troops launched a raid on villages in southeastern Afghanistan Thursday, hunting for members of the al-Qaida terrorist network in the biggest U.S. operation in just over a year, military officials said.Helicopters ferried troops from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division to the remote, mountainous area as the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his terror network intensified, according to U.S. military officials in Washington. [...]
It was the largest U.S. military operation in Afghanistan since Operation Anaconda just over a year ago.
