>> WMD? WHERE?
washingtonpost.com
Nuclear Security Training Lacking
Plants Eliminated or Reduced Drills Designed to Repel Attacks, U.S. Says
Associated Press
Thursday, March 18, 2004; Page A29
Nuclear weapons plants have eliminated or reduced training for guards responsible for repelling terrorist attacks, leaving the government unable to guarantee the plants can be adequately defended, the Energy Department's internal watchdog said.
One plant has reduced training hours by 40 percent, and some plants conduct tactical training only in classrooms, according to a report from the department's inspector general.
Some contractors fear that injuries among guards during training exercises could reduce bonus payments from the government, the report said. Guards typically receive 320 hours of training.
Only one of 10 plants surveyed, Hanford, Wash., trains guards in the basic use of a shotgun, according to the report. None of the plants teaches guards how to rappel down buildings or cliffs because of concerns that guards might be injured. The report noted that one guard died rappelling in 1995.
"Inconsistent training methods may increase the risk that the department's protective forces will not be able to safely respond to security incidents or will use excessive levels of force," said the report prepared by Inspector General Gregory H. Friedman's office and released Tuesday.
The National Nuclear Security Administration, which protects nuclear plants, acknowledged in a letter responding to the inspector general that training for guards has suffered because of overtime demands at weapons plants. It promised to review training to make sure it is adequate.
The criticisms were the latest leveled against the government's ability to protect nuclear facilities, long considered prime targets for espionage and terrorist attacks.
The inspector general complained in January that security guards who repelled four simulated terrorist attacks at the Y-12 weapons plant in Tennessee had been tipped in advance. The plant processes parts for nuclear weapons and maintains vast supplies of bomb-grade uranium.
That earlier report also determined that at least two guards defending the mock attacks had been allowed to look at computer simulations a day before the attacks.
The newest report said some of the plants are not adequately training guards how to use handcuffs, fight hand-to-hand or defend against terrorists in vehicles.
"Defense tactics training should be as realistic as possible," the report said. "Anything less may rob the trainee of the exposure to the levels of force, panic, and confusion that are usually present during an actual attack and increase the possibility of an inappropriate response in high stress situations."
At some weapons plants, for example, instructors used wooden mock-ups or removed windshields from the vehicles of mock terrorists for safety. But experts said that prevents guards from learning how glass affects gunfire or the visibility of a target inside.
The report said all 10 weapons plants surveyed have reduced training in at least two important areas. The plants were the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California; the Nevada Test Site near Nellis Air Force Base; the Oak Ridge Complex in Tennessee; the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site near Denver; the Hanford site; Sandia National Laboratories in California; the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Tex.; the Savannah River Site in South Carolina; the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico; and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.
? 2004 The Washington Post Company
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"Monster Island"
New York's Plum Island is a level-4 bioresearch facility. What exactly is going on there?
Alan Cabal
I make it a rule to never ascribe malicious intent to any occurrence that can be reasonably attributed to human stupidity. There is no such thing as a completely fail-safe system; at least, none that human ingenuity can devise. Likewise, I acknowledge the role of coincidence in the course of human events. Synchronicity does not necessarily imply a designing will. Shit happens, as they say.
The tragic loss of the space shuttle Columbia is a classic illustration of both of these principles: The shuttle is as close to a fail-safe system as our species is capable of. No one at NASA wants to lose an astronaut to an accident. The fact that it broke up over Palestine, TX, while carrying an Israeli war hero is simply a coincidence. It was not brought down by a stone-throwing child, an errant kite or a suicide bomber. There are those who see the Hand of God in coincidences such as this. I am not one of those people.
That said, I do tend to agree with the ancient Greeks that hubris leads inevitably to a correction of some sort. As hubris has become as ubiquitous as obesity in America lately, I try not to concern myself too much with it. Inasmuch as I can, I keep my concerns local.
And locally, there is no more terrifying example of hubris than the Plum Island Animal Disease Research Center.
Located just two miles off the tip of Long Island and six miles from the Connecticut coastline, Plum Island is home to a Bio-Safety Level 4 (BSL-4) research facility. The only comparable government facilities in the country are the United States Army laboratory at Fort Detrick, MD, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Plum Island is specifically engaged in the study of zoonotic diseases. Zoonotic diseases are diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans, like West Nile, like Lyme disease. Like Ebola.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture established the research facility there after acquiring the 840-acre island from the military at the end of World War II. The initial charter from Congress mandated the study of animal diseases, particularly foot-and-mouth disease, with an eye toward eradicating these maladies from the nation's livestock. It seemed an ideal location for such an endeavor: prevailing winds, after all, blow out to sea.
In 1954, the research took a more aggressive turn, with scientists looking to cook up ways to inflict damage on Soviet livestock. The Cuban government alleges that in the 1960s and 70s, bioweapons developed at Plum were deployed against Cuban agriculture, targeting pork, tobacco and sugar cane. Back in 1999, Floyd P. Horn, administrator of the Agriculture Research Service, persuaded President Clinton to include Plum Island in his expanded bioterrorism program based on the possibility of a biological attack on the nation's agricultural base. Last year the administration of the island's research facilities was transferred from USDA to the Department of Homeland Security.
The 200-odd employees do not live on the island; they commute from their homes in Connecticut and Long Island. The facility is only accessible by government ferry, and local sailors who have strayed too close have reported being warned off in no uncertain terms by armed military personnel. The diseases being researched do not live exclusively under glass--there are quite a number of infected live animals for study there. Some of these diseases have an incubation period extending for days.
Which means that it is entirely possible for a researcher to be unknowingly infected on a Friday and then spend the weekend cheerfully spreading some hideous plague from the Hamptons to Tribeca. The government claims that there has only been one outbreak on the island--foot-and-mouth in 1978--which they contained by killing all the livestock. They further maintain that there has never been a leak to the mainland. Apparently the first appearance of what we now call Lyme disease a mere 13 miles northeast of the facility falls under the category of coincidence, as does the mysterious and still unexplained appearance of West Nile virus in Long Island and New York City.
Coincidences, it seems, abound at Plum.
Until 1991, all of the employees were federal. During 1991 and '92, the workforce bifurcated, with many of the jobs being turned over to the private sector, which naturally led to a simmering resentment in the ranks. On August 13, 2002, the resentment came to a full boil and a strike was called: 76 members of the International Union of Operating Engineers walked out at midnight after negotiations on wages and benefits broke down. The union members, employed by a government subcontractor, LB&B Associates, headquartered in Columbia, MD, were responsible for essential support services such as decontamination, waste-water treatment, keeping the generators in working order and other maintenance and safety-oriented occupations. For the duration of the strike, temps were brought in to replace them, the sentinels and technicians of the island's infrastructure.
By the end of that month, the FBI had been called to the island to investigate allegations of sabotage. It seems that the water pressure on the island fell precipitously, disabling decontamination facilities and the necropsy rooms used to examine dead animals. The union blamed the problem on the inexperienced temporary replacement workers, suggesting that they had not been adequately screened and lacked the training to properly maintain the essential daily activity of the island, let alone handle an emergency. Jacob Bunch, a spokesman for LB&B, refused to comment on the FBI investigation and responded to a New York Times reporter's query about the replacement workers by stating that "In terms of training, I will tell you that people are well trained or they wouldn't be there. I am not going to get into how they are trained." He flatly refused to discuss the issue of security clearances.
The strike and the FBI investigation drew unwanted attention to the island. Local residents in Connecticut and Long Island have long harbored suspicions about the nature of the research being done on "Mystery Island," as some call it. One local politician was quoted as saying, "I have gotten calls from constituents asking if it is safe. People worry about Plum Island under routine circumstances, so you can expect that they worry more when circumstances are as unusual as these."
Press requests to visit the island were denied by both the FBI and the USDA, but one union official claimed to have received a frantic call from one of the replacement workers. As he put it, "They were sleeping on cots, working 12- hour shifts and not being able to make calls off the island. He described their condition as being held captive." The chief operating officer of LB&B, Ed Brandon, scoffed at the report, saying that the worker in question had already left the island and that everything was under control and running smoothly.
As a result of the FBI investigation, one of the strikers, Mark J. DePonte, pleaded guilty to tampering with government property. Coincidentally, in October a 600-gallon container of liquid nitrogen somehow managed to tumble off the rear of one of the island's ferries. Shortly thereafter, it was revealed that at least one of the replacement workers had an arrest record.
During the fifth month of the strike, a three-hour power outage renewed public interest in the island. It certainly piqued my interest. On that day, I could not help but fixate on Stephen King's The Stand and Larry Underwood's trek through a sea of corpses in the Lincoln Tunnel, clawing his way out to Jersey. I found the failure of all three of the island's backup generators particularly provocative. Jovial corporate gasbag Ed Brandon had nothing to say about the inability of the replacement workers to operate the generators after five months on the job, and his erstwhile associate Jacob Bunch was equally dumbstruck.
I packed up the car, scored some weed, picked up my girlfriend and headed to the Jersey Shore, just to be on the safe side. Coincidence and stupidity will kill you just as dead as conspiracy and evil genius, if the wind is right, so we holed up in a motel in Ocean City and followed the story from there.
The only reason the incident went public at all was that one of the replacement workers basically flipped a gasket and called Hillary Clinton's office, spilling the beans on the power failure to one of her staffers. The worker stated that, "The reason I am coming forward is because what I have seen at the center is really out of hand and something needs to be done about it."
And just like that, the possibility of disaster was in the open.
Without power, the air filtration systems are inoperable. Without power, decontamination procedures break down. Without power, the seals in the pressurized airlock doors start to deflate. According to one report, workers were desperately sealing the doors with duct tape.
My girlfriend and I stayed in Ocean City for a few days, walking the deserted frozen boardwalk together and monitoring the news for any signs of an incipient human die-off in New York. The most frightening book I have ever read is Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague, a comprehensive overview of emerging rain-forest viruses and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. I was so badly rattled that I actually put the book down about three-quarters of the way through. Sitting down there at the Jersey Shore, watching the whitecaps roll in through the desolate frozen darkness on the longest night of the year, it was all too easy to imagine Manhattan in the throes of a deadly epidemic triggered by some half-wit scab's inability to figure out the basics of generator maintenance and operation.
I took an inventory of the worst zoonotic plagues I could think of: Nipah virus, anthrax, Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis, Hanta virus--
Hanta, I recalled, is transmitted in rodent feces. There was an outbreak in the Four Corners area in the southwest, back in the early 90s. The vector? Pinola nuts contaminated by rat shit.
I reflected on the mother of all plagues, the incomparable Ebola virus, the deadliest strain of which, Ebola Zaire, has a 90 percent kill rate. Transmission is ridiculously easy: The victim starts sneezing at a certain point early in the infection, and the sneeze contains aerosolized droplets of infected blood. Ba-da-bing, ba-da-bang, ba-da-boom--you've got it. In about 10 days, you bleed out and die as your cardio-vascular system... Well, your cardio-vascular system just sort of melts. Ebola Zaire would burn through this city like a fire in a cardboard factory.
Up in New Haven, CT, in 1994, a worker at Yale University's Arbovirus Laboratory became infected with Sabia virus, went home, then took a little jaunt to Boston, where it became apparent to him that his symptoms were serious. More recently, in February of this year, a Fort Detrick researcher inadvertently stuck herself with a needle containing one of the three known Ebola variants. None of the reports of the incident specified which strain, but one can only assume it was the relatively benign Ebola Reston, as she was permitted to go home and gather some "necessities" before being placed in quarantine the next day. She was released from quarantine on March 3.
Sometimes you get lucky.
The research at Plum Island has taken some very alarming turns. In 2001, the New York Times revealed the existence of the Defense Department's "Project Jefferson," an effort to develop a vaccine-resistant form of anthrax. The Pentagon responded to the story by asserting that the project would be completed and the results classified.
Last year, a St. Louis University virologist by the name of Mark Buller revealed in a characteristically dry academic report that he was tinkering with a more lethal form of mousepox, a relative of smallpox, and intended to extend this work to cowpox, which can infect humans. Buller's intent is to devise countermeasures against making pox viruses more lethal, but the central conundrum of bioweaponry defense research is that, by necessity, it entails offensive bioweaponry research.
For his part, Buller is aware of the problem. "When you have thrown a lot of money at it," he told Mother Jones magazine, "people start to think very hard about what is possible, losing sight of what is practical."
Problem is, this research doesn't take place in a vacuum. These researchers are academics--they publish. As the hackers have been telling us for three decades, information wants to be free. So, creating increasingly deadly bioweapons in order to determine how they can be thwarted generates an endless spiral of increasingly potent plagues that must inevitably succumb to that most familiar and unforgiving of universal principles, Murphy's Law.
A lot of people in the know are sounding alarms about this. Richard Ebright, lab director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University, is quoted by Michael Scherer in this month's Mother Jones as saying, "That is work that creates a new vulnerability for the United States and the world. It's like the National Institute of Health was funding a research and development arm of Al Qaeda." Scherer also points out that the government is going full speed ahead with this sort of thing, doubling the Pentagon budget for chemical/biological warfare and pouring up to $10 billion into bioweaponry projects alone.
We are knee-deep in a new arms race, far more terrifying than anything the nukes race had to offer. Accidents happened with our nuclear launch protocols during the Cold War--we came close, far too close, on several occasions--and it's far easier to accidentally release a tick or a mosquito into the environment, or scratch oneself with an infected needle, than it is to inadvertently launch a missile.
Plum Island is 136 miles from the city, as the crow flies. If that crow should happen to land there briefly, perhaps to snack on a tempting bit of carrion, there is a realistic chance that the crow might then become patient zero, carrying back with it some unwholesome and unwelcome souvenir. Or consider the disgruntled, overworked generator mechanic suffering under the burden of a difficult divorce compounded by a bad reaction to Zoloft who goes postal--on a whole new level. Or maybe a series of unfortunate, coincidental and entirely benign failures will pile up like SUVs on black ice.
The list of possibilities for disaster goes on and on. I prefer not to be in close proximity to people who insist on flouting Murphy's Law, especially when they're toying around with what we euphemistically refer to these days as Weapons of Mass Destruction. It's like drinking in a cop bar.
There's been a lot of blather and hoo-hah in the news around here lately that New Yorkers are unprepared for another major disaster along the lines of the Sept. 11 attacks. Very few businesses have established any kind of emergency preparedness drills or protocols, and the average citizen seems to be living in some hideously banal postmodern fog of confusion and denial. A friend of mine up in Inwood bought an ultralight kayak, figuring to haul it down to the estuary there and paddle away to Jersey if and when the bodies start piling up.
Even if nothing ever happens, it's a great toy in the summer months.
For more on Plum Island, see Jim Knipfel's review of Michael Christopher Carroll's Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory, p. 40.
Volume 17, Issue 11
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>> KERRY ENDORSEMENTS WATCH, 1-KIM JONG-IL, 2...
Former Malaysian Leader Endorses Kerry
Thu Mar 18,11:56 AM ET
PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia - Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad endorsed Democratic contender John Kerry (news - web sites) in the U.S. presidential race Thursday, saying he would keep the world safer than President Bush (news - web sites).
"I think Kerry would be much more willing to listen to the voices of people and of the rest of the world," Mahathir, who retired in October after 22 years in power, told The Associated Press in an interview.
"But in the U.S., the Jewish lobby is very strong, and any American who wants to become president cannot change the policy toward Palestine radically," he said.
Mahathir, who was one of the most outspoken leaders in the Islamic world, also said the March 11 train bombings in Spain demonstrated that the Iraqi war has aggravated international terrorism and raised hostility toward Washington and its allies.
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Abolishing Congress
A modest proposal.
O.K., I have almost made it through my second year as a citizen of this splendid republic. I think I know the ropes, now, and am au fait with all the essentials of being a Yankee Doodle Dandy. I live in a quiet suburb, in a detached house with a Stars and Stripes hanging proudly by the door. I decorate my garden with lights at Christmas, and do not recognize Boxing Day. (Nor Guy Fawkes Night, Shrove Tuesday, or Whitsun.) I vote conscientiously, according to some rather simple rules I have worked out: against any issue of any bond, against any person I know to belong, or suspect of belonging, to any public-employee union, against any member of any party that is not Republican or obviously conservative, etc. I understand the ground-rule double and know the difference between a sinker and a slider. I own two fine handguns, which I practice with at the town range when opportunity permits. I am the proud father of two American kids, both of whom can recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Each of my two ordinary American family cars could accommodate an ordinary English family car in its boot, which I know to call the "trunk." I refer to an aubergine as an "eggplant," courgettes as "zucchini," and biscuits as "cookies"; I call a cock a "rooster," a purse a "pocketbook," and a tap a "faucet."* Afflicted with any bodily ailment or injury I consult an attorney as well as, and in some cases before, seeing a doctor. I save diligently so that my kids can go to universities where they will be taught to hate their ancestors (at least the white ones) and accord proper "dignity" and "respect" to people who prefer small molluscs as sex partners. I...
Er, wait a minute, I am trending negative there. Suffice it to say that I consider myself thoroughly Americanized. In some respects, in fact, I may have gone too far: I have read "Snow-Bound" and "The Courtship of Miles Standish" all the way through, and am the only person you ever heard of that can sing the second verse of the national anthem.
There is only one thing I don't quite understand about my new country: What the hell use is the U.S. Congress?
Now, I know, of course, what the Congress is supposed to be for. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution spells it out. "To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States... etc., etc., etc." The problem is, Congress either isn't doing the things it's supposed to do, or is doing them so excruciatingly badly it would be better they were not done at all. Take a look.
"To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water."
I confess I am not sure about the Letters of Marque and Reprisal -- possibly the assembled Senators and Representatives granted a few while I was busy providing for the day that was passing over me; but when was the last time they plucked up the courage to declare War? (Love those capitalized substantives!) Before I was born, that's when, and I am no spring chicken. Oh, we have fought plenty of wars since then, but Congress never declared any. Probably they felt that would be a bit more responsibility than they could handle. After all, if Congress were to declare War, then the ladies and gentlemen who comprise Congress would be collectively responsible for the outcome of the war, wouldn't they? Eeeeek! Best leave it to the Executive.
"To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization..."
In other words, to set some clear standards for who should, and who should not, become a citizen. How archaic! In this breezy modern world of globalization and open borders, all those smelly old prejudices about foreigners (nativism! racism! anti-immigrant!) have been swept away long since. All you have to do to become a citizen is just get here... then wait for the next presidential amnesty. What's Congress got to do with it?
"To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the High Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations."
So, let's see: If a rogue foreign nation were to force down one of our planes over international waters, strip it of all its equipment and fittings, and impound the crew, then Congress is supposed to punish that nation? As they say in Beijing: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Come to think of it, look at that very first responsibility of the U.S. Congress:
"To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises..."
Here the Congress has been not merely active, but a darn sight too active. The federal tax code currently contains 55,000 pages, and is expanding at a rate of 50 pages a day. Does anyone actually understand all that verbiage? No, of course not. The federal tax code is not there to be understood. It is there to provide breaks and relief and handouts to every group of 20 citizens who can squawk loud enough to get a congressperson's attention. It is, in short, a joke. A flat tax or a consumption tax would make far more sense, in both equity and efficiency; but then congresspersons would not be able to spend 100 percent of their time being wined and dined by the Aardvark Breeders Association of America and Black Lesbian Rock-Climbers for Peace. They would have to occupy themselves with stuff like declaring War or controlling the nation's borders. Where would be the fun in that? Where would be the profit?
Article I, Section 8 doesn't list all of Congress's responsibilities. Check out Article III, Section 2, for example, which contains this little nugget:
"In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make."
(My italics.) So in a Case not "affecting Ambassadors" etc. -- let's say, oh, a case in which some citizens have chosen to dispute the ancient and customary definition of marriage -- the Supreme Court has jurisdiction only if the Congress has not declared that particular Case an Exception under the aforementioned Article, and if Congress has made explicit Regulations declaring that the Court does indeed have such jurisdiction. Hmmm. So this issue I have been reading so much about, of renegade federal judges legislating from the bench, is really not an issue at all, since Congress could just forbid them to take the relevant Cases! Does anyone in Congress know this? Why don't they act on it? See above under "declaration of War."
It is my pride and honor to be a citizen of the same state as Judge Gideon Tucker, the man who said, back in 1866, that: "No man's life, liberty or property is safe while the Legislature is in session." I suppose he was talking about the New York State legislature, in which case he was not at all mistaken; but his words apply equally well, in fact a fortiori, to the U.S. Congress and those who make their living there. The mystery is, that 138 years after Judge Tucker enunciated this obvious truth, we still put up with this expensive, extravagant, purposeless nuisance.
Hold on there, Derb, I hear you murmuring. Aren't you going a bit too far here? After all, Congress does make laws, you know. And we do need laws, don't we?
We certainly do. However, you should entertain the possibility that we already have all the laws we need, and that the republic would probably get along just fine if no new laws were passed for a few years. Twenty years ago we had several hundred less federal laws than we have now. I suppose that in some ways we were worse off in 1984; but things weren't bad.
And just try looking closely at the laws the Congress actually passes. Let's take the best-publicized legislative success of the Clinton administration, the passing of the North American Free Trade Agreement by both houses of Congress in 1993. Has it actually done us any good? I have been trying to find out, and believe me, it ain't easy. It is clear, at any rate, that it hasn't done Mexico any good; wages are lower in Mexico now, by comparison with U.S. wages, than they were in 1994! Yet this was a big selling point for the Agreement: lift up Mexico, and we'll have no illegal-immigration problem. Sorry, that didn't work.
Let's try another one: the No Child Left Behind Act. This may be the stupidest piece of legislation ever to crawl down from Capitol Hill. In effect, it legislates that the earth is flat. Dan Seligman exposed the whole silly thing in a recent Forbes article:
And yet the law's main problem continues to be unrepresented in the news stories. The problem is that some students are not smart enough to do well on tests.
The law also states, insanely, that by 2014 all American students must be 'proficient' in reading and math. Any school at which this doesn't happen will suffer severe penalties, up to and including a takeover by the state. Yet the shape of the bell curve guarantees that most schools will fail. No amount of accountability, incentives and superduper teaching can possibly get all the kids in any sizable school up to 100% proficiency by 2014. The act supported by all those hardheaded businessmen is utterly utopian.
Et cetera, et cetera, et read-it-and-weep cetera.
What else has Congress done for us recently? The Defense of Marriage Act? Everyone understands that this is a waste of paper. The matter it was supposed to resolve will be decided by the courts, or by a constitutional amendment. The law is, like the body that passed it, irrelevant. This year's Medicaid bill? Uh-huh. Any year's budget resolution? Oh, right.
Congress? Abolish it! I have been on the premises. If you cleared out all the time-servers, cranks, bores, boors, freaks, fools, paid agents of foreign powers, and front men for the trail lawyers, public-employee unions, fruit growers, oil companies, and Mideast royal families, you could turn the Capitol building into a very fine suite of racketball courts and indoor shooting ranges, with enough space left over for some bowling lanes and perhaps even a decent-sized swimming pool. What are we waiting for? All the governing of our country is being done by judges and federal bureaucrats anyway. For what, exactly, do we need Congress?
* * *
* A key difference between British and American English is that the latter was, at some point in the 18th or 19th century, stripped of any word that might conceivably be taken to refer to any embarrassing body part, or act of intimacy. I grew up in England saying "behind the house," but I have now trained myself to say "back of...," like a good American. The "rocks" my children throw at anything available can are the same size as the "stones" I used to throw when I was their age -- but "stones" is used in the Bible to refer to male gonads. (Which is also why I now give my weight as "180 pounds" instead of "13 stone.") For "tap" (though spelled "tup"), see Othello I.i. One of the principal landmarks in my hometown was an inn called The Cock -- I used to ride a bus that had that destination proudly displayed on the front..., and so on. I am fine with all this bowdlerization, have got quite used to it, and in fact, given the state of our popular culture, would welcome a return of the honest American prudery that brought it about.
http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire200403180921.asp
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While Republicans were sleeping
By Dan Haley
Denver Post Editorial Board
Where have all the Republicans gone?
I'm not talking about all of the would-be candidates who scattered like bugs in the days after Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell announced he wouldn't seek re-election - after months of his campaign staff assuring us he would.
I'm looking for those dyed-in-the-wool conservatives who once kept government out of our lives and federal spending in check.
With a $1 trillion deficit looming, social programs ballooning and amnesty awaiting illegals, national Democrats have co-opted the Republicans' mojo.
For weeks, Democratic presidential candidates criss-crossed the country, beating their chests about slashing the deficit and giving the middle class a tax break. They ripped a page from the old GOP playbook as they ripped the no-tax-but-still-spend president.
And guilty Republicans didn't say a word.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who rarely met a spending bill he didn't like in 18 years of Senate work - unless, of course, it involved defense or intelligence - is suddenly the picture of fiscal sanity.
If President Bush loses the election in November, it won't be because of the war in Iraq. It will be over WMDs: White, Moderate, Disenfranchised voters. They thought they elected the second coming of Ronald Reagan in 2000 but instead ended up with a less crusty version of Lyndon Johnson with a hole in his pocket.
If Kerry continues to talk like a moderate, he just may find the WMDs in his corner.
The first President Bush lost his re-election bid for one primary reason: He disenfranchised his conservative base and allowed a surly Texas billionaire with a can-do attitude to siphon off precious votes of moderates and conservatives.
Not wanting to repeat the sins of his father, it seemed George W. was on track to placate the far right of his party. He pushed funding for faith-based initiatives at the beginning of his term and abandoned most stem-cell research because of right-to-life concerns. He later even rained on the gay-wedding parade, after originally calling it a state matter.
But now he seems to be pandering to the left, too. How else to explain the $18 million boost to the National Endowment of the Arts budget? The guy who once said baseball was his favorite cultural experience wants to boost funding for the same folks who brought us Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" - a photo of a crucifix submerged in a jar of urine.
Those artsy folks aren't going to vote for Bush even if he submerses his own mother in that jar.
President Bush needs to start pandering to the great masses in the middle. If he truly hopes to avoid his father's fate, he'll have to convince more than a few WMDs that he hasn't lost touch with reality.
Humor writer Dave Barry said more than a decade ago that Democrats tend to be the nicer people but they have the management skills of celery. He said he would be reluctant to trust them with a Cuisinart, much less the economy.
My, how times have changed.
When former Congressman Bob Schaffer announced he was running for Campbell's seat, he pledged to bring fiscal sanity back to Washington through "responsible federal spending." With a Republican president and GOP-controlled Congress, that already should be a given and the least of his worries.
Meanwhile, in Colorado, Republican lawmakers aren't spending money - because there isn't any - and instead are dreaming up new ways for the government to interfere in our private lives and businesses, such as worrying about where bookstores place "racy" magazines. It's all in the name of an undeclared culture war, where morality isn't taught by words and examples, but rather legislated.
Barry Goldwater must be rolling over in his grave.
Republicans are dangerously close to losing some of the control in Washington that it took decades to earn. To retain it, they need to return to their roots: Smaller government, less spending, less intrusion.
It may not be sexy, but it works.
Dan Haley is a member of The Post's editorial board.
All contents Copyright 2004 The Denver Post or other copyright holders. All rights reserved.
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ON THE RECORD
A Clear Choice
John Kerry "speaks as if only those who openly oppose America's objectives have a chance of earning his respect."
BY DICK CHENEY
Thursday, March 18, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
(Editor's note: Vice President Cheney delivered this speech yesterday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, Calif.)
Last fall, some people with short memories were asking why on earth California would want to put an actor in the governor's office. The question brought to mind images of 1966, and all the great events that were set in motion by the election of Gov. Ronald Reagan. From his first day in Sacramento to his last day in Washington, Ronald Reagan showed a certain kind of leadership. He had confidence in himself, and even deeper confidence in the United States and our place among nations. His principles were the product of a good heart, a sturdy Midwestern character, and years of disciplined preparation for the work that history gave him. He had a basic awareness of good and evil that made him a champion of human freedom, and the greatest foe of the greatest tyranny of his time. The Cold War ended as it did, not by chance, not by some inevitable progression of events: It ended because Ronald Reagan was president of the United States.
After the fall of Soviet communism, some observers confidently assumed that America would never again face such determined enemies, or an aggressive ideology, or the prospect of catastrophic violence. But standing here in 2004, we can see clearly how a new enemy was organizing and gathering strength over a period of years. And the struggle we are in today, against terrorist enemies intending violence on a massive scale, requires the same qualities of leadership that saw our nation to victory in the Cold War. We must build and maintain military strength capable of operating in different theaters of action with decisive force. We must not only have that power, but be willing to use it when required to defend our freedom and our security.
We must support those around the world who are taking risks to advance freedom, justice, and democracy, just as President Reagan did. American policy must be clear and consistent in its purposes. And American leaders--above all, the commander in chief--must be confident in our nation's cause, and unwavering until the danger to our people is fully and finally removed.
The attacks of September 11, 2001, signaled the arrival of an entirely different era. We suffered massive civilian casualties on our own soil. We awakened to dangers even more lethal--the possibility that terrorists could gain chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons from outlaw regimes, and turn those weapons against the United States and our friends. We came to understand that for all the destruction and grief we saw that day, September 11 gave only the merest glimpse of the threat that international terrorism poses to this and other nations. If terrorists ever do acquire weapons of mass destruction--on their own or with help from a terror regime--they will use those weapons without the slightest constraint of reason or morality. Instead of losing thousands of lives, we might lose tens or even hundreds of thousands of lives in a single day of horror. Remembering what we saw on the morning of 9/11, and knowing the nature of these enemies, we have as clear a responsibility as could ever fall to government: We must do everything in our power to protect our people from terrorist attack, and to keep terrorists from ever acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
This great and urgent responsibility has required a shift in national security policy. For many years prior to 9/11, we treated terror attacks against Americans as isolated incidents, and answered--if at all--on an ad hoc basis, and never in a systematic way. Even after an attack inside our own country--the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center, in New York--there was a tendency to treat terrorist incidents as individual criminal acts, to be handled primarily through law enforcement. The man who perpetrated that attack in New York was tracked down, arrested, convicted and sent off to serve a 240-year sentence. Yet behind that one man was a growing network with operatives inside and outside the United States, waging war against our country.
For us, that war started on 9/11. For them, it started years before. After the World Trade Center attack in 1993 came the murders at the Saudi Arabia National Guard Training Center in Riyadh, in 1995; the simultaneous bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in 1998; the attack on the USS Cole, in 2000. In 1996, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad--the mastermind of 9/11--first proposed to Osama bin Laden that they use hijacked airliners to attack targets in the U.S. During this period, thousands of terrorists were trained at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. And we have seen the work of terrorists in many attacks since 9/11--in Riyadh, Casablanca, Istanbul, Mombasa, Bali, Jakarta, Najaf, Baghdad and, most recently, Madrid.
Against this kind of determined, organized, ruthless enemy, America requires a new strategy--not merely to prosecute a series of crimes, but to fight and win a global campaign against the terror network. Our strategy has several key elements. We have strengthened our defenses here at home, organizing the government to protect the homeland. But a good defense is not enough. The terrorist enemy holds no territory, defends no population, is unconstrained by rules of warfare, and respects no law of morality. Such an enemy cannot be deterred, contained, appeased or negotiated with. It can only be destroyed--and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the business at hand.
We are dismantling the financial networks that have funded terror; we are going after the terrorists themselves wherever they plot and plan. Of those known to be directly involved in organizing the attacks of 9/11, most are now in custody or confirmed dead. The leadership of al Qaeda has sustained heavy losses, and they will sustain more.
America is also working closely with intelligence services all over the globe. The best intelligence is necessary--not just to win the war on terror, but also to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. So we have enhanced our intelligence capabilities, in order to trace dangerous weapons activity. We have organized a proliferation security initiative, to interdict lethal materials and technologies in transit. We are aggressively pursuing another dangerous source of proliferation: black-market operatives who sell equipment and expertise related to weapons of mass destruction. The world recently learned of the network led by A.Q. Khan, the former head of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. Khan and his associates sold nuclear technology and know-how to outlaw regimes around the world, including Iran and North Korea. Thanks to the tireless work of intelligence officers from the United States, the U.K., Pakistan, and other nations, the Khan network is now being dismantled piece by piece.
And we are applying the Bush doctrine: Any person or government that supports, protects, or harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent, and will be held to account.
The first to see this application were the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan by violence while turning that country into a training camp for terrorists. America and our coalition took down the regime in a matter of weeks because of our superior technology, the unmatched skill of our armed forces, and, above all, because we came not as conquerors but as liberators. The Taliban are gone from the scene. The terrorist camps are closed. And our coalition's work there continues--confronting terrorist remnants, training a new Afghan army, and providing security as the new government takes shape. Under President Karzai's leadership, and with a new constitution, the Afghan people are reclaiming their own country and building a nation that is secure, independent, and free.
In Iraq, we took another essential step in the war on terror. Before using force, we tried every possible option to address the threat from Saddam Hussein. Despite 12 years of diplomacy, more than a dozen U.N. Security Council resolutions, hundreds of U.N. weapons inspectors, thousands of flights to enforce the no-fly zones, and even strikes against military targets in Iraq--Saddam Hussein refused to comply with the terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease-fire. All of these measures failed. In October of 2002, the United States Congress voted overwhelmingly to authorize the use of force in Iraq. The next month, the U.N. Security Council passed a unanimous resolution finding Iraq in material breach of its obligations, and vowing serious consequences in the event Saddam Hussein did not fully and immediately comply. When Saddam failed even then to comply, President Bush gave an ultimatum to the dictator--to leave Iraq or be forcibly removed from power.
That ultimatum came one year ago today--twelve months in which Saddam went from palace, to bunker, to spider hole, to jail. A year ago, he was the all-powerful dictator of Iraq, controlling the lives and the future of almost 25 million people. Today, the people of Iraq know that the dictator and his sons will never torment them again. And we can be certain that they will never again threaten Iraq's neighbors or the United States of America.
From the beginning, America has sought--and received--international support for our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the war on terror, we will always seek cooperation from our allies around the world. But as the president has made very clear, there is a difference between leading a coalition of many nations and submitting to the objections of a few. The United States will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country.
We still have work to do in Iraq, and we will see it through. Our forces are conducting swift, precision raids against the terrorists and regime holdouts who still remain. The thugs and assassins in Iraq are desperately trying to shake our will. Just this morning, they conducted a murderous attack on a hotel in Baghdad. Their goal is to prevent the rise of a democracy--but they will fail. Just last week, the Iraqi Governing Council approved a new fundamental law, an essential step toward building a free constitutional democracy in the heart of the Middle East. This great work is part of a forward strategy of freedom that we are pursuing throughout the greater Middle East. By helping nations to build the institutions of freedom, and turning the energies of men and women away from violence, we not only make that region more peaceful, we add to the security of our own region.
The recent bombing in Spain may well be evidence of how fearful the terrorists are of a free and democratic Iraq. But if the murderers of Madrid intended to undermine the transition to democracy in Iraq, they will ultimately fail. Our determination is unshakable. We will stand with the people of Iraq as they build a government based on democracy, tolerance and freedom.
Our steady course has not escaped the attention of the leaders in other countries. Three months ago, after initiating talks with America and Britain, and five days after the capture of Saddam Hussein, the leader of Libya voluntarily committed to disclose and dismantle all of his weapons of mass destruction programs. As we meet today, the dismantling of those programs is underway. I do not believe that Col. Gadhafi just happened to make this very wise decision after many years of pursuing secretive, intensive efforts to develop the world's most dangerous weapons. He was responding to the new realities of the world. Leaders elsewhere are learning that weapons of mass destruction do not bring influence, or prestige, or security--they only invite isolation, and carry other costs. In the post-9/11 world, the United States and our allies will not live at the mercy of terrorists or regimes that could arm them with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. By whatever means are necessary--whether diplomatic or military--we will act to protect the lives and security of the American people.
These past three years, as our country experienced war and national emergency, I have watched our commander in chief make the decisions and set the strategy. I have seen a man who is calm and deliberate--comfortable with responsibility--consistent in his objectives and resolute in his actions. These times have tested the character of our nation, and they have tested the character of our nation's leader. When he makes a commitment, there is no doubt he will follow through. As a result, America's friends know they can trust--and America's enemies know they can fear--the decisive leadership of President George W. Bush.
The president's conduct in leading America through a time of unprecedented danger--his ability to make decisions and stand by them--is a measure that must be applied to the candidate who now opposes him in the election of 2004.
In one of Sen. Kerry's recent observations about foreign policy, he informed his listeners that his ideas have gained strong support, at least among unnamed foreigners he's been spending time with. Sen. Kerry said that he has met with foreign leaders, and I quote, "who can't go out and say this publicly, but boy they look at you and say, 'You've got to win this, you've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy,' things like that."
A few days ago in Pennsylvania, a voter asked Sen. Kerry directly who these foreign leaders are. Sen. Kerry said, "That's none of your business." But it is our business when a candidate for president claims the political endorsement of foreign leaders. At the very least, we have a right to know what he is saying to foreign leaders that makes them so supportive of his candidacy. American voters are the ones charged with determining the outcome of this election--not unnamed foreign leaders.
Sen. Kerry's voting record on national security raises some important questions all by itself. Let's begin with the matter of how Iraq and Saddam Hussein should have been dealt with. Sen. Kerry was in the minority of senators who voted against the Persian Gulf War in 1991. At the time, he expressed the view that our international coalition consisted of "shadow battlefield allies who barely carry a burden." Last year, as we prepared to liberate Iraq, he recalled the Persian Gulf coalition a little differently. He said it was a "strong coalition," and a model to be followed.
Six years after the Gulf War, in 1997, Saddam Hussein was still defying the terms of the cease-fire. And as President Bill Clinton considered military action against Iraq, he found a true believer in John Kerry. The senator from Massachusetts said, "Should the resolve of our allies wane, the United States must not lose its resolve to take action." He further warned that if Saddam Hussein were not held to account for violation of U.N. resolutions, some future conflict would have " greater consequence." In 1998, Sen. Kerry indicated his support for regime change, with ground troops if necessary. And, of course, when Congress voted in October of 2002, Sen. Kerry voted to authorize military action if Saddam refused to comply with U.N. demands.
A neutral observer, looking at these elements of Sen. Kerry's record, would assume that Sen. Kerry supported military action against Saddam Hussein. The senator himself now tells us otherwise. In January he was asked on TV if he was, "one of the antiwar candidates." He replied, "I am." He now says he was voting only to "threaten the use of force," not actually to use force.
Even if we set aside these inconsistencies and changing rationales, at least this much is clear: Had the decision belonged to Sen. Kerry, Saddam Hussein would still be in power, today, in Iraq. In fact, Saddam Hussein would almost certainly still be in control of Kuwait.
Sen. Kerry speaks often about the need for international cooperation, and has vowed to usher in a "golden age of American diplomacy." He is fond of mentioning that some countries did not support America's actions in Iraq. Yet of the many nations that have joined our coalition--allies and friends of the United States--Sen. Kerry speaks with open contempt. Great Britain, Australia, Italy, Spain, Poland and more than 20 other nations have contributed and sacrificed for the freedom of the Iraqi people. Sen. Kerry calls these countries, quote, "window dressing." They are, in his words, "a coalition of the coerced and the bribed."
Many questions come to mind, but the first is this: How would Sen. Kerry describe Great Britain--coerced, or bribed? Or Italy--which recently lost 19 citizens, killed by terrorists in Najaf--was Italy's contribution just window dressing? If such dismissive terms are the vernacular of the golden age of diplomacy Sen. Kerry promises, we are left to wonder which nations would care to join any future coalition. He speaks as if only those who openly oppose America's objectives have a chance of earning his respect. Sen. Kerry's characterization of our good allies is ungrateful to nations that have withstood danger, hardship, and insult for standing with America in the cause of freedom.
Sen. Kerry has also had a few things to say about support for our troops now on the ground in Iraq. Among other criticisms, he has asserted that those troops are not receiving the materiel support they need. Just this morning, he again gave the example of body armor, which he said our administration failed to supply. May I remind the senator that last November, at the president's request, Congress passed an $87 billion supplemental appropriation. This legislation was essential to our ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan--providing funding for body armor and other vital equipment; hazard pay; health benefits; ammunition; fuel, and spare parts for our military. The legislation passed overwhelmingly, with a vote in the Senate of 87-12. Sen. Kerry voted "no." I note that yesterday, attempting to clarify the matter, Sen. Kerry said, quote, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." It's a true fact.
On national security, the senator has shown at least one measure of consistency. Over the years, he has repeatedly voted against weapons systems for the military. He voted against the Apache helicopter, against the Tomahawk cruise missile, against even the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. He has also been a reliable vote against military pay increases--opposing them no fewer than 12 times.
Many of these very weapons systems have been used by our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and are proving to be valuable assets in the war on terror. In his defense, of course, Sen. Kerry has questioned whether the war on terror is really a war at all. Recently he said, and I quote, "I don't want to use that terminology." In his view, opposing terrorism is far less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering, law enforcement operation. As we have seen, however, that approach was tried before, and proved entirely inadequate to protecting the American people from the terrorists who are quite certain they are at war with us--and are comfortable using that terminology.
I leave it for Sen. Kerry to explain, or explain away, his votes and his statements about the war on terror, our cause in Iraq, the allies who serve with us and the needs of our military. Whatever the explanation, whatever nuances he might fault us for neglecting, it is not an impressive record for someone who aspires to become commander in chief in this time of testing for our country. In his years in Washington, Sen. Kerry has been one vote of a hundred in the United States Senate--and fortunately on matters of national security, he was very often in the minority. But the presidency is an entirely different proposition. The president always casts the deciding vote. And the senator from Massachusetts has given us ample doubts about his judgment and the attitude he brings to bear on vital issues of national security.
The American people will have a clear choice in the election of 2004, at least as clear as any since the election of 1984. In more than three years as president, George W. Bush has built a national security record of his own. America has come to know the president after one of the worst days in our history. He saw America through tragedy. He has kept the nation's enemies in desperate flight, and under his leadership, our country has once again led the armies of liberation, freeing 50 million souls from tyranny, and making our nation and the world more secure.
All Americans, regardless of political party, can be proud of what our nation has achieved in this historic time, when so many depended on us, and all the world was watching. And I have been very proud to work with a president who--like other presidents we have known--has shown, in his own conduct, the optimism, and strength, and decency of the great nation he serves.
Mr. Cheney is vice president of the United States.
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Don't Get LOST
The White House toys with signing a very Kerry treaty.
In the wake of international terrorism's most-successful strategic attack since September 11, 2001, the differences between Sen. John Kerry and President Bush about how the war on terror should be waged have become as clear as, well, the differences between the outgoing Spanish premier and his successor.
To be sure, even before last Thursday's murderous explosions in Madrid, Senator Kerry and his surrogates were denouncing the war in Iraq on the grounds that President Bush failed to get the U.N.'s permission for it -- and then was unable to turn the governance of the country post-Saddam over to the so-called "international community." This theme has, however, received mantra-like repetition by the Democratic candidate and his echo chamber ever since the terrorists took down Spain's government.
The good news is that the Bush administration has finally launched a powerful counterattack. Just about every senior national-security official from President Bush on down has suddenly been made available to explain the logic of removing Saddam Hussein from power as an indispensable part of the war on terror. They and key legislators (like Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee) have at last gone on offense in response to the ceaseless, direct, and indirect attacks on the Bush team's integrity as it made the case for draining the "swamp" that was Saddam's terrorist-sponsoring, WMD-wielding Iraq.
Perhaps most importantly, President Bush and his advocates have directly challenged Senator Kerry, et.al., with respect to what may prove to be the most important foreign-policy issue of the 2004 campaign: John Kerry's worldview that U.S. freedom of action around the world can safely -- and, indeed, as a practical matter must -- be subordinated to the U.N.'s superior judgment. In a powerful example of the assault now being inflicted on the Kerry record and candidacy, Vice President Cheney declared yesterday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library: "The United States will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country."
The bad news is that the Bush administration risks grievously blurring where it stands on the appropriate, limited role of the United Nations in determining our security and other interests with its advocacy of a treaty that President Reagan properly rejected 22 years ago. As was noted in this space on February 26, the administration's declared support for the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) caused it to be approved unanimously by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- even though this accord would constitute the most egregious transfer of American sovereignty, wealth, and power to the U.N. since the founding of that "world body." In fact, never before in the history of the world has any nation voluntarily engaged in such a sweeping transfer to anyone.
This is the case because LOST creates a new supranational agency, the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which will have control of seven-tenths of the world surface area, i.e., the planet's international waters. That control will enable the ISA and a court created to adjudicate and enforce its edicts the right to determine who does what, where, when, and how in the oceans under its purview. This applies first and foremost to exploration and exploitation of the mineral and oil and gas deposits on or under the seabeds -- an authority that will enable the U.N. for the first time to impose what amount to taxes on commercial activities.
LOST, however, will also interfere with America's sovereign exercise of freedom of the seas in ways that will have an adverse effect on national security, especially in the post-9/11 world. Incredibly, it will preclude, for example, the president's important new Proliferation Security Initiative. PSI is a multinational arrangement whereby ships on the high seas that are suspected of engaging in the transfer of WMD-related equipment can be intercepted, searched, and, where appropriate, seized. Its value was demonstrated in the recent interception of nuclear equipment headed to Libya.
Similarly, LOST will define intelligence collection in and submerged transit of territorial waters to be incompatible with the treaty's requirements that foreign powers conduct themselves in such seas only with "peaceful intent." The last thing we need is for some U.N. court -- or U.S. lawyers in its thrall -- to make it more difficult for us to conduct sensitive counterterrorism operations in the world's littorals.
Since my last column on this subject, there have been several notable developments with respect to the Law of the Sea Treaty:
It has become clear that one of the prime movers behind the Bush administration's support for this U.N.-on-steroids treaty is none other than John Turner, a man property-rights activists kept from assuming a senior position in the Interior Department. Correctly seen by that community as a wild-eyed proponent of conservation at the expense of landowners' equities, he was given a consolation prize: a seemingly innocuous post as the State Department's assistant secretary for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs. It turns out that in that position -- and thanks to his longtime friendship with Vice President Cheney -- Turner has greatly advanced what is arguably the most egregious assault on property rights in history.
The United States Navy has trotted out arguments for this treaty that reflect what might be called the River Kwai Syndrome. Like the British senior POW in World War II who couldn't bring himself to blow up a bridge his captors would use to their military advantage, Navy lawyers seem convinced that a bad deal is better than none.
Even though this accord will manifestly interfere with important peacetime naval operations, JAG types tell us they think it will be good for their business if freedom of the seas is guaranteed by a new, U.N.-administered international legal system rather than by U.S. naval power. They speciously assert that a 1994 agreement negotiated by President Clinton fixes the problems that caused President Reagan to reject LOST -- never mind that the Clinton accord does not amend or otherwise formally modify one jot of the treaty.
Fortunately, this nonsense will be exposed to critical examination in coming weeks as two Senate committees, Environment and Public Works and Armed Services, hold hearings on LOST. Their chairmen, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.) and John Warner (R., Va.), respectively, deserve credit for inviting critics of the treaty (including this author) to provide testimony Indiana Republican senator Richard Lugar refused to permit the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to hear before it approved the resolution of ratification. (Other committees that have equities in this fight -- like Governmental Affairs, Commerce, Energy, Intelligence and Finance -- have yet to be heard from.)
The prospect these hearings and the attendant public scrutiny of the Law of the Sea Treaty will precipitate a time-consuming and politically costly debate has prompted Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R., Tenn.) to say that he sees no opportunity for the foreseeable future to bring this accord to the floor. Assuming he is good to his word, still more time will be available to awaken the American people to what is afoot.
Most importantly, one of those people, President George W. Bush, may recently have been awakened to the dangers -- political, as well as strategic and economic -- inherent in this treaty. In response to a question recently put to him by Paul Weyrich, the legendary conservative activist and president of the Free Congress Foundation, President Bush indicated that he was unaware of the Law of the Sea Treaty and his administration's support for it. It can only be hoped that, as he conducts the promised review of LOST, he will make clear he does not want it ratified, now or ever.
Better yet, President Bush should assign his trusted undersecretary of Arms Control and International Security, John Bolton, the job of arranging for LOST to be "unsigned" -- just as he did with respect to the fatally flawed treaty that created the International Criminal Court. Secretary Bolton would be particularly appropriate for this job, since he was also the prime architect of the Proliferation Security Initiative that the Law of the Sea Treaty would eviscerate.
While such developments are generally welcome, one thing curiously has not happened. The alarm about the defective Law of the Sea Treaty has still not been sounded by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. It can only be hoped that, as the Senate hearings on LOST start next week, this oversight will be corrected, ensuring that the treaty is deep-sixed, once and for all.
-- Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy and a contributing editor to NRO.
http://www.nationalreview.com/gaffney/gaffney200403181156.asp
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'Lame duck' Khatami concedes defeat to Iran's hardliners
By Behzad Farsian, in Teheran and Robin Gedye
(Filed: 18/03/2004)
? Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
The reformist President Mohammad Khatami of Iran conceded that he had reached the limits of his powers and would be a lame duck head of state until his term ends next year.
He said he was withdrawing two bills that sought to limit the power of the ruling conservative hardliners "so that the few powers that the president still has are not eliminated. "I have met with defeat," he said.
President Khatami: powerless
One of the bills was intended to increase presidential controls in order to limit constitutional violations by the ruling conservatives.
The other was intended to stop the Guardian Council, the hardline constitutional watchdog, from determining who could run in elections. In February's parliamentary poll it barred about 2,500 candidates.
Mr Khatami said he would continue in office until his term expires in June next year, but his admission of political impotence marked the formal burial of the reform movement on whose now-shattered dreams he swept to power in 1997.
"Since last month's elections parliament has been in the hands of a majority of hardline conservatives," said a former Khatami supporter. "He has merely admitted what the public have known since his second term in office began in 2001: his defeat by the conservatives."
Mr Khatami, who has pursued a policy of appeasement towards the conservative opposition, has consistently excused his lack of progress in introducing reformist laws by insisting that he was powerless to stop hardliners interfering with the country's democratic process.
The president is responsible for enforcing the constitution. But any attempts Mr Khatami has made to prevent hardliners shutting down more than 100 liberal publications, blocking reforms and detaining dozens of pro-reform activists have been ignored. Mr Khatami warned the Guardian Council not to "weaken the system".
He said: "People should know that in certain quarters the president is not seen as Iran's top official after the supreme leader, but merely as a co-ordinator among other institutions."
"It's too late for him to do anything," said a 21-year-old student at Teheran University, once a fervent supporter of the president. "The way he handled the election crisis was awful. If he wanted our support, he should have resigned then and not voted in the [parliamentary] elections."
* Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief United Nations nuclear watchdog, said yesterday that he could not rule out the possibility that Iran has a nuclear weapons programme. He said Iran had been developing a nuclear fuel cycle.
"Have they taken the step from that into weaponisation? I am not yet excluding that possibility," he told a US congressional subcommittee.
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>> TALK TO?
U.S., Iran Are Urged to Talk Over Nuclear Plans
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 18, 2004; Page A28
The United Nations' top nuclear official appealed to President Bush yesterday to begin new talks with Iran as a step toward resolving the controversy over the Islamic nation's aggressive pursuit of nuclear power.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, also urged the administration to support a global freeze on the production of fissile material such as enriched uranium and plutonium. The discovery two years ago of a massive uranium enrichment plant south of Tehran triggered the current diplomatic showdown over Iran's nuclear program.
"This is a different ballgame, and we have to change the rules," ElBaradei told reporters after 45 minutes of meetings with Bush and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
ElBaradei said Iran appears to have resumed cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, four days after Iranian leaders barred a team of IAEA inspectors from entering the country. But he suggested that direct talks with the United States may be key to ending the crisis.
"The best way to resolve these problems is through dialogue," ElBaradei said. Asked whether he had relayed a private message to Bush from the Iranians, ElBaradei declined to comment.
The meeting between Bush and ElBaradei came amid reports of a split within the administration over whether to pursue negotiations with Iran, a country that Bush has labeled part of an "axis of evil."
Yesterday, the Financial Times of London reported that Iran offered 10 months ago to hold secret talks on normalizing relations with the United States. The talks reportedly would address U.S. concerns over Iran's nuclear program as well as the Islamic republic's support of terrorist groups.
The Bush administration did not respond publicly to the call for dialogue. Before the meeting with ElBaradei, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the administration had "not received any official proposals" from Iran, and he played down the usefulness of new talks in resolving the conflict.
"There are obviously a number of concerns we have with regard to Iran [that] they need to address," McClellan said. "We've always said in the past that there are established channels of communication when we have issues of mutual concern to address."
A State Department spokesman yesterday expressed satisfaction with the IAEA's recent moves to pressure Iran into fully disclosing past nuclear activities. On Saturday, the agency's governing board approved a resolution that sharply criticized Iran for failing to acknowledge efforts to acquire advanced centrifuge machines used to enrich uranium.
"We shared the view that the best way to deal with that [Iran's] program is through the IAEA," spokesman J. Adam Ereli said.
Earlier in the day, ElBaradei told a congressional panel that it is too early to tell if Iran's nuclear program was entirely peaceful, as its government contends. Asked if Iran had begun work on nuclear weapons, the IAEA chief said: "The jury is still out."
"We have not yet seen that, but I am not yet excluding that possibility," ElBaradei told the House International Relations Committee's subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia.
During his White House talks, ElBaradei asked the Bush administration to back several of his initiatives to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, including the freeze on the production of fissile material. He also asked for U.S. help in securing supplies of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium that are used as fuel in scores of nuclear research reactors around the world. Such fuels, if obtained by terrorists, could easily be used in making a nuclear bomb.
"We need to have a good plan in place to clean up nuclear materials that are all over the place," ElBaradei said.
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washingtonpost.com
More Private Forces Eyed for Iraq
Green Zone Contractor Would Free U.S. Troops for Other Duties
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 18, 2004; Page A25
The U.S.-led authority in Iraq plans to spend as much as $100 million over 14 months to hire private security forces to protect the Green Zone, the four-square-mile area in Baghdad that houses most U.S. government employees and some of the private contractors working there.
The Green Zone is now guarded primarily by U.S. military forces, but the Coalition Provisional Authority wants to turn much of that work over to contractors to free more U.S. forces to confront a violent insurgency. The companies would employ former military personnel and be responsible for safeguarding the area for the first year after political authority is transferred to an interim Iraqi government on June 30.
Surrounded by 15-foot concrete walls and rings of barbed wire, the Green Zone is on the west bank of the Tigris River and serves as a relatively secure home, office and relaxation area for more than 3,000 people in what is otherwise an increasingly dangerous city.
The car bomb that killed at least 28 yesterday destroyed a hotel across the river and less than a mile from the Green Zone, in a neighborhood where some of the U.S. authority's contractors live and where security is far less robust.
U.S. officials expect attacks by insurgents to increase as the June 30 deadline for the political transition nears, and are struggling to protect employees of the CPA and civilians employed by its contractors.
The U.S. Embassy slated to open in June will be in the Green Zone, though not in Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace that has housed CPA Administrator L. Paul Bremer. Also within the guarded area are the al-Rashid Hotel; the Iraqi Governing Council offices; the Convention Center where news conferences are held, a military police compound; a recreation facility, restaurants; two compounds for food and service employees of contractor Kellogg, Brown & Root; a parking area; and a heliport.
The zone has regularly come under attack in past months. On March 7, seven rockets were fired into the zone, five hitting the al-Rashid Hotel. Saturday night, in what officials said was a first, someone stabbed and badly wounded a U.S. Army officer who was walking inside the gated compound. Dan Senor, chief spokesman of the Coalition Provisional Authority, said Monday that it was not known whether the attacker was Iraqi, American or some other nationality.
Bremer, his staff and Iraqis working with the CPA are now protected by the U.S. military and some private security organizations already on contract. Expanding the commercial security force will "augment coalition military forces and allow coalition military forces to focus on counterterrorism and the highest priority sites within the Green Zone," according to the March 7 solicitation for bids.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters yesterday that the U.S. military is trying to reduce the number of troops inside Baghdad and station them in six bases on the city's perimeter. "That will reduce much but not all of the coalition presence here inside the city of Baghdad, because we certainly will be continuing the presence of American and coalition forces inside to provide a safe and secure environment," said Kimmitt, who did not address plans for hiring additional civilian forces to take over in the Green Zone.
The threats that the private security force will be asked to meet provide a summary of the dangers facing U.S. and coalition personnel 10 months after President Bush declared the main fighting over. The contractor, according to the bid proposal, must be prepared to deal with vehicles containing explosive devices, the improvised explosives planted on roads, "direct fire and ground assaults by upwards of 12 personnel with military rifles, machine guns and RPG [rocket-propelled grenade], indirect fire by mortars and rockets, individual suicide bombers, and employment of other weapons of mass destruction . . . in an unconventional warfare setting."
To meet that challenge, the bidders' personnel must have prior military experience, and those involved directly in force protection must have "operated in U.S., North Atlantic Treaty Organization or other military organizations compatible with NATO standards."
If Iraqis are hired by either the prime contractor or subcontractors, they cannot be former senior members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party or affiliated with any organization the Iraqi Governing Council labeled as prohibited. No contractor or subcontractor can "display the image or likeness of Saddam Hussein or other readily identifiable members of the former regime or symbols of the Baath Party or the former regime in government buildings or public spaces," the solicitation said.
Contractors will also be expected to provide dogs and handlers experienced in detecting explosives to provide 24-hour per day, seven-day-a-week coverage for all entry control points and all other locations, the proposal states.
The bids are due Sunday, and selection will apparently be quick. The winner is expected to begin work on April 1. For its part, the U.S. government will supply housing, meals and minor medical care to the contractor employees along with vaccinations against anthrax and smallpox.
? 2004 The Washington Post Company
Posted by maximpost
at 4:51 PM EST
