>> MS. NOONAN...
The Paragraph
Help the White House make the case for re-election.
Thursday, February 12, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
When you are a conservative and tend to support conservatives, it will come as a surprise, and an unwelcome one, when you ding one, as I dinged President Bush the other day about his "Meet the Press" performance. Of those who responded, about 60% disagreed with me, and the rest were more or less in agreement. Many of those who disagreed with me said they thought the president had done well with Tim Russert, that the interview made clear his decency and sincerity. Others said I was kicking the president when he's down and that's the problem with conservative pundits, they can't be trusted. My answer is the obvious one: It is the job of a writer to write the truth as he sees it, and if it's an uncomfortable truth, then so be it.
But here's what was most interesting to me. The letters in disagreement were often passionate and insisted that Mr. Bush will be re-elected. They were so insistent that I realized: They're nervous out there, the Bush people. If they weren't so nervous, they wouldn't have cared about bad reviews. They wouldn't have been so insistent.
So today, in an attempt to harness and refocus the passion of Bush supporters, a contest. Let's go all Deanian and unleash the power of the internet.
It is February 2004. In nine months, the big election. The White House, even as I type, is in the process of preparing a huge and high-stakes campaign. They have a foe to fight, money with which to fight the foe, and loyal troops who will march.
When the president's men gather to come up with the themes and rhetorical approaches of 2004, there's a big question that more often goes unarticulated, and unnoticed. It is: How to make it new.
Mr. Bush has been president three years. He has presided over a time of dense history. Most of the voters in the country have been paying more attention than usual. We know what's happened.
The Bush people have to roll it all into, say, one speech, which can be distilled to one paragraph, which people will distill to a sentence or two to explain to themselves and others why they support the president for re-election.
Just about now they'd be coming up with the paragraph.
But as they do it they have to make it new. To make you look and notice they have to make it fresh, and succinct, something you believe and remember. And it's got to be true. When the paragraph a president's men come up with is not true, they lose. Jimmy Carter's paragraph in 1980 was: We're not so bad, and at least you know us, and Jimmy is a nice man, and by the way that Reagan guy is just too extreme and radical and right-wingy and nutty. People didn't find Ronald Reagan too extreme. And he wasn't too extreme. He seemed like a possible antidote to failure--Jimmy Carter's failure in the world. The paragraph wasn't true. Mr. Carter lost in a landslide.
Is it easy for a White House to come up with paragraph? No. It's hard. There's so much to say, you don't know what to say.
After a while, presidential staffers become so immersed in the sheer grinding dailyness of the White House that it's hard to step out of the thought stream and characterize it in a new way. Years from now they'll do that in their memoirs, capture the big meanings. But it's hard to do it now, when they're immersed.
Another thing. By the end of a first term, White House staffers have been exhausted by history. Every White House is high stress and high stakes 24/7, 365. You get so tired that your ability to judge your fatigue becomes dull, and you don't even know how tired you are. This White House has dealt with more history and drama than many. When I worked in the White House I used to imagine that when I left I'd do what the Broadway producer Leland Hayward used to do after an opening night. He was so sleep-deprived by the time a show was mounted that he'd go to bed and wake up only to drink milk. He'd sleep 10 hours, get up, drink milk, and go back to bed for another 10 hours. He'd do that for days.
In the past, in the White Houses of Kennedy and LBJ and Nixon, it was tense and grueling, and staffers in those days often dealt with the dailyness of the tension by doing the kinds of things people used to do. They smoked and drank and stayed up late and had intense discussions about the tragedy of governance, and then they'd write it all down in drunken sprawls in their diaries. They partied hearty and thought hard. That stopped in the 1980s. The last sort of rocking White House was that of the abstemious Baptist Mr. Carter, whose young aides flocked to the bars of Georgetown. That's how Hamilton Jordan got in trouble for spitting Amaretto at the Egyptian ambassador's wife. Those were the days.
Now things are so clean that the other night I bumped into an aide to the president and asked with concern if the grueling routine was getting to him, and was he trying to get away from the office enough and go for a hike and get time away from things, room to daydream. He thought for a moment and then told me that on those days that he did not begin with prayer, he became tired. But otherwise, no. He told me the president was in the office at 6:45 a.m. and usually leaves at 6 p.m., so everyone got to go home. I found this remarkable. Not that I hadn't heard it before, I had, we all have, but I thought it was spin. I didn't know it was really true. When I worked for Mr. Reagan I was there till 11 p.m. Anyway, what the aide said seemed so sane and moderate I didn't know whether I wanted to compliment him or smack him. He was rather priggish, but it sounded like he was doing everything right.
A final note on a challenge for this particular administration in putting together the re-election paragraph and making it new. Normally White Houses have a built-in fear of their own political base. It's the base that holds a president's feet to the fire. The anxiety a base causes can be inspirational; it keeps you on your toes. George Bush the elder forgot to fear his base; they reminded him why he should have. George Bush the younger has, since 9/11, been very close with his base. But now, for the first time, that base is a little restless--over immigration, high spending, etc. And the vast American middle has yet to be nailed down. Which means the Bush White House is in a challenging time. They are not used to this kind of challenge. They've been through, every day, a bad time from the world, from terror and diplomatic stress. But they have been on a pretty unbroken winning streak in terms of popularity.
They don't know how to be scared. They probably can't wrap their brains around the idea they should be. Or rather in the abstract they know they should be--they read the papers--but in the particular, in their minds and souls, I doubt they have fully wrapped their brains around it. Which is too bad, because fear makes you sharp.
Now for our challenge. What should the Bush paragraph consist of? How to make it new? How to make it memorable, and true? Readers, you are invited to wrap up in one paragraph what the Bush campaign should say as it unveils itself anew. The White House reads this site. They'll see it. Take the floor and tell them how to do it.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag" (Wall Street Journal Books/Simon & Schuster), which you can buy from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.
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Polish Company to Be Probed on Iraq Deal
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Prosecutors are investigating a Polish company - part of a U.S.-based consortium chosen to equip a new Iraqi army - over allegations it does not have permission to sell weapons abroad, Justice Minister Grzegorz Kurczuk said Friday.
The investigation comes after Polish news reports that Ostrowski Arms is not licensed to export the guns and explosives it is subcontracted to supply for a new Iraq army as part of Nour USA's successful bid.
Polish arms maker Bumar PHZ lost the bid and has asked coalition authorities in Iraq for a detailed explanation of Nour USA's offer. Bumar bid $560 million while Nour USA's winning bid was $327 million. Bumar maintains it would be impossible to meet the technical requirements of the contract for that price.
Poland, which supported the invasion of Iraq and commands nearly 10,000 peacekeepers there, had hoped to be rewarded with an order for the struggling government-owned arms maker.
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Saddam's Brother-In-Law Refused Asylum
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON (AP) - A brother-in-law of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein who sought asylum in Britain last year was refused the right to residency, the government said Friday.
British authorities had not previously spoken of the application by Emad Noures, but in response to a question from a local lawmaker, the Department for Constitutional Affairs said the asylum application was turned down in October.
The department also said a court in Stoke-on-Trent, central England, had rejected an appeal of the ruling.
"Adjudicator Kenneth Gillance would like to make it clear that the asylum appeal of Mr. Emad Noures and family was dismissed on both asylum and human rights grounds," said the statement on behalf of the Immigration Appellate Authority.
The department said Noures' wife was the sister of the captured Iraqi dictator's second wife, Samira Shahbandar.
Officials had previously refused to discuss the result of Noures' application, saying the matter was confidential. The government announced the decision after Mark Fisher, a lawmaker who represents Stoke-on-Trent, filed a query in Parliament last month asking to know the outcome of the hearing.
Noures' whereabouts were unknown.
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Qatari Gov't: Yandarbiyev Assassinated
By JABER AL-HARMI
ASSOCIATED PRESS
DOHA, Qatar (AP) -
Former Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev was assassinated in an explosion that destroyed his car Friday, the Qatari government said.
Yandarbiyev's teenage son was critically wounded in the blast, which occurred as he and his father were driving away from a mosque where they had performed Friday prayers, said the Interior Ministry and a local hospital.
"We are collecting evidence in order to reach the perpetrators," Qatar's chief of security, Mubarak al-Nasr, said on the pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera, which is based in the country.
Yandarbiyev, who was acting president of Chechnya in 1996-97, had been linked to the al-Qaida terror group. Russia had been seeking his extradition from Qatar, where he lived for at least three years, accusing him of ties to kidnappers and international terrorists.
Al-Jazeera and fellow Arabic satellite channel Al-Arabiya reported that two people were killed in the explosion. But the Interior Ministry did not confirm this.
An Interior Ministry official said the explosion at 12:45 p.m. killed Yandarbiyev and injured his 13-year-old son, the official Qatar News Agency reported.
A doctor at Hamad General Hospital told The Associated Press that Yandarbiyev died on his way to the hospital. The doctor said his son was in critical condition.
The doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the father and son were the only casualties brought to the hospital.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast. Such explosions are almost unheard of in Qatar, a quiet state with tight security.
Last year, the United Nations put Yandarbiyev on a list of people with alleged links to the al-Qaida terrorist group, which is blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The U.S. government also put Yandarbiyev on a list of international terrorists who are subject to financial sanctions.
Yandarbiyev was considered a key link in the Chechen rebels' finance network, channeling funds from abroad. He had denied that the Chechen rebels had ties to al-Qaida.
"Yandarbiyev was the main ideologue of the separatists, and therefore of the terrorist organizations bringing Chechnya to such severe consequences," said the president of the Moscow-backed Chechen government, Akhmad Kadyrov.
"He is guilty of everything that has happened," Kadyrov said, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.
The Russian Embassy in Doha had no immediate comment on the killing.
Boris Labusov, a spokesman for Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, a successor to the KGB, said his agency had nothing to do with Yandarbiyev's death, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
A Russian member of parliament, Nikolai Kovalyov, a former director of the Federal Security Service, told Interfax that the killing was probably a vendetta.
"Knowing the (Chechen) national traditions, I would assume that it must have been the result of a blood feud, as they are never forgotten and passed from generation to generation," Kovalyov said.
Al-Jazeera reported the explosion occurred after Yandarbiyev had prayed at a mosque in the upscale residential area of al-Dafnah, a northern suburb of Doha. He had driven only 300 yards from the mosque when the blast happened.
The channel showed a badly mangled and burned SUV, with only its white fender still recognizable. A body, completely wrapped in white sheet, was loaded into a waiting ambulance.
An hour later, the scene was almost clear of debris. A few workers were picking up the last remnants.
Yandarbiyev, who was born in 1952, became vice president of Chechnya under separatist president Dzhokhar Dudayev. He served as acting president during Chechnya's de facto independence in 1996-97. In 1996, he led the rebel delegation in peace negotiations with Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.
A poet and author of children's book, Yandarbiyev became one of the most prominent proponents of radical Islam among the Chechen rebels. He came in third in Chechnya's 1997 presidential elections, behind moderate Aslan Maskhadov and the fiery rebel Shamil Basayev.
During the rule of the Islamic militant Taliban in Aghanistan in 1996-2001, Yandarbiyev opened a Chechen Embassy in the Aghan capital, Kabul, and a consulate in the southern city of Kandahar.
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Barrier Route Change May Have Aided Israel
By GAVIN RABINOWITZ
ASSOCIATED PRESS
JERUSALEM (AP) -
Changes in the proposed route of the West Bank separation barrier could have helped Israel's case before the world court, a government legal adviser said Friday.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said in recent weeks he is considering steps, including route changes, to ease the hardship for Palestinians. Sharon reportedly is ready to move the barrier further westward, closer to Israel, in some areas.
Israel announced Thursday it won't take part in oral hearings before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, saying the judges don't have the authority to rule on the case. The hearings begin Feb. 23.
"If we had changed the route earlier, it could have had an effect (on the hearing). It would have taken the wind out of their (the opponents') sails," said Irit Kahan, head of the international division in Israel's attorney general's office.
"Already some time ago, the government realized that the route of the fence was problematic but they didn't begin to change it in time for the court discussion," Kahan told The Associated Press.
"The issue is not the fence itself, but the route of the fence," Kahan said.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said Israel's decision not to attend the U.N.-mandated court was only the latest instance of Israeli noncooperation with the United Nations.
"They are refusing not only the court of The Hague but many of the United Nations resolutions," he told reporters, in English, at his Ramallah headquarters. "This court of The Hague is according to U.N. resolutions but in spite of that, they are refusing to implement and follow up to it."
Israel says it needs the barrier - a system of fences, trenches and walls that could run for up to 440 miles - to keep out Palestinian attackers.
The Palestinians charge that the barrier constitutes a land grab, since it cuts deep into the West Bank at points to include several Jewish settlements on the "Israeli" side, and it disrupts the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians who can't reach jobs, schools and farmland.
Israel TV's Channel Two reported Thursday that Sharon has decided to shorten the planned route and that three Jewish settlements - Emmanuel, Karnei Shomron and Kedumim - would now be left on the "Palestinian" side of the barrier.
Sharon's office confirmed he is considering changes in the route but would not elaborate.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said the barrier is an attempt by Israel to annex Palestinian land. "If Israel wants to build a security fence, it should do it around its own border," Shaath told a news conference in Tokyo on Friday.
Palestinians fear that the barrier, together with an emerging plan by Sharon for a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank, would torpedo their hopes to set up a state in all these areas.
Sharon said he would go ahead with the one-sided move if there is no progress on the U.S. backed "road map" peace plan in the next few months. The plan has ground to a standstill, with both sides not living up to commitments.
On Thursday, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States supports the dismantling of settlements. He said U.S. representatives will travel to the region in coming days to "make sure we understand them (Sharon's ideas), and how we can use those ideas and hopefully movement on the Palestinian side in security to get this process moving."
French President Jacques Chirac, meanwhile, criticized the West Bank barrier and said it would hamper chances of a two-state solution to the conflict.
"The current route is not in accordance with international law," Chirac said in an interview published Friday in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot.
"The chosen route ... cuts off thousands of Palestinians from their land and makes life difficult for the Palestinian people who are already suffering on a daily basis," Chirac told Yediot.
In other developments Friday:
- The body of a Palestinian man was found in a bullet-riddled car in a field near the West Bank town of Qabatiya. The army said a patrol had come under fire from a vehicle that tried to flee at high speed. Soldiers gave chase and opened fire after the car refused to stop. Rescue workers said dead man was unarmed.
- Israel said it arrested a 27-year-old Palestinian nurse Feb. 11 on suspicion she acted as a conduit between the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah and a Palestinian militant who had allegedly taken refuge in Arafat's headquarters. Palestinian security officials say the militant and another man were arrested Friday by Palestinian forces at the request of the United States. U.S. officials could not immediately be reached for comment Friday.
- In an Israeli hospital, a Palestinian militant died of wounds sustained in a Feb. 1. firefight with troops in the West Bank town of Jericho.
- In Bethlehem, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a militia loosely linked to Arafat's Fatah party, said it killed a local man, Khaled Abu Assal, 28, after he allegedly confessed to collaborating with Israel. The body was found dumped in a nearby neighborhood.
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Ship Sinks As Snowstorm Sweeps Turkey
By ESRA AYGIN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) -
Rescuers battled strong winds Friday in the search for 21 crew members of a cargo ship that sank in the Black Sea as a snowstorm sweeping out of the Balkans disrupted travel across Turkey and Greece.
The storm dumped up to 14 inches of snow in Istanbul, and lesser amounts fell in Athens, blanketing the Acropolis and other ancient monuments. Athens' airport was shut down, as was ferry service to several Greek islands, which also lost power.
Temperatures plunged to 15 degrees in northern suburbs of the Greek capital - a 30-year record, and fell to zero in northern Greece. Istanbul recorded a low of 24 degrees.
The Turkish coast guard searched for the crew of the 592-foot coal freighter Hera, a Cambodian-flagged vessel that sank near the entrance of the Bosporus, said official Baris Tozar. Strong winds were disrupting rescue efforts, he said.
Two other cargo ships collided because of poor visibility, leaving one crew member missing. Two more ships ran aground due to strong winds, as the storm forced officials to close the Bosporus and Dardanelles to traffic for a second day.
Authorities canceled flights at Istanbul's main airport, stranding thousands of passengers. Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who visited Turkey on Thursday, was among those stuck in Istanbul, the Anatolia news agency said.
The storm closed roads and schools, knocked out power to some Istanbul neighborhoods and forced city officials turned a sports complex into an emergency shelter for about 100 homeless.
In Greece, hundreds of motorists were stranded by the snow along a main highway, and the military sent armored personnel carriers to help.
"The priority is to free these people before nightfall and before the temperatures drop again," Interior Minister Nikos Alivizatos said. "We're advising people to stay indoors and not use the roads."
Rescuers handed out blankets and dried food to the stuck travelers who were unprepared for the weather, he said.
All planes were grounded at Athens International Airport and flights to the capital were diverted to other cities. Thirteen regional airports were also closed, and ferry services were canceled.
An emergency was declared for three Aegean Sea islands - Tinos, Andros and Syros - which were left without power. Most schools around the country were closed.
Ambulance services were flooded with calls.
The snow disrupted Greece's election campaign, which is in full swing ahead of the March 7 balloting. Candidates canceled appearances and instead donned heavy coats to tour snowbound suburbs and shelters.
Socialist candidate George Papandreou had been due to hand over his portfolio as foreign minister to his deputy, Tassos Giannistis, but the ceremony was postponed.
In Romania, high waves and winds gusting to 50 mph disrupted shipping at three Black Sea ports and halted navigation on parts of the Danube.
Two cargo vessels put out to sea from the port of Constanta-South Agigea to avoid being damaged. Authorities were working to bring the vessels back into port, said Capt. Alexandru Mezei, head of the local naval authority.
Snow and ice slowed road traffic in the country and forced the closure of several mountain roads in northern Romania. Temperatures plunged to 31 below zero in central Romania, while in the capital of Bucharest, a low of 9 below was recorded, making it the coldest day of the year.
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Venezuela Cautioned on Recall Petitions
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -
The Organization of American States and the U.S.-based Carter Center cautioned Venezuelan election officials Friday against using technicalities to reject petitions for a recall vote against President Hugo Chavez.
"The signer's will and intention should be privileged over any technicality," said Jennifer McCoy, director of the Carter Center's Americas program, after she and OAS delegate Fernando Jaramillo met with National Elections Council directors.
The OAS and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's Atlanta-based center are observing the verification of more than 3.4 million signatures opposition leaders claim to have turned in to demand the recall. The two organizations have led international peacekeeping efforts in Venezuela since a 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chavez.
McCoy's comments came amid a controversy over what to do with thousands of petition sheets in which staff at sign-up centers filled out basic personal information for citizens - and had signers simply sign their names. Election officials are at odds over whether that procedure violated election rules.
The dispute has delayed the verification process and added to tensions as the council prepares to decide whether to call the vote. Two small protests against the delays turned violent Thursday, with 20 people hurt.
Opponents were planning a march Saturday to the Caracas offices of the elections council, where Chavez sympathizers are camped out, ready for confrontation.
Venezuela is deeply torn between those who accuse Chavez of trampling over democratic institutions and those who consider him a champion of the poor.
McCoy urged Venezuelans to be patient and continue to have faith in the council.
Election officials, who had originally promised to complete the verification Friday, said they would try to finish by the end of the month.
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Best Idea Yet for Fund Reform -- 12b-1 Fee Begone: Chet Currier
Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) -- After six months of wrangling over scandals in mutual funds, a bright new idea has just come to the fore.
Abolish 12b-1 fees, the charges that are collected from the assets of many funds to pay for distribution and marketing. Jettison them! Deep-six them! Send them someplace from which they can never return.
Senator Peter Fitzgerald, an Illinois Republican who is one of those making the suggestion, calls these fees ``disguised loads,'' or sales charges, which are all too often used in ``confusing and misleading'' ways.
That Fitzgerald and his co-sponsors made 12b-1 fees a centerpiece of the fund-reform bill they proposed this week came as something of a surprise. These fees haven't figured directly in any of the misbehavior in the fund business uncovered since last September by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and others. Until now they have seldom occupied more than an incidental place in the debate.
Front and Center
It's high time they moved front and center. In the 24 years since they were authorized by the Securities and Exchange Commission, 12b-1 fees have embodied much of what's wrong in the relationship between fund companies and their investors.
Critics never saw much sense in the idea of letting fund management take money from existing shareholders to pay for the costs of bringing in new investors. Why should a fund's owners foot the bill when the benefits of increasing size went not to them but to the managers, in the form of bigger management fees?
Not to worry, 12b-1 fee supporters assured everyone in 1980. They told us existing fund investors would see benefits too, because expenses would be lower per dollar in a larger fund. Well, after two decades, says a white paper published by Fitzgerald this week, ``it does not appear that investors have benefited from economies of scale.''
That's not the only sore point about 12b-1s, which derive their name from a section of basic mutual-fund law. They may look small on paper at, say, 0.25 of 1 percent per year. But over time that money adds up, especially on top of the other costs of fund investing.
Fees Outlive Funds
Fund managers took such a liking to 12b-1s that they sometimes kept charging them even after they closed a fund to new investors. ``That's right,'' the independent fund researcher Morningstar Inc. once observed. ``Funds that are no longer marketing themselves are charging marketing fees.''
The fund scandals of 2003-04 have engendered some bad ideas for reform, including suggestions to regulate the level of fund fees -- as if regulators or legislators were better equipped than the give-and-take of a highly competitive free market to determine a fair price.
The 12b-1 proposal, Fitzgerald takes pains to point out, makes no such judgment. The bill ``does NOT prohibit distribution expenses or sales charges,'' he says. ``Charging a load is fully justified -- but call it a load, make it account-based, and don't disguise it in a permanent asset-based distribution fee.''
In laymen's language, he's urging that investors be told clearly whenever they are being charged for something, and that all investors not be obliged to pay for what might only apply to some.
Where the Devil Lurks
The basic principles of managing money in mutual funds haven't changed much since the first funds began to operate in the U.S. 80 years ago. What has changed much more drastically is the way funds are marketed and sold -- for instance, through discount brokers' fund marketplaces, which may charge what amounts to a listing fee.
Also, a huge part of funds' business is now done through employer-sponsored 401(k) plans. Where mutual funds are concerned, the devil is in the distribution.
The simple old distinction between load and no-load funds has been blurred in many ways. In the midst of that blurry area dwell 12b-1 fees.
``Scandal, cynicism and revolt are inevitable consequences of confusing and opaque cost schemes,'' Fitzgerald says in his white paper.
The 12b-1 fee was a bad idea from the start, and has had 24 years to prove it. There may never be a better time than now to put it to rest.
To contact the writer of this column:
Chet Currier in New York, or ccurrier@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor of this column:
Bill Ahearn in New York, or bahearn@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: February 13, 2004 00:03 EST
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Scientists Develop New Hydrogen Reactor
By GREGG AAMOT
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -
Researchers say they have produced hydrogen from ethanol in a prototype reactor small enough and efficient enough to heat small homes and power cars.
The development could help open the way for cleaner-burning technology at home and on the road.
Current methods of producing hydrogen from ethanol require large refineries and copious amounts of fossil fuels, the University of Minnesota researchers said.
The reactor is a relatively tiny 2-foot-high apparatus of tubes and wires that creates hydrogen from corn-based ethanol. A fuel cell, which acts like a battery, then generates power.
"This points to a way to make renewable hydrogen that may be economical and available," said Lanny Schmidt, a chemical engineer who led the study. The work was outlined in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
Hydrogen power itself is hardly a new idea. Hydrogen fuel cells already propel experimental vehicles and supply power for some buildings. NASA has used them on spacecraft for decades.
But hydrogen is expensive to make and uses fossil fuels. The researchers say their reactor will produce hydrogen exclusively from ethanol and do it cheaply enough so people can buy hydrogen fuel cells for personal use.
They also believe their technology could be used to convert ethanol to hydrogen at fuel stations when cars that run solely on hydrogen enter the mass market.
Hydrogen does not emit any pollution or greenhouse gases. But unlike oil or coal, hydrogen must be produced - there are no natural stores of it waiting to be pumped or dug out of the ground.
The new technology holds economic potential for Midwest farmers, who are leaders in the production of corn-based ethanol.
George Sverdrup, a technology manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, said he was encouraged by the research.
"When hydrogen takes a foothold and penetrates the marketplace, it will probably come from a variety of sources and be produced by a variety of techniques," he said. "So this particular advance and technology that Minnesota is reporting on would be one component in a big system."
The Minnesota researchers envision people buying ethanol to power the small fuel cell in their basements. The cell could produce 1 kilowatt of power, nearly enough for an average home.
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With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
For the story behind the story...
Thursday, Feb. 12, 2004
Arnot: NBC Dumped Me for Finding Positive News in Iraq
NBC has refused to renew the contract of Iraq correspondent Dr. Bob Arnot. He says the reason is that he dares to find progress.
"In a 1,300-word e-mail to NBC News president Neal Shapiro, written in December 2003 and obtained by NYTV, Dr. Arnot called NBC News' coverage of Iraq biased. He argued that keeping him in Iraq and on NBC could go far in rectifying that," the New York Observer's Joe Hagan reported today.
"Dr. Arnot included excerpts from an e-mail from Jim Keelor, president of Liberty Broadcasting, which owns eight NBC stations throughout the South. Mr. Keelor had written NBC, stating that "the networks are pretty much ignoring" the good-news stories in Iraq. 'The definition of news would incorporate some of these stories,' he wrote. 'Hence the Fox News surge.'"
Keelor told the Observer: "Of course it's political. Journalism and news is what unusual [events] happened that day. And if the schools are operating, they can say that's usual. My response to that is, 'The hell it is.' My concern there is that almost everything that has occurred in Iraq since the war started is unexpected."
In his letter to Shapiro, Arnot wondered, as has the Bush administration, why the network refused to admit positive developments in Iraq. "As you know, I have regularly pitched most of these stories contained in the note to Nightly, Today and directly to you. Every single story has been rejected."
Arnot told the Observer he knew for "a fact" that Shapiro's problem with his reporting was that "it was just very positive."
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IRAQ PHASE IV...
TRANSFERRING SOVEREIGNTY
Democracy Delayed
Is Democracy Denied
The sooner elections are held in Iraq the fewer American lives will be lost.
BY HUSSAIN AL-SHAHRISTANI
Thursday, February 12, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
A U.N. electoral fact-finding team has arrived in Iraq to discuss with local leaders and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) the possibility of holding elections. Iraqis expect the U.N. experts to give advice on the best way to organize elections through which they choose the people they can trust to rule them.
Since the fall of the regime, I have led numerous humanitarian and developmental projects in different regions of Iraq. Village elders, community leaders and professionals tell me of their dreams for a new Iraq. I am struck by the deep-rooted concern and fear felt by these people that the occupying forces will impose a new dictatorship on them that may cost them further hundreds of thousands of lives. Fair and free elections, they insist, are their only guarantee of living as free people.
It was this very pulse of the nation that the Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani touched when he first advised the CPA, in June 2003, to prepare for elections where all Iraqis--irrespective of gender, religion, sect or ethnicity--could vote to elect their representatives to a national assembly. Ever since, he has continuously reminded the U.S. that it occupied Iraq to bring democracy, which means free elections, and that it must deliver on that promise.
Iraqis are told by the CPA that the reasons for delaying elections are the absence of voter registration lists and the security situation. However, in mid-2003 the Iraqi Central Bureau of Statistics, the body responsible for preparing voter lists, issued a report concluding that it could prepare lists and arrange for elections before the end of 2003. The CPA and the Transitional Governing Council chose to ignore this report, and together signed an agreement that would allow them to handpick transitional assembly members through a complex caucus process. The Nov. 15 agreement gave no role to the U.N., and set a timetable for a handover of sovereignty to these handpicked Iraqis by June 30, 2004.
Having recognized that this process violates the fundamental principle of a fair election--one person, one vote--Ayatollah Al-Sistani issued an edict, "[T]he mechanism in place to choose members of the Transitional Legislative Assembly does not guarantee true representation of the Iraqi people. Therefore this mechanism must be replaced with one that guarantees the aforesaid, which is elections."
On the Ayatollah's insistence, the U.N. was invited to send a mission to study how it can help prepare for such elections and to assist in the transition of sovereignty to a legitimate Iraqi authority. This is an extremely important opportunity for the U.N. to exercise its mandate to maintain peace and security in this volatile part of the world, and to uphold the right of nations to self-determination.
The current impasse is far more than a showdown between Iraq's most influential leader and the CPA. It raises the disturbing question of whether Washington truly understands the Iraqi reality. National identity and self-determination are strong forces in Iraq. Instead of dismissing them, the U.S. ought to work with the U.N. to start preparation for a national election under U.N. auspices.
CPA head L. Paul Bremer might be right that there is not enough time now to organize elections by June 2004; but surely preparations could have been made over the last nine months--if, indeed, an election was ever a U.S. priority. He also points out that security conditions are not conducive to elections; yet clearly, impeding the legitimate demand for direct and fair elections would further aggravate ethnic and sectarian tensions.
The U.S. administration should not force its agenda onto the Iraqi people, based on a U.S. election timetable. The aim should be the creation of a new Iraqi government that has legitimacy in the eyes of its own citizens, so that in the years ahead, a stable, democratic and peaceful Iraq will emerge as a responsible member of the world community. If America is genuinely committed to democracy in the Middle East, then it should avoid handpicking rulers for Iraq. Only a very short-sighted policy would orchestrate a process that leaves behind a government that may be friendly, but will not endure. Without a constitutional process, Iraqis cannot be assured that their basic human and political rights are respected. Failing to engage the people in the political process will further destabilize the country and provide fertile grounds for the remnants of Saddam Hussain's security apparatus to recruit zealots to carry out terrorist acts.
Iraqis--Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen; Muslims and Christians; Sunnis and Shias--have lived together for centuries, and can continue to do so. With its rich cultural heritage, gifted people and natural resources, Iraq can be built into a prosperous, progressive and democratic country. It can be both a model and a locomotive for social and political change in the Middle East. To play this role and make a contribution to stability in this region, Iraqis should be encouraged to move to democracy as soon as they desire.
Al-Sistani is perhaps the only person who can realize both the dreams of the majority of Iraqis, and the declared goal of the U.S.: to create a stable democracy that could potentially transform the Middle East. The U.S. should value the role the Grand Ayatollah is taking to lead the Iraqi people away from militancy and toward the international system of democracy. If Washington plays it right, this path that Al-Sistani spearheaded in Iraq could prove to be the most significant victory in a war on terrorism. Let us hope--and pray--that Washington has the wisdom to seize it.
The most practical way to help Iraq now is to allow the U.N. to work with representatives of all constituents of the Iraqi society to develop a formula for early direct elections--an achievable task. Elections will be held in Iraq, sooner or later. The sooner they are held, and a truly democratic Iraq is established, the fewer Iraqi and American lives will be lost.
Mr. Al-Shahristani is chairman of the standing committee of the Iraqi National Academy of Science. He was held in solitary confinement for 10 years under Saddam Hussein.
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http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd
What is Iraq'd? Click here to find out.
02.12.04
THE BEGINNING OF THE END FOR THE CAUCUSES: U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi announced today that he's behind Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani's plan for direct elections "100 percent because elections are the best means to enable any people to set up a state that serves their interest." He did not say whether or not those elections can be held by June 30, the date set under the November 15 Agreement for the handover of power.
Brahimi's announcement lends Sistani crucial support for getting at least half of what he wants. Sistani objects to the mechanism--the misleadingly named "caucuses"--for establishing an interim government enshrined in the U.S. plan, but not the handover timetable. While Brahimi is going to leave Iraq tomorrow, his team will remain to determine whether the timetable for holding elections is realistic or needs to be delayed. He gave another quote seemingly designed to drag Sistani along for a delay: "We are in agreement with [Sistani] that these elections should be prepared well and should take place in the best possible conditions so that it would bring the results which [Sistani] wants and the people of Iraq and the UN [want]."
It's hard to envision how the caucus plan survives, seeing as the United States implored the United Nations to help resolve its elections standoff with Sistani. Already our favored Iraqis, who had supported the caucus proposal, are backing off from both aspects of the U.S. plan--the caucus and the early timetable. As Brahimi's team was set to arrive in Iraq, Adnan Pachachi of the Governing Council said that the United Nations would only make "recommendations" on elections, implying that the Council could reject them. Today Pachachi sounded resigned to early elections:
Every one wants elections if we can have real elections in the time limits we have. ... We all agree that the best way to choose the members of the interim assembly would be through elections and elections will happen if it's not today then after six months.
Pachachi may be a Sunni, but by and large, the Sunnis don't want direct elections because they fear the numerical superiority of the Shia. In order to build a viable, democratic Iraq, the Sunnis--who have made up the bulk of the insurgency--simply have to feel like stakeholders. The United Nations moving closer to Sistani's position not only doesn't resolve that problem, it inflames it, which makes it even more imperative that any plan adopted for the transfer of power find some mechanism to accommodate the Sunnis. It would be prudent to accept a delay in transferring power in order to figure out how to square the circle. While it's not immediately clear if Sistani would accept a delay, direct elections have been his principal demand, and he's been open to compromise all throughout the U.S. occupation--and even since the November 15 Agreement, when his demands hardened. Now that the United Nations is blessing his plan, it will be easier to persuade him to wait a few months to conduct the elections.
But will it be easier to persuade Washington? Here's The New York Times: "American officials have also said they are willing to accept a compromise solution, though they insist that the White House wants to try to stick to the handover date of June 30." Even if the CPA and the White House scrap the caucus plan, it remains an open question whether they'll move away from the handover deadline and risk keeping the occupation going through the election. To judge from today's briefing by Dan Senor of the CPA, the early answer is no:
We are focused on handover of sovereignty on June 30th, as explicitly outlined in the November 15th agreement between the coalition and the Governing Council.
Senor was actually making this point not about Brahimi's statement, which he professed not to have seen, but about the Zarqawi terrorism memo (which I wrote about below). It seems that the memo has fortified CPA opinion that the handover date is non-negotiable:
We are focused like a laser beam on handover of authority this summer, and Mr. Zarqawi is clearly focused on it as a laser beam--focused like a laser beam on our handover date. We are not moving around that date; Mr. Zarqawi understands that. And it is especially important that in light of the fact--as is evidenced by this memorandum, in light of the fact that Mr. Zarqawi recognizes that one of the greatest bulwarks against his efforts to spread terror in Iraq will be Iraqi control of the government, it is especially important that we stick to our plan and move forward this implementation.
As noted below, the greatest threat to Iraq isn't from Zarqawi, Ansar Al Islam, or Al Qaeda. It's from Sunni-Shia divides over creating the transitional national assembly. Unfortunately, it looks like the United States is focused more on the smaller threat. This is a fast-moving story on a complicated issue, so surely things will change. But for now, the United States appears to be sticking to the handover date.
posted 8:00 p.m.
E-mail Iraq'd
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>> ON ZARQAWI...
FALSE COMFORT: The other day I laid out my suspicions about the so-called Zarqawi memo. In response to some e-mails, let me clarify that I don't believe the military or the CPA just made the memo up. What I wonder about is whether Zarqawi is really its author--or, if he is, how connected to bin Laden he in fact is. At yesterday morning's CPA briefing, Christopher Dickey of Newsweek and Paul Martin of The Washington Times attempted, with little success, to get more information about the document's authorship and the circumstances surrounding its capture:
Q. Christopher Dickey with Newsweek. Can you tell us a little bit more about how this document was found? The New York Times has carried now two versions. One says the Americans found it directly. William Safire says it was found by the pesh merga. Who found this thing and how was it found?
GEN. [MARK] KIMMITT: The important thing is that we have this document in our hands. How it was found is not as important as the fact that we have it, we've reviewed it, we understand what it is saying, and we can use it, as Mr. Senor said, to understand the thought process behind the terrorists, so that we can use that in future operations to kill or capture those that would create and conduct anti-coalition and anti-Iraqi operations.
MR. [DAN] SENOR: Yeah. For operational security reasons, and certainly issues related to sources and methods and intelligence gathering, we cannot reveal at this time all the details that were involved in the discovery of the memorandum. But as General Kimmitt has said, it is important to have the opportunity to climb into a mind of an individual who is planning, and we believe executing, a major terror campaign inside Iraq.
Yes?
Q. Paul Martin from Washington Times and the Mirror. Could we ask, first of all, what evidence there is that Zarqawi himself wrote the document? Is his signature on the document? How do we know it's Zarqawi, is the first question.
Secondly, you mentioned the date of the 30th of June. What do you expect both from the IGC side and your own side to change after the 30th of June in terms of your security threats and responses?
GEN. KIMMITT: To answer the first question: we're satisfied that given the initial conditions under which we obtained the document, and follow-on intelligence that has been obtained since we picked up the document, that this can be traced back to Zarqawi.
MR. SENOR: Mr. Zarqawi says in the memo, to your second, Paul--Mr. Zarqawi says in the memo that if the Iraqis assume effective control of their own government, the terrorists, the al Qaeda elements, will lose their quote-unquote, "pretext" to wage terror in this country--and that he says they will literally have to pack up and go somewhere else, find another battle.
We hope he's right, because that's the path we're on; we are on the path towards handing over sovereignty and we are on the path towards defeating these terrorists. The two are inextricably linked.
Senor's comments here are far more worrisome than his reluctance to answer questions about the memo. (Surely it's conceivable that there indeed are sources-and-methods reasons for not revealing either how the document was obtained or how its authorship was verified.) He seems to take a kind of comfort from the memo that the course the U.S. is pursuing in Iraq is the right one:
It is very clear that the terrorist strategy will fail if America continues to show its resolve the coalition has demonstrated over the past 10 months. And the terrorist strategy will fail if we hand over sovereignty to the Iraqi people on June 30th as outlined in the November 15th political agreement.
But let's not forget that Islamist terrorism represents only a fraction of the problems Iraq is facing. In fact, taking the memo at face value indicates precisely that, since its author bemoans the inability of Sunnis to join in the jihad. For months, U.S. military officials have said that they believe the vast majority of violence is attributable to Baathists. Obviously, we need to go on the offensive against whatever terrorists have infiltrated Iraq. But even if we get every last terrorist, we're not going to have resolved either the political or the security problems that Iraq is facing--and if we want to address those vastly more difficult and pressing concerns, the path we're on is, at best, seriously inadequate, and at worst, dangerously counterproductive. Even if we assume that the memo illuminates the terrorists' strategy for the next few months, and we further assume that our strategy is as well configured to thwart the terrorists as Senor says, we'll still be addressing the lesser threat and not the greater one. That should be cause both for alarm and for redrawing our plans--not satisfaction.
Another journalist asked Kimmitt about how well our security strategy is, in fact, configured to deal with potential terror attacks indicated by the memo.
Q. Gavin Mostrom (ph), CNN. You say that you're expecting a spike in violent incidents in the lead up to the June 30 handover and that you are taking all the necessary precautions. If that's the case, why at this very time are we seeing the military essentially roll back to eight bases, for instance in Baghdad, while you're expecting this spike to occur? ...
GEN. KIMMITT: ... With regards to the first question about the coalition forces pulling back from Baghdad, again, this seems to be misinterpreted time after time after time. The U.S. and coalition forces are not pulling out of Baghdad. The sum total of the forces that are providing security inside Baghdad are a combination of the coalition forces and the Iraqi security forces, the Iraq Civil Defense Corps, and the Iraqi police and the new Iraqi army, the Iraqi security forces. There is a net amount of security that is provided by both those organizations.
The intent has been, for a long period of time, to establish and move to a process called local control; which is as the Iraqis are capable of picking up the security responsibility themselves, then it is appropriate for the coalition to reduce their visibility. It's far more effective to have Iraqi security forces walking the streets of Baghdad than to have coalition forces do that.
But that is not to suggest that the coalition forces are moving a thousand miles away nor a hundred miles away, they're moving outside to the outskirts of Baghdad. Much like a fireman--where they have up to this point been like the policemen walking up and down the streets, the Iraqi security forces are now capable of providing that function. The coalition forces will move to the outskirts of the city, like the firemen. Their response time may increase from about five minutes to 15 minutes, but they will be inside their bases still conducting some measure of patrol, but like a good fire department, come out when necessary. The first responder, the first person on the scene will continue to be, and appropriately be, the Iraqi security forces. It is their country moving towards sovereignty and self- sufficiency. But while we're going through that transition period, the coalition will stand by, ready to help, but appropriately move to a less visible position, but nonetheless, still providing the same measure of security. The net effect of security should be the same, and more appropriately, with an Iraqi flag on the left shoulder rather than a coalition flag on the left shoulder.
Huh? To the extent this means anything, Kimmitt is conceding that new word of terrorist attacks isn't influencing our security posture. If "the intent has been, for a long period of time, to establish ... local control," then clearly the calculus for this plan was created before we received what U.S. officials are considering credible warnings of forthcoming attacks. To not permit new information about increased threats to change our security planning is playing with fire.
Second, Kimmitt is relying on the premise that "the Iraqis are capable of picking up the security responsibilities themselves." But we've rushed these Iraqi security forces through training. There's no possible way they can match the capabilities--and certainly not the firepower--of the First Armored Division. Furthermore, as Kimmitt noted, the plan to Iraqify security responsibilities in Baghdad was hatched before we got hold of this memo. If we believe there is an increased likelihood of terror attacks, is this really the time we want to gamble on the unproven abilities of Iraqi security forces?
Finally, thwarting terrorism is nothing like fighting a fire. Kimmitt says "the first responder, the first person on the scene will continue to be, and appropriately be, the Iraqi security forces. It is their country moving towards sovereignty and self-sufficiency." But neither the U.S. nor the Iraqis should be responding to terrorism--we need to prevent it. If we're responding to terrorist attacks, that would testify to our insufficient security capabilities.
One might object that if we increase our military presence in Baghdad (or anywhere else), we play into the hands of the memo's author--assume for a second that the memo is unproblematic--who wants to draw the U.S. into a bloody conflict and have us squander what remains of Iraqi goodwill through heavy-handed tactics. But look what happens when the fragile sense of security in Iraq breaks down: After yesterday's suicide bombings, Iraqis began furiously chanting anti-U.S. slogans, blaming us for being unable to provide safety. Given a choice between Iraqis angry at us because of our inability to prevent attacks and Iraqis angry at us because of our ability to prevent attacks, we should choose the strategy that angers Iraqis while saving lives.
This memo seems to have convinced U.S. officials in Iraq that the course we're on is self-evidently correct. That's not a conceit that we, or Iraqis, can afford.
posted 10:27 a.m.
E-mail Iraq'd
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Zarkawi's Cry
A terrorist's words of despair.
http://www.nationalreview.com/document/zarkawi200402121818.asp
An NRO Primary Document
EDITOR'S NOTE: Earlier this week, Coalition officials discovered a letter believed to have been written by terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to al Qaeda operatives (see Michael Ledeen here). Below is the text of the letter, as translated and distributed by the Coalition Provisional Authority.
1. The foreign Mujahidin: Their numbers continue to be small, compared to the large nature of the expected battle. We know that there are enough good groups and jihad is continuing, despite the negative rumors. What is preventing us from making a general call to arms is the fact that the country of Iraq has no mountains in which to seek refuge, or forest in which to hide. Our presence is apparent and our movement is out in the open. Eyes are everywhere. The enemy is before us and the sea is behind us. Many Iraqis would honor you as a guest and give you refuge, for you are a Muslim brother; however, they will not allow you to make their homes a base for operations or a safe house. People who will allow you to do such things are very rare, rarer than red sulfur. Therefore, it has been extremely difficult to lodge and keep safe a number of brothers, and also train new recruits. Praised be to Allah, however, with relentless effort and searching we have acquired some places and their numbers are increasing, to become base points for the brothers who will spark war and bring the people of this country into a real battle with god's will.
2. The present and future: there is no doubt that American losses were significant because they are spread thin amongst the people and because it is easy to get weapons. This is a fact that makes them easy targets, attractive for the believers. America, however, has no intention of leaving, no matter how many wounded nor how bloody it becomes. It is looking to a near future, when it will remain safe in its bases, while handing over control of Iraq to a bastard government with an army and police force that will bring back the time of (saddam) Husayn and his cohorts. (headquarters comment: it is not clear to whom "it" is referring, but it appears to mean the united states.) There is no doubt that our field of movement is shrinking and the grip around the throat of the Mujahidin has begun to tighten. With the spread of the army and police, our future is becoming frightening.
3. So where are we? Despite few supporters, lack of friends, and tough times, god has blessed us with victories against the enemy. We were involved in all the martyrdom operations -- in terms of overseeing, preparing, and planning -- that took place in this country except for the operations that took place in the north. Praised be to Allah, i have completed 25 of these operations, some of them against the Shi'a and their leaders, the Americans and their military, the police, the military, and the coalition forces. There will be more in the future, god willing. We did not want to publicly claim these operations until we become more powerful and were ready for the consequences. We need to show up strong and avoid getting hurt, now that we have made great strides and taken important steps forward. As we get closer to the decisive moment, we feel that our entity is spreading within the security void existing in Iraq, something that will allow us to secure bases on the ground, these bases that will be the jump start of a serious revival, god willing.
4. Plan of action: after much inquiry and discussion, we have narrowed our enemy to four groups:
A. Americans as you know, these are the biggest cowards that god has created and the easiest target. And we ask god to allow us to kill, and detain them, so that we can exchange them with our arrested shaykhs and brothers.
B. Kurds these are a pain and a thorn, and it is not time yet to deal with them. They are last on our list, even though we are trying to get to some of their leaders. God willing.
C. The Iraqi troops, police, and agents these are the eyes, ears, and hand of the occupier. With god's permission, we are determined to target them with force in the near future, before their power strengthens.
D. The Shi'a in our opinion, these are the key to change. Targeting and striking their religious, political, and military symbols, will make them show their rage against the Sunnis and bear their inner vengeance. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis who are fearful of destruction and death at the hands of these Sabeans, i.e., the Shi'a. Despite their weakness, the Sunnis are strong-willed and honest and different from the coward and deceitful Shi'a, who only attack the weak. Most of the Sunnis are aware of the danger of these people and they fear them. If it were not for those disappointing shaykhs, Sufis, and Muslim brothers, Sunnis would have a different attitude.
5. Way of action: As we have mentioned to you, our situation demands that we treat the issue with courage and clarity. So the solution, and god only knows, is that we need to bring the Shi'a into the battle because it is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us. We need to do that because:
A. The Shi'a have declared a subtle war against Islam. They are the close, dangerous enemy of the Sunnis. Even if the Americans are also an archenemy, the Shi'a are a greater danger and their harm more destructive to the nation than that of the Americans who are anyway the original enemy by consensus.
B. They have supported the Americans, helped them, and stand with them against the Mujahidin. They work and continue to work towards the destruction of the Mujahidin.
C. Fighting the Shi'a is the way to take the nation to battle. The Shi'a have taken on the dress of the army, police, and the Iraqi security forces, and have raised the banner of protecting the nation, and the citizens. Under this banner, they have begun to assassinate the Sunnis under the pretense that they are saboteurs, vestiges of the Ba'th, or terrorists who spread perversion in the country. This is being done with strong media support directed by the governing council and the Americans, and they have succeeded in splitting the regular Sunni from the Mujahidin. For example, in what they call the Sunni triangle, the army and police are spreading out in these regions, putting in charge Sunnis from the same region. Therefore, the problem is you end up having an army and police connected by lineage, blood, and appearance to the people of the region. This region is our base of operations from where we depart and to where we return. When the Americans withdraw, and they have already started doing that, they get replaced by these agents who are intimately linked to the people of this region. What will happen to us, if we fight them, and we have to fight them, is one of only two choices:
1) if we fight them, that will be difficult because there will be a schism between us and the people of the region. How can we kill their cousins and sons and under what pretext, after the Americans start withdrawing? The Americans will continue to control from their bases, but the sons of this land will be the authority. This is the democracy, we will have no pretext.
2) we can pack up and leave and look for another land, just like it has happened in so many lands of jihad. Our enemy is growing stronger day after day, and its intelligence information increases. By god, this is suffocation! We will be on the roads again. People follow their leaders, their hearts may be with you, but their swords are with their kings. So i say again, the only solution is to strike the religious, military, and other cadres of the Shi'a so that they revolt against the Sunnis. Some people will say, that this will be a reckless and irresponsible action that will bring the Islamic nation to a battle for which the Islamic nation is unprepared. Souls will perish and blood will be spilled. This is, however, exactly what we want, as there is nothing to win or lose in our situation. The Shi'a destroyed the balance, and the religion of god is worth more than lives. Until the majority stands up for the truth, we have to make sacrifices for this religion, and blood has to be spilled. For those who are good, we will speed up their trip to paradise, and the others, we will get rid of them.
By god, the religion of god is more precious than anything else. We have many rounds, attacks, and black nights with the Shi'a, and we cannot delay this. Their menace is looming and this is a fact that we should not fear, because they are the most cowardly people god has created. Killing their leaders will weaken them and with the death of the head, the whole group dies. They are not like the Sunnis. If you knew the fear in the souls of the Sunnis and their people, you would weep in sadness. How many of the mosques have they have turned in to Shi'a mosques ("husayniyas")? How many houses they have destroyed with their owners inside? How many brothers have they killed? How many sisters have been raped at the hands of those vile infidels?
If we are able to deal them blow after painful blow so that they engage in a battle, we will be able to reshuffle the cards so there will remain no value or influence for the ruling council, or even for the Americans who will enter into a second battle with the Shi'a. This is what we want. Then, the Sunni will have no choice but to support us in many of the Sunni regions. When the Mujahidin would have secured a land they can use as a base to hit the Shi'a inside their own lands, with a directed media and a strategic action, there will be a continuation between the Mujahidin inside and outside of Iraq. We are racing against time, in order to create squads of Mujahidin who seek refuge in secure places, spy on neighborhoods, and work on hunting down the enemies. The enemies are the Americans, police, and army. We have been training these people and augmenting their numbers.
As far as the Shi'a, we will undertake suicide operations and use car bombs to harm them. We have been working on monitoring the area and choosing the right people, looking for those who are on the straight path, so we can cooperate with them. We hope that we have made progress, and perhaps we will soon decide to go public -- even if gradually -- to display ourselves in full view. We have been hiding for a long time, and now we are seriously working on preparing a media outlet to reveal the truth, enflame zeal, and become an outlet for jihad in which the sword and the pen can turn into one. Along with this, we strive to illuminate the hindering errors of Islamic law and the clarifications of Islamic legal precepts by way of tapes, lessons, and courses which people will come to understand.
The suggested time for execution: we are hoping that we will soon start working on creating squads and brigades of individuals who have experience and expertise. We have to get to the zero-hour in order to openly begin controlling the land by night and after that by day, god willing. The zero-hour needs to be at least four months before the new government gets in place. As we see we are racing time, and if we succeed, which we are hoping, we will turn the tables on them and thwart their plan. If, god forbid, the government is successful and takes control of the country, we just have to pack up and go somewhere else again, where we can raise the flag again or die, if god chooses us.
6. What about you? You, noble brothers, leaders of jihad, we do not consider ourselves those who would compete against you, nor would we ever aim to achieve glory for ourselves like you did. The only thing we want is to be the head of the spear, assisting and providing a bridge over which the Muslim nation can cross to promised victory and a better tomorrow. As we have explained, this is our belief. So if you agree with it and are convinced of the idea of killing the perverse sects, we stand ready as an army for you, to work under your guidance and yield to your command. Indeed, we openly and publicly swear allegiance to you by using the media, in order to exasperate the infidels and confirm to the adherents of faith that one day, the believers will revel in god's victory. If you think otherwise, we will remain brothers, and disagreement will not destroy our cooperation and undermine our working together for what is best. We support jihad and wait for your response. May god keep for you the keys of goodness and preserve Islam and his people. Amen, amen.
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>> ON KERRY...
Kerry Testified of '200,000 a Year Who Are Murdered' By U.S. in Vietnam
by David Freddoso
Posted Feb 10, 2004
On April 22, 1971, asked how a U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam would affect the South Vietnamese, a young John Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "[Y]es, there will be some recrimination, but far, far less than the 200,000 a year who are murdered by the United States of America." (See page 190 of the attached transcript of his entire testimony).
Kerry, who is now a U.S. senator from Massachusetts and the leading Democratic presidential candidate, was then a private citizen testifying two years after his return from naval service in Vietnam, where he had won a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. In the course of his remarks to the committee, he complained of "the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage in the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war, when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions." (Pages 184-185.)
'A Phony Deal'
The same day Kerry testified, Rep. Sam Johnson (R.-Tex.) was sitting in a cell in the infamous Hanoi Hilton POW camp, where he says he was tortured, underfed, and mostly cut off from correspondence, in violation of the Geneva Convention. Johnson told HUMAN EVENTS that his captors had moved him there recently after 42 months of solitary confinement.
"When [Kerry] testified against the war, his testimony was un-American and untrue, and I think he lost all credibility as a real military man," said Johnson, asked to comment on a full 32-page transcript of Kerry's testimony that was obtained yesterday by HUMAN EVENTS. Johnson, a retired Air Force Colonel, was a prisoner of war for seven years after being shot down in North Vietnam in 1966.
Johnson said the idea that 200,000 Vietnamese were annually "murdered by the United States of America" was "not true. Absolutely not true." He also complained of Kerry's liberal use of his Vietnam service in his presidential campaign, particularly the use of the slogan "band of brothers," a Shakespearean reference to the camaraderie of men who have seen battle together.
"It's a phony deal," he said. "There are Vietnam veterans that you'll see who will call you brother and commiserate with you over experiences over there, but his use of that is totally false, and I don't know how anybody could fall for it."
During the question-and-answer part of his 1971 testimony, Sen. George Aiken (R.-Vt.) asked Kerry if the South Vietnamese army and South Vietnamese people "would be happy to have us withdraw or what?"
"If we don't withdraw," Kerry said, "if we maintain a Korean-type presence in South Vietnam, say 50,000 troops or something, with strategic bombing raids from Guam and from Japan and from Thailand dropping these 15,000 pound fragmentation bombs on them, et cetera, in the next few years, then what you will have is a people who are continually oppressed, who are continually at warfare, and whose problems will not at all be solved because they will not have any kind of representation.
"The war will continue," said Kerry. "So what I am saying is that yes, there will be some recrimination but far, far less than the 200,000 a year who are murdered by the United States of America."
It is not clear from Kerry's testimony when, where or how he believed these people were, or would be, "murdered by the United States of America."
HUMAN EVENTS provided Sen. Kerry's senatorial office with a copy of the full 32- page transcript and asked if he stood by the above statements or wished to offer some explanation for them. Later in the day, a spokeswoman for the senatorial office said she had forwarded the questions to Kerry's presidential campaign. The campaign had not commented by press time.
The transcript indicates that later in the testimony, under sympathetic questioning from Sen. Clifford Case (D.-N.J.), Kerry drew laughter from the crowd when he dismissed the administration's rationale for the war, to keep Communism at bay. "I think it is bogus, totally artificial," he said. "There is no threat. The Communists are not about to take over our McDonald hamburger stands."
In his testimony before Senators Case, Aiken, William Fulbright (D.-Ark.), Stuart Symington (D.-Mo.), Claiborne Pell (D.-R.I.), and Jacob Javits (R.-N.Y.), Kerry also gave and then quickly retracted testimony that the vast majority of soldiers in Vietnam got high on drugs literally all day, every day.
"A lot of guys, 60, 80 percent stay stoned 24 hours a day just to get through the Vietnam [War]," he said.
When Symington appeared incredulous, Kerry altered his testimony: "Sixty to 80 percent is the figure used that try something, let's say, at one point."
Copyright ? 2003 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.
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Kerry's Troubling Consistencies
by David Limbaugh
Posted Feb 13, 2004
While many, myself included, are pointing out the numerous inconsistencies in Senator Kerry's recent positions on the issues, I think we also ought to look at his disturbing consistencies from the Vietnam era to the present.
It is true that Senator Kerry voted to authorize a military attack on Iraq and then later tried to squirm out of his vote. Senator Kerry decried Republicans for criticizing candidate Clinton for avoiding the draft but is now exploiting questions about President Bush's Air National Guard service. Kerry has conveniently retreated from his position against capital punishment for terrorists. He shamelessly attacks the Patriot Act, though he voted for it a few short years ago. And he's all over the board on the gay marriage debate.
While this small sampling of Kerry's many contradictions reveals that he is a rank opportunist, it tells us little about his driving ideology. But we have other evidence from which a clearer picture emerges as to his true ideological rudder, especially with respect to his fitness as a commander in chief.
President Bush is already a tried and tested commander in chief with whom the majority of the public feels secure despite valiant Democratic efforts to tarnish his credibility. Because the War on Terror is foremost on voters' minds, Democrats became desperate to find a candidate qualified to be commander in chief.
What were Democrats to do? Well, a faction of them tried to draft General Wesley Clark to inject instant defense credibility into the party notorious for its softness on national defense. For a number of reasons that was a bust. At the same time, on a parallel track, Senator Kerry began to milk his Vietnam service for all it was worth, which so far has been a successful ploy.
And so the logic has been established: John Kerry was a war hero 30 years ago, and George Bush saw no combat, therefore John Kerry is better equipped to lead the nation at war than George Bush.
But for Democrats to get any traction here, they have to explain the lack of military experience of our other successful commanders in chief. More significantly, they have to explain how military combat experience qualifies one to lead the nation on foreign affairs and national defense. Perhaps this wouldn't be so difficult if the combat veteran in question had not demonstrated such hostility toward the military and national defense, like Senator Kerry has since he returned from Vietnam.
It was then that he first propelled himself into political prominence on the backs of his fellow Vietnam veterans, accusing them of unspeakable atrocities and impugning America for engaging in an immoral war in Vietnam. He made these charges with all the public fanfare he could muster, knowing they would inevitably undermine the morale of our troops. To him, containing Communism was an ignoble cause. He cavorted with the likes of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden in decrying this "barbaric war."
Adding insult to injury, Kerry said in 1970 that he would disperse our troops "through the world, only at the directive of the United Nations," and that he wanted to "almost eliminate CIA activity altogether."
All of this could be more easily written off as the fulminations of an idealistic young man, but for the fact that Kerry is singing from the same hymnal today. He is still trashing our intelligence services; he is saying that we should defer to the United Nations before taking military action against known threats to the United States, and he has implied we were involved in an unjust war in Iraq. He has refused to vote for the $87 billion supplemental appropriation for rebuilding Iraq and supporting our troops there. And throughout his career he has voted against developing some of our most important military technology.
So despite Kerry's many political turnabouts, we see a troubling consistency on these issues that matter the most in America today. He seems to have a visceral aversion to the military he served, a visceral affinity for the United Nations, a propensity to rush to judgment against just causes in which the United States engages and a casual disregard for undermining our troops in combat.
With all due respect, all the war medals in the world shouldn't be enough to enable Kerry to overcome his consistent record as being soft on defense. It is this consistency--more than all of Kerry's political inconsistencies--that should ultimately undo his quest for the presidency, if scandal doesn't do him in first.
Copyright ? 2003 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.
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Hillary's Hopes Helped by 'Kerrygate'
Posted Feb 13, 2004
Will "Kerrygate" provide an opportunity for Hillary Clinton to "save the day" at the Democratic convention? R. Emmett Tyrrell , author of the new book Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House, thinks that at the very least the chances of it happening have gone up -- way up. Quoted yesterday, Tyrrell noted that "the likeliness of Mrs. Clinton potentially grabbing the Democratic nomination in Boston in a 'save the Democratic Party' scenario has increased ten fold."
As pundits consider the Democratic Party's latest scandal, Tyrrell has released his Madame Hillary, shedding new light on the junior New York Senator and her seemingly unstoppable rise in power within her party.
About the developing Kerry scandal, Tyrrell stated that "'Kerrygate' could have a tremendous impact on the number one issue driving the Kerry campaign -- 'electability.' While many analysts and pundits will surely give the windfall to Sen. John Edwards, this could have greater impact on Sen. Hillary Clinton's political future."
Tyrrell went on to say, "It is fascinating that one of the driving forces behind Kerry's scandal is none other than friend of Hillary and recent Democratic Presidential Candidate General Wesley Clark, who Mrs. Clinton encouraged to run."
In a recent Wall Street Journal Op-ed, Tyrrell predicted:
"There are Democrats who want to loosen the Clintons' grip on their party. That grip has always been good for the Clintons but bad for the party. Will frontrunner Mr. Kerry be the next victim of the Clintons' political research teams? Possibly not -- he is the Washington insider that Mr. Dean is not. And it is not clear that he will be sailing into the summer convention with a great deal of brag and bounce. He may be limping in after still more primary battles. Then Hillary will make her grand entrance. With Mr. McAuliffe smiling from the podium her power will be vast."
To purchase Madame Hillary, click here.
Copyright ? 2003 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.
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VEEP STAKES...
Kerry's Veep
A short list in the making.
Choosing a running mate will be the most important decision John Kerry makes between now and November -- not only because vice presidents stand a reasonably good chance of becoming presidents, but because they are such a key part of electioneering. Kerry probably won't announce his selection until the summer, but with the Democratic presidential nomination all but clinched, the season of speculation may begin.
The traditional rules of veep selection will apply. Most people base their vote on who sits at the top of the ticket, which means that the vice-presidential nominee is not likely to influence the outcome of the race unless it's close. Moreover, potential running mates must meet the "do no harm" principle -- there should be nothing in their backgrounds that might make them liabilities in the fall.
Kerry himself will have to deal with a few unique conditions. He won't want a running mate from the northeast. He'll probably want someone from outside Washington, D.C., which means he'll choose with a bias against a current member of Congress, especially another senator. His running mate will have to stand on stage next to Dick Cheney and appear credible. Finally, Kerry will face pressure from the Clinton faction of his party not to select a partner who would emerge as a rival to Hillary Clinton in 2008 in the event of a Democratic defeat this year.
Herewith, a look at the contenders:
EVAN BAYH: This senator from Indiana is a hawk on the Iraq war and a rising star in the Democratic party. He might put his home state in play, but his main appeal would be his youth, energy, and New Democrat credentials. His membership on the Senate Intelligence Committee would be an asset. Feminist groups might try to nix him because he's not an abortion-rights absolutist -- or possibly get him to pull a Lieberman and renounce his heresy.
WESLEY CLARK: From the standpoint of expectations, no presidential candidate failed so badly in the primaries as this retired general. At least Howard Dean had to rise before he fell; Clark started out near the top and did nothing but tumble. Perhaps more than any other candidate on this list, the unpredictable Clark violates the "do no harm" principle of veep selection.
HILLARY CLINTON: The media will go through several rounds of talking about Hillary as veep, if only because talking about Hillary is a favorite pastime for pundits. But neither Kerry nor Clinton will want this match. The last thing Kerry needs is another "liberal senator from the Northeast" on his ticket. Hillary has a strong incentive to stay away as well. Some potential running mates would see their careers enhanced by losing with Kerry this year: It would establish them as statesmen on their side of the aisle. Yet Hillary's reputation would suffer and it would hurt her chances in 2008. Also, she has repeatedly promised to serve out her term as senator from New York. Reneging would make her seem -- for lack of a better word -- Clintonian.
HOWARD DEAN: Forget it. The only rationale for a Kerry-Dean ticket would have been a desperate attempt to unify a torn party.
JOHN EDWARDS: Apart from Kerry, no presidential candidate has beaten more expectations this year than the senior senator from North Carolina: Edwards is the only loser who emerges from this year's primaries looking better than he did before getting in. He continues to run a veep-friendly campaign and is already generating some buzz about a Kerry-Edwards ticket. What's more, Kerry will face some pressure to go with a southerner. Yet Edwards hasn't exactly been a Dixie powerhouse -- his single triumph in South Carolina didn't translate into victories in Tennessee and Virginia. Another strike is that he's a fellow senator. There's a chance he would make North Carolina competitive for Kerry, but no guarantee. Odds are he'll appear on Kerry's short list until the bitter end -- but that he won't make the final cut.
HAROLD FORD: Some vice-presidential short lists are compiled for public consumption -- certain names are placed on them to flatter and court particular individuals and constituencies. There's no doubt that Kerry will want to be seen as giving serious consideration to a black running mate, even if he isn't really going to pick one. The most likely politician to fill this role is Harold Ford, a young congressman from Tennessee who is believed to have a bright future on Capitol Hill. Talk of a Kerry-Ford ticket will boost both Kerry and Ford, but it won't happen.
DICK GEPHARDT: The ultimate safe pick. The St. Louis congressman has been vetted enough times to guarantee that there are no surprises lurking in his closet. Although he may be seen as a Democratic dinosaur, he's experienced and gaffe-proof. He would put Missouri in play and might help out in other union-heavy Midwestern states (though his poor performance in the Iowa caucuses may suggest otherwise). A Kerry-Gephardt ticket would mollify the party's protectionist wing, which is skeptical of Kerry's vote for NAFTA a decade ago. Gephardt's modest upbringing also makes him one of several contenders who would nicely balance Kerry's privileged background. His recent endorsement of Kerry is another plus.
BOB GRAHAM: If this Florida senator had been the Democratic veep nominee in 2000, we'd probably be in the midst of a primary battle to pick a GOP challenger to President Gore. Graham's disappointing presidential run hurt his chances in 2004, though he did have the sense to exit before the embarrassment became fatal. Kerry will make a play for Florida this year, but the GOP is better positioned there than it was four years ago. Graham's impact today is probably less than it once would have been. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he does come with foreign-policy credentials.
JENNIFER GRANHOLM: Looks great on paper as an attractive female governor of a swing state (Michigan). Too bad for Kerry that she was born in Canada and isn't eligible for the Oval Office.
JIM HUNT: The other veep candidate from North Carolina. This retired governor has won plenty of elections in his home state, though a 1984 Senate loss to Jesse Helms prevented him from becoming a national figure. He's no spring chicken -- he'll be 67 on Election Day -- but he's a Washington outsider who would play about as well in the south as anybody Kerry might pick.
GARY LOCKE: If Democrats think they need this governor to carry the state of Washington, then they've got some big problems. Going with Locke would generate very good notice in the press (plus lots of headline puns about "Picking Locke") because Locke, an Asian American, would be the first nonwhite candidate on a presidential ticket. But would black and Hispanic loyalists grumble that they were more deserving of the honor?
JANET NAPOLITANO: The governor of Arizona is probably the top female contender for Kerry -- she's not from D.C. and she might put her GOP-friendly home state into question. But Kerry should keep in mind that while Geraldine Ferraro was making history in 1984 as Walter Mondale's running mate, Ronald Reagan was winning the women's vote. Perhaps the politics of the gender gap have changed, but then again maybe not as much as Democrats might hope. Furthermore, Napolitano would have a tough time looking like she's as ready as Dick Cheney to become commander in chief.
SAM NUNN: Worth considering only because the evil genius James Carville mentioned him as a possibility. As a Georgian, he adds a southerner to the ticket -- though it's far from clear that he would provide a significant lift in his home state, which is now solidly Republican. He is viewed as one of his party's elder statesmen on security issues.
BILL RICHARDSON: The governor of New Mexico is often mentioned because he's Hispanic. But don't be fooled: The Hispanic influence on the Electoral College is often misunderstood. If no Hispanics had voted four years ago, the election results in only two states would have changed: Florida would have gone for Gore and New Mexico would have gone for Bush. (Bush would have won the popular vote but Gore would be president -- all because of Cuban Americans.) It's hard to see how Richardson's addition to the Democratic ticket would give Kerry critical advantages anywhere except New Mexico. Picking Richardson makes more sense for Democrats thinking about long-term demographic alignments than it does for Kerry thinking about November. Despite all this, Richardson is one of the best Democratic pols in the country -- a governor with genuine foreign-policy experience as UN ambassador and as a congressman who secured hostage releases around the world. He would probably make Kerry's short list even if his mother hadn't been Mexican.
ROBERT RUBIN: Selecting the former treasury secretary would be compared to Bush's choice of Cheney four years ago -- a decision that has nothing to do with geography and everything to do with boosting credibility. In Rubin's case, it would signal to Wall Street and the investor class that a Kerry presidency is nothing to fear -- and perhaps create fundraising opportunities that otherwise wouldn't exist. It would also seek to remind people of prosperity during the Clinton presidency and give Kerry a very effective surrogate for attacking Bush's economic record. Interesting trivia: A poll for USA Today in 2000 showed a Gore-Rubin ticket outperforming a Gore-Kerry ticket.
TOM VILSACK: The governor of Iowa presumably would go a long way toward securing his home state, which the GOP hopes to capture this year. And it certainly doesn't hurt that Vilsack's wife endorsed Kerry before the caucuses last month, during Kerry's surprising surge. (In a piece for NRO on Monday, David Hogberg explained why he doubts Vilsack will end up on the Democratic ticket.)
FEARLESS PREDICTION: This wouldn't be punditry if it didn't include some guesswork. Much will ride on the question of how optimistic Democrats are feeling this summer: Will Kerry be forced into a bold and strategic choice or can he be more conservative and tactical? My own sense is that the race will be close to the end, with Democrats believing they have a realistic chance of defeating Bush. Kerry will pick Gephardt -- and he'll be glad he did.
http://www.nationalreview.com/miller/miller200402120825.asp
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Pakistan had case against scientist
By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff, 2/13/2004
WASHINGTON -- More than three years ago, Pakistani intelligence agents built a corruption case against Abdul Qadeer Khan, the country's most famous nuclear scientist, but officials under President Pervez Musharraf decided not to pursue it because Khan was a national hero, according to a former Pakistani official.
The former official, who was a case manager at the National Accountability Bureau, the country's leading anticorruption agency, said the dossier prepared by the intelligence officers spanned some 120 pages. It detailed how he reaped massive profits from kickbacks in the procurement of nuclear equipment and amassed seven houses in the wealthiest areas of Islamabad.
Last week, Khan, known as the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, confessed in a dramatic, televised statement to selling nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran, and Libya in one of the largest cases of nuclear proliferation in history. He was swiftly pardoned by Musharraf after telling the nation that he acted alone and that the government had no knowledge of his dealings over two decades.
Musharraf has said he suspected Khan had been sharing nuclear secrets for three years but did not have evidence.
But the former case manager said investigators in 2000 believed there was sufficient evidence to bring corruption charges against Khan, and there was additional evidence that Khan was making unauthorized deals in the international nuclear black market.
The decision not to bring charges allowed Khan to continue his alleged black-market activities for two and a half more years. Musharraf quietly forced Khan to retire in 2001, but did not curtail his international travel or make public the corruption file against him.
"We said that somehow he is a national hero, the National Accountability Bureau is new, [and] we cannot afford to take on someone of his stature," said the former official. He said he agreed with the determination that Khan was too popular to face national prosecution at that time and had recommended waiting a year.
In Pakistan's five-decade standoff with India, Khan played a vital role in building a nuclear weapon to match that of India. He is so revered in Pakistan that his picture appears in school textbooks along with the nation's founder. His fame extends beyond Pakistan to the rest of the Muslim world.
But the dossier prepared in 2000 told a different story, the official said. It reported Khan held $8 million in several bank accounts and had given a house to General Mirza Aslam Beg, the former commander of Pakistan's army, who supported sharing nuclear technology with other Muslim countries. Beg has told reporters he did not authorize Khan to give nuclear secrets to anyone.
The dossier showed that some in Pakistan's government were worried in 2000 about the lack of oversight over Khan's activities in the underground world of nuclear procurement, including clues that he was buying more materials than were necessary for Pakistan's program alone, the official said.
For example, it showed how Khan had acquired a high-tech wiring system at an extremely high price -- buying far more wire from Indonesia than the nuclear program could have used, according to the official -- "enough for 100 years."
The dossier also detailed Khan's close ties with Haji Abdul Razzak, a Dubai-based Pakistani businessman who is wanted on corruption charges in Pakistan, stating that Khan owned stock in one of Razzak's companies. The document indicated that Khan paid "stipends" to about a dozen journalists who wrote flattering articles about him and financed the Pakistan Observer, a newspaper headed by Zahid Malik, Khan's biographer, according to the official.
The dossier also said that Khan owned a hotel worth about $10 million in Timbuktu, Mali, named after his wife Hendrina and that a Pakistani Air Force C-130 aircraft was used to bring antique Pakistani furniture to the hotel, the official said.
On Monday, Musharraf told The New York Times that he had been suspicious of Khan for at least three years and believed him to be operating with "illegal contacts, maybe suspicions of contacts." Musharraf acknowledged that he was wary about pursuing Khan because of a fear of popular backlash.
Musharraf also said in that interview that he had not been given enough evidence about Khan's proliferation activities to move forward with a case until the fall of 2002.
For decades, specialists in international proliferation have warned that Pakistan's military was not only building a bomb, but assisting other countries to do so.
"They were clearly proliferating," said Larry Pressler, a former US senator who urged that sanctions be imposed on Pakistan in the early 1990s. "The generals were traveling. They were talking to everyone in the region."
According to a special report by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-based human rights organization, Khan secretly visited Busheir, Iran's nuclear facility, in 1986 and 1987 and was retained as a consultant by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran to study whether the reactor there could produce plutonium.
In the 1992 report, the Wiesenthal Center, better known for its work hunting Nazi war criminals, said that Pakistan signed a secret nuclear cooperation agreement with Iran in 1987 that involved training Iranian nuclear scientists in Islamabad.
Libya is also believed to have signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Pakistan and funded part of their program, according to the Wiesenthal report and other nuclear nonproliferation specialists. In the early 1990s, Pakistan's government also bought missile designs from North Korea, but for cash, not in a nuclear barter, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto told the Globe this week.
But the dossier is evidence that beyond whatever trading Khan was authorized to do on behalf of Pakistan's nuclear program, he was also making deals on his own.
"There was no check on him," said the official. The dossier "said that Khan was the only guy who had links with the black market and there was no check" on his international nuclear trading.
The Khan file, which was prepared by an outside intelligence agency and handed to the National Accountability Bureau, was considered so sensitive that officials had to come to the office to read it, and could not make copies, he said. The official studied the file in 2000 and took notes, which he showed to a reporter.
Reached by telephone in Islamabad, the former head of the National Accountability Bureau, Lieutenant General Syed Mohammad Amjad, confirmed that the official was a longtime employee of the bureau and said he had a reputation for honesty.
But Amjad said he could not confirm the existence of a dossier on Khan because he left the bureau before the end of 2000.
Pakistan's secretary of information, Syed Anwar Mahmood, also said he had no personal knowledge of the dossier.
Farah Stockman can be reached at fstockman@globe.com.
? Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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at 3:16 PM EST
