Osama being treated by Pak Army
CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/789042.cms
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SATURDAY, JULY 24, 2004 12:56:40 PM ]
WASHINGTON: Pakistan's intelligence officials knew in advance about the 9/11 attacks, a well-known American analyst has said, based on a ''stunning document'' that he claims was given by a Pakistani source to the 9/11 Commission on the eve of the publication of its report.
The document, from a high-level, but anonymous Pakistani source, also claims that Osama bin Laden has been receiving periodic dialysis in a military hospital in Peshawar, says Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor-at-large of the news agency UPI.
''The imprints of every major act of international Islamist terrorism invariably passes through Pakistan, right from 9/11 - where virtually all the participants had trained, resided or met in, coordinated with, or received funding from or through Pakistan,'' Borchgrave cites the confidential document as saying.
But one does not have to go to Borchgrave's unnamed sources to find Pakistan's involvement in terrorist activity leading to 9/11. The 9/11 commission report itself nails Pakistan in chapter after chapter, revealing that the Pakistani intelligence was in cahoots with the Taliban and al Qaeda, far more than Iran and Iraq ever were.
Among the inquiry commission's observations, quoted verbatim here
* ''Pak[istan's] intel[ligence service] is in bed with bin Laden and would warn him that the United States was getting ready for a bombing campaign'' - quoting Richard Clarke
* ''Islamabad was behaving like a rogue state in two areas - backing Taliban/bin Laden terror and provoking war with India'' - quoting NSC Bruce Riedel
* Pakistani intelligence officers reportedly introduced bin Laden to Taliban leaders in Kandahar -Commission's own observation.
* Pakistan's military intelligence service, known as the ISID (Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate), was the Taliban's primary patron - Commission's observation
* Pakistan helped nurture the Taliban. The Pakistani army and intelligence services, especially below the top ranks, have long been ambivalent about confronting Islamist extremists. Many in the government have sympathized with or provided support to the extremists - Commission's observation.
Elsewhere, even as the Bush administration made a big to-do about ten hijackers passing through Iran and tried to implicate Teheran on that grounds, the 9/11 report shows that several hijackers who rammed the planes into American targets used Karachi as a base and trained there for weeks on end.
In fact, the report paints Karachi as the gateway to terrorism, drawing an elaborate picture of the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed using the port city to plan the attack, gather the hijackers there, and put them through their paces.
''Much of his (KSM's) activity in mid-1999 had revolved around the collection of training and informational materials for the participants in the planes operation,''the 9/11 report says. ''For instance, he collected Western aviation magazines; telephone directories for American cities such as San Diego and Long Beach, California (from Karachi flea markets); brochures for schools; and airline timetables, and he conducted Internet searches on US flight schools.''
''He also purchased flight simulator software and a few movies depicting hijackings. To house his students, KSM rented a safehouse in Karachi with money provided by bin Laden,'' the report adds.
But all this is not good enough for the American media, which has almost completely ignored Pakistan's role in 9/11 while going on a feeding frenzy over a few speculative morsels tossed out by the Bush administration about the involvement of Iran and Iraq.
Not a single US TV channel or newspaper collated, let alone reported or highlighted, the multiple indictment of Pakistan contained in the report. Even a cursory key word search would have shown more than 200 references to Pakistan, many of them damning. There are less than 100 references to Iran and Iraq combined.
While the commission report repeatedly implicates Pakistan and its intelligence agency ISI in terrorist activity, it too appears to have failed to record some well-chronicled events that might have pointed to the impending catastrophe.
For instance, the report does not contain any reference to Niaz Khan, a Pakistani waiter in Britain who walked into an FBI office in New Jersey nearly a year before 9/11 and alerted them about a plot to fly planes into buildings. Nor does it go into reports that terrorist mastermind Mohammed Atta received a wire transfer of funds from a source in Karachi connected to the ISI.
Despite this, Pakistan finds itself incriminated in the report far more than Iran or Iraq. The commission itself is frequently censorious of Pakistan's role, but in the end it recommends more carrots as a means of bringing back what it suggests is a failed state from the brink.
Pakistani officials have issued their pro forma denials about Islamabad's involvement, clutching instead at a few paras in the report that recommend a sustained (and conditional) US engagement with the military dictatorship.
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Kargil warning went unheeded
Kanwar Sandhu
Delhi/ Chandigarh, July 24
The Cassandra Effect
A report warning of possible intrusions into Dras and requesting permanent defences was shot down
Wargame conducted by Army's 121 Brigade before the Kargil intrusions had inferred that the enemy would try to "capture dominating heights in Dras Defended Area so as to interdict NH 1A".
The Brigade Major had made a written request to HQ 3 Infantry Division for permanent defences at Tiger Hill, Talab and Saddle. The request was turned down.
Pak intrusions into these areas were detected in May 1999. In the war that followed, the battle for Dras cost 474 Indian soldiers' lives.
Around January 1999, months before the Kargil war, the Indian Army conducted a wargame called Exercise JAANCH. Field commanders found weaknesses in the defence and inferred, among other things, that the enemy would "capture dominating heights in Dras Defended Area so as to interdict NH 1A (The Srinagar-Leh road)". Their concerns were ignored and recommendations to strengthen defences shot down. Months later, Pakistani troops occupied those heights and the Kargil war followed.
A confidential letter of the then Commanding Officer of 16 Grenadiers, Col P. Oberai to Headquarters, 121 Brigade dated January 30, 1999 is telling. It mentions that during one of the visits of the Brigade Commander (Brig Surinder Singh) to Dras Defended Area it was felt that the defences needed a re-look in view of the possibility of the enemy capturing certain heights in the vicinity of the Indian Army's defences, thus rendering some posts untenable. Following this, the then GOC of 3 Division (Major General V.S. Budhwar), during his visit on November 25, 1998 ordered that the existing defences of Dras be wargamed.
Wargame "JAANCH" followed. Among the inferences drawn on the enemy's likely aim was that he would "capture dominating heights in Dras Defended Area so as to interdict NH1A". During "JAANCH" it was also found that there was a paucity of troops for holding defences at Gap, Hump, Tiger Hill, Sando and Bimbat LC.
Under the heading "Threat Perception", it was mentioned that the forces which were likely to be available to the enemy for an offensive against the brigade sector included one reserve battalion each from the brigades of the Force Commander Northern Areas. In addition there were two Mujahid/ Chitral Scouts which were likely to relieve two regular battalions from an Infantry brigade. "Considering the above, the adversary is likely to muster 5-6 battalions for a meaningful offensive against own Brigade Sector", the note said.
The note suggested that an ad-hoc battalion headquarter under the Second in Command of the battalion should be positioned at Talab. At Tiger Hill, a protective patrol was recommended.
Similarly, at Saddle, deployment of a section (about 10 troops) was suggested. Incidentally, while capture of Talab was essential to reach Tiger Hill, Saddle was in the vicinity of Tololing.
Giving a reference to the Brigade Commander's verbal directions in his communication, the CO concluded that the "adversary had the wherewithal of launching a brigade size force in the Dras Defended Area as the prevalent terrain favours such an operation. By incorporating the proposed deployment it would also ensure upsetting the time frame of the adversary and stalling his misdemeanour in the Dras Defended Area. As such it would be prudent to review the present deployment ..."
Subsequent to this communication the then Brigade Commander made a presentation on February 24, 1999. Following this on March 18, the officiating Brigade Major of the Brigade, Lt Col. Anil Pandey made a projection to HQ 3 Infantry Division for defence stores. Among the various places where permanent defences (PDs) were sought were Talab (four), Tiger Hill (one) and Saddle (3). In fact while demanding PDs, Tiger Hill and Saddle were put in "priority one". A PD is usually a cement and steel structure.
On March 1, the Brigade had also sent a seven-page note to the Division on counter-insurgency (CI) operations in the Dras sector stating ominously: "Militancy has taken roots in the Dras area and is likely to escalate in the coming months." On March 31, the Brigade in another communication to the Division stated: "There is likely to be an upgradation in the anti-national elements (ANE) threat, with greater chance of interdiction of NH1A..."
The Division Headquarters turned down the demand for defence stores as requested by the Brigade on March 18, 1999. Ironically the letter of Major Pradeep Kumar, GSO2 Ops for Col GS of the Division, is dated May 3, 1999 when the first of the intrusions were detected in the Kargil sector. The letter to the Brigade stated: "Your report on defence stores has been perused by the GOC. Disparity between availability and your requirement is glaring." It further stated: "This disposes of your letter under reference."
This information adds a different dimension to the events leading to the war, which has so far been attributed mainly to failure of intelligence. The Kargil Review Committee in its report "From Surprise to Reckoning" had surmised that "Pakistan achieved surprise by carrying out an operation considered unviable and irrational by Indian Army Commanders." The operation was not considered unviable or irrational.
The Army Headquarters, when asked, did not attach much importance to the pinpointed recommendations made after wargame "JAANCH".
The then GOC, 3 Div, Maj Gen V.S. Budhwar, being abroad, could not be contacted. The then GOC, 15 Corps, Lt Gen Krishan Pal (Retd), said that he did not recall any such exercise.
"It must have been conducted at the brigade or division level." But he refused to blame anyone, "The responsibility, if any, was mine", he said.
The then Chief of Army Staff, Gen V.P. Malik (Retd), when contacted too did not recall any such exercise that pinpointed such concerns. "How come this has not surfaced all this while? If only Brig. Surinder Singh had done what I asked him to do during my visits, intrusions would not have taken place," he added.
Brig Surinder Singh, when asked about the steps taken by his Headquarters said that, "I was informed that patrols were sent out by the units but these made little headway in view of the weather conditions. However, had the concerns being projected repeatedly been heeded by the higher formations, the enemy could have been deterred from occupying those heights."
So who was responsible for glossing over the imminent security concerns in Dras, as the new set of documents show? Earlier only documents relating to Brig Surinder Singh's briefing of the then Army Chief and others in August 1998 had surfaced.
An Army spokesperson maintained that "comprehensive inquiries had been made into the Kargil war and appropriate action against certain commanders in the chain have been taken, commensurate with the degree of their culpability."
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Alleged Syrian nuclear plans elicit debate
By Will Rasmussen
Daily Star staff
Saturday, July 24, 2004
BEIRUT: Charges have surfaced in recent weeks in Western newspapers that Syria may have acquired nuclear weapons technology on the black market, although some US experts believe the allegations are based more on politics than on evidence.
Although US officials have never publicly stated that Syria has sought nuclear weapons, Western diplomats and a US intelligence official asserted in the Los Angeles Times last month that Syria may have purchased centrifuges, used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, from Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdel-Qadeer Khan.
Reuters, The Times in London and The Ottawa Citizen published similar reports within weeks of the Los Angeles Times story.
In a statement issued earlier this year, Syrian president Bashar Assad denied that Syria had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and called for a nuclear-free region.
International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohammed al-Baradei said Wednesday that "we have no proof that Syria is trying to engage in nuclear activities in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."
US experts, meanwhile, disagree over whether Syria has the ability or the desire to develop the weapons.
Allegations of nuclear ambitions are the latest in a string of US criticisms of the Syrian regime, which has also been accused of sponsoring organizations on the US State Department terrorism list, maintaining a military presence in Lebanon and deploying ballistic missiles.
"Syria is on a long list of countries like Iran and, formally, Iraq, North Korea and Pakistan, which have a history of seeking WMDs," said Jack Spencer, a senior defense analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based think tank with ties to the Bush administration. Syria has "tapped into the black market before," and "it's reasonable to assume" they would be a part of the Khan network, he told The Daily Star in a phone interview.
Khan, considered the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, sold centrifuges to Iran, Libya and North Korea over two decades, and some in the Bush administration considered Syria to be a potential customer even before the recent alleged detection.
While not specifically mentioning Syria, John Bolton,
US undersecretary of state for arms control, told the UN in April that in addition to Iran, Libya and North Korea, "several other" nations sought centrifuge technology.
Some US experts, however, have questioned the reliability of the US intelligence.
Syria's alleged development of chemical weapons may not be indicative of its interest in nuclear weapons, said Patrick Clawson, deputy director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Syria, he said, "lacks the interest and the educational base needed to develop weapons" and would be worried about a "nasty" Israeli response should they develop a nuclear program.
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>> FALLUJAH CHRONICLES...
PART 1: Losing it
In early May I took a taxi from Amman to Baghdad. After passing through Jordanian customs and approaching the Iraqi border post, my driver warned me to remain in the car. The Iraqi resistance had people working for it at the border post, he said, and if they saw my US passport they would contact their friends on the road ahead. They would welcome us with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire. I pushed the seat back as he said and closed my eyes. Soon we were driving east to Baghdad on Iraq's Highway 10, and I had sneaked into the country without any US or Iraqi official's cognizance. As we drove past the charred hulks of sport-utility vehicles (SUVs) whose drivers had been less savvy than mine, and whose passengers had been less lucky than me, I wondered who else was infiltrating Iraq with the same ease I did.
When I got to Baghdad my colleagues were aghast to hear that I had taken the road. Nobody drove into Iraq anymore, not since April, when a rebellion had virtually severed the western Anbar province from the rest of the country. Thousands of mujahideen had manned roadblocks, searching for foreigners to kidnap or kill, at least 80 US military convoys were attacked and anybody who could was flying into the country. The locus of fighting had been Fallujah, a dusty town emerging from the desert about 60 kilometers west of Baghdad. Not a place you would remember unless you were kidnapped there.
Fallujah had always been a little different from the rest of Iraq. An American non-governmental organization project manager told me with bewilderment of his meeting with a women's group from the town who shocked him by being more radical than the men. "We must be willing to sacrifice our sons to end the occupation," they told him.
Combining rigid religious conservatism, strong tribal traditions and a fierce loyalty to Saddam Hussein, Fallujah battled five different US commanders who were brought in to tame the wild western province of the country. According to Professor Amazia Baram, an Iraq expert from the University of Haifa and the Washington-based United States Institute of Peace, Saddam found greater loyalty in the 300,000-strong city of Fallujah than he did even in his home town of Tikrit. He never executed Fallujans, though he did kill Tikritis who were his relatives, and Fallujans dominated his security and military services. Their proportion of the intelligence services was the highest in the country. This was already beginning to be the case under the Iraqi monarchy, continuing under the regime of the Arif brothers from 1963-68. The Arifs themselves hailed from Fallujah. After the first Gulf War of 1991, Saddam went to Fallujah, not Tikrit, to declare his victory in "the mother of all battles". He was greeted there with genuine love. Also unlike Tikrit, where the tribes are urbanized, the tribes of Fallujah are concentrated in the rural areas surrounding the city, and thus have not modernized and abandoned tribal mores as much as tribes in other parts of the country.
Situated on a strategic point bridging the Euphrates River in the desert, Fallujah is the center of a fertile region on the outskirts of the desert leading to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria. Its location makes it a smuggling center. After the latest war, Fallujah did not suffer from the same looting seen in other parts of the country, as there was less reason to be hostile to the former regime and its institutions. Saddam had given Fallujah virtual autonomy. The religious and tribal leaders appointed their own civil management council even before US troops arrived. Tribes assumed control of the city's institutions and protected government buildings. Religious leaders, whose authority was respected, exhorted the people to respect the law and maintain order. Local imams urged the public to respect law and order. Tight tribal bonds also helped preserve stability. Trouble with Americans started soon after they arrived, however.
A March 29 protest, coinciding with Saddam's birthday, against the 82nd Airborne Division's occupation of a school turned bloody when US soldiers killed 17 protesters and killed three more in a follow-up protest two days later. A cycle of attacks and retaliation had begun, with the Fallujah-based resistance increasing in sophistication and successive US units throwing their might upon the city in futile efforts to pacify it. Finally, on March 31, four American contractors were killed and mutilated. This was an Iraqi tradition called sahel, a word unique to Iraqi Arabic, meaning the act of lynching. It originally meant dragging a body down the street with an animal or vehicle, but eventually grew to mean any sort of public killing. Iraqis have a history of imposing sahel, even on their leaders, as the former royal family learned.
The slayings of the American mercenaries provoked a Stalingrad-like response by the Americans called Operation Vigilant Resolve. After a month-long siege of Fallujah, during which US forces battered the city in pursuit of about 2,000 armed fighters, the United States received an offer from a coalition of former generals, tribal leaders and religious leaders. The Americans described it as a success but Fallujans were clear that they had liberated their city. The arrangement struck with the Americans was simple: Leave us alone or we will fight you. The details of the agreement went largely unpublished, but the US, which only a week before had vowed to take the city by force, had agreed that General Jassim Muhamad Saleh, a former Republican Guard commander, would establish what has been called both the Fallujah Brigade and the Fallujah Protection Army (FPA). After the US-trained Iraqi army had mutinied, refusing to fight in Fallujah on the grounds that they had joined to defend Iraq, not kill Iraqis, General Jassim and his supporters approached marine commander Lieutenant-General James Conway and offered salvation. "It got to the point that we thought there were no options that would preclude an attack," Conway said. Lieutenant-Colonel Brennan Byrne described it as "an Iraqi solition to an Iraqi problem". They would crown General Jassim as warlord of Fallujah. "The plan is that the whole of Fallujah will be under the control of the FPA," Byrne said.
One senior US official explained to the Washington Post on May 19, "What we're trying to do is extricate ourselves from Fallujah." But Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt, deputy commander of operations for the coalition, maintained that marines were not "withdrawing" but were rather "repositioning" and would remain "in and around Fallujah". I saw no marines inside the city and I was told by Fallujah police and soldiers that they would shoot at Americans if they came in, contradicting a statement by the commander of US military operations in the Middle East, General John Abizaid, who said, "We want the marines to have freedom of maneuver along with the Iraqi security forces." Kimmitt insisted, "The coalition objectives remain unchanged, to eliminate armed groups, collect and positively control all heavy weapons, and turn over foreign fighters and disarm anti-Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah." I found no evidence of such policy. Though Kimmitt claimed General Jassim and his 1st Battalion of the Fallujah Brigade would subdue the resistance and foreign fighters, I found the general beholden to the mujahideen leaders, seeking their approval, collaborating with them, and under their command; quite the opposite of Kimmitt's claim that "the battalion will function as a subordinate command under the operational control of the First Marine Expeditionary Force". And though Jassim was to have been replaced by General Muhamad Latif over allegations of war crimes committed during Jassim's repression of the 1991 post-Gulf War uprising, I found Jassim still in "command".
April was the worst month for the US-led occupation, which fought a two front war in the Sunni Triangle as well as against the Army of the Mahdi, a militia controlled by radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, in Baghdad's Shi'ite neighborhoods and the Shi'ite south of the country. Fallujah had become a rallying cry for Iraq, uniting its antagonistic Sunni and Shi'ite communities against the occupation, and solidifying the bonds between their militias, creating a popular resistance in Iraq for the first time. After their Fallujah siege, during which all ceasefire attempts had failed, the marines began their withdrawal from the city on April 30. Obstinate resistance fighters who rejected the ceasefire terms killed two marines with a roadside bomb that day, trying unsuccessfully to provoke the marines to violate the accord, and the US withdrawal went ahead as planned. US marines described their May 10 half-hour incursion into the city as the first of the new joint patrols they would make with the Fallujah Brigade, but Fallujans described it as the last time Americans would be allowed to enter their city. There have been no further US patrols in Fallujah.
On the main street of Fallujah, once called Habbaniya Street but renamed Sheikh Ahmad Yassin Street in honor of the Hamas leader killed by the Israelis, laborers with scarves protecting their faces from the dust gather to be picked up for day jobs. It was these angry, unemployed young men, armed with their shovels and pipes, who dismembered the four contractors after the mujahideen had ambushed their vehicles. Young boys sell bananas and Kleenex boxes. The boys serve as an early-warning system for the city, notifying the fighters if they spot foreigners. Fair-skinned journalists told me of hiding low in their cars to avoid arousing attention, only to have the Kleenex boys spot them and shout "American! American!" At a major road intersection, anti-American graffiti in English are scrawled on the walls as a warning to US soldiers.
The boys gathered around me and the laborers removed their kafiyas from their faces to talk. They witnessed the attack on the contractors, they said, describing how the two cars had stopped at a red light and the mujahideen opened fire on them from other vehicles. The rear car was hit and the front car sped off and made a U-turn, but it too was hit. A mujahid shouted: "I avenged my brother who was killed by the Americans!," and the assailants left. An angry mob on the street mutilated the bodies, burning them and beating them with pipes until they were partially dismembered, a gruesome scene captured on film. I asked one Kleenex salesboy if he had done it. "I would even pull Bush down the street!" he smiled. A laborer said, "God and the mujahideen gave us victory. It will spread to all of Iraq and all the way to Jerusalem."
The bodies were dragged about a kilometer and a half to the old Fallujah bridge and hung from it. Blackwater, the company that employed the four Americans, later claimed they had been held at a roadblock, but in the films of the attack that I watched on promotional jihad compact discs (CDs) sold in Fallujah, there was no roadblock, and it is unlikely that any Blackwater employees ever returned to Fallujah to investigate. According to a US Army major familiar with the events, the murder and mutilation of Americans three kilometers from a US base provoked the marines into taking premature action. "The result on marine operations was that the marines were forced to respond to the incident and thus were not able to choose the timing or location for their operations," he said. "In other words, they had to attack Fallujah immediately, as opposed to being able to go with their original highly publicized plan of putting platoon-sized elements living with the people, using minimal force combined with a visible maximum presence and developing intelligence portfolios to allow targeted action as opposed to blunt, broad-spectrum action that has had the predictable results of pissing off a lot of Iraqis while being a focal point for nation-wide resistance elements."
He blamed Blackwater's mercenaries who, in Afghanistan, had almost gotten into firefights with US troops. "Cowboys," he said. "Their reputation is not good ... basically they are good at shooting guns but do not have a reputation for people with brains or situational awareness. This comes from some friends that worked with them in Afghanistan. My guess is that they did not coordinate their move with the marines in the area [who probably had no idea they were in Fallujah]. The ones who were killed were driving in the city with no crew-served weapons or anybody riding top cover outside of an SUV. That is really stupid. Basically a bunch of high-paid dumb-ass special-forces types who wanted to get in a firefight because they thought they were bulletproof."
Near the old bridge where the charred bodies were strung up is the Julan neighborhood on the northwestern border of the town. I found the neighborhood's people sorting through the rubble of their destroyed homes, flattened as if by an earthquake. AC-130 gunships, attack helicopters, and even fighter planes had pummeled the neighborhood where mujahideen held out. I found one man standing in the center of an immense crater that had been his home, his children playing on piles of bricks. Another man sat collapsed in despair in front of the gate leading to his home that had been crushed as if by a giant foot. He played with his worry beads indolently. One by one the men of the neighborhood asked me to photograph the damage US marines had inflicted upon them. As I was doing so a white sedan pulled up and two men covering their faces with checkered scarves emerged, demanding to know my identity. They were afraid of spies, they told me. I convinced them I was just a journalist and they escorted me to a mosque whose tower had collapsed from a US attack. In the still-seething Julan neighborhood, fighters were bitter about the compromise reached with the Americans that ended the fighting, and threatened to kill the leaders who had negotiated and approved the settlement.
Down the railroad tracks on the eastern edge of Fallujah, the Askari neighborhood suffered a similar fate, its homes eaten by US bullets and shells. It is here that US troops man the Fallujah checkpoint alongside Fallujan soldiers, some wearing the uniforms of the former army. Dozens of cars line up there to wind slowly around barricades and be searched for weapons and foreign fighters. My driver resented the hour-long wait and took the back roads into Fallujah, through a moonscape of sand dunes, past abandoned cement factories with cranes frozen atop like skeletons. Fallujah is a center for cross-border smuggling in Iraq and apart from the patronage it received from Saddam, smuggling was the primary revenue earner. As long as Fallujah's businessmen are permitted to continue their smuggling activities, the town will remain quiescent. Trails carved out of the desert lead into the town from every direction, and the main road is ignored by those who know. On my way out we drove past a lot in the desert where a dozen rusted trucks were parked, with Hebrew writing on them and Israeli license plates, probably stolen in Israel and sold in Jordan. No soldiers or marines regulated traffic in the area, I noticed, as we bumped our way over the dunes.
Fallujah's lawlessness was actually threatening the economy by obstructing the essential traffic coming in through Jordan. Iraqi friends who had driven the western roads described seeing thousands of mujahideen manning checkpoints made of concrete blocks and logs in the middle of the road and demanding identification cards at gunpoint, searching for foreigners. For the month of April, they had managed to take over the west. They had not been killed or disarmed, so there is no reason to think they cannot do it again.
Referring to Iraq's Highway 10, a former American marine currently working very closely in a civilian capacity with the marine commanders in Fallujah explained to me, "Fallujah sits on a major artery between Baghdad and the rest of the world. There is no fucking way we will let them stand in our path. We're trying to rebuild the country. Fallujah is in the way. We will be moving massive amounts of people and material in the region. We would have been using the western route a lot more if it was safe." I asked him who was in control of Fallujah. "I can tell you who is not in control," he said. "The marines." He told me of kidnapping incidents he knew about. "People disappear into the hole of Fallujah," he said. "The mujahideen control the city." He was suspicious of anointed warlord General Jassim's ability to control the city, telling me, "I don't trust Jassim or the Fallujah model." He was convinced that the status quo in Fallujah would have to be corrected. "The situation will change," he said. "We should have never gone inside the city. This is not a Marine Corps mission. The marines are a mobile, self-sustainable fighting force. The Marine Corps doesn't do occupation. We would kick ass shutting borders. The Corps does short displays of massive power. The Marine Corps goes into violent situations, kicks ass and then lets the army handle things. The Marine Corps cannot handle logistics or stay long." The planned handover of sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30 would not reduce the need to reassert control over Fallujah, he said, adding, "What will be gone after June 30? A three-letter acronym and some Bush flunkies and third-stringers."
The marines rely on private companies to supply them with their arms, food, water and all other essential materiel, from Baghdad, Jordan and Turkey. Companies use their own private armies composed of former intelligence and army servicemen to protect the convoys that support the marines in the entire west. They too are vulnerable to the mujahideen. Forgotten is the importance of the Habaniya airbase, also called Al Taqaddum, 80km west of Baghdad. Seized by allied special forces even before the war itself began, it was the main Iraqi airbase outside the former "no-fly zone" imposed after the 1991 Gulf War. It remains essential to support the 25,000 marines occupying western Iraq. The lines of communication, or LOCs, that much of the occupation and economy depend on are thus vulnerable to interdiction, passing through inhabited and agricultural areas that provide cover for the resistance.
US marines conducted their last patrol into Fallujah on May 10. It was a hasty affair. A convoy drove up to the headquarters of the new Fallujah military force for a brief meeting and left. The mood was festive on the streets. Thousands of residents came out for a carnival-like victory celebration. Fighters carrying their weapons piled on to pickup trucks and shot into the air, songs were sung and a sheep was slaughtered on the street. Men queued to sign up for a newly formed military unit, collecting the forms from an Iraqi officer wearing the uniform of the disbanded Republican Guard, seated behind a desk.
A marine colonel responsible for civil-affairs operations in Fallujah admitted to me that he had no role in the negotiations that led to the settlement and knew nothing about them. He and his men were not even permitted to enter the city. Though marine commanders had claimed they would conduct joint patrols with local forces in the city, since May 10 the marines have stayed away. The colonel admitted to me that he did not even know who was in charge of Fallujah.
Brigadier-General Kimmitt had announced: "We have to win this war in Fallujah one neighborhood at a time. We're going to do it on our terms, on our timeline, and it will be overwhelming." But General Mattis and his men, escorted by the new Fallujah Brigade for their own protection, had barely been able to penetrate the city. After their safe exit from Fallujah after that last incursion, and after Iraqi forces had raised their own flag - not the new one issued by the Iraqi Governing Council - over the eastern checkpoint, Mattis concluded with a speech: "My fine young sailors and marines, sometimes history is made in small, dusty places like this. Today was good history because we did not get into a fight. Not a shot was fired. We did not come here to fight these people, we came here to free them." He had forgotten all his demands, including the handover of heavy weapons, the men who killed the four American contractors, and any foreign fighters. The commander of the most powerful fighting unit in the world was satisfied, according to the Associated Press (AP), with the mere fact that "nobody shoots", and that "any day that there is no shooting it is good". On April 20, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had warned: "Thugs and assassins and former Saddam henchmen will not be allowed to carve out portions of that city and to oppose peace and freedom."
The police, civil-defense corps and Fallujah Bigade, all ostensibly under final US authority, told me they would attack Americans should they enter. Although the well-dressed General Muhamad Latif was said to be in control, and General Jassim dismissed, the men of the Fallujah Brigade were still commanded by Jassim, it was to him they gave their allegiance and it was to him the town leaders came to discuss plans for the new army. Jassim's men were not arresting the mujahideen. Their ranks included mujahideen. The general himself was beholden to the mujahideen leaders, seeking their approval, collaborating with them, and under their command. The police were afraid of mujahideen units who were terrorizing them and civilians.
If Fallujah was quiet now, it was in part because mujahideen leaders had left the city. Some had sought refuge in Baghdad's Aamriya district, home to Sunni radicals and adjoining the resistance center of Abu Ghraib. Residents of Aamriya told me that after the entrance of mujahideen from Fallujah into their neighborhood, attacks against Americans there had ceased in order to avoid provoking the Americans and revealing their identities. Mujahideen in Fallujah, eyeing the surrounding villages where there tribes were based, and the nearby city of Ramadi, expected similar battles to occur there, leading to the liberation of more territory and a country governed by the resistance. They had been planning for this at least since February. Leaflets had been circulated by "the Army of Muhamad", instructing people what to do when the Americans left. Meanwhile, a group called the Mujahideen Brigades circulated leaflets in Baghdad urging people to stay home because "your mujahideen brothers in Ramadi, Khalidiyah, and Fallujah will bring the fire of the resistance to the capital Baghdad, and support our mujahideen brothers in the Army of the Mahdi in liberating you from the injustice of the occupation. Forewarned is forearmed." Other leaflets circulating in Fallujah after the accord condemned the leaders who negotiated it for weakening the resistance.
Should the Fallujah model be applied elsewhere in the Sunni Triangle, it is clear that radical Sunnis in alliance with former Ba'athist officers would seize control - a warlord with a cleric legitimizing him in every city. Within Fallujah, some neighborhoods were still controlled by irredentist mujahideen, bitter at the ceasefire that betrayed their cause. They were threatening the very radical leaders who had tenuous control of the city, condemning their moderation. With no clear leader, the people of Fallujah were worried about internal power struggles turning bloody.
So could the Fallujah model be applied elsewhere? And should it? Supporters of armed resistance to the occupation had assisted the fight in Fallujah, providing food and medicine and smuggling weapons in with the aid that was trucked in from the Mother of All Battles Mosque in Baghdad's Ghazaliya district. Now Fallujan leaders were supporting Muqtada al-Sadr's Shi'ite fighters in the south, and meeting with leaders from other Sunni parts of the country.
Leaving aside virtually independent Kurdistan, which has been ruled by two US-supported benevolent warlords for 14 years, there are no military figures who could command legitimate authority in the Shi'ite neighborhoods of Baghdad and the the Shi'ite south. There are only religious leaders such as Muqtada and the network of clerics and gangs he controls. This would be ceding the country to Khomeinist thugs who would impose the strictest form of Islam, meting out religiously inspired death sentences like the Taliban. Abdel Aziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress and interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi all command armies, but have no significant popular support. Journalists are already asking for written guarantees from militia leaders in Karbala and Najaf in order to operate while Americans desperately search for a suitable local leader to impose his own order. And if US troops cannot deal with the mujahideen, how will the inchoate Iraqi regime?
Members of the former governing council have already voiced their displeasure. Governing council spokesman Haydar Ahmad told the Arabic news network al-Arabiya on May 2 that the Ministry of Defense had not been consulted prior to the formation of the Fallujah Brigade, adding, "The tragedy of Fallujah cannot be ended by forming a force without consulting the authority in this country." Erstwhile US ally Chalabi, interviewed by alJazeera on May 3, said that "the issue is that those who carried arms and the terrorists who fight against the new situation in Iraq are from the Ba'athists and the remnants of Saddam's regime. They should not be given legitimacy to control any area in Iraq by force." Chalabi compared the solution in Fallujah to returning control of Germany to the Nazis, adding that "The terrorists are free in the secured haven of Falluja." Chalabi and two other governing council members, Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum and Adil Abdel Mahdi, had co-signed a statement supporting the Iraqi defense minister's rejection of what they termed "the Republican Guard brigade" in Fallujah as part of the new Iraqi army. A spokesman for leading moderate Shi'ite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani objected that "members of the Ba'ath Party committed the worst crimes and made bloodbaths and the biggest mass graves in the history of humanity". The number of armies in the country is only increasing, and unless the United States wants an Iraq of warlord-controlled, radical Islamic fiefdoms like it has in Afghanistan, Fallujah looks like a model for disaster.
Tomorrow: PART 2, The fighting poets
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PART 2: The fighting poets
On May 11, one day after US marines conducted their last patrol into Fallujah following their decision to pull back and hand over to a Fallujah Brigade after a bloody month-long siege, hundreds of dignitaries gathered under a long tent in the city 50 kilometers west of Baghdad for a poetry celebration organized by the National Front of Iraqi Intellectuals.
It was staged in front of the unfinished Rahma Hospital, and a podium was placed on top of the rough gray stairs at the hospital's entrance, with the front's emblem and Iraqi flags draped on the podium. Tall columns and arches framed the background. Graffiti on the walls of the hospital read, "Long live the mujahideen and the loved ones of Mohammed", "Victory is Fallujah's and defeat for the infidel America" and "the Fallujah martyrs are the lights for the way to the complete liberation of Iraq".
Clerics resplendent in their turbans, tribal leaders wearing white kafiyas, or headscarves, businessmen, military and police officers and men in Ba'athist-style matching solid-color open-collar shirts and pants called "safari suits" sat on plastic chairs under a long tent shading them from the noonday sun. Banners hung on the sides of the tent and walls of the hospital made clear the sentiments of the moment: "All of Fallujah's neighborhoods bear witness to its heroism, steadfastness and virtue", "The stand of Fallujah is the truest expression of the Iraqi identity", "Fallujah, castle of steadfastness and pride" and "The martyrs of Fallujah, Najaf, Kufa and Basra are the pole of the flag that says God is great".
Above the podium, tough-looking men wearing sunglasses and grimaces looked down on the crowd. A banner above them described the event as a poetry festival to support Fallujah against the occupation. Cans of soft drinks and bottles of water were provided for the honored guests.
"Hey Fallujah," called one poet, "when I wrote my poem you were the most beautiful verse inside it and without your stand I could not raise my head again." Another poet, with the strong accent of Shi'ite southern Iraq, declared: "Fallujah is full of real men." Bridging the Sunni-Shi'ite divide, he referred to the important Shi'ite martyr Hussein, who is venerated for defying Sunni tyranny: "From the 'no' of Hussein Fallujah learned so much." He continued that just as "Hussein was supported by 70 of his followers, we have to be like his followers and end the internal strife ... I have a brave friend from Fallujah and I came from Karbala." He led the audience in chants and hand-clapping, calling for unity between Sunnis and Shi'ites.
Another Shi'ite poet from Baghdad, Falah al-Fatlawi, declared that radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Army of the Mahdi militia "awoke for Fallujah, and Sadr's voice from Najaf" declared the value of Fallujah. "We will never sell it," he said, "people sacrificed their spirit for Fallujah, one heart, one line, Sunni and Shi'ite for Fallujah!" Mohammed Khalil Kawkaz recited a poem called "The Fallujah Tragedy" in a barely intelligible local accent. "Fallujah is a tall date palm," he said. "She never accepts anybody touching her dates, she will shoot arrows into the eyes of those who try to taste her, this is Fallujah, your bride, oh Euphrates! She will never fall in love with anyone but you ... Americans dug in the ground and pulled out the roots of the date palm."
Choosing an interesting metaphor, given the recent decapitation of American Nick Berg, he announced: "We will slit the throats of our enemies!" and added that "the earth hugs the destroyed houses ... the women burned and the children suffered, calling to the governing council, you are deaf and dumb O governing council! You found honor in meeting him who pillaged Fallujah [the Americans]."
He cried to the Euphrates River, asking it why it did nothing to help the city: "Oh Euphrates, what happened to you that you just lay down? Get up and fight with your waves and swallow this country [US] and the others [the coalition], stand with Fallujah! You are the Iraqi flag, they tried to change you but they cannot, for you are her love! Oh Fallujah, you are my blood, my eyes, my everything! All the mosques say God is great and call for jihad, as the Americans bomb their towers! No honor, no justice, no right, nothing, but we have the scarved ones [mujahideen] who will restore all, he brought them, prisoners, hostages, like a wolf and he negotiated and sold them in the market! He who did not bleed for you [Fallujah] is dishonorable!"
Another poet shouted, "Congratulations on the victory of the revolutionaries, your heads will always be high and the one who wanted to conquer you hangs his head low!" A poet from the southern Shi'ite shrine city of Najaf sang, "I brought with me all the love from Najaf to this city and I send it as kisses to the people of the Anbar."
A 12-year-old boy from Najaf followed him, and the microphone was lowered to accommodate his small stature. He wore a pressed white shirt neatly tucked into his jeans, and he waved an arm angrily, pointing a finger at the sky. "I came from Najaf to praise the heroes of Fallujah!" he shouted, and ended by calling to God, screaming, "Ya Allah! Ya Allah," and then burst out sobbing. Older men escorted him off as he wiped away his tears, and he was embraced and kissed in succession by the dignitaries in the front row. He returned to recite another bellicose poem, this time brandishing a Kalashnikov as long as he was tall.
Listening to the hyperbolic poems amid a devastated city I was reminded of Ma'rouf al-Resafi (1875-1945), nicknamed "the poet of Iraq". A teacher, writer, translator, journalist, historian and politician, Resafi traveled for much of his life and settled in Fallujah, from which he fled in 1941 to Baghdad when British troops and mercenaries attacked it. He wrote famous poems in tribute to Fallujah, including one that went:
Oh Englishmen, we will not forget
Your cruelty in the houses of Fallujah
Sanctioned by your army, wanting revenge
Its parasites dazzled by Fallujah's inhabitants
And on the defenseless you poured a glass
Of blood mixed with betrayal
Is in this the civility, and loftiness
Your people claim to ascend to?
Seated majestically in the center of the crowd, prominently next to the chief of police, Colonel Sabar Fadhil al-Janabi, Sheikh Dhafer al-Ubeidi, the guest of honor, rose to speak, a white scarf framing his dark-bearded face and a gold-braided translucent cape draped over his shoulders. "There was never unity in Iraqi history like this," he said, describing the event as "the wedding day for Fallujah". Muslims had not felt such joy, he said, since Saladin liberated Jerusalem in 1187. Silencing the enthusiastic crowd, he continued: "I don't like clapping, so if I say something you like then say 'Allahu Akbar' [God is great], which is in accordance with our traditions. Clapping is for poets, not religious leaders."
Dhafer warned that Zionists, imperialists and Masons were leading the occupation and inciting sectarian war. "The meaning of Fallujah has become victory," he told them. Fallujah was now haram for the Americans, he said, religiously prohibited, until judgment day. "And Iraq will be haram for America until judgment day." Dhafer wished peace upon the crowd and descended to shouts of "God is great!"
As the tribal leaders seated behind Dhafer parted and lumbered out of the tent, holding their gowns up slightly with one hand, I stopped one of the guests, Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Zowabi, to ask him about the event. "It is a victory celebration," he told me. "It is a message that all Iraqis are one people, as you saw, and there are many well-known people here from all Iraq." I asked the chubby sheikh if the battle would continue, and he laughed, answering, "Fallujah is part of the victory, but there are more battlefields. There will be a popular rebellion in all of Iraq."
I asked him what political plan they had for the rest of the country, and his answer was typical of what I have been hearing in Iraq for the past 13 months. "We want a national government that represents the Iraqi people," he said. When I pressed him on what type of government, he said, "We want any government that satisfies the Iraqi people." And did the tribal leader want a democracy? "We don't hate democracy, we believe in democracy, but it should come from the Iraqi people. We have our own special democracy that takes Iraqi history and culture into consideration." He explained proudly that "the first code of laws on Earth was Hammurabi's code in Iraq, before America even existed", referring to "priest king" Hammurabi (circa 1792-1750 BC), who united all of Mesopotamia under his 43-year reign of Babylon.
Zowabi's companion, a tall, gaunt sheikh with a thin mustache, told me, "We don't want freedom or democracy if it comes from America." Another sheikh cut him off, shouting, "How can you tell a foreigner that you don't want freedom or democracy? He will tell the whole world." The interrupted sheikh did not respond, telling me only that "America should leave today, before tomorrow".
PART 3: The Fallujah model
With Fallujah being touted by Iraqi fighters as a successful example of how to liberate their country from the US-led occupation, and by the occupation leaders as a successful example of how to hand over the country to its people and avoid further bloodshed, I set out to discover the reality behind the "Fallujah model".
What I found was a city run by the Iraqi resistance, itself divided between those who supported the ceasefire with occupation forces in May that ended a month's heavy fighting in the city and those who sought to continue the struggle throughout Iraq "and all the way to Jerusalem".
To learn more about the history of Fallujah's resistance, I visited the opulent home of Abu Mohammed, a former brigadier-general in the Iraqi military. We sat in his guest hall, decorating with expensive but gaudy art, flowery and uncoordinated, typical for the region, watching a news broadcast on the assassination of Iraqi Governing Council president Izzedin Salim.
The brigadier-general's three cheerful young boys were play-fighting on a sofa, grinning at me shyly, hoping to get the attention of the foreigner. Abu Mohammed has a baby face and dimples, and smiled as much as his frolicking boys. Like most of Fallujah's people, he traced the beginning of the resistance to the US Army's killing of 17 demonstrators in late April of last year.
Abu Mohammed explained that Fallujah was more traditional than most Iraqi cities. "It is conservative and the influence of mosques is great and widespread." Saddam Hussein's control of thought and ideas, he said, meant that "you could only express yourself through the mosques and it was in the mosques that people felt there was an authority who cared and listened to them". Abu Mohammed added that "the level of education of imams in the mosque was not high".
Abu Mohammed, like all members of the previous army, lost his job when the US occupation dissolved it, along with outlawing the Ba'ath Party. He explained that this had only created enemies for the Americans. He spoke of "the massive use of force" and "disrespect for our traditions" that Fallujah experienced, as well as the "media showing American raids and attacks", meaning that "former regime people like me were forced to support revenge".
"After the war ended," he said, "we expected things to improve, but everything became worse, electricity, water, sewage, draining, so mosque speakers openly spoke of jihad and encouraged prayers to join it after a month of occupation." Abu Mohammed explained that the "mosque culture developed against the Americans in this year. The mosques were free. Mosque culture in Fallujah centered on the jihad. This attracted foreign Arabs who felt constrained by their own regimes, and of course there were neighboring countries who supported this financially. Nobody in Fallujah opposed the resistance and many different resistance groups came in. Weapons were very available in Fallujah. All soldiers and security personnel took their weapons home, and the Ba'ath Party had also distributed weapons."
Abu Mohammed was bewildered by what he called "the stupidity of the Americans", explaining, "They didn't seize ammunition depots of the army that contained enormous amounts of weapons." The military experience, the financing and the weapons were all present in Fallujah, he said, and "the nature of the people here is violent because they grow up with weapons from childhood and weapons become part of our personality". He added that "the imams of mosques took over the defense of Fallujah efficiently".
When the fighting in April started, "the people here were monitoring American movements and had the upper hand. Military experience let them know where the Americans would attack. Fallujans were expecting this to happen, especially after the four [US] contractors [were killed], and they prepared themselves for the fight. The resistance spread into positions assigned to them by Sheikh Dhafer [al-Ubeidi] and Abdallah Janabi, and the military planning and street fighting in defense of one's home requires less strategizing."
Abu Mohammed admitted that "the presence of alJazeera's [Qatar-based television station] exaggerated pictures and incitement of people led people inside and outside Iraq to sympathize with Fallujah." He compared alJazeera's Fallujah correspondent to a sports commentator: "His broadcasts were like a sports commentator, not a journalist, encouraging people to support one team against the other. And he raised the spirits of fighters."
Abu Mohammed was concerned about the new status of Fallujah. "There is no law in Fallujah now," he said. "It's like Afghanistan - rule of gangs, mafias and Taliban. If they decide somebody is a spy they will kill him. There is no legal procedure. Imams of mosques who left during the fighting were prevented from returning to their mosques." He feared that soon differences would emerge among different mujahideen groups, leading to further violence.
He told me a new Fallujah army had been formed "to contain the former army and resistance leaders from taking over and subverting the rule of law". Abu Mohammed was skeptical about the new army that he had joined. "What is the point of this new army? Who does it kill? Who does it defend?" he asked, adding that "the religious leadership decides who gets into the new army". He himself was approached by delegates from a leading mosque run by Janabi, who brought him forms and told him he was approved.
After the first five days of fighting, the former brigadier sent his family out of the city. Now they had returned, and his oldest boy was serving me coffee, but he wanted to leave the city. He told me his beliefs were different than most of his neighbors. "I am looking for the future of my children," he said.
Across the town, I visited the headquarters of the Islamic Party. One of the 25 parties belonging to the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, its controversial leader was Dr Muhsin Abdel Hamid. The party had strong anti-Shi'ite undertones, and Hamid had already claimed, incorrectly, that Sunnis were the majority in Iraq.
The party offices were located in an old cinema, earning it the nickname "the cinema party" by Fallujans who viewed it as too cooperative with the Americans. The Islamic Party dominated the city council, but its members were not active during the fighting and some left the city, earning them the contempt of Fallujans, who divided their community between those who stayed and fought and those who left.
By the doors boxes of medical supplies were piled high and several men in sweatpants were sprawled in front, holding Kalashnikovs. Inside the theater, piled on seats and on the stage, were thousands of boxes containing medical supplies, as well as food for the families of "martyrs" and the wounded. The party was sending hundreds of these by truck to Karbala and Najaf, where Shi'ite militias were battling occupation forces. By the door I found a poster advertising an "Islamic music band" called "the voice of the right". It showed a bloody heart in the center of Iraq with a hand plunging a spear through it. Another poster showed two pages, one with American soldiers and one with Iraqis and mosques: "With the Prophet's guidance we will unite to turn the page on the occupation." On a table they sold copies of the party's newspaper, Dar Assalam, and a radical Sunni magazine it supported called Nur, meaning "lights".
I met with Khalid Mohammed, the office director, who insisted on speaking only classical Arabic, or Fus-ha, an annoying habit akin to speaking Shakespearean English in daily conversation. Though the Islamic Party had been a key player in the negotiations with the Americans that brought about the hudna, or ceasefire, Mohammed was worried about groups in the city "who reject the hudna and want to turn Fallujah into a center to export the rebellion". Three differences had emerged during the fighting, he said, "and when we worked on the ceasefire there were other fighters who want fighting to continue until the occupation ends". Mohammed confirmed to me that former Iraqi Republican Guard general, Jassim Mohammed Saleh, had not been dismissed as some reports said but was in fact the No 2 man in power in the city.
The Islamic Party's main competition comes from the Association of Islamic Scholars, headquartered in the Abdel Aziz Mosque of the Nazal neighborhood, which was a key battle zone during the siege.
The association, long committed to resisting the occupation, commanded its own mujahideen units during the fighting. According to a Coalition Provisional Authority official familiar with Iraq, Sheikh Harith al-Dhari, one of the association's leaders in Baghdad, is also an important leader of the resistance. The mosque was alleged by Americans to contain mujahideen and was attacked, its green dome speckled with bullet holes. On one of the mosque's walls a banner announced that "violation of the mosque's sanctuary dishonors the world's Muslims". Papers taped to columns on either side of the entrance gate said, "God chose for you a group of martyrs from the city of clerics and religious science and congratulations to them who now live in the stomachs of the green birds," a reference to heaven for martyrs. Another paper said, "Congratulations on your victory, O people of pride and virtue, O heroes of Fallujah." Colorful stickers I had also seen on car bumpers in the streets showed an Iraqi flame burning the Israeli flag alongside the new Iraqi flag that the governing council had approved. Abdel Hamid Farhan, the mosque leader, told me his city was not yet free and would not be until the rest of the country was liberated.
On the large concrete blocks that guard the Fallujah provisional council from attack, I found the same resistance posters I had seen elsewhere in the city and throughout the west of the country. The resistance had capable graphic designers working for it. "Iraq is the beginning of the end of the occupation," it said, showing a fist lunging out of Iraq into an Iraqi flag. On the flag it said, "Congratulations to Fallujah's people, jihad, martyrdom, victory." Two armed resistance fighters were on either side, their faces covered by kafiyas, scarves. A US flag with a Jewish star on it was on fire, its flames burning American soldiers. The poster was produced by "the Islamic Media League".
Inside, Saad Ala al-Rawi, a lawyer and head of the local provisional council, was receiving petitioners behind his desk. He had a thin mustache and wore the Ba'athist "safari" uniform of matching shirt and pants. An elderly woman draped in a black abaya, her face wrinkled and full of traditional tribal tattoos, had come to ask for help and was shouting her problems in the presence of several sweating portly men wearing dashas and kafiyas.
Al-Rawi had taken part in the negotiations with the Americans, but was surprised to learn that simultaneous negotiations were being held without their knowledge to establish the Fallujah army and appoint General Jassim. He didn't want to answer questions about this. Though he appreciated the role played by three Iraqi Governing Council members in the negotiations, "we were expecting something stronger", he said, "because they are Iraqis and we are Iraqis from the same country. The minimum they could do was threaten to resign because their people were being slaughtered in Fallujah." I pressed him about the other negotiations, but he refused to discuss them.
He, too, mentioned the April 29, 2003, school demonstrations as a key event. "The resistance started that day," he said. "Fallujah was the first city that resisted the occupation. The killings continued when they would open fire randomly on us and raid our houses. Because of these events, sympathy with the resistance increased." His 45-member council was formed on April 1 this year. "We have spent most of our time negotiating with them [the Americans] over their human-rights violations."
Referring to the attack on the four American contract workers, he told me, "For us as Muslims and Arabs, we condemn the mutilation and burning of the four, but in a war killing happens on both sides. We are at war, so killing is normal. But mutilating bodies is not acceptable." He added that the Americans used the incident as an excuse to attack Fallujah. I asked him if they would shoot at US troops should they re-enter the city. "Let me ask you this," he said, "if someone invades your house, will you just stand by?"
TOMORROW: All power to the sheikh
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PART 4: All power
to the sheikh
On Friday, March 14, I pulled up to the mosque of Sheikh Dhafer al-Ubeidi, a key cleric in organizing the resistance in Fallujah, along with Abdallah Janabi. Hadhra Mosque lies inconspicuously across the street from the Rahma Hospital, where two days before I had attended a poetry festival staged to celebrate US forces pulling out of the city after a month-long siege. Fallujah is known as medinat al-masajid or the city of mosques, for its 80 mosques, but Hadhra Mosque is small and modest compared with others in the city, its colors faded, its dome small. But if there is a final authority for the resistance in Iraq, a command and control center, this is it.
I had been warned that Dhafer ran the city, and to operate in it I would need his "clearance". Other journalists who had not done so were held up by armed gangs. A writer for a leading US newspaper was caught at a checkpoint attempting to disguise his face with a woman's black veil. Another writer for a top US magazine was held after coming out of the marine base in an armored car, with an armed driver, bulletproof vest, US passport with Israeli stamps and a receipt from the Israeli-Jordanian border crossing in his pocket. My contact in Fallujah was asked by Dhafer to confirm whether these and other foreigners held by local militias were in fact journalists. I was hoping to get a piece of paper from the sheikh that would be a license to work in the city.
As I got out of the car in front of the mosque, a big explosion shook the city, and in the distance I could see a large mushroom cloud growing, and then being dispersed by the wind. Probably a mortar converted into a roadside bomb. The police car in front of the mosque veered off to take a look. On the tall fence lining the mosque, a banner announced, "Sunnis and Shi'ites are committed to defeating the Zionist plan." It did not explain what plan was being referred to; apparently the locals already knew. The white paint was peeling off of the rusted gate. A sign above the gate bore the title al-Hadhra Muhamadia Mosque and Madrassa (religious school). The mosque's manar, or tower, was damaged from a US shell.
Leaflets and announcements were taped on to the gate. One said that "the fatwa [religious verdict] council asks for pictures and evidence of occupation forces violating human rights and any attack on our values and our Islamic symbols. Please give them to the council in the Hadhra Mosque." Another one contained a long verse dedicated to a man martyred by the Americans. An announcement from the Telecommunications Ministry reminded people not to pay telephone repairmen, who were salaried by the ministry. Another one from the qaimaqamia (an old Ottoman word for "city hall") instructed people about what documents they should bring "to receive compensation for martyrs, and wounded people, and damaged vehicles". A similar one asked the families of martyrs to go to the courts to get a death certificate and then to the hospital to get additional proof of death in order to process their compensation claims.
Finally an announcement from the Mujahideen Council declared that "imams [mosque leaders] are responsible for their mosques and the mujahideen have no rights to interfere in mosques after today". It added that "some thieves go to markets, confiscating goods and money and consider themselves mujahideen, but they are liars and we ask the people of the city of mosques to catch these people and educate them [forcefully] and the mujahideen will support them to prevent strife in our city".
Past the security guards a tall palm tree provided a bit of shade on the path to the mosque's office. The windows of the mosque and its offices were still crossed with tape to prevent shattering from fighting. Inside the office I found an acquaintance I had known in Baghdad a year before, Taghlub al-Alusi, a gentle elderly man, tall and dignified, with sharp lines on his face. He was born on Alus, an island in the Euphrates River to the north, but he had lived in Fallujah for 42 years until moving to the United Arab Emirates in the late 1990s, where he worked as an engineer.
I had met Taghlub in Baghdad's Sunni stronghold Adhamiya on a visit to the offices of the National Unity Movement, a party established by Iraq's most famous living Sunni thinker, Dr Ahmad Kubeisi. Kubeisi's movement had been the great hope of Iraq's Sunnis, and I had followed it closely since he returned from a self-imposed exile in the UAE that had started in 1998 and ended with a triumphal Friday sermon in the Abu Hanifa Mosque, Iraq's main Sunni mosque, in Baghdad's Adhamiya district. For this sermon, hundreds of people had stood and knelt barefoot outside the packed mosque. On top of its walls young men held banners proclaiming "one Iraq, one people", "we reject foreign control", "Sunnis are Shi'ites and Shi'ites are Sunnis, we are all one", "all the believers are brothers", and similar proclamations of national unity.
Kubeisi's sermon that followed prayers was unique for its nationalism. Baghdad had been occupied by the Mongols, he said, referring to the sacking of the capital of the Muslim world in 1258. Now new Mongols were occupying Baghdad and they were creating divisions between Sunnis and Shi'ites. However, the Shi'ites and Sunnis were one and they should remain united and reject foreign control. They had all suffered together as one people under Saddam Hussein's rule. Saddam oppressed all Iraqis and then he abandoned them to suffer.
I continued following Kubeisi after he formed his unity movement. Last summer he spoke in Baghdad, condemning the attacks against American soldiers because they were premature and should not begin until it was seen whether or not the Americans acted on their promise to leave as soon as possible. Kubeisi admitted that Sunnis were pushed aside because the United States viewed them as hostile and that the Shi'ites were the temporary victors. Speaking in Samara last summer, Kubeisi prohibited attacks against Americans. "We waited 35 years under Saddam and we should give the Americans a year before we fight them and tell them to leave," he said. Kubeisi was based in the UAE state of Dubai and traveled back and forth between there and Baghdad. According to his supporters, he was informed by the Americans that he would be denied re-entry to Iraq.
Taghlub, my acquaintance, had worked with Kubeisi's movement for three months, but left because "I found them inefficient". He told me Kubeisi was now "sleeping in Dubai" after being threatened by the now-defunct Iraqi Governing Council, the Americans and the armed Badr Brigade of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Taghlub's son Mohammed was a religious student in the mosque and helped his father in administering it. When I mentioned Kubeisi's movement he shook his head. "It was a failure," he said. Taghlub's older brother, Sheikh Hisham al-Alusi, had once led Hadhra Mosque, but after being seriously injured in an assassination attempt he was confined to a wheelchair and was too feeble to move on his own, so he appointed Dhafer as his replacement. According to a Coalition Provisional Authority official who met with Taghlub often when Taghlub led the negotiations that ended in US forces withdrawing and handing power over to Fallujans, Taghlub was a leader of the resistance in Fallujah.
Removing my shoes and leaving them by the door, I was escorted into a sparse office and seated on an old sofa. I was offered a glass of water. Taghlub completed his conversations with callers and sat close to me, the deep lines on his face giving him an even more distressed look than normal. He was very worried about the Americans having entered Karbala that day. "It's holy for us too," he said of the shrine city containing the tombs of Hussein and Abbas, two of the Prophet Mohammed's grandchildren. "They are our forefathers," he explained, rejecting any hint of Sunni-Shi'ite conflict.
A continuous stream of visitors came to see the town leaders present in the office, to ask for help and hold whispered conversations. Abdel Basit Turki, the former interim human rights minister, entered with a small entourage, including three clerics from Samara and a local tribal sheikh. Dressed in an elegant suit, the tall man had come to pay his respects and receive the gratitude of the town's leaders. Turki is from western Iraq, born in Haditha, a town to the north of Fallujah, though when I asked him where he was from he only smiled and said, "I am an Iraqi."
Turki was an economics professor who never left Iraq under Saddam's regime. He served as minister from August 30, 2003, until April 8 this year, when he resigned to protest US actions in Fallujah. "I resigned because the American military used force to solve problems that could be solved by referring to the Iraqi people," he told me, adding, "Their attitude to the Iraqi citizens makes the future of human rights in Iraq insecure." He complained about "Americans using Apaches to raid Sadr City, besieging Fallujah and even using fighter jets against the city, converting homes into mass graves. As minister of human rights I had to resign to show the people I identified with them." He complained that his challenge had been twofold, dealing with "the former regime's human-rights violations and the violations resulting from the occupation by foreign troops. My main challenge [is] to educate people about human rights during an occupation. You cannot educate people about human rights when they are being bombed and killed." He added that he had received pressure from the Americans to deal only with human-rights violations of the previous regime.
Turki's companion, Sheikh Ahmad, from the mosque of Risala al-Muhamdia in Samara, a city to the north of Baghdad, had also come to pay his respects to Iraq's first liberated city. "What happened in Fallujah is expected to happen in other cities in Iraq," he told me, predicting an intifada shaabia (people's uprising). "All the people of Iraq will erupt in revolution, and at that moment it will make no difference if you are Sunni or Shi'ite," he said.
A 12-year-old boy entered the room, to the delight of the mosque's leadership. They introduced him as Saad, a brave boy who had fought as a capable sniper during the battle with the Americans. He was hugged and kissed by all the men in the room, who congratulated him for being a batal, or hero. Already a seasoned scrapper, he smiled proudly, and thanked them in a hoarse adult voice with the confidence of a grown man. He was insolent to the older and bigger boys, who seemed scared of him. I was nervous around him too - he reminded me of a rabid pit bull. After prayers I saw him lingering outside the mosque, slinging a Kalashnikov with the magazine inside, providing security.
Sheikh Hisham al-Alusi was wheeled in and the men came over to kiss him on the head, and praise Allah for his recovery. He explained that he had been shot three months before. "They shot 30 bullets at me, but only one entered my body," he explained. It was his first day back at the mosque, and Dhafer deferred to him, letting him take the desk. Hisham was pale and spoke in a whisper. He had been a member of the US-backed town council and had eschewed incitements of violence. Two masked men in a car pulled up next to him when he was leaving the Hadhra Mosque and shot him. The people in the mosque told me he had been shot by the resistance, apparently either out of a desire to hide the fina, or internal strife in their community, very typical of Muslim clerics, or simply to pin the blame on the Americans. When I confronted a source about having been lied to, he told me implausibly that the assailants were in fact US agents.
Soon after, General Jassim Mohammed Salih of the Fallujah Brigade walked in, wearing a white dishdash and white scarf. After exchanging greetings with the guests in the increasingly crowded office, he briefed them on the latest political events, barking gruffly in clipped military style, his jowls shaking, as he fingered yellow prayer beads. "I spoke to Brahimi yesterday and he says hi to all of you," he said, referring to United Nations representative to Iraq Lakhdar Brahimi. He then defended the need for the Fallujah army he did or did not command, depending on whether one listens to Fallujans or Americans. "Everybody else has militias and it's not called terrorism," he said, "but when an army defends its city this is called terrorism." Jassim stressed the central role of the army, explaining that "the army is the people's, not Saddam's, and anybody who comes in and attacks the institution of the army finds half a million people carrying guns against him". "Even Saddam," smiled Dhafer. I left to allow the unofficial town council to meet in private.
Returning to the mosque for Friday prayers, I removed my shoes again and walked over the prayer mats spread outside to accommodate the crowds overflowing from inside the mosque, and sat in the small garden beneath a palm tree. Taghlub's son Mohammed informed me that I was not allowed to record Dhafer's khutba, or sermon. "It is a special khutba for the people of Fallujah only," he explained. It was the first time in 13 months in Iraq that I had been told not to record a sermon.
Dhafer stood at the mosque's pulpit and from outside I could only hear him on the loudspeakers. His raspy voice was angry and high-pitched from the beginning. As is the convention, Dhafer began with a general discussion of religion, then became increasingly specific and political. "We told you last Friday and we are still telling you that after God gives you victory and safety you have to fight fitna," (internal strife, the greatest evil in the Islamic community). Using an interesting metaphor since Islam prohibits card-playing, he told his followers, "We have seen all of our enemy's cards." He condemned the Iraqi Governing Council members "who sit with the Americans".
"Everybody hates America now because of the policies of President [George W] Bush," he said, "and his own people condemn him, so what can we do? What can we say? What are the limits of our response? What are the rights of the Iraqi people?" He then answered his queries, saying there was no action the Iraqis could not take against the Americans. "They slaughtered the Geneva Accords that we were insisting upon every Friday in our mosques, and they killed human rights. This is the tragedy of the Islamic world that we experience here in Iraq, but the gates of victory for all the Islamic world have been opened in Fallujah and victory will never stop as our Prophet has predicted. All the world can recognize now that Fallujah beat the US. This is Islam our religion and state, this is the Islam of Mohammed." Dhafer warned that "after the enemy lost his battle with us he has begun planting strife and spreading rumors".
Referring to an issue of great concern in the city, as demonstrated by one of the leaflets on the mosque's gate, Dhafer turned to the unruly mujahideen. "Some people are surprised sometimes with mistakes that some people make," he said, "but I swear by God the mujahideen are innocent from those mistakes. It's a big shame on some people who claim they are mujahideen yet they make many checkpoints in several places and steal cars or kidnap people in those places. They are not mujahideen. It looks like they were educated by our enemies [the Americans]. They went into a neighborhood in our city and they did what the Americans did, forcing people to lie on the ground, spreading their legs and putting their feet on their heads: what religion is this?" Dhafer urged the mujahideen to be more pious.
Alluding to the extrajudicial killings of alleged spies for the Americans, whom he called "the traitors who sold their religion and their honor and their land and they became apostates", the sheikh reminded his people that "the accused is innocent until proven guilty". He urged people to support the town's security forces. "The police must take more authority than they have until now," he said. "Policemen should not be lazy and civil defense should do their jobs, as should the elected army." Dhafer concluded with a prayer for the mujahideen and martyrs in Najaf and Karbala.
TOMORROW: The tongue of the mujahideen
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PART 5: The tongue of the mujahideen
After listening to a sermon by Sheikh Dhafer al-Ubeidi, a key cleric in organizing the resistance in Fallujah, the next day I returned to the mosque for a formal interview with the 37-year-old sheikh. A bevy of bony young boys hung around the mosque for no apparent reason, but were always available on command to fetch tea or water for guests. The oldest among them, a lanky, grinning 17-year-old named Ala, had been part of a delegation sent by Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's militia, the army of the Mahdi, during the fighting in Fallujah that ended in May with the withdrawal of US forces.
Ala was from Baghdad's Sadr City and had worked during the fighting in the mosque's infirmary, helping the wounded. I asked him why he had come to Fallujah. "It's my country and this is also my city," he said. He was the mosque mascot, a representative of the Shi'ite mukawama, or resistance, that had helped Fallujahns in their battle, cutting American supply lines near Abu Ghraib. Former and current mujahideen stood by a fence. Muscular young men, some still with bandages covering wounds from the fighting, pulled up on Jawa motorcycles, popular with the former regime's Praetorian Guard.
Sheikh Dhafer was waiting inside for me. He would be interviewing me as well, to decide if I should be given permission to visit and work in Fallujah. The sheikh was respected for having vocally criticized Saddam Hussein, resulting in several occasions of imprisonment, but Saddam never dared execute him because he was from Fallujah. A friend of Dhafer's described him to me as "the tongue of the mujahideen", meaning he was their voice. Dhafer was the director of Aman al-ulia Lilifta, the high council for fatwas, or religious verdicts, of Fallujah. Fallujah's leading cleric, the aging Abdallah Janabi, was known as the emir, or prince, of Fallujah. As head of the Mujahideen Council, he had given Dhafer authority over the city and its fighters.
Dhafer has a wide nose and long narrow eyes that disappeared whenever he smiled, which was often, covered by round cheeks. When I asked him if he was the real leader of Fallujah, Dhafer smiled disingenuously. "I am just a simple member of the city who lived through all the suffering of Fallujah," he said. I told him I had heard he was the architect of the victory over the Americans and he grinned proudly but whispered, "Don't mention that for my security."
Dhafer admitted that he belonged to the unofficial City Consultative Council of which Taghlub al-Alusi was the head. He refused to tell me how many members the council had or who they were, but he did tell me it had a core of about 50 professionals, tribal and religious leaders and "those who stayed in the city", meaning mujahideen. When I pressed him for details about the council he laughed and squinted at me suspiciously. "What are these intelligence questions you ask me?" he said. The council appointed the team that negotiated with the Americans for a ceasefire after a month-long siege and ratified the selection of the Ba'athist officers who were placed in charge of the city's security. During negotiations, Dhafer admitted to me, he would meet with the teams and follow events. In reality, all the members were appointed with his approval and they returned to him for acceptance of the accord they reached with the Marines.
"They must withdraw from all of Fallujah, including the neighboring villages," he told me. Not satisfied with limiting the liberation to Fallujah proper, he sought to extend it to the surrounding villages, several hundred thousand more people and a much wider zone of freedom. Like all Fallujahns, he viewed time as before or after "the events". "Before April 4," he said, "the first day of the siege, all of Fallujah was closed by American troops without us knowing about it. The American administration said the siege would not open until we got the people who killed the four [US] contractors." He told me the Americans had pictures of two men alleged to have led the mob that killed them and then desecrated their bodies. "How can you punish a whole city for two men we don't even know?" he asked, adding that the city's religious leaders had condemned the mutilations (though not the killings of course).
Dhafer said that "the casualties of tanks, mortars, aircraft and everything in their arsenal, without counting the people under the destroyed buildings, was 1,200 wounded, 586 martyrs, of whom 158 were women and 86 were children". By the time fighting was over, Fallujah hospital officials would claim that up to 1,000 people had been killed, mostly women and children. At least 500 were still buried in the city's two main soccer fields and others in people's gardens. "Now all people in the world know that the US administration has no honor," Dhafer said.
Though I knew from others in the mosque that Dhafer had commanded foreign fighters in Fallujah, he denied the presence of any, telling me that "everybody knows Fallujah was the main source for the former army and its officers, including high-ranking officers, so many sent their families out and stayed to fight. This is why the American Marines that managed to destroy several South American countries in hours could not even destroy the Julan neighborhood of Fallujah. We believe God was involved in the fighting. We know we did not have equal power, but God was on our side. They demoralized us with their power and we demoralized them by shouting 'God is great' from the same mosques they were shooting at." I had seen at least four damaged manars, or mosque towers, in the city. "We demand that the manars not be repaired so that generations remember what they did."
Someone entered the office and whispered in the sheikh's ear that the Americans were approaching the city. He left hurriedly to see what was going on, so I spoke to Colonel Sabar Fadhil al-Janabi, chief of Fallujah's police force, known as the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, or ICDC, who had come to complain to Dhafer about the problems he was having with the mujahideen and seek his help. The 49-year-old former military officer had been in the police for the past nine months, but only took over control during "the events" of April. The police were involved in defending the city against the Americans, he told me, as well as evacuating wounded people and preserving law and order. He refused to answer questions about the number of police under his command, and when I pressed him he smiled and said, "This is an intelligence question," explaining that the Americans did not know and were trying to find out. He would not even provide me with a rough figure, except to say, "We have enough."
The colonel had come to seek Dhafer's assistance with the main problem he was facing. "The people wearing kafiyas who are above the law," he said, meaning the scarf-clad mujahideen. They were mistreating his forces. He asked Dhafer for his help and support in establishing the authority of his policemen. Outside, his men waited for him in civilian clothing with walkie-talkies and Kalashnikovs. They were new, replacing the old police who had fled.
Though I repeatedly tried to meet General Jassim Mohammed Salih of the Fallujah Brigade in private, I was told he was out of Fallujah in a nearby secure village, away from the mujahideen who sought to kill him. I visited another officer, General Mohammed Saleh's headquarters several times, and was told every time that he was not present, though I could see his car and driver inside. Outside his headquarters, six of his soldiers languished in a pick-up truck with its doors open to let in the breeze, should there be any. They were listening to a tape of an angry cleric sermonizing against the Americans. On the walls outside the headquarters someone had written "Allah is great, come to the jihad!" Instead of meeting the generals I talked to some of the soldiers under their command, guarding a roundabout near the train tracks. A dozen soldiers were wearing at least half a dozen different types of uniforms from the old army, though none had boots, and they wore dusty leather dress shoes instead. They told me that they did not all have boots when they served under the previous regime, and some had to buy their own boots in the market.
One man wore a jungle-patterned uniform belonging to Saddam's special forces, others had several shades of olive and khaki, as well as the old Republican Guard uniform. They mocked one man for wearing an American Army-issued uniform with the "chocolate chip" pattern, but he vehemently denied it was American, insisting it was an old Iraqi desert uniform. They were proud of their old uniforms, their lieutenant explaining to me, "We are not Saddam's army. We are soldiers for Islam and for the defense of the city." Another agreed, explaining, "We did not volunteer for Saddam but for the defense of the city and country." They had all belonged to the army before the occupation, and lost their jobs when US proconsul L Paul Bremer dismissed the army in May of 2003. They had joined the new Fallujah army when General Jassim formed it.
I asked them what they would do if Americans crossed the railroad tracks and entered the city. "They won't enter the city," I was told sharply. "We will shoot them," said another. Another man elaborated, "If Americans come inside the city we will fight them again." The lieutenant explained that "we have direct orders to fight the Americans without referring to our commanders first for permission".
Though they were currently an army belonging to the city of Fallujah, they admitted that "if the ministry of defense is formed under the authority of the Iraqi people we will join it". They saw themselves as a model for the rest of the country. "All the governorates and cities are trying to do what we did," one said to me, "we are an example." They were the first to achieve liberation, they explained, because "Fallujah is the mother of mosques and we are committed to our religion and united. Fallujahns are used to being independent and dignified. Our dignity is the most important thing to us." They were also the best-fed army in Iraqi history, with a pile of finished dishes on the grass beside them. Dhafer's Hadhra Mosque paid families to cook food for the soldiers and deliver it to them.
The following day I visited the mosque and found a new man sitting behind the desk. Haji Qasim, a former army intelligence officer, served as Taghlub's representative on an advisory council, and was, they told me "Sheikh Dhafer's right-hand man". Qasim, who received the honorific "Haji" after making the pilgrimage to Mecca, was also the founder of Fallujah's Center for the Study of Democracy and Human Rights, formed in January 2004, though in my visits I never found him studying either, only running the mosque's affairs with his assistant, Mohammed Tarik, the 32-year-old executive director of the center and a member of the town council. Tarik was a professor of the agriculture department of Anbar University, having received a master's degree in bio-technology from Baghdad University, but everybody in the mosque called him "doctor". Tarik had been present during the fighting, providing an administrative and management role for the fighters and aid workers. He admitted to me that the mosque had been a center for the mujahideen where the defense of the city was organized.
As we were talking, a fit-looking teenager on crutches hobbled in morosely. He wore a soccer uniform, but his training pants had a hole for the screws coming out of his right thigh. He had come to pick up forms from Qasim to receive compensation. An American helicopter had shot him in his car. When he saw me, a foreigner, he turned incandescent. He demanded to know who I was, what my identity was, and Tarik got up to whisper in his ear. The young man threw his forms down and walked out. The other men apologized uncomfortably, explaining what happened to him while Tarik went to talk to him.
While I was waiting for Tarik to return, 11 policemen stormed in and angrily complained to Qasim about not being paid and about the dismissal of some officers they respected. They said they were representing 351 policemen and demanded higher salaries. "Aren't you a journalist?" they shouted at me. "Record this!" Following them, a man whose car had been confiscated by the mujahideen came to complain. He had come to deliver aid from the Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad when it was stolen from him. Qasim made a call and told the man where to go to pick up his car.
TOMORROW: Mean and clean streets
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PART 6: Mean and clean streets
Pulling up to the Hadhra Mosque headed by Sheikh Dhafer al-Ubeidi, a key cleric in the Fallujah resistance, shortly after noon prayers were over one Friday, I saw several dozen armed Fallujah Brigade soldiers, police and civilians crowded before the entrance. Some were looking inside an old car. Several more soldiers and police were guarding the gate, and there were more inside. The guard, Ahmad, was my friend and greeted me wearing a new black-and-white keffiye around his head like a bandanna. Several police approached and said "No journalists," but Ahmad said, "No, he is a friend," and ushered me into the guard room. I noticed several soldiers and policemen standing by the door to Dhafer's office. I recognized the same assistant to the chief of police I had noticed on previous visits. I asked Ahmad what was going on, did something happen? "Oh, it's nothing," he said, "a simple thing. We arrested two spies, they're British or maybe German."
I peered through the window trying to see what was going on, armed men rushed about busily. A few minutes later Ahmad knocked on the door. "Okay, come," he said. I walked across to the office, removed my shoes and entered.
Taghlub al-Alusi, the head of the unofficial City Consultative Council, stepped out looking more worried than usual, and we greeted. The room was crowded with men standing and sitting, and at first I did not notice the woman sitting in a corner before tables full of food in foam "to go" containers. She was white, and young.
Colonel Sabar Fadhil al-Janabi, chief of Fallujah's police force, was seated across from her, his back to me. He greeted me warmly, a leg of chicken in his hand. I sat down beside them and smiled at the woman. A middle-aged white man emerged from the bathroom and sat next to her. Taghlub returned to his table and with another man began carefully examining every page of two German passports, turning them around and squinting. Sitting next to the colonel was a young man, I took him to be 18. He looked just like his father the colonel. When he stood up, I saw he had a pistol on his right waist and a walkie-talkie on the other side. He was only 16, he told me. Across, on the other side of the table, sat a short, round man with layers of tape covering his nose like a pig's snout, next to him was a baby-faced man in a tailored suit. "He's the qaimaqam," I was told, the mayor. He was rehearsing a statement, asking the elders for approval. An old man sat next to me and nodding toward the German man said, "He shouldn't have worn a dishdasha [robe], it was suspicious."
Uwe Sauerman, a very tall, pale 55-year-old freelance journalist and his assistant, Manya Schodche, 24, herself very pale, had driven to Fallujah that morning. After being warned not to go to Najaf because it was too dangerous, Uwe obeyed his hotel manager's instructions and took a dishdasha with him and set off with a driver and translator. On entering Fallujah, Uwe donned his dishdasha, but was seen doing so. The German couple were stopped at the checkpoint where four US contractors had earlier been killed after being spotted by young informants posing as street sellers. They were forced out at gunpoint by six armed men, one of them in a policeman's uniform, and accused of being an American general and female soldier. Soon a mob of hundreds surrounded them, including some of the same laborers who had killed the four contractors, beating them with shovels, sticks and rocks. A plastic bag was placed over Uwe's head. Manya was slapped around and severely handled. Their translator, a Christian from Baghdad, was called a traitor and collaborator. He wore a cross. His nose was broken and he was hit in the back of the neck with a machete.
Just before they were to be doused with gasoline, the police managed to drag them into their nearby station. The mob and mujahideen attacked the station, calling for their prisoners to be returned to them, and the police transferred the four to the Hadhra Mosque under heavy security. The mob surrounded Hadhra with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and Kalashnikovs. Abu Abdallah, a foreign leader of a mujahideen unit, marched in with his Kalashnikov demanding the return of the "American spies". The Fallujah Brigade and the police nearly engaged the mujahideen in a shootout.
That same day, the committee of leaders at Hadhra had decided to confront Abu Abdallah, hoping to disarm his unit, or at least subordinate it to their command. They received word that there were two dead American spies and Fallujah went into a state of alert, expecting a US attack. The two Germans were brought to the Hadhra office and interrogated. Once "the committee for the investigation of espionage" established that they were indeed German journalists, they received apologies and were ordered to eat.
Manya's face was swollen beneath her eyes and her shirt had blood speckles on it. Uwe's face was spotted with red bruises and he winced when he moved. He had a broken tooth. His hands were trembling. The fear and tension from whatever had transpired in this room still lingered, and they were contagious. I realized my heart was racing. The translator with tape on his nose was dabbing it continuously, wiping the blood that was dripping from it. He came to sit next to us. The mayor told him, "If you don't eat I'll be angry." He answered in a nasal voice as if someone was pinching his nose, "I can't, I'll throw up." The colonel, with a mouth full of food, commanded Uwe, "Eat, eat!" Uwe obeyed.
Uwe and Manya were ordered into a nearby office where local stringers from alJazeera and al-Arabiya television networks, who had been called in, were preparing their cameras to film the mayor's press statement. They seated the Germans on a sofa on either side of the mayor, who explained that on that morning an old Iraqi car entered the city with two foreigners dressed in Arabic clothing, the man in a dishdasha and the woman in a hejab (veil). "The way they entered was suspicious and illegal," he said, "and they were brought here to the good people of the mosque." He displayed their German passports and urged all the foreign journalists to check in with the mayor's office or the police if they entered the city. "We welcome all foreign press here," he said, "Fallujah is a peaceful city, the quietest city in Iraq." The two Germans sat in a mute stupor next to him as Taghlub looked on in weary boredom.
Uwe was told he could make a statement. "When I saw the pictures of American attacks on Fallujah I decided to go to Fallujah," he said in a thick German accent, "to take pictures of the city and ask the victims of these attacks what happened to them and how are their lives. In my hotel in Baghdad they advised me to wear a dishdasha because it is better and I will be safer. Somebody shouted 'Amerikaner! Amerikaner!' and then people came, and you know what happened next? Men with guns put a bag on my head like the Americans do and I didn't see anymore. Then I was in an empty house and they interrogated me and after a while I convinced them I am a German and friend of the Iraqi people, not an American, and they were very friendly. I would like to come again to show the German people what happened in Fallujah so I will try to come tomorrow."
The mayor shook Uwe's hand before the camera and told both Germans they were welcome. Uwe was then ordered to recant his statement comparing the behavior of the mob to the Americans, and he readily complied. "When I said they used a plastic bag," he said, "it doesn't mean that we have to compare you the people of Fallujah to the Americans. I only meant that the plastic bag itself reminded me of the Americans." Uwe was told to hold his dishdasha for the cameras and then the press conference ended. Saad, a young sniper, was serving refreshments. He asked me if Manya was Uwe's daughter or his girlfriend. He didn't understand how a woman could be traveling with a man not related to her. "Just give me five minutes alone with her," he told me with a wistful smile.
Under heavy protection, Uwe and Manya were loaded into the mayor's car. A convoy of six cars, including two pickup trucks loaded with multi-colored Fallujah Brigade fighters with their Kalashnikovs at the ready, headed out. Once they exited town the convoy halted and the armed men emerged. For a moment I thought they would execute them. But they only reshuffled their men and continued to Baghdad. The Fallujah Brigade soldiers returned home. The convoy pulled up to the heavily fortified German Embassy in Baghdad's Mansour district an hour later and was greeted by bewildered German security guards. At first the guards only permitted Manya, Uwe and the mayor in. Chief of police Janabi was very offended and puffed his cheeks, threatening to go home. I pulled aside the security guard and explained to him that it was better to let the police chief in as well and he relented.
Dhafer, and two generals, had all been in the mosque prior to my arrival, but were hastily moved out for their own safety due to concerns about the mujahideen that also led to the deployment of nearly 20 Fallujah Brigade members to protect the convoy taking the Germans to Baghdad. It was clear to the men in the committee that the rogue mujahideen had to be pacified, Dhafer wasn't even safe in his own mosque.
Taghlub and the men were very upset - they nearly lost control of the town and their own power. If the Germans had been killed, the Americans would surely have returned. The foreign mujahideen based in the Julan neighborhood were proving especially recalcitrant. They were harassing Iraqis for smoking cigarettes and even for drinking water using their left hand, considered impure. They had banned alcohol, Western films, makeup, hairdressers, "behaving like women", ie homosexuality, and even dominoes in the coffee houses. Men found publicly drunk had been flogged and I was told of a dozen men beaten and imprisoned for selling drugs. Islamic courts were being established in association with mujahideen units and mosque leaders, meting out punishment consistent with the Koran. Erstwhile Ba'ath Party members told me they were expiating the sins of their former secularism, and Ba'ath ideology had now become Islamist. An assistant to the mayor confirmed that there were Islamic courts with their own qadis, or judges, who acted independently of the police. He added that all the spies had already been killed, "but before we killed them we made sure they were spies". He was concerned about "the mujahideen who do not know Sheikh Dhafer and the men of the Hadhra", the foreigners and uncooperative mujahideen who sought to expand the liberated zone beyond Fallujah.
TOMORROW, the concluding article: Radicals in the ashes of democracy.
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PART 7: Radicals in the ashes of democracy
The day two German journalists, Uwe Sauerman and Manya Schodche, nearly experienced sahel, the Iraqi lynching made famous by the death in Fallujah of four American contractors employed by US company Blackwater, the city's Mujahideen Council banned all journalists from the city and warned that those who entered might be killed.
Fallujah was still a safe haven for the mujahideen, including foreign fighters who were supporting the resistance. Video compact discs (VCDs) with footage of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Shi'ite fighters battling Americans in Nasiriyah were sold in Fallujah, alongside propaganda films for Sunni resistance groups based in Fallujah, such as Ansar al-Sunna and the Iraqi Islamic Army, with a cheerful reggae-like beat accompanying victorious Islamic music. Young foreign fighters from Saudi Arabia and other countries were shown giving testimonies before going out on suicide operations. The VCDs depicted various operations conducted by the resistance, primarily against US military targets, as well as various crimes of the occupation, destroyed homes, abusing prisoners, and a lot of bloody dead people accompanied by mournful chanting Islamic music.
The VCDs glorified martyred fighters, claiming they died smiling and smelling sweet - though I did not find that to be the case - they listed operations, and they displayed a lot of captured booty from attacks. One scene depicted a large spread on the carpet of what was clearly a Sunni tribal leader's guest hall or diwan, containing what appeared to be the contents of the two vehicles belonging to the four Blackwater men, many weapons, communication devices, electronic airplane itineraries printed off the Internet, identity cards, supermarket discount cards, plane tickets, anything one would expect to find in the pockets of a high-paid US contractor.
At one point the Ansar al-Sunna production showed the Spanish passports and other belongings of what it claimed were Spanish intelligence agents killed in Mansour last November. I even received two thick monthly newsletters from the Saladin Victory Group, a mujahideen unit, which included articles, poems and lists of all their operations. The mujahideen wanted to continue the battle, even after the June 28 handover of sovereignty. "As long as the Americans are in Iraq we will fight," they said. Radical Fallujan clerics had admitted to a Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) official I spoke to that the Fallujah settlement "is an opportunity to secure themselves and be sovereign and expand the liberation". If the Americans could not quell the rebellion, surely no Iraqi force would be able to, and the victory in Fallujah had only encouraged the resistance throughout Iraq.
Hijackings and kidnappings continued apace. Two trucks with furniture owned by a foreign company that supplied the Americans were hijacked near Fallujah. They were headed to the Americans' al-Fau base. A man from Fallujah came to the company headquarters and told them they could have the trucks back for money, as long as the merchandise was not bound for the Americans. A terrified representative from the company handled the negotiations, which went through the influential Sheikh Abdallah Janabi. Janabi's men were very upset about thieves giving the mujahideen a bad reputation and swore they would kill the thieves, though eventually the trucks were returned for US$4,000.
On June 9, 12 members of the Fallujah Brigade were killed in a mortar attack on their camp at the edge of town. On June 10, a Lebanese worker and two Iraqi colleagues had been captured on the highway near Fallujah. Their bodies were found two days later. Their throats had been slit. Brigadier Mark Kimmitt, the spokesman for the CPA, announced that the CPA was not satisfied with the performance of the Fallujah Brigade and implied that the marines might have to enter the city again. A small patrol did so on June 14. The next day, the marines, who said they had "prepared for a battle reminiscent of Mogadishu", had instead found that Iraqi police and soldiers turned out in full force to ensure the patrol wasn't tampered with as they passed the sand-filled barriers into the city.
Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and police lined the streets as if it were a parade. The marines stayed in town for three hours, while their officers met with city authorities, discussing reparations for the damage caused during the month-long siege and the release of prisoners from CPA prisons. The following day it was reported that six Shi'ite truck drivers carrying supplies to the Fallujah Brigade had been seized by the mujahideen, tortured and murdered, at the behest, so the families claimed, of Janabi, who denied it, adding that the Shi'ites had been working with the Americans and selling them alcohol, and had been warned to stop. Starting June 19, the Americans initiated a policy of bombing Fallujah from the skies every few days, killing scores of civilians, but claiming the strikes were targeting members of Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's network.
The following Friday, hundreds of Fallujan men attended a large demonstration after noon prayers. They were angry at being accused of harboring Zarqawi and of murdering the Shi'ite truck drivers. Janabi denied involvement again, blaming it on "those who try to make fitna [sectarian strife] between the Iraqis", but he also said the slain Shi'ites came in on US military vehicles. The crowd and speakers chanted in support of Muqtada in appreciation of his Iraqi nationalism and defiance of the Americans. The crowd denied that Zarqawi was in Fallujah, and a young cleric shouted angrily that "we don't need Zarqawi's help in Fallujah to defend our mosques and homes" because "the people of Fallujah have men that love death like the kafir [infidel] love life", meaning they had plenty of men who seek martyrdom fighting the Americans. The crowd erupted in cheers of "Allahu akbar!" ("God is great"). Huge banners supporting the Association of Islamic Scholars, which led the resistance units, were prominently displayed. The mayor of Fallujah was interviewed on alJazeera television and he denied that the six Shi'ites had even been killed in his city.
Police in Fallujah complained about Janabi's excessive power. He was emerging from behind the scenes where he had previously hidden, no longer merely delegating authority to Sheikh Dhafer al-Ubeidi, but actively involving himself in the city's affairs. A friend of mine met with the Fallujah police. The mujahideen in Fallujah expected the marines, who were massed outside the city, to invade, so Janabi called for a preemptive attack.
After negotiations with the marines, it was Janabi's mosque of Saad bin Waqqas that announced the new truce in May that ended the month-long siege of the city. In an interview for Asia Times Online, Janabi predicted that resistance activities would continue against the new Iraqi government of Iyad Allawi. He expected the new government to take its orders from the Americans and warned of increased resistance attacks and a possible civil war. The Association of Islamic Scholars was at war with the occupation, he said, because the new government rejected Islam. Janabi praised Muqtada for being a nationalist and for fighting the occupation. "We have a good relationship with him," he said.
In late July, the leadership in Fallujah met with foreign fighters in their city and expelled about 25 of them, including Syrians, Jordanians and Saudis. Several resistance groups, including the Army of Mohammed, the Victorious Assad Allah Squadron, Islamic Wrath and others issued a joint declaration that was posted on mosques and in the streets of Fallujah calling for the blood of Zarqawi to be spilled. In the statement, the many groups called for Zarqawi's head to be cut off just as he had cut off the head of his hostages, an act the declaration said was against Islam and the Iraqi resistance. The declaration also declared their friendship with Iraqi Shi'ites and called for cooperation with the new Iraqi government led by Allawi. That same week, demonstrators in Fallujah called for their homes to be rebuilt with money from Iraq's oil revenue. That same day, US planes bombed yet another house allegedly used by Zarqawi's network, killing 14 people.
My interest in the foreign mujahideen, in particular Saudis, finally became too dangerous even for me. My contact in Fallujah, himself a non-Iraqi seeking to join what he described as "al-Qaeda in the northern Anbar", encouraged me to go to the Julan neighborhood, which had been deemed by the local council to be off limits to foreigners, to meet Saudi fighters for al-Qaeda. My contact was to leave me there to go off "on a job". I began to wonder why al-Qaeda would be interested in meeting an American journalist. They are a secretive organization, interested only in reaching out to fellow Muslims for recruitment and in advertising their successes, such as the decapitation of US journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, I recalled. These were the resistance fighters who did not recognize the authority of Dhafer and his associates, and who threatened their lives for releasing the German journalists. An American was much more valuable. That night my contact brought two Iraqis working with the Saudis to meet me in my hotel unannounced. They barely greeted me, but looked me up and down with taciturn interest, as if examining merchandise. My contact's increasingly erratic behavior and confused statements insisting he trusted me and I should trust him convinced me that if I went to Fallujah again I would not return. I had been warned that my contact had turned, and was being pressured to turn over an American to make up for the lost Germans. I knew that the foreign fighters in Fallujah were embittered over the many hostages they had been pressured to release.
I left Iraq, flying out this time to avoid the checkpoints on Highway 10. The Royal Jordanian flight remained within the airport's limits for 15 minutes, circling up in sharp spirals until it reached an altitude at which it could safely fly over Fallujah and avoid being shot down by the resistance. Soon after, an al-Qaeda unit in Saudi Arabia calling itself the Fallujah Squadron began killing foreigners. The US war in Iraq, meant to democratize the region, had instead radicalized it, created a united front, with Fallujans fighting for the honor of Palestine, and Saudis fighting in the name of Fallujah.
(This is the concluding article in this series.)
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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The Hawks and the Doves Are Aflutter over U.S. Iran Policy
By Danielle Pletka
Posted: Friday, July 23, 2004
ARTICLES
Los Angeles Times
Publication Date: July 23, 2004
Every few years, with soothing regularity, a prominent research institution comes along to recommend that the United States reengage with Iran. The gist of such reports usually follows the same line: Isolation just isn't working; reformists (or sometimes they're called moderates or pragmatists) need Washington's help in the battle against hard-liners; the country is not (nor will it ever be) on the verge of a new revolution; and only relations with the U.S. will provide incentives for better behavior.
This week, it was the Council on Foreign Relations that sounded the call in a 79-page report from a task force chaired by former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and former CIA Director Robert M. Gates.
Given the seriousness of the threat Iran poses, fresh ideas from the Council on Foreign Relations and elsewhere are, of course, welcome. Iran, after all, is Terror Central: It has become an operational headquarters for parts of Al Qaeda, continues to sponsor Hezbollah and Hamas, and senior officials remain under indictment in U.S. court for masterminding the 1996 bombing in Saudi Arabia of the Khobar Towers military housing complex, in which 19 Americans died. According to U.S. and European officials, the regime also remains bent on acquiring nuclear weapons and is well down the road to doing so.
Clearly, U.S. policy in Iran has been a failure. Its problems have persisted notwithstanding four years of tough talk from the Bush administration, a continued embargo on U.S. investment and virtual diplomatic radio silence. It's time to try something new; on that much, we can agree with the pro-engagement groups.
But that's where our agreement ends. They insist, in the face of evidence to the contrary, that dialogue and trade would succeed where a hard line has failed. Yet dialogue and trade are the hallmarks of Europe's fruitless engagement of Iran. Neither European diplomatic outreach nor cordial trading relations have achieved results. Carrot-and-stick offers, like a proffered "trade and cooperation agreement" in exchange for a stand-down on nuclear proliferation, have also failed. Engagement is a proven bust.
The fact is, neither tough love nor tough talk will achieve results in Iran because decision-makers in the government--not just the so-called hard-liners but the "moderates" and "pragmatists" as well--are committed to supporting terrorism, developing nuclear weapons and annihilating Israel. Any opening from the U.S. will only lend credibility to that government and forever dash the hopes of a population that, according to reliable polls, despises its own leadership.
So what to do? President Bush has taken the first step by making clear that the Iranian clerical regime is anathema to the U.S. national security. But we're not likely to invade for a variety of practical reasons, among them a shortage of troops and an absence of targeting information about Iran's nuclear sites. Nor can we count on Iran's weary and miserable population to rise up unaided and overthrow its oppressors; virtually all analysts agree that's not about to happen.
Instead, a new three-part policy is needed.
First, the administration must ante up promised support for the Iranian people. Just as we supported Soviet dissidents, we must use the diplomatic and economic tools at our disposal to embarrass the regime for its abysmal human rights abuses, rally behind dissident student groups and unions and let them know that the U.S. supports their desire for a secular democratic state in Iran.
Second, the administration must persuade the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency to stand firm in their confrontation over Iran's nuclear program. Iran has made commitments to end the production and assembly of nuclear centrifuges. It has reneged on those promises, and the next step is for the IAEA to refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council. There is quiet talk of economic sanctions in European capitals; the EU must know that a failure to follow through would mean an Iranian nuclear weapon within a few years.
Finally, the U.S. must lead in the containment of Iran. Iranian weapons imports and exports should be interdicted; financial transfers to terrorists must be identified and confiscated; terrorists traveling into and out of Iran should be aggressively pursued and eliminated.
These steps would not deliver quick solutions, but they are the only rational course available to the U.S. and its allies. We have seen that engagement with the current leadership of Iran would not achieve policy change; all it would do is buy an evil regime the time it needs to perfect its nuclear weapons and to build a network of terrorists to deliver them.
Danielle Pletka is vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
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Axis of Evil, Part Two
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, July 23, 2004; Page A29
Did we invade the wrong country? One of the lessons being drawn from the Sept. 11 report is that Iran was the real threat. It had links to al Qaeda, allowed some of the Sept. 11 hijackers to transit and is today harboring al Qaeda leaders. The Iraq war critics have a new line of attack: We should have done Iran instead of Iraq.
Well, of course Iran is a threat and a danger. But how exactly would the critics have "done" Iran? Iran is a serious country with a serious army. Compared with the Iraq war, an invasion of Iran would have been infinitely more costly. Can you imagine these critics, who were shouting "quagmire" and "defeat" when the low-level guerrilla war in Iraq intensified in April, actually supporting war with Iran?
If not war, then what? We know the central foreign policy principle of Bush critics: multilateralism. John Kerry and the Democrats have said it a hundred times: The source of our troubles is President Bush's insistence on "going it alone." They promise to "rejoin the community of nations" and "work with our allies."
Well, that happens to be exactly what we have been doing regarding Iran. And the policy is an abject failure. The Bush administration, having decided that invading one axis-of-evil country was about as much as either the military or the country can bear, has gone multilateral on Iran, precisely what the Democrats advocate. Washington delegated the issue to a committee of three -- the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany -- that has been meeting with the Iranians to get them to shut down their nuclear program.
The result? They have been led by the nose. Iran is caught red-handed with illegally enriched uranium, and the Tehran Three prevail upon the Bush administration to do nothing while they persuade the mullahs to act nice. Therefore, we do not go to the U.N. Security Council to declare Iran in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. We do not impose sanctions. We do not begin squeezing Iran to give up its nuclear program.
Instead, we give Iran more time to swoon before the persuasive powers of "Jack of Tehran" -- British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw -- until finally, humiliatingly, Iran announces that it will resume enriching uranium and that nothing will prevent it from becoming a member of the "nuclear club."
The result has not been harmless. Time is of the essence, and the runaround that the Tehran Three have gotten from the mullahs has meant that we have lost at least nine months in doing anything to stop the Iranian nuclear program.
The fact is that the war critics have nothing to offer on the single most urgent issue of our time -- rogue states in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Iran instead of Iraq? The Iraq critics would have done nothing about either country. There would today be two major Islamic countries sitting on an ocean of oil, supporting terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction -- instead of one.
Two years ago there were five countries supporting terrorism and pursuing these weapons -- two junior-leaguers, Libya and Syria, and the axis-of-evil varsity: Iraq, Iran and North Korea. The Bush administration has eliminated two: Iraq, by direct military means, and Libya, by example and intimidation.
Syria is weak and deterred by Israel. North Korea, having gone nuclear, is untouchable. That leaves Iran. What to do? There are only two things that will stop the Iranian nuclear program: revolution from below or an attack on its nuclear facilities.
The country should be ripe for revolution. The regime is detested. But the mullahs are very good at police-state tactics. The long-awaited revolution is not happening.
Which makes the question of preemptive attack all the more urgent. Iran will go nuclear during the next presidential term. Some Americans wishfully think that the Israelis will do the dirty work for us, as in 1981, when they destroyed Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor. But for Israel, attacking Iran is a far more difficult proposition. It is farther away. Moreover, detection and antiaircraft technology are far more advanced than they were 20 years ago.
There may be no deus ex machina. If nothing is done, a fanatical terrorist regime openly dedicated to the destruction of the "Great Satan" will have both nuclear weapons and the terrorists and missiles to deliver them. All that stands between us and that is either revolution or preemptive strike.
Both of which, by the way, are far more likely to succeed with 146,000 American troops and highly sophisticated aircraft standing by just a few miles away -- in Iraq.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
? 2004 The Washington Post Company
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DAILY EXPRESS
Engagement Announcement
by Lawrence F. Kaplan
Only at TNR Online | Post date 07.23.04 E-mail this article
Oops, we invaded the wrong country. Or at least this is the impression created by the final report of the 9/11 Commission, which depicts Iran as a transit point for Al Qaeda members during the run up to September 11. It is an impression the Kerry team has done nothing to dispel. Kerry adviser Charles Kupchan says the news about Iran shows that "rather than focusing on Iraq, where there was no imminent threat to American security," the United States should have been more vigilant about Iran, "where we know there's a weapons of mass destruction program, there's a fundamentalist theocracy." In a similar vein, the report has prompted the Kerry campaign's Ann Lewis to complain that "Iran, over the last couple of years, has been moving forward toward getting a nuclear capacity--nuclear capability--and yet this administration's policy is hard to discern." She's right. The administration's Iran policy is hard to discern. Before they walk into a bind of their own devising, however, Kerry's advisers would do well to take a closer look at their own candidate's stance toward Iran. It is not hard to discern. But it is hard to defend.
At times, Kerry seems to be taking his cues from Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential run, sounding as though he's blasting his opponent from the right while he quietly offers up solutions from the left. Nowhere is this truer than in the case of Iran, where, when you strip away Kerry's hard-boiled rhetoric about preventing the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon, what the candidate offers is a facsimile of the Clinton-era policy of "engagement." Likening the Islamic Republic to a much less dangerous threat from long ago, Kerry seeks to "explore areas of mutual interest with Iran, just as I was prepared to normalize relations with Vietnam." Hence, Kerry says he "would support talking with all elements of the government," or, as his principal foreign policy adviser Rand Beers has elaborated, the United States must engage Iran's "hard-line element"--this, while the candidate tells The Washington Post he will downplay democracy promotion in the region. In fact, as part of this normalization process, Kerry has recommended hammering out a deal with Teheran a la the Clinton administration's doomed bargain with North Korea, whereby the United States would aid the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for safeguards that would presumably keep the program peaceful. To sweeten the deal, he has offered to throw in members of the People's Mujahedeen, the Iranian opposition group being held under lock and key by U.S. forces in Iraq.
Nor will you hear any of Kerry's foreign policy advisers calling for regime change in Iran, at least any time soon. Beers has long insisted on engaging the Islamic Republic, as have Kerry advisers Richard Holbrooke and Madeline Albright. So, too, have several big name contributors to the Kerry campaign from the Iranian-American community. Indeed, in 2002 Kerry delivered an address to an event sponsored by the controversial American Iranian Council, an organization funded by corporations seeking to do business in Iran and dedicated to promoting dialogue with the theocracy. In his eagerness to engage in this dialogue, of course, Kerry is hardly alone. The Council on Foreign Relations has just released a report calling for "systematic and pragmatic engagement" with Iran's mullahs, and the Atlantic Council is expected to release a report next month recommending the same.
Like these, Kerry's calls for a rapprochement with Teheran come at a rather inopportune moment. The very regime that Kerry demands we engage, after all, has just been certified as an Al Qaeda sanctuary--and by the very commission in which the Kerry campaign has invested so much hope. The report's finding, moreover, counts as only one of Teheran's sins. Lately its theocrats have been wreaking havoc in Iraq and Afghanistan, aiding America's foes along Iran's borders in the hopes of expanding their influence in both countries, even as they continue to fund Palestinian terror groups. Then, too, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has amassed a mountain of evidence pointing to Iranian violations of the Nonproliferation Treaty. With two nuclear power plants slated to go online in Iran, and IAEA inspectors stumbling across designs for sophisticated centrifuges, even the Europeans and the United Nations have nearly exhausted their efforts to engage the Islamic Republic.
So why hasn't anyone told John Kerry? To begin with, it's not so clear the Bush team has abandoned engagement, either. Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Blackwill refuses to surrender hopes for a nuclear deal, as does Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who lauds Iran as a "democracy." To be sure, the president vows Washington will side with Iran's pro-democracy movement and that the "development of a nuclear weapon in Iran is intolerable." But long gone from the administration's rhetoric is any talk of regime change. As with so much else, when it comes to Iran, the administration finds itself divided between hawks at the Defense Department and Undersecretary of State John Bolton, on the one hand, and America's diplomatic corps and National Security Council staffers, on the other.
Put another way, the administration has two Iran policies, and the result has been a mix of good and bad. Kerry, by contrast, boasts a single, coherent, and--to judge by the description of Teheran's activities in yesterday's report--utterly delusional Iran policy. Now, if only the Bush team could sort out its own, it might have an opportunity to draw a meaningful distinction.
Lawrence F. Kaplan is a senior editor at TNR.
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Iran's Growing Threat
By Rachel Ehrenfeld
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 23, 2004
Recent events have made it clear that the threat posed by Iran should be dealt with sooner rather than later. Today's 9/11 Commission report documents extensive ties between Iran and terrorism, and the mullahs' drive to create a nuclear weapon is well known. In recent days, Iranian officials and clerics have increased the incitement for violence against American and Coalition forces in Iraq. However, ending the real threat this fundamentalist Islamic theocracy poses to the United States and the West may be impossible, thanks to the Left's and the pro-Islamists non-stop assault on the president's credibility.
The case against Iran should be air-tight. The Bush administration is now armed with:
[1] The 9/11 Commission's report, documenting the logistical, operational and material support from Iran and Hezbollah (Iran's international terrorist arm) to al-Qaeda;
[2] Iran's own admission of its intention to develop nuclear weapons;
[3] Iran's increasing anti-American rhetoric; and
[4] Iran's growing support of terrorism in Iraq.
According to the just-released 9/11 Commission Report, Iran's support of al-Qaeda dates back to 1991, when operatives from both sides met in Sudan and agreed "to cooperate in providing support--even if only training--for actions carried out primarily against Israel and the United States."
By 1993, "al-Qaeda received advice and training from Hezbollah" in intelligence, security and explosives, especially in "how to use truck bombs." The training took place in the Bekaa Valley, Hezbollah's stronghold in Lebanon.
The commission further reports that "at least 8 to 10 of the 14 Saudi `muscle' operatives traveled into and out of Iran between October 2000 and February 2001," and that Iran facilitated "the travel of al-Qaeda members through Iran on their way to and from Afghanistan." Yet in an ostrich-like move, the commission refrained from accusing Iran of supporting al-Qaeda.
This is how the commission phrased it: "There is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9-11 hijackers...however, we cannot rule out the possibility of a remarkable coincidence...[and] we found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack."
Indeed, the commission recommends that further investigations should be carried out, but looking at the body of evidence about Iran's leadership role in worldwide terrorism and the war against the U.S., one can only hope that we can act in time to restrain it.
"Iran is closer to nuclear capability that it was two years ago," said Dr. Ephraim Kam, deputy director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv, earlier this week. And U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, R-KS, also added that Iran is clearly developing nuclear weapons. Pakistan, as we found out earlier this year, provided Iran with information on how to build an atomic bomb.
Iran's admission that they are working on developing nuclear capabilities was made in November 2003 by a member of the Iranian Parliament, Ahmad Shirzad. He made reference to the existence of a then-unknown essential nuclear facility, at a time when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iranian opposition had identified at least 8 different nuclear facilities in Iran. Despite all the evidence, it is unlikely that the international community will take steps to disarm Iran any time soon - indeed, the IAEA and EU overtures have been disastrous. And undoubtedly, China and Russia will block any real disarmament efforts.
Iran denies that it is developing nuclear weapons; however on July 6, 2004, the Iranian daily, Kayhan's editorial warned that, "The entire Islamic Middle East is now a volatile and tangled trap, and will be set off by the smallest bit of silliness - and will reap many victims of the sinful adventurers...Indeed, the White House's 80 years of exclusive rule are likely to become 80 seconds of Hell that will burn to ashes everything that has been built." Earlier, according to reports in the Kuwaiti, Al-Siyassah, Hashemi Rafsanjani, the head of the Expediency Council stated, "The present situation in Iraq represents a threat as well as an opportunity... It is a threat because the wounded American beast can take enraged actions, but it is also an opportunity to teach this beast a lesson so it won't attack another country." He ended his speech calling for "Death to America, Death to Israel."
Iran's support of the growing terrorist activities in Iraq and its attempts to destabilize the interim government resulted in warnings issued this week by the Defense and Interior Ministers of Iraq in an interview for the London based Arabic-daily, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. The Defense Minister, Hazem Al-Sha'lan, after accusing Iran of supporting terrorism on Iraqi soil, warned, "We have the capability to move the assault into their country[ies]."
If you think that Iran has its hands full with terrorist activities already, think again. Last month, according to Reuters, the Islamic Republic of Iran - through the proxy known as the Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign - launched a new campaign calling for volunteers to carry out suicide attacks against U.S and Coalition forces inside Iraq, as well as missions targeting Israel and author Salman Rushdie. Since the 10,000 volunteers already registered are not enough, they distributed a "Preliminary Registration for Martyrdom Operations" application for the position of "martyr." Announcing this new campaign, the cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati urged the public that "It is the duty of every Muslim to threaten U.S. and British interests anywhere."
So, what are we waiting for? The president's impaired credibility, a dividend of the perpetual partisan assaults of the political Left, most elements of the Democratic Party in general, and the pro-Islamists anti-American elements in Europe and elsewhere now poses a grave danger to our security at home and abroad. Since the Democratic Party has embraced its activist core, its politicians have denounced the war in Iraq as unjustified and immoral, each American and Iraq death the intended by-product of President Bush's wilful lies. Ted Kennedy claimed the war was "cooked up in Texas" months or years before it was launched; Al Gore screeches that President Bush "betrayed us!"; and the Left at large has claimed the president massaged intelligence to manipulate the public into attacking the benign despot of Iraq. The 9/11 Commission's and Lord Butler's report debunked the Left's and the pro- Islamists' allegations, but the damage was already done. Having tarnished the president's veracity specifically on the War on Terror for political advantage, the Democrats hope is to render us impotent to respond to the genuine threat posed by Tehran. If the damage they have caused cannot be reversed, their self-seeking rhetoric may prove to have mortal consequences.
*Rachel Ehrenfeld is the author of Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It and is the Director of the American Center for Democracy.
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CIA points to continuing Iran tie to al Qaeda
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
A senior CIA official has revealed that al Qaeda operatives in Iran probably had advance knowledge of recent terrorist attacks, a sign that the cooperation between Tehran and al Qaeda is continuing since September 11.
"There have been al Qaeda people who have stayed for some time in Iran ... and because they have been in touch with colleagues outside of Iran at times when operations have occurred, it's hard to imagine that they were unwitting of those operations," the senior official said.
"And it's not hard to make the leap that they may have had at least some operational knowledge. It's harder to make the leap that they were directing operations like that."
The senior official spoke to reporters on the findings of the September 11 commission. The commission's report provides new details of Iranian government support for al Qaeda, including travel assistance to several of the hijackers involved in the 2001 airline attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
U.S. intelligence officials have said that a senior al Qaeda operations official, Sayf al-Adl, has been in Iran since 2002. He has been linked to the terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia in May, and to the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa.
The commission inquiry revealed that captured al Qaeda leaders Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh disclosed to interrogators that at least eight of the September 11 hijackers "transited Iran" on the way to Afghanistan, "taking advantage of the Iranian practice of not stamping Saudi passports," the nearly 600-page report stated.
Both terrorists said that ease of travel was the only reason the hijackers went to Iran and they denied any ties between al Qaeda and Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed terrorist group.
"In sum, there is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers," the report said.
The report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States also said senior Hezbollah terrorists knew about the al Qaeda members' travels to Iran.
The report said no evidence was found that Iran or Hezbollah were aware of the planning of the September 11 attacks.
"At the time of their travel through Iran, the al Qaeda operatives themselves were probably not aware of the specific details of their future operation," the report said. "After 9/11, Iran and Hezbollah wished to conceal any past evidence of cooperation with Sunni terrorists associated with al Qaeda."
The commission concluded that "we believe this topic requires further investigation by the U.S. government."
The senior CIA official confirmed that the al Qaeda hijackers had traveled through Iran but said details of Tehran's backing for the travel are not clear.
"I don't think we know that this was a deliberate Iranian policy, that is, a sanctioned policy at the highest levels of the Iranian government," the senior official said.
U.S. intelligence officials have said Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and the Qods Division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a unit of hard-line Islamist shock troops, are deeply involved in supporting terrorists, including al Qaeda.
The report also disclosed that "intelligence indicates the persistence of contacts between Iranian security officials and senior al Qaeda figures after [Osama] bin Laden's return to Afghanistan [in 1997]."
The commission report also said that captured al Qaeda terrorist Waleed bin Attash, known as Khallad, disclosed that Iran's government "made a concerted effort to strengthen relations with al Qaeda" after the October 2000 attack on the destroyer USS Cole in Aden harbor, Yemen.
According to the report, bin Laden rebuffed the offer from the Shi'ite regime in Iran because of fears that the cooperation would alienate Sunni supporters in Saudi Arabia.
"Khallad and other detainees have described the willingness of Iranian officials to facilitate the travel of al Qaeda members through Iran, on their way to and from Afghanistan," the report said.
Iranian border inspectors helped the terrorists by not placing travel stamps on passports, which allowed Saudi members to return to Saudi Arabia and not have their passports confiscated by Saudi authorities.
The report noted there is "evidence suggesting that eight to 10 of the 14 Saudi 'muscle' operatives traveled into or out of Iran between October 2000 and February 2001."
Intelligence information showed that senior al Qaeda leaders in Sudan during the 1990s "maintained contacts with Iran and the Iranian-supported worldwide terrorist organization Hezbollah," the report said.
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Iraq blasts Iran's 'blatant' support for insurgents
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
BAGHDAD -- Iraqi Defense Minister Hazim Shaalan said Iraq's neighbors have been supporting the insurgency against Baghdad. He cited Iran as exercising "blatant interference" in Iraq's affairs.
"They [Iranians] confess to the presence of their spies in Iraq who have a mission to upset the social and political situation," Shaalan said yesterday in an interview with the London-based A-Sharq Al Awsat.
"Since the establishment of the Iraqi state, Iranian intrusion has been vast and unprecedented." The defense minister did not cite other states as supporting the insurgency. But other Iraqi officials said Syria has failed to stop Al Qaida-inspired volunteers from joining the insurgency. They said the Iraqi government has invited its neighbors to a conference to discuss security cooperation.
"We are prepared to move the arena of the attacks on Iraq's honor and its rights to those countries," Shaalan said.
"We've spoken to them and confronted them with facts and evidence, but none of them have taken any action to stop supporting terrorism in Iraq.
Iraq has been preparing to launch its military, introducing new infantry, artillery and other units.
Iraqi officials said the interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Alawi will focus on developing the military over the next few weeks. They said the military would focus on border control and supporting missions against insurgents in Iraq.
"We will start to prepare the organized Iraqi Army starting from the beginning of next month and we have already prepared a command," Shaalan said.
Officials said Iraqi Army will have 40,000 soldiers in the first stage, comprising three light divisions. Battalions for the first division were being trained and equipped.
Shaalan said the military was forming an air force, navy and artillery corps. He said many of soldiers were former members of the military under the Saddam Hussein regime.
"Iraq will have a modern and powerful air force, navy, artillery and operating in accordance with advanced techniques to protect Iraq," Shaalan said. "Currently, we have surveillance aircraft in the National Guard to monitor our borders from the air."
[On Wednesday, seven Iraqis and a U.S. soldier were killed in fierce fighting with Sunni insurgents in Samara. A U.S. combat unit was pursuing insurgents who entered houses and a mosque in the city, 125 kilometers north of Baghdad.]
Officials said Iraqi security forces have also completed their first large-scale operation. The operation on July 18 included 90 members of the Iraqi National Guard and 300 police officers in a search for insurgents.
In early July, Iraq and Syria agreed to launch a joint effort to stop infiltration along their more than 500-kilometer border. But Iraqi officials have been skeptical over whether the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad would make the required effort. Alawi was scheduled to arrive in Damascus on Thursday.
"We're talking about hundreds [of insurgents] if not in the thousands," Shaalan said.
Copyright ? 2004 East West Services, Inc.
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The Boldness of the President
http://daily.nysun.com/Repository/getmailfiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:ArticleToMail&Type=text/html&Path=NYS/2004/07/23&ID=Ar01000
Reading the report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, we couldn't help thinking of Justice Scalia's great dissent in Morrison v. Olson. It's the case in which the Supreme Court upheld the idea of an independent prosecutor. Justice Scalia warned of the danger that unleashing an uncontrollable prosecutor against a president could shake his courage. "Perhaps the boldness of the President himself will not be affected -- though I am not so sure," he warned.
Well, look now to what the 9/11 report has to say about the man to whom President Clinton, under attack by an independent counsel,delegated so much in respect of national security, Samuel "Sandy" Berger. The report cites a 1998 meeting between Mr. Berger and the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, at which Mr. Tenet presented a plan to capture Osama bin Laden.
"In his meeting with Tenet, Berger focused most, however, on the question of what was to be done with Bin Ladin if he were actually captured. He worried that the hard evidence against Bin Ladin was still skimpy and that there was a danger of snatching him and bringing him to the United States only to see him acquitted," the report says, citing a May 1, 1998, Central Intelligence Agency memo summarizing the weekly meeting between Messrs. Berger and Tenet.
In June of 1999, another plan for action against Mr. bin Laden was on the table. The potential target was a Qaeda terrorist camp in Afghanistan known as Tarnak Farms. The commission report released yesterday cites Mr. Berger's "handwritten notes on the meeting paper" referring to "the presence of 7 to 11 families in the Tarnak Farms facility, which could mean 60-65 casualties."According to the Berger notes, "if he responds, we're blamed."
On December 4, 1999, the National Security Council's counterterrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke, sent Mr. Berger a memo suggesting a strike in the last week of 1999 against Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Reports the commission: "In the margin next to Clarke's suggestion to attack Al Qaeda facilities in the week before January 1, 2000, Berger wrote, `no.' "
In August of 2000, Mr. Berger was presented with another possible plan for attacking Mr. bin Laden.This time, the plan would be based on aerial surveillance from a "Predator" drone. Reports the commission: "In the memo's margin,Berger wrote that before considering action, `I will want more than verified location: we will need, at least, data on pattern of movements to provide some assurance he will remain in place.' "
In other words, according to the commission report, Mr. Berger was presented with plans to take action against the threat of Al Qaeda four separate times -- Spring 1998, June 1999, December 1999, and August 2000. Each time, Mr. Berger was an obstacle to action. Had he been a little less reluctant to act, a little more open to taking pre-emptive action, maybe the 2,973 killed in the September 11, 2001, attacks would be alive today.
It really doesn't matter now what was in the documents from the National Archives that Mr. Berger says he inadvertently misplaced. The evidence in the commission's report yesterday is more than enough to embarrass him thoroughly.He is a hardworking, warm man with a wonderful family, but his background as a trade lawyer and his dovish, legalistic and political instincts made him, in retrospect,the tragically wrong man to be making national security decisions for America in wartime.That Senator Kerry had Mr. Berger as a campaign foreign policy adviser even before the archives scandal is enough to raise doubts about the senator's judgment.
Neither Mr.Berger nor any other American is to blame for the deaths of Americans on September 11, 2001. The moral fault lies only with the terrorists, not with the victims.With the war still on,one can't help but to ponder who might best defend the country going forward, and how.
The commission's report contains plenty of other valuable information. Many of the recommendations -- to move operations functions to the Department of Defense from the CIA, to speed the transition between administrations so that key defense positions are not left vacant, to stress "widespread political participation"in the Arab and Muslim world,to declassify the intelligence budget, to provide a written national security transition handover memo when administrations change -- make sense.
Other aspects of the report, including the absence of serious recommendations for dealing with the terrorist threats from Syria or Iran, are harder to understand. The report is being taken seriously for its political ramifications for the Bush administration and for its policy recommendations. But perhaps its greatest value is as a history -- more, a sad epitaph -- of the Clinton-Berger administration.
Why was it Mr. Berger rather than President Clinton himself making all these judgment calls? As the report puts it, these decisions "were made by the Clinton administration under extremely difficult domestic political circumstances.Opponents were seeking the president's impeachment."
One can blame the special prosecutor law or Mr. Clinton for agreeing to name a special prosecutor, or one can blame the underlying reckless behavior by Mr. Clinton that got him into the "difficult domestic political circumstances." Or one can blame the Republican Congress. No matter what one's view of the underlying merits, it is hard to deny that one of the costs to the country was a preoccupied president.There's no guarantee that, in the absence of the scandal and the prosecutor, Mr. Clinton would have acted against Mr. bin Laden. But the chances would have been at least somewhat increased, and it would have been Mr. Clinton rather than Mr. Berger making the call.
The boldness of the president, in Justice Scalia's phrase,had been lost,and the man left in charge, Mr. Berger, was not up to it. When we think of the repairs that need to be made in the coming months, it is of this: The need to carry on our national politics with an eye to protecting the boldness of our leaders and particularly in a time of war. It is something to think about amid one of the bitterest, most adhominem political seasons in the history of the Republic.
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More Revelations in Berger Inquiry
Wider Circle in Administration Claims Prior Knowledge of Probe
By Mike Allen and John F. Harris
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 23, 2004; Page A08
For the second day in a row, administration officials said yesterday that more of President Bush's aides knew about an investigation of former Clinton national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger than the White House originally acknowledged.
The question is sensitive because Democrats have charged that Republicans leaked word of the investigation to try to taint next week's Democratic National Convention and to distract attention from criticisms of Bush in the report of the commission investigating the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that some National Security Council officials knew Berger -- who has resigned from his position as informal adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry -- was suspected of mishandling National Archives documents that were being sought by the commission.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, meeting reporters to discuss the commission's report, would not say when she was told of the probe.
"Sandy is somebody I've known a long time," Rice said. "And I think he's a good person, and I respect him. This is a criminal investigation. It's a serious matter. I'm just not going to comment about it."
The senior official said that a few NSC staff members who also report to the counsel's office had known about the inquiry.
On Wednesday, a day after saying he learned about the investigation from news reports, White House press secretary Scott McClellan added that "a few individuals" in the White House counsel's office had known about the inquiry. He said that was because the counsel's office was coordinating document production with the Sept. 11 commission.
Former Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart, who is serving as a spokesman for Berger during the controversy, said the expanding circle of officials who the White House acknowledges knew of the criminal investigation heightens his suspicion about the timing of the disclosure that Berger is under investigation.
"This is the third day in a row that the story has changed," Lockhart said. "Did the political operation know? Did [adviser] Karl Rove know? I think it's time for them to come clean, say what they knew, when they knew it, and what role if anything they had in leaking it."
Berger has acknowledged removing copies of a classified "after-action report" that he had ordered to study the Clinton administration's handling of terrorist threats at the time of the millennium, but he said the removal was unintentional. He returned some copies after being contacted by Archives officials, but some documents are missing and were apparently discarded.
The narrowly averted millennium threat, aimed at Los Angeles International Airport and a Western hotel in Jordan, resulted in White House anti-terrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke's preparation of the after-action review. It recommended building agent capabilities at the CIA and dramatically tightening immigration rules and border protections.
The Sept. 11 commission report said the recommendations generated an internal tug of war over CIA funding, with the agency finally getting a modest supplemental appropriation.
Also yesterday, Bruce R. Lindsey, who serves as former president Bill Clinton's liaison to the Archives, said he was not alerted to concerns about missing documents until two days after Berger's Oct. 2 visit. Berger was notified that day, and he searched his office for the missing papers. A government source claiming knowledge of the investigation said Archives officials alerted Lindsey to concerns after a visit by Berger in September. Lindsey said yesterday this was not the case.
Staff writer Susan Schmidt contributed to this report.
? 2004 The Washington Post Company
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Agencies Getting Heavier on Top
47 Executive Titles Created Since 1960
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 23, 2004; Page A27
The federal government is top-heavy with more layers of high-ranking bureaucrats than ever before, impeding the flow of information within agencies and clouding the accountability of the officials who run them, according to a study to be released today.
The study, conducted for the Brookings Institution by government scholar Paul C. Light, found that the number of federal executive titles swelled to 64 this year. That's up from 51 in 1998, 33 in 1992 and 17 in 1960.
"It's a natural phenomenon of bureaucratic behavior, and if you don't pay attention to it it's like kudzu -- it grows," said Light, a professor at New York University's Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service.
Light and his research assistants combed the Federal Yellow Book, a directory of more than 40,000 executive branch officials. They took inventory of top managerial jobs in the 15 Cabinet departments, counting only titles that link directly to the Senate-confirmed positions of secretary, deputy secretary, undersecretary, assistant secretary and administrator.
Comparing the results with previous studies, they charted the birth and proliferation of such titles as deputy associate deputy secretary, deputy associate assistant secretary and principal deputy deputy assistant secretary. The jobs were held by political appointees and career executives.
One of the more notable growth professions was that of chief of staff to a Cabinet secretary. The first such post was created in 1981 at the Department of Health and Human Services. It spread to 10 more departments over the next decade and now exists at every Cabinet agency except Defense.
"People just end up believing from a power and perquisite standpoint that you've got to have a chief of staff if you are to be seen as a credible player," Light said.
The report cited several reasons for the overall trend, including the use of promotions rather than pay raises to reward senior employees, the creation of new positions by Congress and attempts by presidents to tighten their hold on the bureaucracy with a greater number of political appointees. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security is partly responsible for the growth, but every department except Treasury has added new executive titles since 1998.
Title creep may be good for business card printers, but it is bad for agencies and taxpayers, Light said. Information about problems -- mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by the military, say, or concerns about possible damage to the space shuttle -- has to pass through more hands before it gets to the top.
"It helps explain why information flows are sometimes so sluggish," Light said. "And it also explains why we can't hold anybody accountable for what goes right or wrong. There are just so many places that decisions get made, or not made, that you can't really figure out who is responsible."
After reviewing the study, Chad Kolton, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, said in an e-mail: "President Bush has significantly improved the federal government's effectiveness, most notably in better protecting our nation by merging 22 separate agencies into a Department of Homeland Security. This largest government reorganization in more than 50 years has made us safer by streamlining bureaucracy, combining resources and improving communication."
While Bush has slowed the rate of title growth, the government is adding an average of one executive title a year, Light said.
The trend has gone the other way in the private sector. Investor pressures for more efficiency and concerns about muddled information channels sparked a drive toward fewer corporate management layers that began 15 years ago, said Michael Useem, a professor of management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
"Many companies began a long march to streamline and flatten," Useem said. ". . . Everybody with any management sense whatsoever says it is a good idea, not only for information coming up, but to ensure actions get taken and not snarled in endless approval and red tape."
? 2004 The Washington Post Company
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New Details Revealed on 9/11 Plans
Interrogators Found Motives and Mind-Set
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 23, 2004; Page A19
If the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had known that Zacarias Moussaoui, an al Qaeda operative now charged as a conspirator in the plot, had been arrested in August, he might have canceled the mission.
As it turned out, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the main strategist behind the attacks, did not find out until after Sept. 11 that Moussaoui was jailed in Minnesota on immigration charges.
That revelation, from a U.S. interrogation of one of Mohammed's top deputies, Ramzi Binalshibh, is among many new details about the planning and execution of the attacks contained in the 567-page report of the commission investigating the attacks and the government's response, which was released yesterday.
Rich in specifics, the report draws on intelligence reports not previously made public, including information drawn from CIA interrogations of al Qaeda operatives that reveal new information on the plans, motives and mind-set of the terrorists involved in the attacks, as well as others at the organization's highest levels.
The commission members believe Moussaoui was to have been among the Sept. 11 hijackers, although Binalshibh has called him a poor candidate who was needed only to fill out a shaky roster. Mohammed has told interrogators that Moussaoui was going to be part of a second wave of attacks, the report said.
The commission report provides similar glimpses of other terrorists associated with the attacks, including Mohammed, who is referred to in the report as "KSM," and who promoted the idea of using the jetliners as missiles.
Mohammed originally conceived of crashing nine airliners while he would hijack a 10th himself, killing the male passengers and landing to give a speech "excoriating" repressive Arab governments and U.S. support for Israel.
"Beyond KSM's rationalizations about targeting the U.S. economy, this vision gives a better glimpse of its true ambitions. This is theater, a spectacle of destruction with KSM as the self-cast star -- the superterrorist," the report said.
Mohammed, the report found, is not the only terrorist leader with an outsize ego and a powerful blood lust.
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who became head of al Qaeda operations on the Arabian peninsula, was "so extreme in his ferocity in waging jihad" that he would commit a terrorist act inside the holiest mosque in Mecca if he thought there were a need, according to interviews with captured terrorists, the report quoted. Nashiri, who reported directly to bin Laden, orchestrated the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.
Despite the attention bin Laden has received from U.S. officials, the report found that not all those working with him have accorded him undivided devotion.
Nashiri was asked to swear loyalty to bin Laden but "found the notion distasteful and refused," the report said. He was not alone: Mohammed also refused, as did Hambali, the leader of Southeast Asia's Jemaah Islamiah terrorist network who accepted bin Laden's offer in 1998 to form an alliance "in waging war against Christians and Jews."
In addition to providing new insights into some of the plotters, the report traced the evolution of the planning for the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mohammed and his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, began talking about plots to hijack U.S. airliners and crash them into buildings after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing -- for which Yousef was later convicted. Bin Laden signed on in concept in the spring of 1999.
The report reveals that the target bin Laden was most interested in hitting was the White House, even though hijack leader Mohamed Atta thought it was too difficult and preferred the Capitol.
At a meeting in Spain in July 2001, Binalshibh told Atta that bin Laden wanted the attacks "carried out as soon as possible because he was worried about having so many operatives in the United States." In early August, Atta communicated to Binalshibh that the attacks would be launched in the first week of September, when Congress reconvened.
Atta said he and Marwan Al-Shehhi would pilot airliners into the World Trade Center, and crash them on the streets of New York if they could not hit the towers. Atta had considered "targeting a nuclear facility he had seen during familiarization flights near New York," but others in the hijack plot feared they would be shot down in restricted airspace.
The commission report said that some aspects of the plot remain a mystery. For instance, two of the hijackers who have received the most attention, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, had no English skills or exposure to life in the West, unlike the others. They arrived in San Diego in 2000 and authorities have speculated about who there may have helped them.
The report said Mohammed "denies that al Qaeda had any agents in Southern California. We do not credit this denial."
Research editor Margot Williams contributed to this report.
? 2004 The Washington Post Company
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Overhaul of Congressional Panels Urged
Report Finds Responsibility, Accountability Lacking
By Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 23, 2004; Page A21
Congressional oversight of intelligence and counterterrorism is "dysfunctional" and "the American people will not get the security they want and need" without far-reaching reforms of the outmoded committee system, according to the report of the Sept. 11 commission.
The report offers a broad series of recommendations, including the establishment of greatly strengthened intelligence committees with unique powers to set policy and allocate funds, the creation of permanent committees on homeland security, and the publication of the hitherto secret figure on annual intelligence spending.
"Tinkering with the existing system is not sufficient," the commission wrote as it parceled out to Congress a fair measure of responsibility for the failures in law enforcement and intelligence preceding the catastrophic attack on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. "Our essential message is: the intelligence committees cannot carry out their oversight function unless they are made stronger and thereby have both clear responsibility and accountability for that oversight."
Earlier blue-ribbon reports criticized Congress for its lax oversight, but the 9/11 commission offers the most detailed and scathing assessment yet. Senior members of the House and Senate quickly promised speedy consideration of the proposals while acknowledging that many of the reform recommendations will encounter resistance, as they clash with institutional traditions or the interests of turf-conscious lawmakers.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), co-author of the legislation creating the commission, declared that "delay was the enemy." McCain and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) urged congressional leaders to call a special session after the November elections to begin considering the commission's recommendations.
But, speaking a news conference attended by families of 9/11 victims and the chairman and vice chairman of the commission, McCain noted that the proposal to create either a House-Senate intelligence committee or strengthened intelligence committees in the separate chambers "is going to meet with significant institutional resistance because you're going to be removing somebody's turf."
At a news conference with the theme "Terror on the Run," House GOP leaders largely ignored the 9/11 commission's recommendations and focused instead on the achievements of the Bush administration and of the GOP-controlled Congress in fighting the terrorism threat.
"We haven't endorsed any recommendations," said House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). He added: "We're not going to rush through anything."
Few in Congress disagree that there are serious problems with the oversight of counterterrorism and intelligence. Responsibility for oversight has been granted to dozens of committees and subcommittees whose jurisdictions overlap and conflict, often resulting in confusion and gridlock.
The 9/11 panel noted that officials from the Department of Homeland Security now appear before 88 congressional panels. In the House, the department is overseen by a committee that does not have permanent status. In the Senate, there is no such dedicated oversight panel. "One expert witness . . . told us that this is perhaps the single largest obstacle impeding the department's successful development," the report stated.
As if to underline the warnings contained in the commission report, homeland security legislation in the House was stalled this week by partisan politics. Four House committees were involved in drafting final legislation governing the funding of first responders.
In the area of intelligence, the writing of the annual budget is divided among the intelligence committees, armed services committees and appropriations committees. Congressional rules that -- among other things -- limit the terms of intelligence committee members to six years in the House and eight years in the Senate weaken the committees' "power, influence and sustained capability," according to the report of the 9/11 commission.
Membership on the intelligence panels is not generally coveted, in part because much of the work is done in secrecy. "Members get nothing from being on those panels in terms of public recognition," and as a result they often apply themselves to the work only sporadically, according to a former House Democratic aide.
To strengthen the committees, the 9/11 commission proposed a number of changes, including giving the committees more authority over a unified intelligence budget whose total size would become a matter of public record for the first time, rather than hidden in the budget of the Defense Department. Details of the budget would continue to be classified.
"Having the figure public should increase pressure to get efficiencies, particularly in the big technical programs" such as satellite reconnaissance, said Jeffrey H. Smith, a former CIA general counsel.
Staff writer Charles Babington contributed to this report.
? 2004 The Washington Post Company
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>> IRAN NEWS...
Lebanese Minister Denies Presence Of Iranian Forces In Lebanon
BEIRUT (IRNA) -- Lebanese Minister of State Karam Karam dismissed on Friday a U.S. Department of State allegation that Iranian military forces are present in Bekka, east of Lebanon.
Speaking to the Voice of Lebanon radio, Karam said that the U.S. allegation is an interference in Lebanon's internal affairs.
Stressing that no Iranian forces are in Lebanon, Karam said that only Syrian forces are currently in Lebanon.
Refuting the U.S. allegation, the Lebanese minister said that only Zionist forces have illegally entered Lebanon and are in the Sheba'a farmlands of the southern region.
Washington has brought up the issue of withdrawal of all "foreign forces from Lebanon" but ignores the occupation of a vast part of the country by Israelis forces, argued the minister.
The Lebanese media reported on Friday that the U.S. Ambassador to Beirut Mark Grossman, in a recent speech in Washington, called for a withdrawal of all foreign military forces from Lebanon, including Iranians.
Comparing the Syrian forces in Lebanon with U.S. forces stationed in some European countries, the minister said that Syrian forces are in Lebanon pursuant to an agreement signed by the two countries following the Arab-Israeli war in 1967.
He concluded by saying that friends of Lebanon such as Iran and Syria have always supported the Islamic and national resistance of the country and would continue their support in the future.
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The Two Americas Canard
By David Frum
Posted: Friday, July 23, 2004
ARTICLES
National Review
Publication Date: August 9, 2004
Together, John Kerry and John Edwards possess family fortunes totaling probably in the vicinity of $1 billion. If elected, John Kerry would be the richest president in American history, richer even than his hero John F. Kennedy. And unlike other rich men to seek the presidency--Ross Perot, Herbert Hoover, and so on--Kerry is the very opposite of a self-made man: He came by his money by marrying a woman who inherited it from her husband who in turn inherited it from his great-grandfather.
Yet the Kerry-Edwards campaign is audaciously presenting itself as a crusade against unearned wealth and privilege. As the saying goes: Only in America!
Perhaps conscious of the absurdity of the situation, Kerry has left the populist heavy lifting to his running mate, a man whose fortune is estimated in the mere double-digit millions. But even Edwards must choke a little at the preposterousness of his famous "two Americas" speech:
One America that does the work, another America that reaps the reward. One America that pays the taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks. One America that will do anything to leave its children a better life, another America that never has to do a thing because its children are already set for life. One America--middle-class America--whose needs Washington has long forgotten, another America--narrow-interest America--whose every wish is Washington's command. One America that is struggling to get by, another America that can buy anything it wants, even a Congress and a president.
By my count, that's actually five different pairs of Americas, and no two pairs overlap.
Pair 1: Those who work and those who collect rewards without working. About 60 percent of Americans work; the other 40 percent are in school, retired, unemployed, at home with small children, and so on. It's not very nice of Kerry and Edwards to try to foment divisions between working Americans and their children and retired parents--and it does not seem like very smart politics either.
Pair 2: Those who pay the taxes and those who get the tax breaks. About 65 percent of federal income-tax revenue is contributed by the top 10 percent of taxpayers. Again, you have to worry how wise it is of Kerry and Edwards to suggest that some nine-tenths of their fellow citizens are mooching off wealthy people like themselves.
Pair 3: Those who will do anything for their kids and those who never have to "do a thing" for them. It is unfortunately true that there are a lot of rotten parents out there. Edwards seems to be suggesting they are all Republicans.
Pair 4: Middle-class vs. narrow-interest America. What exactly do Edwards and Kerry offer middle-class America? Astoundingly little, really. In 1992 Bill Clinton offered middle-class tax cuts and universal government-guaranteed health insurance. True, Clinton reneged on the first promise and failed to deliver on the second--but that was after the election. Kerry and Edwards offer neither. In fact, most of their campaign promises are carefully targeted to--you guessed it--"narrow interests."
Pair 5: Those who are struggling to get by and those who can buy anything they want. Political pros sometimes talk about 70-30 issues, meaning issues on which one side outnumbers the other by better than a two-to-one margin. Edwards is going here for a 99.9-to-0.1 issue. Who in America can buy anything he wants? Not me, and probably not you either, and possibly not even John Edwards himself. His running mate sure can, however--but does Edwards really mean to condemn him?
How did Edwards talk his way into this maze?
During his own presidential campaign, Edwards plainly hankered to be a Robert F. Kennedy for our times: a handsome, wealthy man who has taken it on himself to give voice to the voiceless, hope to the hopeless--a tribune of the plebs who basks in the gratitude of the adoring throng. But while Edwards may enjoy this mawkish fantasy, the calculating part of his brain recognizes its danger. There simply aren't enough poor people in America to elect a man president, even if they all voted, which they don't and won't.
David Frum is a resident fellow at AEI.
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>> LEFT WATCH
This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040802&s=phillips
How Kerry Can Win
by KEVIN PHILLIPS
[from the August 2, 2004 issue]
John Kerry can win, given George W. Bush's incompetence, and White House strategists realize that. All the Democrats need to do is to peel away some of the Republican "unbase"--the most wobbly members of the GOP coalition. The caveat is that not many Democrats understand that coalition or why it has beaten the Democrats most of the time since 1968. Nor do most understand the convoluted but related role of Bill Clinton in aborting what could have been a 1992-2004 (or 2008) mini-cycle of Democratic White House dominance and in paving the way for George W.
Elements of this shortsightedness are visible in both the party and the Kerry campaign. While attempts to harness "Anybody but Bush" psychologies and to attract voters without saying much that is controversial might win Kerry a narrow victory, this strategy would be unlikely to create a framework for successful four- or eight-year governance. Deconstructing the Republican coalition is a better long-term bet, and could be done. The result, however, might be to uncage serious progressive reform.
Republicans, in contrast, have been successful in thinking strategically since the late 1960s. From 1968 until Bill Clinton's triumph in 1992, Republicans won five of the six presidential elections, and even Jimmy Carter's narrow victory in 1976 was in many respects a post-Watergate fluke. The two main coalitional milestones were Richard Nixon's 61 percent in 1972 and Ronald Reagan's 59 percent in 1984.
The two Bushes, notwithstanding their dynastic achievement, represent the later-stage weakness of the coalition, which would have been more obvious without the moral rebukes of Clinton that were critical in the 1994 and 2000 elections. In the three presidential elections the Bushes have fought to date, their percentages of the total national vote have been 53.9 percent (1988), 37.7 percent (1992) and 47.9 percent (2000)--an average of 46.5 percent. Keep in mind that in 1992, Bush Senior got the smallest vote share of any President seeking re-election since William Howard Taft in 1912, while in 2000, the younger Bush became the first President to be elected without winning a plurality of the popular vote since Benjamin Harrison in 1888. The aftermath of 9/11 created transient strength, but the essential weakness of the Bushes was palpable again by mid-2004.
Strategizing on behalf of a family with more luck and lineage than gravitas, the principal strategists for each Bush President--Lee Atwater for number 41 and Karl Rove for number 43--have necessarily been Machiavellian students of the Republican presidential coalition and how to maintain it. After helping to elect 41 in 1988 because Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis was an Ivy League technocrat unconvincing as an occasional populist, Atwater observed that "the way to win a presidential election against the Republicans is to develop the class-warfare issue, as Dukakis did at the end. To divide up the have and have-nots." Since then, the focus on keeping Republicans together has evolved and intensified.
Despite the Republican weakness evident in 1992 and Bush's second-place finish in 2000, Rove is notable for his preoccupation with the GOP "base," which he presumably thinks of in normal majoritarian terms. However, in the case of Bush's running for election or re-election, it is also useful--and the Democrats of 2004 would find it particularly worthwhile--to focus on the GOP's "unbase." This, in essence, is the 20-25 percent of the party electorate that has been won at various points by three national anti-Bush primary and general election candidates with Republican origins: Ross Perot (1992), John McCain (2000) and, in a lesser vein, Patrick Buchanan (1992). Most of the shared Perot-McCain issues--campaign and election reform, opposition to the religious right, distaste for Washington lobbyists, opposition to upper-bracket tax biases and runaway deficits, criticism of corporations and CEOs--are salient today and more compatible with the mainstream moderate reformist Democratic viewpoint than with the lobbyist-driven Bush Administration. Perot and Buchanan's economic nationalism (anti-outsourcing, anti-NAFTA) and criticism of Iraq policy under the two Bushes is also shared by many Democrats.
Taking things somewhat further, these members of the "unbase" of the Republican presidential coalition ought to be the Democrats' key target because (1) they have some degree of skepticism about Bush and (2) they are the segment of the GOP coalition most logically open to recruitment for a progressive realignment, short-term or otherwise. That is the way small or large realignments work: by wooing the most empathetic part of the current coalition.
In 1992, when Perot drew 19 percent of the November vote, George Bush Senior got only about 80 percent of the Republican vote. Most of the "unbase" and part of the base deserted. If McCain had been well funded in 2000, he might have been able to get 30-40 percent in GOP primaries nationally, and even without serious money, he did win the primaries in seven states, including New Hampshire, Michigan and Connecticut. Sticking with the idea that the GOP "unbase" is somewhere between 20 percent and 25 percent, Bush can afford to lose 5 to 7 percent of the overall Republican electorate. But if he loses 10 percent, he's probably done for, and if he drops 15 percent, he's finished.
It could happen. Back in late winter, when Kerry still had a winner's aura from the primaries, one CBS News poll showed 11 percent of those who had voted for Bush in 2000 were unprepared to do so in 2004. That was enough to put Kerry ahead, at least until the GOP's spring advertising blitz.
Kerry looked better by late June, but part of the reason for Kerry's--and the Democrats'--failure to capitalize on Bush's weaknesses is that they seem unable to decide between two very different strategies. One might be called the Wall Street strategy, which includes rhetoric about failed policies in Iraq and GOP tax cuts that pander to the rich, but avoids most specifics or bold indictments of Bush failure. Critiques of US economic polarization, NAFTA or globalization are sidestepped, and the example of Clinton-era federal deficit reduction so admired by Wall Street is held up. Indeed, Kerry's demeanor is appropriate to a man married into one of the biggest US corporate fortunes.
It is plausible to think that this will enable Kerry to draw a slightly improved vote among upper-middle-class and even fat-cat Republicans disenchanted with Bush as an incompetent cowboy who has bungled Iraq and pandered to Falwell, Robertson and Bob Jones University. Pinstriped caution has already helped the Massachusetts Senator to haul in record levels of Democratic contributions, some from Republicans and independents. Still, for all its success in Manhattan, the Hamptons and Santa Barbara, this is not a strategy that resonates with swing voters in battleground states from Ohio to New Mexico.
The alternative--at once bolder and riskier, but with a larger potential electorate--involves targeting the ordinary Republicans who rejected at least one generation of Bushes to back Perot or McCain. These voters--not a few thousand elites but millions of the rank and file--are concentrated in the middle-class precincts of swing states like Maine, New Hampshire, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado and the Pacific Coast.
Even by the campaign's own polls, it is precisely the Perot-McCain states that Kerry most needs to win. For Democratic and left-tilting progressives, the second benefit is luring voters drawn to the outsider economics of Perot and McCain, not to the insider calculations of big donors and fundraisers like former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. It is the Perot-McCain constituency, more than the elite Democratic entente, that could best catalyze a bipartisan progressive coalition. A partial analogy, at least, can be made to the role that GOP progressives like George Norris, Hiram Johnson and Robert La Follette Jr. played during the 1930s in launching the New Deal. Convincing John McCain to run for Vice President in a Kerry fusion ticket would have been the strongest tactic, but Edwards is a persuasive alternative. Now for Kerry to repeat the boldness and refreshing candor would be an important further change of pace.
In addition to adopting a bolder style, national Democrats also need to grasp Bill Clinton's role during the 1990s in aborting some national trends and stirring others that did his party considerable harm. Indeed, Clinton's moral notoriety was central to the rise of George W. Bush at two junctures--Bush's initial election as governor of Texas in 1994, a year dominated (especially in Dixie) by an anti-Clinton backlash, and the presidential race of 2000, in which regional disgust with Clinton was so strong that even Tennessee Southern Baptist Al Gore could not carry Arkansas and Tennessee against the religion-linked Bush campaign for moral restoration.
Without these offsets to Clinton's lengthy prosperity, it seems clear that 1992 should have ushered in a twelve-to-sixteen-year Democratic mini-cycle. Indeed, the sixteen-point collapse in Bush Senior's vote between 1988 and 1992 was the sort of hemorrhage mostly seen on previous realignment occasions. Clinton's failure to take advantage of this opportunity, instead facilitating the Bushes' return in dynastic form, is one of the too-little-understood ingredients of the 2000 upheaval.
Part of the emptiness of the Democrats' pinstriped or don't-rock-the-boat strategy is that it doesn't grapple with these circumstances. Not just the South but the kindred pivotal border states and the Ohio Valley cannot be counted on to reward a Democrat trumpeting the Clinton memory and legacy. Nor does bland centrism effectively respond to the Bush family's regaining of the presidency in 2000 by tactics and subsequent inroads on small-d democracy and small-r republicanism to which only a feckless Democratic nominee could turn the other cheek.
However, let it pass for the moment that Bush was put in office only by a 5-to-4 decision of the Supreme Court, hijacked the Democrats' mini-cycle, fought and botched the first father-and-son war in US annals and convinced 55-60 percent of Americans that the nation is on the wrong course. There is a more stark yardstick that even cautious Democrats should understand: In 1991-92, George H.W. Bush, prior to his defeat, fell from a record high job-approval rating of 90 percent after the Gulf War to a low 30s summer bottom before the election. His son, who hit the low 90s right after 9/11, by early June had fallen to 42-43 percent, another fifty-point decline. No elected President has ever done this; the Bushes have done it twice. Maybe it's the gene pool.
Back in 1992, Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot went after Bush with the gloves off, softening him up so that the Democratic nominee Clinton didn't have to do that much. In 2000 Al Gore didn't run a strong campaign--his occasional populism was as labored as fellow Harvard man Dukakis's in 1988--but some Republicans and independents had taken their cues from McCain. This year, by contrast, Bush had no primary challenge and will have no ex-Republican third-party opponent. Sure, some Republicans have attacked Bush through books, but while that's probably been worth a point or two, it's not the same thing.
To win this election decisively, John Kerry is going to have to feel the same outrage that Howard Dean felt, and he's going to have to express some of it with the same merciless candor that the Republican dissidents have employed against two generations of Bushes. In today's circumstances of a nation on the wrong track, most swing voters--especially wavering GOP men who grew up on John Wayne movies--will not be content with pablum. The Edwards selection seemed assertive, but if Kerry reverts to equivocation, he could face the ultimate epitaph on a political tombstone: Here lies John Kerry, the first Democratic nominee to lose to a Bush President who'd already dropped fifty points in job approval and earned the snickers of half the world.
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The New Medicare Prescription Drug Law
Formulary Policies Could Limit Access to Necessary Medications
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=127965
by Jeffrey S. Crowley
July 20, 2004
A key feature of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA) is its reliance on private insurers (stand alone-drug insurers and Medicare Advantage plans) to negotiate drug prices and reduce program costs. One of the major tools that they will use to steer enrollees toward preferred drugs are formularies, or defined lists of drugs for which a prescription drug plan will provide coverage. Formularies have become a common feature of existing private employer-sponsored health insurance programs, as well as Medicaid, the federal-state program that provides health coverage to nearly 53 million low-income individuals. [1] Unlike these existing programs, however, the new stand-alone prescription drug insurers are not responsible for the costs for other health services (such as hospital or physician costs) that could rise if their formulary policies are overly restrictive. Additionally, the MMA permits private insurers (both stand alone plans and Medicare Advantage plans) to operate "closed" formularies that are not permitted by Medicaid; allows people with a vested interest to create the formularies; and does not clarify the exact appeals rights that enrollees will have to access needed, prescribed drugs. These policies could result in Medicare beneficiaries being denied access to drugs prescribed by their physicians, and suffering bad health outcomes as a result.
WHAT THE LAW DOES
The MMA permits private insurers to cover most outpatient prescription drugs and biologicals. Plans cannot pay for drugs already covered by Medicare Parts A and B [2] and a limited list of drugs for so-called non-essential uses. [3] Prescription drug plans can cover all other FDA-approved medications with a valid prescription, but could limit which drugs they cover by operating formularies. Plans that elect to use formularies must meet the following requirements:
Develop through Committee. Formularies must be developed by a Pharmacy and Therapeutic (P&T) Committee, and the majority of the Committee's members must be practicing physicians or pharmacists. At least one practicing physician and one practicing pharmacist on the Committee must be independent from the prescription drug plan and have expertise in the care of the elderly or people with disabilities. [4]
Use clinical information. In developing and reviewing the formulary, the P&T Committee must base its decisions on the strength of the scientific evidence and standards of practice, including assessing peer-reviewed medical literature, such as randomized clinical trials, pharmacoeconomic studies, outcomes research data, and other information that the Committee deems appropriate. The P&T Committee must also consider whether including a drug on the formulary has therapeutic advantages in terms of safety and efficacy. [5]
Determine classes and drugs covered in each class. The formulary must include drugs within each therapeutic category and class of covered drugs, although not necessarily all drugs within such categories and classes. The law's reference to "drugs" appears to mean that prescription drug plans must cover at least two drugs in every class, although plans are able to define for themselves what is a class. The law also provides for the United States Pharmacopeia to be asked to develop model guidelines for therapeutic categories and classes, although plans will not be bound by them. [6]
Update formularies. Except to take into account new drugs and new therapeutic uses of drugs, a prescription drug plan can only change the therapeutic categories and classes at the beginning of each plan year. Plans can change the drugs included or excluded from their formulary, however, at any time. Before removing a drug from the formulary, the plan must provide notice to their enrollees through posting the formulary change on the Internet or providing the formulary to enrollees, upon request.
CONCERNS ABOUT THE LAW
Formularies have become an important tool in the management of pharmaceutical costs and in efforts to improve the quality of health services received. In some cases, physicians prescribe drugs for conditions and situations that are outdated or contraindicated. There are also large variations in pharmaceutical costs for drugs to treat the same condition, and these costs do not always correlate with the effectiveness of a drug or other clinical criteria. In these situations, formulary policies can serve important public policy goals by conserving health resources and providing higher quality care without any deleterious impacts on individuals. However, the implementation of the MMA's formulary provisions could create problems.
Closed formularies could lead to access problems. Closed formularies could potentially exclude high-cost drugs without regard for the unique needs or circumstances of individuals. Under open formularies, plans can manage utilization by denying access to certain drugs (such as higher cost drugs or drugs shown through clinical evidence to be less effective in most cases than a preferred drug) until an individual has met specific procedural requirements (such as receiving prior authorization or failing to benefit from a preferred drug). Closed formularies do not make such accommodations for normal, individual-level variations in responses to pharmaceuticals. The MMA provides for an exceptions process where an individual, with their physician's support, can petition a private plan to cover a non-formulary drug or charge the lowest cost-sharing (i.e. cost-sharing for the preferred drug in a class) for a non-preferred drug. However, private insurers retain full discretion to approve or deny all such requests. This creates the risk that needed drugs may not be accessible in a timely or affordable manner under the new Medicare benefit, as the formal appeals process could take several weeks to be resolved.
Formulary decisions are not sufficiently independent. The MMA requires that P&T Committees include at least one practicing physician and one practicing pharmacist who are independent from the prescription drug plan. The law places no minimum or maximum constraints on the size of the P&T Committee. Therefore, the value of having two independent participants could be diluted to the point of being meaningless if plan employees are permitted to dominate the P&T Committee, and outvote the two independent committee members. Since the MMA relies on P&T Committees to ensure that formularies are developed based on current clinical evidence and standards of clinical practice, it is imperative that P&T Committee decisions are not unduly influenced by a plan's management or financial interests.
Financial incentives could lead to excessively restrictive formularies. The MMA places prescription drug plans at-risk for limiting drug costs. For the law to be successful at limiting costs to Medicare and for plans to maximize their profitability, prescription drug plans will have strong incentives to limit spending. While this is intended to put pressure on plans to reduce prices, these incentives may lead plans to avoid persons with high-cost conditions or limit drug spending by developing restrictive formularies. [7], [8] Plans could achieve this goal by keeping essential medications, such as latest generation mental health drugs, off of their formularies.
There is a potential for arbitrary formulary limitations, such as no coverage for off-label uses. Plans could also develop formulary policies that impose arbitrary dispensing limits (such as providing coverage for only 3 prescriptions per month) or that limit access to prescription drugs for off-label uses. Off-label prescribing is a practice where a physician prescribes a prescription medication for a use that is not an indication that was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Although the MMA clearly states that Medicare prescription drug plans are permitted to cover drugs for off-label uses, the law contains no provisions that would prevent plan formularies from limiting coverage to only "on-label" uses. Many uses for prescription drugs, while not FDA approved, are therapeutically important. Persons with rare conditions have been especially likely to take drugs for non-FDA approved uses because studies have not been conducted to evaluate drug efficacy or safety in those cases. Moreover, for conditions where the standards of clinical practice are evolving rapidly, evidence of the clinical benefits of new uses of drugs is frequently not available in the "real time" needed to treat individuals with life threatening conditions.
There are no guarantees that plans will cover breakthrough drugs or life-saving drugs. Because plans have incentives to keep costs down, they may delay or deny coverage of new and expensive drugs. The plan-stacked P&T Committee may decide that a new drug belongs in an old class of drugs, and prefer an older and less effective drug instead. For persons with cancer, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, HIV/AIDS, and other life-threatening and progressively disabling conditions, access to the latest medications is important because they can prevent further disability and help the individual stay alive. New drugs are especially important to persons who have failed on all currently available treatments.
Dual eligibles could be worse off. For over 6 million dual eligibles (i.e. , low-income people with disabilities and elderly individuals enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid), Medicaid prescription drug coverage will end when the new Medicare prescription drug coverage program begins. Drug coverage for dual eligibles will shift from Medicaid to private Medicare prescription drug plans, and dual eligibles will not have the choice to retain their Medicaid prescription drug coverage instead of signing up for a Medicare prescription drug plan. Dual eligibles have poorer health status and more extensive prescription drug needs than most other Medicare beneficiaries. [9] Coverage of medically necessary drugs is particularly critical because most dual eligibles are quite poor, and thus, unable to pay out-of-pocket for non-covered drugs. For these individuals, closed formularies pose special risks. Both their ability to navigate an appeals process and afford needed drugs in the interim is limited. This could result in serious reductions in access, even in states with limits on their Medicaid prescription drug benefits. [10]
IMPROVEMENTS
Require open formularies. Legislative changes could require private plans to operate open formularies similar to those in Medicaid. While some may argue this would limit the ability of private plans to negotiate cost savings from pharmaceutical manufacturers, open formularies do not weaken a plan's ability to use tiered cost sharing, prior authorization and other tools to restrict access to drugs when this is appropriate and evidence-based. For example, for many classes of drugs, it would be clinically appropriate for a plan to use "reference pricing" where all Medicare-covered drugs are on the formulary, but individuals pay the difference in price between the preferred drug and the drug that their doctor prescribes. [11] Such a system, however, should be carefully limited to classes for which individual drugs are close substitutes for each other, and would not be appropriate in cases (such as HIV/AIDS antiretroviral drugs) where drugs within a class are less interchangeable. Open formularies provide a safety valve so that individuals and their physicians can demand exceptions to routine formulary practices when it is clinically indicated. For dual eligibles and other low-income Medicare beneficiaries, it can be especially important to ensure that all needed drugs are on the formulary, as cost-sharing protections ensure access to all formulary drugs. The MMA protects dual eligibles and other low-income Medicare beneficiaries by limiting cost-sharing to no more than $3 per prescription for a preferred drug and $5 per prescription for non-preferred drugs, with an even lower limit for dual eligibles with income below the poverty level.
Ensure that P&T Committee decisions are based on clinical evidence. Through regulations and administrative monitoring, the federal government can assure that P&T Committee formulary decisions are based on clinical evidence. The law requires P&T Committees to base their decisions on the strength of the scientific evidence and standards of practice, including assessments of peer-reviewed medical literature, such as randomized clinical trials, pharmacoeconomic studies, outcomes research data, and other information that the Committee deems appropriate. Federal officials should require plans to comply with federally-promulgated and other commonly-accepted standards of clinical practice. For example, the standard of care for the treatment of HIV/AIDS is guided by federal treatment guidelines that are evidence-based, and updated regularly. Through regulation, federal officials should develop a process whereby the Secretary annually publishes a list of clinical practice guidelines for a range of conditions with which private plan formularies must be consistent. Additionally, regulations should prohibit private plans from using cost-sharing levels and other features of a prescription plan benefit to create barriers to access to drugs that have been shown through clinical research to produce superior results. Federal officials should also commit resources to monitoring and evaluating P&T Committee practices and private plan benefit features on an ongoing basis and making recommendations for administrative and legislative improvements, when necessary.
Limit the ability of plans to drop drugs from the formulary throughout the year. The MMA provides for an annual election period when Medicare beneficiaries are permitted to change prescription drug plans. Plans are permitted, however, to change their formularies at any time. For individuals with a broad range of conditions, treatment interruptions can be extremely harmful. Furthermore, for many individuals, the sole criterion for selecting a prescription drug plan is to ensure that specific drugs are covered. The MMA should be changed to prohibit plans from dropping drugs from their formularies, except with advance notice prior to the annual plan election period or in exceptional circumstances, such as if new clinical evidence indicates that use of a drug is unsafe or ineffective. Additionally, Congress and federal officials should develop supplemental safeguards for persons with conditions, such as HIV/AIDS or mental illness, where treatment interruptions pose unique dangers to the individual or have serious public health implications.
Provide for access to non-formulary drugs for persons with serious or complex conditions. For new drugs or drugs used to treat rare conditions, scientific evidence may not be available to justify to a P&T Committee that it should add it to the plan's formulary. For individuals who have failed to benefit from all other available treatments, and persons with life-threatening conditions, a looser standard for coverage of drugs is necessary. If closed formularies are permitted, persons with serious or complex conditions, or at a minimum, persons with conditions that in the absence of treatment are expected to result in death, should be exempted from formulary restrictions and should have access to all FDA-approved drugs with a valid prescription. This is especially important when private plans have incentives to deny coverage for high-cost drugs, and clinical evidence is unavailable to support the denial of access to a new treatment. Plans that use open formularies should be required to provide for standing exceptions to tiered cost-sharing requirements so that individuals do not need to request exceptions repeatedly for drugs used on an on-going basis.
Permit Medicaid to supplement gaps in Medicare drug coverage. Because of their poorer health status and their lower incomes, dual eligibles are particularly vulnerable to not having their prescription drug needs met by private Medicare prescription drug plans. They are uniquely situated as the cohort of Medicare beneficiaries most at risk by the MMA because they are losing current protections provided through Medicaid. Congress should modify the law to permit state Medicaid programs to voluntarily supplement gaps in Medicare's drug coverage. States advocated for the ability to provide wraparound drug coverage through Medicaid before the Medicare prescription drug law was enacted, and it is consistent with the manner in which Medicaid already supplements Medicare coverage for other services for dual eligibles, such as cost-sharing and long-term services.
Jeffrey S. Crowley is Project Director for the Health Policy Institute at Georgetown University
[1] CBO March 2004 Baseline, see http://www.cbo.gov/factsheets/2004b/Medicaid.pdf.
[2] Drugs covered by Medicare Parts A and B include injectable drugs, immunosuppressive drugs used by organ transplant recipients, epoetin alfa (which is used by persons with cancer and end-stage renal disease and other conditions to treat anemia), and certain vaccines. Medicare also covers oral cancer drugs if they are also available in injectable form. Oral cancer drugs not available in injectable form, however, are not currently covered by Medicare and prescription drug plans will be permitted to cover these drugs.
[3] Except for smoking cessation drugs, the MMA prohibits Medicare prescription drug plans from covering drugs that may be restricted from coverage by state Medicaid programs. Medicaid programs that choose to cover prescription drugs are permitted not to cover the following drugs (and their medical uses): 1) Drugs when used for anorexia, weight loss, or weight gain; 2) drugs when used to promote fertility; 3) drugs when used for cosmetic purposes or hair growth; 4) drugs when used for the symptomatic relief of coughs and colds; 5) drugs when used to promote smoking cessation; 6) prescription vitamins and mineral products, except prenatal vitamins and fluoride preparations; 7) nonprescription drugs; 8) covered outpatient drugs which the manufacturer seeks to require as a condition of sale that associated tests or monitoring services be purchased exclusively from the manufacturer or its designee; 9) barbiturates; and, 10) benzodiazepines.
[4] ?1860D-4(b)(3)(A) of the Social Security Act, as added by P.L. 108-173.
[5] ?1860D-4(b)(3)(B) of the Social Security Act, as added by P.L. 108-173.
[6] ?1860D-4(b)(3)(C) of the Social Security Act, as added by P.L. 108-173.
[7] Report to Congress: New Approaches in Medicare (see Chapter 1), Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, June 2004.
[8] Huskamp, H.A. and Keating, N.L. , The New Medicare Drug Benefit: Potential Effects of Pharmacy Management Tools on Access to Medications, Harvard Medical School prepared for the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, July 2004.
[9] Dual Eligibles: Medicaid's Role in Filling Medicare's Gaps, Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, March 2004.
[10] Crowley, J.S. , The New Medicare Prescription Drug Law: Issues for Dual Eligibles with Disabilities and Serious Conditions, Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, June 2004.
[11] Huskamp, H.A. , Rosenthal, M.B. , Frank, R.G. , and Newhouse, J.P. , "The Medicare prescription drug benefit: how will the game be played?," Health Affairs (Mar/Apr 2000): 8-23.
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Working Paper
Fifty Concerns about the Medicare Law, and Ideas on How To Fix Them
by Jeanne M. Lambrew, PhD
July 22, 2004
Download Full Report >
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=128706
One of the few statements accepted across the political spectrum is that the implications of the new Medicare law are enormous. Clearly, the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA) is important because it adds a long-overdue drug benefit to the program that costs between $400 and $535 billion over ten years. Beyond this, the delivery system and design of the drug benefit; its interactions with the renamed and reinvigorated Medicare Advantage (formerly the Medicare + Choice program); and other changes have similarly profound implications. Many of the changes are clear in the structure of the legislation, [i] but others are in its details and their impact depends on their implementation.
This paper aims to both catalogue the important issues associated with the new law and suggest how they could be addressed. The 50 highlighted issues are both serious and solvable. They focus on concerns of beneficiaries -- particularly those with low income or high health care needs [ii] -- rather than those of health care providers, health plans, potential drug insurers, or drug manufacturers. Each is described succinctly, including references to both the section of the law where the issue arises and the page number in the Conference Report to Accompany H.R. 1. [iii] The regulatory and legislative fixes are brief suggestions rather than full-blown proposals. Some require further policy development and involve tradeoffs. For example, increasing consumer protections may discourage private plan participation; limiting potentially overly-aggressive cost management tools may increase Federal costs. The intent is to encourage discussion and debate about policies to ensure affordable, meaningful drug coverage, and basic benefits, for the Medicare population.
This paper places a special emphasis on potential regulatory changes to the new Medicare law. The law delegates numerous and significant policy decisions to the regulatory process and the Secretary of Health and Human Services. For example, the regulations could create a simplified appeals process for beneficiaries who lose access to preferred drugs when a plan changes its formulary midyear; they could create standards the limit employer "dropping" of their contributions to retiree drug coverage. These regulatory improvements are especially important since the odds are low that legislative changes can be enacted in the near term. The President has indicated that he will veto major legislative changes, [iv]and has declined to send to Congress a list of technical corrections as required by law. [v] As such, the forthcoming proposed regulations represent an important moment in Medicare policy making.
Download Full Report >
Jeanne M. Lambrew is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and associate professor in the Department of Health Policy at The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services.
[i] For an overview, see Moon M. (June 2004). How Beneficiaries Fare Under the New Medicare Drug Bill. New York: The Commonwealth Fund.
[ii] For a fuller description of the consumer issues in the new law, see Dallek G. (July 2004). Consumer Protection Issues Raised by The Medicare Prescription Drug, Modernization, and Improvement Act of 2004. Menlo Park, CA: The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
[iii] U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means. (November 21, 2003). Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003: Conference Report to Accompany H.R. 1. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
[iv] Bush GW. (January 20, 2004). The State of the Union Address. Washington, DC: The White House.
[v] Marre K. (June 2, 2004). "Administration: No technical Medicare bill is necessary," The Hill, p. 16.
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>> RIGHT
Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage in Action
AEI Newsletter
Posted: Thursday, July 22, 2004
ARTICLES
August 2004 Newsletter
Publication Date: August 1, 2004
Since President George W. Bush signed the Medicare Modernization Act into law on December 8, 2003, it has been criticized as too expensive (estimates range from $409 billion to $534 billion for costs to be incurred through 2013) and too complex for seniors to understand. In their new study Private Discounts, Public Subsidies: How the Medicare Prescription Drug Discount Card Really Works, AEI's Joseph Antos and Ximena Pinell compare the prescription drug discount program with other discount programs and find that it can, in fact, provide substantial savings to seniors but that enrollment requires better consumer access to program information than is currently available.
The drug discount card program mandated in the Medicare Modernization Act offers prescription drugs at savings between 5 and 50 percent greater than existing plans. Low-income seniors who lack insurance coverage can receive a $600 annual cash subsidy and access special discounts offered by drug manufacturers. Based upon estimates for prescription drugs from the Medicare website, Antos and Pinell argue that between June and December of this year, beneficiaries could save between one-half to three-quarters of their total prescription drug costs, and they present case studies with price comparisons between already existing prescription drug programs and the new Medicare discount program.
All Medicare beneficiaries who do not already have prescription drug coverage under the Medicaid program may enroll in the new program, and Medicare discount cards can be obtained through pharmacies and health plans operating under the Medicare Advantage program for an enrollment fee of no more than $30--which is waived for seniors whose income does not exceed 135 percent of the federal poverty level. The program aims to enable consumers to compare prices for drugs anywhere in the country, thereby promoting competition through price transparency.
As of the first week of June, only 2.9 million seniors were enrolled in the program, 2.4 million of whom had been automatically enrolled under Medicare managed-care plans. Antos and Pinell find that the newness of the program and the extensive criticism, coupled with the limited availability of information on the Medicare website, have inhibited enrollment, and they credit the Access to Benefits Coalition with attempting to counter these difficulties and provide a clearing-house for consumer-friendly information regarding the program.
Related Links
More about the book
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Putting Health Savings Accounts into Practice
New Guidance from the Treasury
Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) have proven to be one of the most controversial provisions of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. Will HSAs blaze a trail to a more efficient health care system? Will they disrupt existing employer-sponsored insurance? Will they prove popular with health insurers, employers, and individual consumers? Or are they just another variation in the tax code that will be ignored by almost everyone? The future of HSAs, and their effect on health care markets, will depend greatly on how the law is interpreted by the U.S. Treasury Department's new guidance.
At this health policy discussion, Roy Ramthun and William Sweetnam Jr. of the Treasury Department will explain departmental efforts to develop HSAs within the provisions of the law. Three experts on HSAs and private health insurance markets will share their assessments of the Treasury's new guidance and its effect on the future of health insurance.
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>> NORTH KOREAN INTERLUDE...
Japan's Sinister Intention Disclosed in "Defense White Paper"
Pyongyang, July 21 (KCNA) -- The Japanese Defense Agency recently worked out a "defense white paper" for 2004 and presented it to the Cabinet meeting. In the paper Japan painted a distorted picture of the state of affairs, alleging that the situation in the Asia-Pacific region was rendered unstable by the DPRK, pulling it up again. Minju Joson Wednesday in a commentary says that as for the military capabilities of the DPRK with which Japan took issue, they are means of legitimate self-defense designed to protect the sovereignty of the country and security of the nation from the U.S. imperialists' hostile policy toward the DPRK and their moves to strangle it. Every sovereign state has the right to possess this means and there is no cause for Japan to talk this or that about the matter, it adds.
The commentary cites facts exposing the aim pursued by Japan in trying to find fault with the DPRK in the paper.
It is the petty trick of Japan to attain everything needed for turning itself into a military power and implementing its policy of overseas expansion under the pretext of coping with "threat from the DPRK", it notes, and continues:
It is a mistake if Japan thought its imprudent scheming would work all the time. Japan would be well advised to refrain from the frivolous act of absurdly slandering others. It should discard cold war mentality such as confrontation and distrust in Northeast Asia and look squarely into the trend of the times in which moves toward reconciliation and cooperation are picking up greater momentum than ever before.
Negotiations for Transfer of U.S. Military Base in Ryongsan
Pyongyang, July 23 (KCNA) -- Members of the People for Achieving Peace and Reunification and the Phyongthaek Measure Committee against the Expansion of the U.S. Military Base and civilians in Phyongthaek reportedly held a press conference in front of the building of the "government" in Seoul on July 19 to reject the negotiations for the transfer of the U.S. military base in Ryongsan. Speakers including the director of the Secretariat of the People for Achieving Peace and Reunification in their speeches noted that they would strongly oppose the 10th consultative council meeting of the future of the south Korea-U.S alliance policy initiative slated to be held in the U.S. which would discuss the issue of drawing up an agreement on the transfer of the U.S. military base in Ryongsan and an accord to implement it.
A press release issued at the press conference said the humiliating nature has been revealed by the negotiations for the transfer of the U.S. military base in Ryongsan and this is the reason why the organizations are opposed to the above-said meeting.
The demands of the U.S. were unilaterally met at the last negotiations for the transfer of the U.S military base in Ryongsan because of the inequality manifested in those negotiations, the press release said, strongly demanding a total restart of the negotiations.
It held that the U.S. should not cut back its forces in south Korea but completely pull them out of south Korea.
At the end of the press conference, the participants staged a sit-in strike in front of the building.
U.S. Reckless Military Racket Denounced
Pyongyang, July 21 (KCNA) -- The United States is staging "RIMPAC 2004" joint military exercises and a large-scale military drill code-named "Summer Pulse 04" in the Asia-Pacific region. This goes to prove that the black-hearted intention of the Bush administration to realize the strategy of preemptive attack in the Asia-Pacific region and the rest of the world at any cost has reached a very serious and dangerous phase. Rodong Sinmun Wednesday says this in a signed commentary.
It goes on:
It is the U.S. calculation that it can dominate the world only when the Asia-Pacific region is placed under its control as "the 21st century would be a century for Asia-Pacific". Its Asia-Pacific strategy is aimed to establish its domination over the region and prevent any force seeking hegemony and union from emerging. The U.S. foresees that its potential enemy may emerge in the region. The bellicose Bush group set out a new "national security strategy" the keynote of which is "preemptive attack" and is using it as a main leverage for realizing its ambition for world domination. It is now putting spurs to the moves to increase its combat capacity, focusing on Northeast Asia.
The on-going large-scale military exercises are aimed to carry out the U.S. Asia-Pacific strategy and its new "strategy of preemptive attack." In a word, the main purpose of these maneuvers is to improve the long-range deployment capacity of the U.S. forces and the mobile capability of its forces overseas and help them acquire those capabilities in order to realize the strategy of blitz warfare by a surprise war and preemptive attack.
The U.S. is staging maneuvers under the simulated conditions of an actual war with huge forces involved in an area near Taiwan. In recent years the U.S. has massively shipped its weapons into Taiwan. But the saber-rattling for a preemptive attack launched by the U.S. to realize its Asia-Pacific strategy is as dangerous an act as jumping from a frying pan into the fire.
The U.S. adventurous strategy of preemptive attack is, however, bound to go bust. It. is well advised to stop its reckless play with fire.
Participants in March for Korean Peace and Reunification Meet
Sinchon, July 21 (KCNA) -- Members of the group of participants in an international march for Korean peace and reunification held a meeting in the chest-nut valley in Wonam-ri, Sinchon County of South Hwanghae Province Wednesday to condemn the U.S. imperialists' mass killings of Koreans. They laid bouquets and flowers before the grave of 400 mothers and the grave of 102 children before listening to the testimonies made by those who underwent great misfortune and pain due to the U.S. imperialist aggressors in the land of Sinchon during the last Korean war.
Ju Sang Won, lecturer at the Sinchon Museum, who narrowly escaped death in a powder storage in Wonam-ri, told about the monstrous crime committed by GIs. He said they herded children into the powder storage and did not give them even a drop of water before spraying gasoline over them to burn them.
Then they threw hand-grenades into the storage, killing all of them, he added.
Choe Kyong Nyo, section chief of the Sinchon County People's Committee, testified to the mass killings of innocent civilians including children and old people committed by GIs and asked the marchers to fully expose and condemn these hideous crimes before the world.
Michel Watts, a participant in the march and chief of the U.S. branch of the Association for Friendship with the Korean people, said in his speech that everyone should clearly know about the bloodbath in Sinchon and the blood-stained history of the United States and that he, an American, would like to apologize for GIs' crimes in Korea.
He vowed to fight to prevent the repetition of the crimes the U.S. committed against other nations and other countries and the atrocities it perpetrated in Korea.
A letter to the U.S. president was adopted at the meeting.
The letter said the destruction and killing of civilians committed by Gis during the last Korean war are the inhumane and monstrous crimes unprecedented in the world history of war in their scale and targets and in their ferocious and brutal nature. The U.S. government should be held fully responsible for the above-said crimes and make an honest apology and compensation to the Korean people, the letter demanded, and continued:
The U.S. has stood in the Korean nation's way of independent reunification and seriously threatened peace and security on the Korean peninsula over the last 51 years. It must stop running wild, pondering over the grave consequences to be entailed by its hostile policy toward the DPRK.
If the U.S. is truly concerned for the peace and reunification of the Korean peninsula, it should immediately accept the fair and aboveboard proposal of the DPRK to seek a peaceful and negotiated solution to the nuclear issue on the principle of simultaneous actions. And it should withdraw its troops from south Korea and stop at once its military threat and blackmail which may lead the situation on the peninsula to catastrophe.
Prior to the meeting the marchers visited the Sinchon Museum.
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>> YOU DON'T SAY WATCH...
The SEC and Market Structure Reform
No Data, No Analysis, No Vision
By Peter J. Wallison
Posted: Tuesday, July 13, 2004
FINANCIAL SERVICES OUTLOOK
AEI Online (Washington)
Publication Date: July 1, 2004
The proposal of the Securities and Exchange Commission for market structure reform, like so many other recent SEC initiatives, seems entirely ad hoc. There are certainly good reasons for considering reform of a market that consists of two separate and entirely different structures--one centralized and lacking any significant competition, and the other decentralized and highly competitive--but the SEC did not present any. Instead, the commission's proposal, which is not based on either market data or a vision of how the securities markets should function, seems designed to placate contending interests rather than meet the needs of investors or companies, now or in the future.
In late February, the Securities and Exchange Commission published Regulation NMS, a long-awaited proposal for market structure reform. There is little doubt that reform is overdue. The last major restructuring of the securities markets occurred in 1975, when Congress adopted a plan for a national market system. In that legislation, which followed serious SEC studies of the securities market in 1963 and 1971, Congress seemed to contemplate a number of regional securities markets that would compete with the New York Stock Exchange and a future in which investors would be able to access these markets without the use of intermediaries. This is not, of course, the structure that has since developed. Today, the NYSE remains the dominant market for NYSE-listed securities, many of the regional exchanges have withered, and investors who want to buy or sell NYSE-listed securities must still do so by placing orders with brokers.
The Ascent of Nasdaq
But while the structure for trading NYSE-listed securities has remained largely immutable, there has been a virtual revolution elsewhere in the securities markets since 1975. An informal dealer market that traded non-listed securities over the counter in 1975 became a formalized dealer market known as Nasdaq; entirely new computerized order-matching venues (known as electronic communications networks, or ECNs), arose to challenge the Nasdaq dealer market; and in response Nasdaq itself became a fully electronic market. In some ECNs, institutional traders can trade anonymously with other institutions without the intercession of a broker. In other words, the original vision of Congress for a securities market of competing venues and direct access by investors has been partially realized--but in the Nasdaq market, not in the market for NYSE-listed shares, where Congress apparently intended that it occur.
The reasons for this are complex, but SEC regulatory decisions are probably an important factor. Since 1975, the SEC has approved rules--such as the trade-through rule--that have tended to support the dominant position of the NYSE in trading NYSE-listed securities. The trade-through rule requires that orders to buy or sell securities listed on any registered stock exchange be sent for execution to the market where the best price is posted. Because the NYSE is the largest and most liquid market for these securities, it generally has the best prices, and thus the trade-through rule has reduced the likelihood that any serious competition for the NYSE would arise.
As originally framed, Nasdaq was a dealer market; it consisted entirely of dealers who made markets in securities that were not listed on any registered exchange by offering to buy or sell shares as principals. In this market, an investor (through a broker) would survey the prices and number of shares each market maker was willing to buy or sell and then choose the dealer or dealers with whom he or she would execute a trade. Since Nasdaq was a dealer market and not a registered exchange, it was not subject to the trade-through rule and was thus vulnerable to competition from a source that offered superior prices or services.
Such a competitor appeared in the late 1990s, when ECNs began to offer computerized matching of offers to buy or sell Nasdaq securities. Over time, as institutional investors found that they could effect trades at lower cost and achieve better overall pricing on the ECNs, these competitive trading venues began to drain market share from the dealers who made up the Nasdaq market. Eventually, in a bid to remain a viable market, Nasdaq sought the approval of the SEC to become a privately owned electronic market, competing with the ECNs for market share in Nasdaq securities. It has been a difficult struggle for Nasdaq. Even with the advantages of greater liquidity, Nasdaq today has less than 20 percent of the trading volume in Nasdaq securities.
Thus, by 2004 the U.S. securities market was characterized by two entirely different trading structures. For NYSE-listed securities (as well as those listed on the American Stock Exchange, or Amex), there is a centralized registered exchange that accounts for the vast majority of the trading. For Nasdaq securities, there is a market that consists of competitive trading venues, each vying to gain and hold market share. Although some portion of trading in NYSE securities takes place on Nasdaq or the ECNs under various exemptions, by and large the two different markets do not compete to offer better services or prices to investors. What competition between them occurs is limited to vying for listings by companies that want their shares to be traded on an organized market.
It is hard to see how government support for the existence of two entirely different securities market structures can have any rational policy basis. One of these trading formats must, on the whole, be better than the other. It would be one thing if the two structures were competing--if, for example, NYSE-listed securities could be traded on Nasdaq and vice versa. Then competition would resolve the issue: the best overall system would win. This is what happens when competitive and incompatible systems arise in the private sector; competition either picks a winner, or the systems become specialized so that they serve important submarkets. As an example of the latter outcome, in computer operating systems, Windows is now the dominant form, but Macintosh retains some market share because it offers special qualities for various submarkets.
But what is unusual in the heavily regulated securities market is that government regulation seems to be preventing competition, perpetuating support for two different market structures so that competition between them cannot resolve the question of which is best for investors and public companies. It is as though the Federal Communications Commission were fostering two different and incompatible telephone systems, so that users of one system could not place calls to users of the other. We would not think this made much sense if it happened in the world of telephones, but for some reason the existence of a similar outcome in the securities market has not provoked widespread objection.
Judging the Centralized NYSE Structure
Each of the structures has its strong proponents. Supporters of the centralized NYSE structure and the trade-through rule argue that concentrating most trading in a single market reduces bid-ask spreads and thus provides investors with the best prices available in the market. They also contend that breaking up this central trading venue by permitting or encouraging competition would fragment the market, so that bid-ask spreads will widen, price discovery will weaken, investors will get inferior prices, and medium- sized and small companies will have difficulty attracting investor interest in their shares. Moreover, they argue, the specialist system utilized at the NYSE--in which a single firm is charged with maintaining an orderly market in each listed security by acquiring shares when there is an imbalance of sellers and selling shares when there is an imbalance of buyers--prevents unnecessary share price volatility and the losses that can result. Such a market is said to be better for "retail" investors, whose relatively small trades usually receive what is called "price improvement" when they are bought or sold by a specialist at a price somewhat better than that currently posted. These are powerful arguments for the centralized NYSE structure.
However, many institutional investors have complaints about trading in the centralized NYSE market. Among their concerns is the view that their trading interest--either buying or selling--has a greater "market impact" when trading occurs on the NYSE than when it takes place on the ECNs. This is a particular concern of institutional investors--mutual funds, pension funds, and other large traders--that want to buy or sell large blocks of shares within a short period of time. What they mean by greater market impact at the NYSE is the effect on share prices when the existence of a large order to buy or sell becomes known in the human-mediated NYSE market; in this case, prices rise or fall as others anticipate the effect of the order and profit from trading ahead of it, adversely affecting the average price that institutional investors receive in completing a large trade.
For this reason, many institutional investors believe that they can generally get better pricing on ECNs, where they can trade anonymously and without revealing the size of their trading interest to others in the market, thus reducing the market impact of their transactions. In a 2003 survey by Greenwich Associates for Instinet (an ECN), presented at an AEI conference in October 2003, the institutional investors who participated in the survey reported that ECNs were three times more likely to deliver low market impact than an exchange and twice as likely as a negotiated broker-to-broker trade that does not take place on the NYSE floor.[1] In the survey, ECNs were also deemed superior to exchanges in achieving anonymity, price improvement, and fast execution, but exchanges were deemed superior for certainty of execution.
As long as the trade-through rule exists, it will be difficult for institutional investors to trade NYSE-listed securities on ECNs. This is because ECNs match buy and sell orders virtually instantaneously. If, as required by the trade-through rule, these orders must be sent first to the floor of the NYSE (because a better price may be posted there), the delay before execution might mean the original match can no longer be effected. An example will make this clear. Assume that an institutional buyer wants to purchase 5,000 shares of Company A, an NYSE-listed security, that has been posted for sale on an ECN at $30. At the same time, an offer to sell 100 shares of Company A at $29.50 is posted on the floor of the NYSE. If the trade-through rule were to apply, the institutional buyer's order must first be sent to the NYSE to clear the 100-share offer before it can be executed for the full 5,000 shares on the ECN. Some surveys indicate that it takes an average of twelve seconds for the NYSE specialist to respond to an order. By that time, for a variety of reasons, the original offer at $30 may be gone. Thus, much of the value offered by ECNs for institutional trades might be lost as long as the trade-through rule continues to apply to NYSE-listed securities.[2]
Apart from institutional investors' complaints about the centralized NYSE structure and the applicability of the trade-through rule to the trading of NYSE-listed securities, supporters of a competitive market structure like the Nasdaq market argue that the competition among trading venues encourages innovation that will provide better service to investors and reduce costs. There is some evidence for this. The ability of ECNs to take more than 80 percent of trading in Nasdaq securities away from Nasdaq itself demonstrates that innovation can produce new ways of doing things that can out-compete even established institutions. In this case, to its credit, Nasdaq preserved itself by becoming an electronic market so it could compete with the ECNs, but the ultimate beneficiaries of the new trading method were investors, including institutional investors and the many shareholders and pensioners they are trading for. If the trade-through rule had been applicable to Nasdaq, it is very likely that the ECNs would never have become a significant competitive factor in the Nasdaq market.
So what we have here is a complex policy debate, revolving around questions such as these: Will a centralized market deliver better services to investors over time than a competitive market? If the trade-through rule were eliminated, would the ECNs out-compete the NYSE as they out-competed Nasdaq? Would that be a bad thing or a good thing for investors or for companies of varying sizes that list their shares for sale? There is little doubt that ECNs are a benefit to institutional investors; the benefits they offer to individual investors are less clear. Some contend that the trade-through rule and the centralized structure of the NYSE provide greater benefits to individual investors. Should the securities market be structured so as to provide benefits to institutional investors over individual investors, or the other way around? Should this question be answered through a regulatory decision or through competition and would not allowing competition be a regulatory decision in itself?
The SEC Plan
Into this policy debate stepped the SEC in February 2004, with a market structure reform proposal titled Regulation NMS. The proposed regulation would: (1) modify the application of the so-called "trade-through" rule in the trading of both New York Stock Exchange listed securities and Nasdaq securities, (2) impose a ceiling on the market access fees used by ECNs, (3) prohibit sub-penny bids and offers, and (4) change the method for the sharing of revenue from the sale of market data.
Although all of these proposals have significance for various aspects of securities market structure, the proposed changes in the trade-through rule have raised the most serious questions about what the SEC is proposing to do.
Before the publication of Regulation NMS, many observers anticipated that the SEC would eventually have to decide whether to retain the trade-through rule or to eliminate it, and that this decision in turn would suggest whether the SEC's market reform proposal would move in the direction of encouraging a centralized market like the NYSE for all securities trading, or a competitive market--like the Nasdaq market--where trading venues compete with one another.
But when Regulation NMS was published, it turned out that it was completely ad hoc. It did not seem to be based on any vision of what would be the best market for investors or even for companies that have listed their shares. It proposed to allow investors--probably institutional investors--to opt out of the trade-through rule on a trade-by-trade basis, which suggested that the SEC favored competitive markets; but then it also proposed to apply the trade-through rule to the Nasdaq market, where it had not been applicable before.
The only plausible theory for what the SEC might have been trying to do with this internally contradictory proposal is that it was a political compromise: the agency was attempting to placate the various parties in the debate by giving institutional investors and the ECNs a limited opportunity to trade NYSE securities in the electronic markets, while telling those who favor a centralized market and the trade-through rule that all the benefits of the rule will now be available to investors in Nasdaq securities. But it does not work. If institutional investors take advantage of the opt-out provision, it could substantially reduce the role of the NYSE as a central market and thus the benefits a central market is supposed to confer. And if applying the trade-through rule to Nasdaq securities has any effect, it will destroy the benefits that many see in the competitive Nasdaq marketplace. Regulation NMS, then, may be good politics for the SEC, but it is not good regulatory policy and it is certainly not real market structure reform.
More seriously, the 200-page release that accompanied Regulation NMS did not contain any rationale for the proposal--no analysis comparing the benefits that investors or companies receive from a centralized market with the benefits they derive from a competitive market, and no suggestion of what interests and purposes the SEC believes the securities market should serve. For example, an important question is whether in fact small investors--also known as retail investors--receive greater benefits from a centralized structure such as the NYSE or a competitive structure such as the Nasdaq market. It may well be true that when retail investors place orders for NYSE shares, they get better pricing on the NYSE, but it is also probably true that most small investors are shareholders through intermediaries such as mutual funds or pension funds, and these institutions may get better pricing through use of ECNs.
This is an important issue as a matter of policy, and the SEC could have contributed to its resolution by analyzing what benefits retail investors receive directly in comparison to the benefits they receive as shareholders of mutual funds or beneficiaries of pension funds. How many "retail" investors are there, and how much trading do they do? Even if we assume that retail investors receive better prices by trading on a centralized exchange such as the NYSE, do these benefits outweigh the lower overall prices that institutional traders believe they receive by trading through ECNs? On questions such as this--which should be central to a resolution of the policy issues associated with market structure reform--the SEC provides no analysis and no answers.
Unfortunately, this follows a pattern that is becoming characteristic of the current SEC. Its controversial shareholder-access proposal, for example, also had no empirical or analytical support and seems to be based entirely on placating various constituencies. Most recently, in adopting rules requiring that all mutual funds have independent chairs, the commission pointedly ignored data demonstrating that funds with non-independent chairs perform better over time than funds chaired by independent directors.
The release that accompanied the Regulation NMS proposal noted that "the objective of market center competition can be difficult to reconcile with the objective of investor order interaction." Indeed, as we have suggested above, such a reconciliation appears to be wholly impractical. But whether the SEC tries to reconcile the two systems or, more realistically, attempts to choose between them, the task is made more difficult if the agency does not do any analysis.
Comparing Securities Markets Structures
There is a good deal of useful analysis that could be done. At AEI, we have been studying the issues associated with securities market structure since early 2003 and will eventually issue a report with recommendations for reform. In connection with this project, we commissioned Professor Kenneth Lehn, a former chief economist at the SEC and now a professor at the University of Pittsburgh's Katz Graduate School of Business, to study how the three different trading venues--the NYSE, Nasdaq, and the ECNs--respond to stress. In a paper delivered at an AEI conference on June 10, 2004, Professor Lehn and two of his colleagues, Sukesh Patro and Kuldeep Shastri, presented their analysis, which contained some important data for students of the securities markets.
One of the strongest arguments for a centralized market structure is that it promotes efficient price discovery by focusing the maximum amount of liquidity in a single place. Price discovery--finding the price at which buyers and sellers will transact--is one of the principal functions of markets, and it is generally assumed that the more liquid a market, the more efficient the price discovery process. This is logical, since the concentration of buy and sell orders in a single place creates the maximum opportunity for the right price to be found, given the information available in the market at that moment.
There are two important corollaries to this idea. The first is that traders who transact in a highly liquid market get the best possible price at any given time, and the second is that an efficient and centralized market should be less volatile under stress, because the volume of buy and sell orders should keep the market from moving too rapidly in either direction in response to favorable or unfavorable news. Thus, an investor who wishes to sell on bad news should be able to get a better price in a liquid market than an illiquid one, because the volume of buy orders in a liquid market should provide some support to the price, even though the price is moving down on adverse news.
In the specific case of the NYSE and the Amex, an additional factor is said to dampen volatility. These markets both use a specialist system, in which--as noted above--an individual (employed by a specialist firm) is responsible for assuring an orderly market by buying when there is an imbalance of sellers and selling when there is an imbalance of buyers. There is a lot of skepticism about whether specialists actually do this effectively, but studies comparing Nasdaq price volatility with NYSE price volatility have in the past shown lower volatility in prices on the NYSE.
Given these assumptions, it would be expected that Professor Lehn's analysis--which focused specifically on periods of market stress--would further confirm the superiority of the centralized market structure in delivering better price discovery and lower volatility. However, this is not what the analysis showed.
In their study, Professor Lehn and his colleagues paired 341 NYSE stocks with the same number of Nasdaq stocks traded on two days during 2003.[3] Paired matching was necessary because, as noted above, the NYSE and Nasdaq are--with a very small number of exceptions--completely separate markets, trading an entirely different group of stocks. One of the major contributions of the Lehn study was the care with which pairs of stocks were matched, so that the overall efficiency of the different markets could be assessed for similar stocks on the same day. The match excluded all financial firms, utilities, ADRs, all firms with prices less than five dollars, and all NYSE firms with market values less than $300 million. The matched stocks were then divided into terciles (thirds) according to market capitalization. The large capitalization stocks, incidentally, account for most of the volume in their respective markets, including about 70 percent of the volume on the NYSE.
The authors then selected two days of market stress during 2003--that is, two days on which the markets were surprised by economic news, causing a rapid rise or fall in securities prices. The market stress days chosen were January 2, 2003, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average made its largest positive move that year, during forty minutes of trading in the morning, and May 1, 2003, when it made its largest negative move that year in a similar forty-minute period. In both cases, the market was surprised by reports from the Institute of Supply Management on that organization's index of manufacturing business conditions. The performance of both markets was then evaluated for the stress periods and calm periods on each of the two days chosen.
The data collected by the Lehn group is significant for policy analysis. It showed that for stocks in the largest capitalization tercile, in both calm and stress periods on those two days, both quoted and effective bid-asked spreads were lower on Nasdaq than on the NYSE, and in the Nasdaq market itself bid-ask spreads were lower on ECNs than they were at traditional market makers. On the other hand, for stocks in the two lower terciles, spreads were lower on the NYSE than they were in the Nasdaq market during both stress and calm periods. This result is in accord with other academic studies. However, in periods of stress for all terciles the spreads at ECNs widened less than on Nasdaq, and thus appeared to account for the relatively good performance of Nasdaq when compared to the NYSE on the top tercile and to improve the performance of Nasdaq for the two lower terciles, even though for these lower terciles Nasdaq's performance was not as good as that of the NYSE during periods of both calm and stress.
This result suggests that where there is already a high degree of liquidity in a stock there is no diminution in the quality of the market--including the process of price discovery and the suppression of volatility--when the stock is traded in a supposedly "fragmented" and competitive electronic market such as that for Nasdaq stocks. On the other hand, stocks with less liquidity may benefit from being listed on a centralized market such as the NYSE.
The implications of this data are profound. More research is probably necessary--the Lehn group is refining its work for presentation at another AEI conference in the fall of 2004--but as a preliminary matter, it appears that for large capitalization stocks the competitive structure associated with the Nasdaq market functions better under periods of both calm and stress than the centralized NYSE structure. The adverse effects of what is called "fragmentation"--the breaking up of liquidity so that spreads widen and price discovery suffer--is simply not evident for these securities. In fact, the opposite seems to be true: for highly liquid stocks, the fragmented market seems to be more orderly for these stocks than the centralized form.
On the other hand, to the extent that the SEC is interested in creating a better market for stocks of all companies, large and small, the Lehn group's results suggest that a centralized NYSE-style market may offer benefits for stocks with lower volume levels. This in turn suggests that if the NYSE were opened to competition by the electronic markets, trading in the high volume stocks might gravitate to Nasdaq and the ECNs, while trading in lower volume stocks would tend to concentrate on the NYSE and the Amex--where volatility and spreads would be lower during both calm and stress periods. More research is currently underway on this subject.
However, for purposes of this Financial Services Outlook report, the important point is that carefully designed and implemented studies could give the SEC the information necessary to understand the comparative benefits and deficiencies--for both investors and companies--of the centralized and the competitive structures that currently exist in the U.S. securities market. The fact that the SEC is attempting to implement market structure "reform" without doing an analysis of this kind should be a matter of concern to all those who understand the value and importance of the U.S. securities market.
Notes
1. Greenwich Associates, Instinet Proprietary Trade Execution Study: Research Results (October 2003), 8. For a link to the study and for other information on the AEI conference at which it was released, visit www.aei.org/event650.
2. To be sure, NYSE securities can be traded on ECNs without complying with the trade-through rule, but only if the ECN does not post a price in the Consolidated Quotation System--a system that lists all current posted prices for NYSE and other listed securities. However, without the opportunity to advertise a price, it is extremely difficult for ECNs to attract trading interest in NYSE and other listed securities.
3. The complete Lehn, Patro, and Shastri study is available, along with additional information and commentary from the AEI conference at which the study was presented.
Peter J. Wallison is a resident fellow at AEI.
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A Capital Idea from Microsoft
And a smashing endorsement of Bush's pro-growth tax cuts.
The stunning Microsoft decision to return more than $75 billion in cash to shareholders over the next four years is a smashing endorsement of the importance of President Bush's pro-growth tax cuts. It is also a tremendous boon to investors, who will recycle this windfall into thousands of businesses both large and small -- a process that will significantly increase new jobs and grow the economy.
The Redmond, Washington-based software maker intends to pay a special $3 dividend for every investor share, for a total of $32 billion. Additionally, Microsoft will double its annual dividend and buy as much as $30 billion of its own stock over the next four years. If this new policy raises the Microsoft share price -- as is likely -- then the total package could be worth over $100 billion to shareholders.
Ironically, Microsoft's corporate decision, induced by supply-side tax cuts, will also provide a huge Keynesian injection of fiscal stimulus to the economy, one that will more than offset the temporary effects of higher energy costs on consumer purchasing power. Even better, this sea-change policy will ripple through corporate America, forcing public companies to take similar actions.
When President Bush launched his initiative to equalize the tax rate on capital gains and investor dividends at 15 percent, there was a derisive outcry. Mainstream thinkers claimed the plan would only benefit the rich and have no impact on economic growth or jobs. Now that the economy -- led by business investment -- is growing at the fastest pace in two decades, the liberal establishment may wish to rethink its position.
Basically, the Bush plan significantly reduces Uncle Sam's tax bite on profits and investment capital, leaving more in private hands for channeling into job-creating businesses. Remember, both dividends and capital gains are taxed at the corporate level, the individual level, and as capital gains. While this triple taxation of capital was not eliminated, the tax penalty was substantially lowered. As the capital-gains levy was cut from 20 percent to 15 percent on the marginal dollar, the dividend rate was reduced at the top income level from 40 percent to 15 percent. Meanwhile, personal income-tax rates were reduced across the board.
The charge that this policy would only benefit the rich is patently false. A recent Zogby poll shows that a substantial 59 percent majority of investors has a portfolio valued at less than $100,000. In addition, 28 percent of investors earn a modest $50,000 to $75,000 a year; another 19 percent earn $35,000 to $50,000; and 7 percent earn less than $35,000. According to Zogby, "The majority of investors earn less than $75,000. . . . This helps explain why old-fashioned [class-warfare] populism does not work in political campaigns nationwide."
Steady dividend flows over time reduce equity risk and add enormous investor protection for retirement and other purposes. So what we're seeing now is a return to the old-time religion of investing for both dividends and capital-gains returns.
According to the American Shareholders Association, investor wealth has increased $2.2 trillion, or 25 percent, since May 20, 2003, the start date of the Bush policy. So far this year, 161 of the S&P 500 companies have raised or initiated dividends. According to Standard & Poor's, year-to-date dividend-paying issues in the S&P 500 index are averaging a 4.8 percent gain while non-dividend payers are down 3.5 percent.
Professor Jeremy Siegel of the University of Pennsylvania calculates that stock market returns including dividends have produced a 7 percent annual increase (adjusted for inflation) over long periods of time. But dividends fell behind in the last two decades because capital gains were taxed at a lower rate. Now, however, with a sharp reduction of the double-tax on dividends, dividend issuance is more efficient, with corporate payout policies more often based on the economics of a decision than just the tax consequence. Stock buybacks now have equal footing with dividend issuance. At lower tax rates, CEOs also have an incentive to pay out more cash to shareholders, rather than build internal empires or make unwise investment decisions.
In effect, the new law democratizes corporate governance. It puts real financial power into the hands of the shareholder constituency and removes it from the corpocratic front office.
Bush critics -- especially Kerry and Edwards, who wish to overturn the Bush policy -- fail to understand that reducing the double and triple taxation of investment capital is a business-funder, job-creator, and economic-grower. Simply put, capital is the best friend of both businesses and workers.
Bush's policies make more capital available by reducing its after-tax cost and raising its post-tax investment return. When it is more profitable after-tax to invest, the mighty investor class will do so. And by supplying ever more capital to business and the economy, 90 million investors will expand America's virtually unlimited potential to grow, create jobs, and prosper.
-- Larry Kudlow, NRO's Economics Editor, is CEO of Kudlow & Co. and host with Jim Cramer of CNBC's Kudlow & Cramer.
http://www.nationalreview.com/kudlow/kudlow200407230854.asp
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What Unites Europeans?
From the July 26, 2004 issue: Antipathy to the United Europe project.
by Gerard Baker
07/26/2004, Volume 009, Issue 43
UNDER PRESSURE from insurgents in Iraq, assailed by his Democratic opponent at home for a reckless "unilateralism," struggling to reassure a restive American public that his foreign policy is on the right track, President Bush has turned to an unlikely corner for help this summer--Europe.
In the space of three weeks in June, the president shuttled across the Atlantic on a diplomatic itinerary that read like that of a demented tourist--Rome, Paris, Normandy, Dublin, Istanbul. When he wasn't receiving their hospitality, Bush was treating European leaders to some of his own--at the G-8 Summit in Sea Island, Georgia, or on the fringes of President Reagan's funeral.
Throughout a hectic month, the talk was of hatchets buried, pages turned, old alliances renewed, friendships rekindled. In Paris, he enjoyed what aides said was a fine dinner with his old chum President Jacques Chirac (Bush may not have eaten any crow, but freedom fries were definitely off the menu). At Sea Island and in Istanbul, at the NATO summit, he exchanged warm words with Chancellor Gerhard Schr?der (no mention of certain former members of the German cabinet who once likened Bush to Hitler), and in Dublin he expressed his affection and appreciation for the leadership of the European Union (never a discouraging word about the differences between Old and New Europe). If Bush had broken into a few bars of the "Marseillaise" or donned a pair of lederhosen, his message could not have been clearer.
You don't have to be a cynic to believe there is a degree of pragmatism about this newfound fondness for Europe in the West Wing. Getting a U.N. resolution passed on Iraq last month was essential to an orderly transfer of power. Having the Europeans on board was the sine qua non of that project. Demonstrating to the American people that others are willing to take on some of the burden in Iraq is critical to puncturing the Kerry critique that only the Democrats can build an international coalition that will pave the way for an eventual U.S. departure.
And yet beyond these short-term political reasons, there does seem a steadily strengthening conviction, even among some of the most reluctant Atlanticists in this administration, that the United States might need Europe after all. Sure, the pacific old continent is never going to belly up to the bar when there's serious fighting to be done. And those who can produce something meaningful in military terms--the British, mainly, and some martial Eastern Europeans--have stuck with the United States all along, even in Iraq.
But Europe, the quasi-mythical entity, still seems to count to the rest of the world, and even to Americans. It just isn't enough to have the ever-loyal Tony Blair and a bunch of anonymous folk from the Eastern Bloc pulling for you if France and Germany, and through them the institutions of the European Union and NATO, are standing resentfully, contemptuously aside. If only we could get a united Europe, as we did in the Cold War, on our side, surely--Americans seem to be saying--we could achieve much more of what we want in the world.
You could be forgiven for thinking, with Americans now evidently less confident about their ability to remake the world, with Kerry and Bush apparently in a desperate competition to prove who is the more multilateralist and Euro-friendly, that this might be Europe's hour.
The once derided Old Europeans, it seems, have been vindicated and are in the intellectual and geopolitical ascendant. The French, Germans, Belgians, and others have, you would think, won the battle for the future of Europe. In Spain, Jos? Mar?a Aznar, the conservative prime minister, was ousted in March; Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi, Bush's other main European backers, are hanging by a thread.
With public opinion, fueled by the distortions of Michael Moore and the connivance of a complaisant media, hardening against the United States and its aims and ambitions in the Middle East, it would be easy to imagine Europeans uniting around the Franco-German leadership, with its lofty ambition to build Europe as a counterweight to American power in the world.
And yet, last month, even as Bush was making nice with European leaders, the voters on the old continent were giving a rather different verdict on them.
IN THE EUROPEAN parliamentary elections in early June, Chancellor Schr?der's Social Democrats in Germany suffered humiliation at the polls at the hands of their conservative opponents. In France, Chirac's Gaullists were soundly beaten by a combination of socialists and nationalists. Even in plucky little Belgium, the spiritual home of Europe's dreamers, the ruling party, which had fervently backed the Franco-German axis, got trounced.
It would be nice to think European voters had had a change of heart about Iraq, but sadly that was not behind the rout of the Old Europeans. In Britain, too, and in much of Eastern Europe, ruling parties got kicked.
Try as they might to blame a continent-wide set of special factors for the startling setbacks, there was one clear explanation for the rejection--and one that has even bigger implications for transatlantic relations than Iraq.
Europe's voters were reacting angrily, with a unified voice rarely seen in European politics, against the ambitious plans of the continent's elite to accelerate and deepen a process of political integration that has, as its ultimate ambition, the creation of a superstate to rival the United States.
Not only was support for governing parties substantially down, support for parties that have been opposed to European integration was up sharply. In Britain, the U.K. Independence party, which favors outright withdrawal from the E.U., got more than 16 percent of the vote, placing it third behind the already Euroskeptic conservatives and Labour. Euroskeptic (or Euro-realist, as they prefer to be called) parties did well in France, Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands, too.
More striking still was the result in Eastern Europe. Having been admitted to the E.U. just a month earlier, voters in eight former Communist states voted against the E.U. in large numbers. In the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the Baltic states, Eurorealist parties fared well. And across Europe, in another sign of disenchantment and disdain for the European project, turnout was pitiful.
European voters--especially in the New Europe, which is alive and well, it should be noted--have good reason to react against the E.U.; there is a widespread view reflected in polls that it is out of touch, corrupt, and bureaucratic. Its economic policies stifle enterprise with complex regulations; its leading economies espouse high taxes and expensive welfare states even as the population ages rapidly. Above all, its Franco-German leadership still dreams of creating what amounts to a single, multination state, with its own foreign policy, that will make the E.U. much more effective at blocking U.S. policies.
To all this, most of Europe's voters said last month, politely, roughly what Dick Cheney said to Democratic senator Pat Leahy on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
And yet, in what must rank as another Marie Antoinette moment in Europe's history, the continent's political leaders simply ignored the popular verdict. A week after the historic elections, the E.U. leaders agreed on a treaty containing a new "constitution," the first ever for the E.U.
If ratified, this 400-page document would accelerate and deepen European integration. Over the objection of Britain to some of the more extreme elements, it would, in the fields of economics, social policy, justice and criminal law, and even foreign and security policy, establish broad, overarching European, as opposed to national, competence.
In other words, as voters were rejecting the vainglorious ambitions of Europe's elite to create a federal state, the leaders themselves were finalizing an ever more grandiose plan.
Happily, that is not the end of the story. The voters will get another chance. The treaty now has to be ratified by all 25 member states. Giving in reluctantly to enormous pressure to consult the public, at least eight countries--including Britain and France --will submit the constitution to a referendum.
In the interest of sane and safe representative democracy, it is fervently to be wished that the voters of Europe reject the plan. Under the treaty, if just one country fails to ratify it, the agreement becomes null. But another more likely and intriguing possibility is now in prospect.
Core European countries, most of whom, such as Germany, are not submitting the constitution to a vote in any case, will give their approval. France, a country with a long record of consulting its often truculent population, may prove trickier. But voters in the referendum there will come under serious pressure from all the mainstream parties to approve the treaty.
In Britain, too, Tony Blair will campaign hard for a Yes vote, but it looks a tall order. Opinion polls show more than two thirds of voters likely to reject the constitution.
If Britain rejects the treaty, it is possible the whole project will be scrapped. But more likely is an outcome hinted at in the constitution itself, which would enable those countries that want it to go ahead with closer integration in the political, economic, and social spheres. Under this "enhanced cooperation," in Euro-jargon, the core countries might accelerate the process by which they become something resembling a single state.
But other countries, like Britain, are likely to want to hold back, valuing their national independence, but also their economic systems and their foreign policies.
In a decade or so, then, it is possible to imagine not one Europe but two. A core group of countries would be characterized by aging and sclerotic economies, overregulated and overtaxed, as well as by exaggerated global ambitions to rival the United States as a superpower. An outer eurozone might be made up of Britain, Scandinavia (two of whose members have already rejected the euro), and several of the most dynamic former Communist countries, plus Turkey (which, unless French opposition prevents it again, will begin the process of joining the E.U. later this year).
These latter nations are likely to be strongly Atlanticist in outlook, promoting free markets and open trade and being broadly supportive of American global leadership--and, with Turkey on board, perhaps also offering a vital link to the Islamic world, promoting democracy and economic freedom in the Middle East, in line with the long-run strategic objectives of the United States.
Now that is a Europe America could really do business with.
Gerard Baker is U.S. editor of the Times of London and a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.
? Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
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Military might and political messages
By Mac William Bishop
TAIPEI - Military exercises often have as much political use as tactical utility, and this week, China, Taiwan and the US all have conducted major exercises in or around the Taiwan Strait. These maneuvers send messages about the various countries' intentions in the Taiwan Strait.
China's exercises began on July 16 and were scheduled to end Friday, July 23. Meanwhile, the United States' global Summer Pulse 2004 exercises, which began in mid-July and will last until mid-August, have moved to the Western Pacific region this week. Taiwan also is holding its annual Han Kuang (Han glory) exercises, which began on Wednesday, July 21, and will last until July 28.
The fact that the exercises are being conducted virtually simultaneously is neither an accident nor coincidental. It is also no accident that former Chinese president Jiang Zemin, now the chairman of the Communist Party's Central Military Commission, was quoted in a Hong Kong daily Wen Wei Po last week as in essence promising to attack Taiwan (seen as a wayward province) before or around the year 2020. The comments were made as China kicked off a major military exercise on Dongshan Island near China's southeast coast, only 280 kilometers from Taiwanese territory.
Yet even as China was showing off its military might near the Taiwan Strait, the US was conducting its own show of force in the Western Pacific, with an exercise called Summer Pulse 2004. This exercise is one of the largest naval drills the US has conducted in years, involving seven carrier strike groups - more than 120 warships, all over the world. The Pacific aspect of the exercise was widely interpreted by Taiwanese, as well as some Chinese and US pundits, as constituting a direct challenge to China.
The commander of US Pacific Forces, Admiral Thomas B Fargo, was in Beijing on a routine regional tour, and he was warned on Friday by Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing to stop military exchanges and arms sales to Taiwan. This is precisely what Li told US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice last week. Li said nothing about Summer Pulse 2004.
US military officials confirmed that the exercise was serving a purpose in this regard, but said it was an exaggeration to say that Summer Pulse was being held exclusively for the benefit of Taiwan and China. "It's a lie to say that the exercise is directed at China, but then again, it's a lie to say that it is not," a senior US defense source told the Asia Times Online.
Scheduling exercises no coincidence
The scheduling of these exercises is no accident, the source said, speaking on condition he not be identified further. There were very clear reasons that the US would choose to conduct parts of Summer Pulse in the Western Pacific at the same time that China and Taiwan were conducting their own exercises: to demonstrate the United States' ability to project power and to show China that the US can still play a deterrent role in the region, despite its other operational commitments worldwide, as in the Middle East.
In short, the exercises are being held by the US to remind China that it is still serious about its commitment to defend Taiwan.
China has consistently vowed that it would unify with the democratic island of Taiwan at any cost. High-ranking party officials and senior People's Liberation Army (PLA) officers in the past have said that Beijing is willing to go to war to prevent Taiwan from becoming an independent country, and Taipei and Beijing have yet to agree to formal negotiations about Taiwan's status.
Political tensions between the two rivals have increased with the controversial re-election of Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian, and his administration's plan to formulate a new constitution is particularly worrying to Beijing. Chen promised in his inauguration speech on May 20 to confine the constitutional revisions to matters of administration and governance, and to avoid sensitive topics related to sovereignty.
"I am fully aware that consensus has yet to be reached on issues related to national sovereignty, territory and the subject of unification versus independence," Chen said. "Therefore, let me explicitly propose that these particular issues be excluded from the present project of constitutional re-engineering."
This pledge, however, did not assuage Beijing's fears that Chen had, in effect, established a timeline for independence.
China has, therefore, sought to employ various forms of pressure on Taiwan to remind the island's leaders that it was and remains deadly serious about preventing any slide toward independence. Jiang Zemin's comments and the publicity surrounding the PLA's military exercises can be interpreted in this light.
The exercises, in which 18,000 troops reportedly took part, have been conducted only 280km from the Taiwanese-controlled Penghu islands, also called the Pescadores. China's exercises are designed to demonstrate that country's ability to carry out joint operations, or missions involving naval, air and ground forces. These would be vital in carrying out a successful attack on Taiwan.
China seeks to demonstrate air superiority
According to Hong Kong's Ta Kung Pao newspaper, one of the primary goals of the exercises was to demonstrate China's ability to gain air superiority over Taiwan. Proving that it could control the air over the Taiwan Strait is of paramount importance to China, as the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) has long been outclassed by its Taiwanese counterpart, both in terms of the quality of its aircraft and the training of its pilots, according to some defense analysts.
However, the combination of increased defense spending by China and structural problems with Taiwan's military is beginning to erode the qualitative superiority of Taiwan's Air Force, according to the US Department of Defense's most recent report to the US Congress on China's military capabilities.
"The [Taiwanese] Air Force's recently completed transition from 1960s fighter aircraft to modern 'fourth generation' [advanced aircraft such as the US-made F-16 or the French-made Mirage 2000-5] units retains many of the qualitative advantages over the PLAAF. However, fighter pilot shortages are stressing personnel, and training is conservative and overemphasizes defensive counter-air missions," according to the report, Fiscal Year 2004 Report to Congress on PRC Military Power.
Correcting China's relative lack of "fourth generation" fighter aircraft is one of Beijing's top priorities. And as China's 2004 arms budget is about US$26 billion (many analysts believe China's arms budget is much higher than the official figures indicate), the PLAAF will probably not have to go begging to acquire advanced weapons systems.
"The PLAAF and the PLANAF [PLA Naval Air Forces] are undergoing significant upgrades, which include acquiring fourth-generation aircraft, air defense systems, advanced munitions, and C4ISR [command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] equipment," the US Defense Department's report noted.
One of the reasons Beijing wants more capable air forces is due to the Chinese strategy of preventing intervention by "third parties" (ie the United States) in the event of a Taiwan Strait conflict.
The US, which is by law committed to providing for Taiwan's defense by selling weapons to the island, has in the past shown its willingness to intervene in crises in the Taiwan Strait. Notably, in 1996, former US president Bill Clinton dispatched two aircraft-carrier battle groups to the region after China began firing missiles into the waters of the Taiwan Strait. The missile tests were apparently designed to prevent the people of Taiwan from voting for Lee Teng-hui, an avowed pro-independence presidential candidate. The threats were unsuccessful - in fact, some analysts believe they had an effect opposite to that intended by China - and Lee won the election.
Strategic cross-Strait balance shifting to China
However, the cross-Strait strategic balance has been rapidly shifting in China's favor over the past 10 years, and many analysts - including experts at the Pentagon - are starting to believe that the US would have a difficult time intervening on Taiwan's behalf should China decide to attack. Therefore, some elements of the US military want to show China that the US could respond - in a very substantial way.
Official statements from the US Navy confirm that the primary purpose of the drills was to demonstrate the US's ability to get ships where they were needed as quickly as possible.
"We've moved from our standard deployment pattern to the Fleet Response Plan, where we promised the president of the United States that we can put six carriers anywhere in the world within 30 days, and [two more carriers] shortly after that," Vice Admiral Michael McCabe, the commander of the US Navy 3rd Fleet, said in a statement on the US Pacific Command's website. "We've changed the way we maintain, the way we train, the way we equip and the way we deploy. As an example of that, this summer, in what's called Summer Pulse, we will have seven different aircraft carriers with their supporting ships operating in five different theaters."
However, a number of strategic assessments of possible "Taiwan scenarios" indicate that many US defense officials believe China is gaining the ability to defeat Taiwanese forces before foreign militaries could intervene. The US, then, is not relying on a purely military containment strategy.
"Washington does not in any way ignore China's military buildup and the possibility that it might in the long term pose a strategic challenge to the United States," said Richard Bush, the director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Bush is also a former director and chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan, the US de facto embassy in Taipei.
"But successive administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, believe that US interests will be best served by a PRC [People's Republic of China] that is deeply integrated into the international community," Bush said. "If, on the other hand, the United States starts out by treating China as our enemy, it will surely become our enemy."
US not trying to 'surround' China
Another US defense expert concurred with this assessment.
"The United States policy toward China is still an engagement policy. The long-term intentions of China toward Taiwan and the rest of Asia are not clear, but the US does not actively seek to contain China," said Larry Wortzel, the director of the conservative Heritage Foundation's Davis Institute for International Studies in Washington. Nor is the US "surrounding' China", he said.
Taiwan, meanwhile, appears to be trying to adapt to the changing military balance in the Taiwan Strait, despite its relatively limited resources. Taiwan's Legislative Yuan has approved a nearly US$10 billion defense budget for this year, not including a "special budget" of approximately $16 billion earmarked for the procurement of a number of high-profile advanced weapons systems from the US. The special defense budget is at present the source of bitter debate within the Legislative Yuan, as many in Taiwan feel the money could better be spent elsewhere.
Despite the lack of a consensus on priorities, the military establishment in Taiwan is attempting to carry on as usual. The country began conducting its annual Han Kuang series of military exercises on Wednesday. The exercises, criticized by some observers as unimaginative and pointless, include a mock counter-landing operation, a rehearsal of an airborne assault, and several live-fire exercises.
But one of the most highly anticipated events in this year's exercise took place on Wednesday, when Taiwan's air force landed two Mirage fighter aircraft on the Sun Yat-sen Freeway in central Taiwan. When the freeway was built in the 1970s, several portions were designed to be used as temporary or emergency runways in the event of a war with China. Taiwan has five such freeways, several portions of which could theoretically be used as emergency airfields.
But the hype surrounding the landings was dismissed by some observers. "Landing on the freeway is no different from landing on a regular runway," said retired Taiwanese army general Shui Hua-ming. "The only difference is, well, it is the freeway, not an airport."
One foreign defense analyst held a different view. "The freeway landings are good, because it shows that Taiwan's military is trying something different," the analyst said, on condition of anonymity. "Usually, every year it was the same thing. They hold the same anti-amphibious landing exercise, blow up the same beach, and then turn around and everyone claps," he said.
Taiwan still hasn't fortified its airfields and hangars to increase their survivability in the event of a "saturation attack" by the PLA's Second Artillery Corps (China's missile forces), so the country was still vulnerable to the more than 500 short- and medium-range missiles that are deployed across the Strait, targeting Taiwan.
"This is a good sign," the analyst said. "It shows that Taiwan's military is willing to take a few risks and look for new alternatives to defend Taiwan."
Mac William Bishop is a journalist based in Taipei. Comments or queries may be sent to mwbtaiwan@hotmail.com .
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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