OnePeople

Parameters

If you're under the impression that the military is a monolithic, unthinking, unquestioning bureaucracy, you'll be surprised by Parameters, the journal of the US Army War College. Think of it like Foreign Affairs for senior Army officers. Many of the articles are very relevant right now, including The CNN Effect: Strategic Enabler or Operational Risk? and The Moral Limits of Strategic Attack, which discusses the moral and practical issues surrounding "noncombatant immunity" and the Pentagon's "effects-based" bombing strategies. The Bush Doctrine and War with Iraq is a wonderfully candid analysis of the new National Security Strategy. This is a wonderful resource, and unbelieveably, it's free.

War for Oil, But Not What You Think

It turns out that this may be a war for oil after all, but not in the way that you think. The United States has made it pretty clear that it's not interested in Iraqi oil, but the opponents of the war seem awfully interested: scroll down to Section 2(b) of this Cooperative Research report on Iraqi Oil and Gas Reserves. It mentions a Department of Energy report documenting Iraqi oil contracts with "Italy (Eni), Spain (Repsol YPF), Russia (Tatneft), France (TotalFinaElf), China, India, Turkey, and others." We've hinted at this before, but now we'll come out and say it: could it be that some opposition to this war isn't high-minded internationalism, but a craven attempt to ensure these contracts pay out?

US Bungled Turkey Diplomacy

The front page of the Washington Post has a piece on how the Bush Administration completely screwed up its negotiations with Turkey. The Administration was foolish, setting a number of fictional deadlines without consequences. It was clumsy, allowing Turkey to think that they were far more important than they actually were. Finally, it was arrogant, asserting that we didn't need Turkey anyway. This screwed up the war, the UN vote, and did permanent damage to the US relationship with Turkey -- who will be desperately needed as Iraq's reconstruction begins.

"One week into the war, the administration's inability to win Turkey's approval has emerged as an important turning point in the U.S. confrontation with Iraq that senior U.S. officials now acknowledge may ultimately prolong the length of the conflict. It is a story of clumsy diplomacy and mutual misunderstanding, U.S. and Turkish officials said. It also illustrates how the administration undercut its own efforts to broaden international support for war by allowing its war plan to dictate the pace of its diplomacy, diplomats and other experts in U.S.-Turkish relations said."

"Turkey's rejection not only forced a rewrite of the war plan, but it undercut the administration's broader diplomatic efforts to win international support for an invasion. Diplomats said the image of Turkey resisting U.S. pressure emboldened smaller countries on the U.N. Security Council to reject a proposed U.S.-British resolution authorizing military action. The failure of that resolution in turn made it impossible for the United States to recruit such close allies as Canada and Mexico to join the fight against Iraq, since they had tied their support to a new resolution."

National Day of Prayer

Social Security will be bankrupt by the time I retire, but at least we'll have a National Day of Prayer, encouraging us assess our faults, fast, be humble, and pray to God for guidance. Feel free to read the full text of H.Res. 153. I propose a National Day of Passing Meaningful Legislation.

Nasiriya as Harbringer

It hasn't been posted yet, but one of CNN's embeds just reported from inside the city of Nasiriya, which he said was occupied by the coalition. I'm posting a summary of the report here, because it seems like it's typical of what's going on in the contested cities right now. The embed said that the mission, which was supposed to take 6 hours and has lasted six days, has been slowly winding down over the last three days. He made it sound as though the coalition had taken control of the town, and that the guerilla problem was relatively under control. This is in stark contrast to the reports from the BBC.

He said militias on both sides are fighting in the streets. This is also interesting, because I haven't heard any reports of a pro-coalition militia there.

These pro-Hussein militias have hidden their weapons inthe fields surrounding the cities, and the reporter described a big effort to remove the weapons caches.

This part is a scary. Knowing that the coalition will not attack civilians, the pro-Hussein militia members shoot at the coalition units, and then immediately drop their weapons and disappear into the crowds.

Finally, he described the friendly fire incident covered earlier today, and cited 20 injuries and no casualties. He described thefirefight between three different coalition units, all of whichthought the others were Iraqi military. The embed said he wasshot in the head, saved only by his helmet. The embed made it sound like friendly fire was a chronic problem during the five day fight for the city.

Grocery Cards

Turns out those irritating grocery cards don't even save you money overall. They just make you feel like you're saving money and let stores boast of savings they don't offer to everybody.
The Poynter Institute has a good summary on the latest on the cards, which includes a WSJ story comparing savings in stores with and without cards and a Businessweek story on the privacy issues.

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=2

Those Annoying Grocery Cards

It does annoy me that I now have three -- count them, three -- grocery cards to carry around so I can pretend I am saving money. You probably use them too, those little "discount" cards they swipe at the grocery checkout to "save" you money. But do cards save money? You might have guessed the answer is no. Stores use them to track your purchases.

The Wall Street Journal reports, "How much cash are you really saving by shopping at a supermarket that has a card, instead of a noncard store? To find out, we went shopping at both types of stores and talked to a range of card experts. We found that, most likely, you are saving no money at all. In fact, if you are shopping at a store using a card, you may be spending more money than you would down the street at a grocery store that doesn't have a discount card.

We learned this the hard way, by going on a five-city, shop-till-you-drop grocery spree. In each city, we shopped at a store using its discount card, and afterward went to a nearby grocery store that doesn't have a card and bought the same things. Then we rolled up our sleeves, unrolled our receipts and crunched the numbers.

In all five of our comparisons, we wound up spending less money in a supermarket that doesn't offer a card, in one case 29 percent less.

The bottom line: Sale prices -- which were once available to all shoppers -- are now mostly restricted to cardholders in stores with cards and are called "card specials." In our experience, items not covered by card discounts tended to be more expensive than at nearby noncard stores. As a result, we paid more at card stores than at noncard stores.

Supermarkets strongly defend their programs. The cards let stores "target savings" to their most loyal customers, says Ertharin Cousin of Albertsons. Still, according to industry experts, the WSJ shopping experience was typical, because cards are designed to make customers feel like they got a bargain, without actually lowering prices overall.

Less income, higher prices? BusinessWeek also explored the issue in a thoughtful article. BusinessWeek said:

Longer-term, the impact of data collection could be far more disturbing. Using cards to track purchase histories, stores are beginning to segment customers into groups based on how much and how often they purchase. Such information will help stores target desirable -- read: profitable -- customers and cater to their needs.

This is high priority in the grocery business. After all, the top 30 percent of customers account for 75 percent or more of sales, while the bottom 30 percent account for just 3 percent, according to independent grocer Gary Hawkins, who also serves as president of the Syracuse (N.Y.) consulting firm DataWorks Marketing. Ultimately, the information could be used to tailor prices to individual shoppers -- much the way airlines charge vastly different prices for two seats on the same flight. While that makes economic sense, under a worst-case scenario, the system could discriminate against lower-income shoppers who may simply have less money to spend.

The strategy is called customer-specific marketing, and it's the supermarket industry's Holy Grail. The reason? In a nutshell, Wal-Mart. As grocery stores see revenues and profits flatten, Wal-Mart, with its low prices and huge selection, continues to lure shoppers.

Supermarkets need to fight back. But they don't want to compete on price, says DataWorks' Hawkins. "They need to extend special prices, but only to certain customer segments," he says. "As stores begin to better understand the data they're collecting, they'll use it not just for marketing but to develop new metrics to manage and serve customers."
Some stores even rate their customers. They have a system that gives more discounts to people who shop more.

Microsoft

Looks like big companies are finally getting involved in the fight against spam and pop-ups. Today Microsoft said it wouldn't let hotmail subscribers send more than 100 messages a day -- at least not unless they paid for more storage. It's half-hearted, but still a start. Even a small fee might be deterent enough since spam only works by being essentially free.

AOL and other providers are now getting into the act. Mainly their efforts are lame, like the totally ineffective pop-up blocker I have from Earthlink.

With spam now making up half of all email, it's about time for corporate America to get involved.

REDMOND, Washington (AP) -- To cut down on junk e-mail, Microsoft Corp. is capping the number of e-mails that users of its free Hotmail service can send each day.

By limiting to 100 the number of messages that could be sent in a 24-hour period, Microsoft's MSN division hopes to stop people from using its service to send the unsolicited messages, known as spam.

"MSN is strongly committed to helping stop the widespread problem of spam and this change is one way we are preventing spammers from using Hotmail as a vehicle to send the unwanted e-mails," said Lisa Gurry, MSN lead product manager.

Microsoft said it viewed the limit as a reasonable cap that would affect less than 1 percent of its active subscriber base of 110 million. The company would not disclose its previous cap.

The limit took effect earlier this month. It does not apply MSN 8 subscribers or those who purchase extra storage on Hotmail.

SARS Spreads

OnePeople.org Official SARS LogoWe were beginning to feel like delusional paranoids after reporting that the SARS outbreak was coming under control and patients were being discharged. Buried amongst the war items today, Reuters is reporting that the U.S. State Department is encouraging citizens in Vietnam to leave, even offering to pay for the plane home for diplomat's families. Five schools are now closed, and cases have been confirmed in Germany and Britain. Scientists have identified the virus, which is probably in the paramyxovirus family, of measles and mumps fame. In a darkly humorous twist, the Hong Kong Hospital Authority chief William Ho has been hospitalized with symptoms of pneumonia.

Russian Aid to Iraq

Fox News cited this article, but it's missing from their website. No coverage on CNN. A collection Russian companies shipped night-vision equipment, radar jamming, and and antitank missles to Iraq. The State Department has been talking to the Russian government about this for over a year, but the effort was complicated by the nuclear weapons treaty negotiations and their bid to get Russian help in North Korea. The Russian government said the company doesn't exist, then said they were watching the company closely, then that the goods were legal, then that they couldn't stop the shipments if they wanted to.

Get Your War On

It's clip art, it's sarcastic, it's a nuanced commentary on the war. Get Your War On!

SARS: Good News/Bad News

As a followup to our previous coverage of the SARS outbreak, three schools in Hong Kong have been closed, and they've figured out that a professor visiting Hong Kong from the Chinese mainland was the source of the hotel outbreak, which sickened the first batch of six in Hong Kong. Worldwide, there are 350 cases and six deaths. The good news: vigorous treatment seems to help. Many of the hospitalized patients in Hong Kong are being sent home.

While no cause has been found, the WHO has sent a team to the Guangdong province in China, which borders Hong Kong, to determine a link between SARS and the atypical pneumonia outbreak there last year.

MoJo on Blood for Oil

"I have sinned in my heart."MotherJones has a great piece on the "Blood for Oil" story, with a short history of American policy in the Gulf. It starts sounding an awful lot like alarmist petro-conspiracy nonsense, but there's enough useful information there to make it worth reading. It undermines the antiwar "Blood for Oil" argument, and replaces it with a more far-fetched and creepy argument against American aspirations of global domination.

The article describes U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf after the Oil Crisis of the 1970s. Suddenly concerned with its access to oil, the United States diversified its oil vendors and began a deliberate campaign to assert influence over the oil-producing states in the Gulf. This was either a result of, or was closely harmonized with, some hawkish global dominance thinking and the influence of Kissinger.

The strategy proposed by the conservative think-tanks (and Kissinger, apparently) was not about getting oil but rather controlling access to oil. If the U.S. can reduce its own dependence on Gulf oil, and can prevent others from getting that same oil, they will "control the spigot" and extend its reach to every oil-consuming country in the world. One struggles to imagine President Carter in a black nehru jacket, petting a white persian kitten.

In order to assert this hegemony, the US is supposed to overthrow governments in the region and install friendly regimes... and everyone knows how good a track record we have doing that. In actuality, of course, the US has supported the existing regimes and the alternate oil vendors in the western hemisphere can't really meet the US demand. This gap between the plan and the actual history is fairly wide, and goes mostly unaddressed by the article.

Near the end of the piece, MoJo cites the opinion of the oil industry commentariat, which indicates that the oil industry is nervous about war in the region and would much rather have the corrupt stability of the existing leadership, instead of the uncertainty of a regional conflict. This is, of course, where the traditional "Blood for Oil" argument breaks down.

The question raised by the article is not whether hawkish portions of the Bush Administration want to control the Persian Gulf -- of course they do. The article cites many papers and meetings on the subject. They want America-friendly democracies with American military bases pumping oil to American consumers. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has been a vocal proponent of this policy, adding a dash of pro-democracy and human rights reasoning. Instead, the question is whether or not this is a plausible policy that won't make things worse for both the Gulf and America in the long term. The answers, of course, will make themselves very clear during the purge and reconstruction in Iraq.

Budget Battle

Like us, you're probably preoccupied with the War and the ominous news of Turkish and Iranian involvement. While all this is happening, though, our Congress is hard at work. The House passed the President's tax cuts. The Senate debated the measure today. It looks as though ANWR drilling is out, to the relief of Democrats. A coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats seeking to scale the tax cuts back from $726 billion to $350 billion was led by Senator John Breaux (D-LA), of all people. They failed, and it looks as though the Bush Administration will get most of what they wanted, except for $100 billion which Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) rescued for a special war reserve.

Iraq in Mexico

SKY news is reporting that the CIA is hunting six Iraqi agents in Mexico. Voice of America isn't so sure. 200 Iraqis in New York were rounded up by the FBI. Germany is holding five suspects. French police found ricin in the Metro, but it's apparently non-letal. Well, thank god for that. The French say that it may have instead been destined for Chechnya. Wha?

What is Red Alert?

Orange alert hasn't really changed how you live. There are more police, maybe. You have to show your ID to get into a government building, maybe. Red alert, which appears likely when the attack on Iraq begins, is another thing altogether.

The Homeland Security Department describes it this way:

• Increasing or redirecting personnel to address critical emergency needs;
• Assigning emergency response personnel and pre-positioning and mobilizing specially trained teams or resources;
• Monitoring, redirecting, or constraining transportation systems; and
• Closing public and government facilities.

Individual state and county agencies are given a great deal of leeway in how they interpret these alerts. Sid Caspersen, the Director of the New Jersey Office of Counter-Terrorism, is pretty specific:

"Red means all noncritical functions cease... Noncritical would be almost all businesses, except health-related.
"The state police and the emergency management people would take control over the highways...
"You literally are staying home, is what happens, unless you are required to be out. No different than if you had a state of emergency with a snowstorm."

Update: Sun Mar 23 15:08:01 EST 2003
The ACLU is making themselves pretty clear on the NJ policy.

A Message to the Opposition

We're deluged with email from MoveOn and other activist groups encouraging us to rally when the war starts. It's hard to imagine a bigger waste of time. Any war protest right now is a waste of good human captial.

A much more pressing issue, one worth protesting, is how Iraq will be treated after the United States takes stewardship of the country. It will be a long process, and we have never been very good at projects like these. The media gets bored, and our attention will inevitably turn back to domestic issues.

Remember Afghanistan? They just finished a round of fundraising for their government, which is just over a year old. They shouldn't have to beg after the pledges and support they received from the West. Not the case, of course. They're desperate for US$234 million, about half the budget for the entire country. Without it, they're bankrupt. On top of that, they need US$1.7 billion in aid for reconstruction. Unless they receive immediate aid, they say, Afghanistan will return to being the largest exporter of heroin in the world -- how else will farmers pay the bills?

The U.S. has pledged $820 million. This seems like a good thing, but you can't build roads with a pledge and the Bush Administration forgot to include Afghan reconstruction in the last budget, sneaking $300 million into the appropriations at the last minute. Needless to say, this can't happen in Iraq. The stakes are far too high.

"As our coalition takes away their power, we will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free."

Bush To Demand Saddam Leaves

CNN is reporting that Bush will give an address at 8pm tonight, demanding that Saddam Hussein abdicate to avoid a war. Put that alongside this Kuwaiti press report, via talkingpointsmemo.com, that Saddam has named his son Qusay to succeed him, and arrested those who wouldn't swear allegiance.

So President Hussein steps down, and his son succeeds him. Is that progress? Isn't that exactly the kind of sneaky thing Hussein would do to prolong this un-war? Why would the Administration give him this opportunity?

Update Mon Mar 17 20:32:30 EST 2003
Less of an issue now that he's included Hussein's two sons in the ultimatum. Surely this is a concern: all three leave town, and install some puppet. If I were an incorrigible despot, I'd be giving that some thought.

SARS Spreads

It's being called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, and it's spreading. The Beeb has provided a map of confirmed infections. They've also provided a handy FAQ. It's being transmitted by air travel, of course. The experts interviewed are not very concerned. Pay attention to how many new cases have been found since we last mentioned this, and keep in mind that there's a two-day incubation period before symptoms arrive. According to this CDC press call, cases may have appeared in Georgia and New York. At the time of this writing, Reuters is reporting Britain's first case.

OnePeople is also delighted to see that the BBC has also picked up on the Spanish Flu meme, advanced in these pages, and also by New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark. The Beeb jauntily claims that it's not as bad as the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, since it isn't a flu, and hasn't yet killed 40 million. A cold comfort.

For the real alarmists: everyone has issued travel warnings, and they're sanitizing airplanes. Says one expert: "There's no much you can do to avoid this, unless you go and live as a hermit."

First Run in NYT

After a week of interviews, you'd think there would be fewer factual errors, but I can't look a gift horse in the mouth. There's a story in this Sunday's New York Times City section on my own beloved dog run.

Domino Democracy Doomed

"Trust me, Jenny. Democracies love you."

If Saddam Hussein is removed, the U.S. has pledged to encourage an Iraqi democracy that will be a model for democratic government in the Middle East. The hope is that the Arab Street is secretly hoping for democracy, and that new democracies in the Middle East would be naturally more sympathetic to the United States.

The State Department popped that balloon with a report to top-level government officials which casts serious doubt on the ability of an Iraqi democracy to encourage democracy elsewhere. "Iraq, the Middle East and Change: No Dominoes" asserts that democracies are unlikely to develop before more pressing social and economic issues are resolved. Even if new democracies develop, the report warns that anti-American sentiment is likely to create more Islamic governments hostile to the United States.

This flies in the face of the "Democracy Domino" camp, led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. The idea that an Iraqi democracy will encourage the development of democracy elsewhere in the Middle East is central to the Bush Administration's case for regime change. Thanks to the L.A. Times, we know that even Bush's own State Department doesn't believe him.

Feds Seize AP Correspondence

Two reporters are working on a terrorism story. One sends the other an envelope. The Customs Service seizes the FedEx package, and gives the package to the FBI. What's worse? The content of the correspondence was a document unclassified eight years ago, they had no warrant, and did not notify either reporter or the AP.

The Customs Service says that the inspection was part of their random inspections. The FBI says the material, which covered the items seized from Ramsey Yousef's apartment in the Phillipines, was sensitive. You'll remember Yousef as the fellow behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and a planner in the Pacific airline plot. These same documents were entered into evidence into two seperate trials, so the FBI claim fails spectacularly.

Let's recap:

• Customs Service seizes mail (well afield of its jurisdiction)


• FBI decides unclassified material (in the public record!) is classified again.


• The government took personal correspondence without warrant or notification.


• FedEx violated its own policies by not referring AP to the Customs Service, and instead paid $100 to compensate for the missing parcel.


• The AP only discovered the seizure after a receiving an anonymous tip

Let's be totally clear about this: the Customs Service is opening your mail and will surrender it to any governement agency functionary without notice or warrant, and did so with the tacit cooperation of FedEx. Balls.

PS - The intended recipient of the package, AP Washington Bureau reporter John Solomon, is on the FBI's shit list. There was an unpleasant episode in May of 2001 involving Senator Robert Torricelli and an anonymous FBI informant that resulted in a secret wiretap on Solomon's phone.

How many times does the FBI have to go rogue before Congress starts taking it apart? Add this to the even-longer list of reasons for a formal domestic intelligence agency with proper oversight and controls. Having these federal cops running around taking my mail without a warrant is absolutely chilling. This should be a front-page scandal, not buried on the AP wire.

World War I, Again

Today is Irrational Alarmist Day at OnePeople: the leader of Serbia was assassinated. The nations of the world are integrated through treaties and trade like never before. A major world power is starting to act more and more beligerent. It's smelling like WWI. What's missing? A worldwide flu epidemic... until now.

Georgie loves Tony

When you give the Swedes b-roll of George Bush and Tony Blair, Lionel Richie standards, and digital editing equipment, madness ensues.

Fox Secures the Right To Lie

Roger Ailes is a happy man. His team of lawyers was able to successfully argue for the network's right to lie and distort the news. This needs no further comment.

[redacted]

jwz turned over a rock, and found some nifty Reuters kill notices.

How Democrats Lost In 2002

I just received a note from the Democratic party. It reads:

Democrats have consistently asked Bush the hard questions on Iraq. Democratic lawmakers, led by Tom Daschle and Nancy Pelosi, are speaking up for Americans concerned about the rush to war without the support of our allies and the world. Democrats continue to try and work toward a resolution of the conflict in Iraq and believe the administration must do more to address the national security issues raised by North Korea.

You gutless cowards. You sniveling, shifty, cynical opportunists. I am willing to tolerate plenty of bluster and crypto-fascism from the Republican Party -- as long as there's a strong opposition to keep them in check. Let me refer you to the Senate and House roll calls on Public Law 107-243. You don't get to vote one way and then walk it back when you find that opinion has changed.

The Democratic Party has no leaders, it has polling numbers. Shame.

W says: "I am weak and materialistic"

What Bush might say if he said what he meant.

http://www.fuckitall.com/bsh/

Bush Address

If you missed the press conference last night, like I did, have no fear. The White House has a full transcript and video. Read on for pithy armchair-wonk commentary.

Again, the President asserts that Iraq is an imminent threat to national security. There's no evidence of that -- most attempts to draw a straight line from Iraq to national security have failed. Much of the evidence coming from this Administration has later proved false -- he even reiterated Powell's story about the poison plant in Northern Iraq. Wasn't that plant famously missing when the media checked on it? Yet, again with this claim. It seems that the Administration has deliberately replaced logic with rhetoric. I want to hear the words "credibility gap" a lot more often.

There's a great case to be made for Iraq being a threat to international security, but the likelihood of Iraq being so dire a threat as to warrant an invasion is wishful thinking. I wish this Administration would spend more time trying to make the Internationalist case, which would highlight our obligations as the sole superpower to take care of rogue nations like Iraq. This National Security case is going nowhere.

Where is the fancy slogan bunting, and am I the only one to think the backdrop suggests a church altar?

Good questions from the press. Specifically, if all countries are using the same pool of intelligence, why are we coming to such wildly different conclusions? What are the conditions under which we would unilaterally declare war? What are the potential risks? Does Saddam Hussein have to be killed or captured to consider the war a success? How much will it cost to fight the war?

All those questions were ducked, by the way.

I'm noticing his use of "my government" instead of "our government."

He never directly acknowledges the angst of the general public, but at least twice acknowledges the sacrifice of military families instead. I'm taking that as a snub. Military families have a more immediate worry, of course, but I would expect a little more care. He's putting the reputation and security of the country at risk, and that's a concern for everyone -- not just those doing the fighting. Especially nasty was the plug for military spending, like it was some kind of warm blanket that would make our concerns about the conduct of war go away.

I wonder when the networks will grow weary of these non-news prime time events. A press conference on the pending war in Iraq should include things like "How much will this war cost? Why won't anyone support us? What are the risks of war?" If you're not going to answer those very important questions, you don't get to pre-empt Survivor.

What did Kamel Say?

Last week Newsweek reported that Hussein Kamel told the CIA that Iraq did destroy all its chemical and biological weapons. You'll remember Kamal as the son-in-law who defected, became a Western informant, then stupidly went back to Iraq, where he was quickly executed.

Newsweek had been one of many publications that had held Kamel up as an information goldmine, one that proved Iraq was up to no good.

The Newsweek story failed to make clear how this information fit in with their years of other reporting. The Guardian tried to put the whole thing together, saying that the former UN inspector now thinks Kamel was a "consumate liar."

Nobody gives much guidance on how much of what we think about the programs is based on Kamel. Much of what he said was backed up by documents, so it can't be all wrong.

March 3, 2003 Newsweek
Exclusive: The Defector's Secrets

John Barry

Hussein Kamel, the highest-ranking Iraqi official ever to defect from Saddam Hussein's inner circle, told CIA and British intelligence officers and U.N. inspectors in the summer of 1995 that after the gulf war, Iraq destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver them.Kamel was Saddam Hussein's son-in-law and had direct knowledge of what he claimed: for 10 years he had run Iraq's nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs.

Saddam's stone wall: Iraq still hasn't satisfied the U.N. inspectors.(Saddam Hussein)(Irag shows no sign of changing its negative attitude toward weapons inspection by the United Nations)(Brief Article)
Gregory Beals John Barry


04/27/1998
Newsweek

Earlier this month, a report by another U.N. body, the International Atomic Energy Agency, revealed that Iraq tried to revive its nuclear-weapons program after the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. When the agency demanded an explanation, Baghdad said an "unauthorized" program had been run by Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel, Saddam's luckless son-in-law, who defected to Jordan in 1995 and then returned to Iraq, where he was killed. That effort now seems to have been shut down, and the IAEA is prepared to give Iraq a clean bill of health on nuclear weapons.

His secret weapon.(Saddam Hussein had a germ-warfare arsenal during Gulf War)
Christopher Dickey


09/04/1995
Newsweek

No hurry: Iraq's germ-warfare program finally came to light because of the defection on Aug. 8 of Saddam's son-in-law Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel Hassan al-Majid, whom Ekeus describes as "the mastermind of the whole biological-weapons program." With Kamel prepared to spill Saddam's secrets, the Iraqis suddenly provided Ekeus with reams of information on their outlawed program. The defection will apparently not lead to Saddam's downfall in the near future. Once again, the dictator was crushing any potential challengers at home. And given the lack of an acceptable successor to Saddam, even U.S. allies in the Middle East were in no hurry to see him fall, as long as he remains politically and militarily weakened.

But the forced revelations have deprived Saddam of his most potent secret weapon. "They kept biology as the prize," Ekeus told Newsweek. He said the Iraqi strategy was to get economic sanctions fitted without revealing the secret of the biological weapons. Germ warfare could have given Saddam "an ideal strategic weapon," Ekeus said, assuming he had an effective longrange delivery method. Delivered secretly, it also could have been "the ideal terrorism weapon." Now if Iraq wants to escape from the economic sanctions that are choking it, Baghdad will have to prove that it has given up its doomsday weapons.

RELATED ARTICLE: Doomsday Arsenal

Iraq now concedes its program to make weapons of mass destruction was far more advanced than it admitted before.

* Biological: Outsiders learned for the first time that anthrax germs and botulism poisons were actually loaded into Iraqi missile warheads and bombs. If inhaled, both agents kill by destroying the ability to breathe. Iraq also loaded a little-known fungal poison called aflatoxin, which may cause cancer, and it experimented with infectious viruses.

* Nuclear: Baghdad also provided new information showing that its nuclear program was more advanced than the allies knew. In August 1990, the month it invaded Kuwait, Iraq reportedly began a crash program to produce a nuclear weapon within a year. It failed.

* Chemical: Iraq's supply of mustard gas and nerve agents such as sarin was well known, having been used in combat against Iran and Kurdish rebels. Mustard burns skin and lungs but is much less lethal than sarin, which paralyzes.

Defector's testimony confuses case against Iraq.

By Julian Borger in Washington.

03/01/2003 The Guardian

Copyright (C) 2003 The Guardian

Hussein Kamel, the former head of Iraq's weapons programmes whose 1995 defection has been portrayed by the US and Britain as evidence of Iraqi deceit and the futility of inspections, was a "consummate liar", according to the last weapons inspector to interrogate him.
The transcript of the interrogation, leaked this week to Newsweek magazine and seen by the Guardian, makes it clear that the defector's testimony on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was inconclusive and often misleading.


The emergence of the classified statements weakens the case the US and Britain has tried to build against Saddam Hussein, in which Kamel's defection has been used to bolster claims that Iraq still has thousands of tonnes of chemical and biological weapons for which it has not accounted.
They reveal that Kamel, who was President Saddam's son-in-law, told UN inspectors that Iraq had destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons and abandoned its nuclear programme after the Gulf war. But he said blueprints, documents, computer files and moulds for missile parts had been hidden.

Rolf Ekeus, the former chief UN weapons inspector who oversaw the interrogation in August 1995, said much of the chemical arsenal had been destroyed by the inspectors, not Baghdad.

Mr Ekeus agreed that the Iraqi government had probably eliminated its biological arsenal but said he remained convinced that "seed stocks" of bacteria had been retained as well as growth media and fermenters so it could quickly reconstitute its arsenal.

Kamel, who had been the director of Iraq's military industrial establishment, was assassinated soon after his mysterious decision to return to Iraq just weeks after his high-profile defection.

The US and British governments have pointed to the defection to emphasise the extent of Iraq's weapons programmes and the inherent weakness of inspections.

But Mr Ekeus pointed out that Unscom, the UN special commission on Iraq, had already discovered a lot about the Iraqi pre-war biological programme earlier that year, forcing Baghdad's admission in July, a month before Kamel's defection, that it had pursued germ warfare.

The transcript of Kamel's interrogation reveals a far more ambiguous picture than the one portrayed in Washington and London.

"Kamel was a consummate liar," Mr Ekeus said.

While the transcript of the interrogation makes it clear that the defection was less than a breakthrough, it had a psychological impact on Baghdad. The Iraqi government, unsure what he was going to tell the inspectors, became much more forthcoming.

Before Mr Ekeus arrived in Amman to interrogate Kamel, the Iraqis invited him to Baghdad to hand over documents and then took him to Kamel's chicken farm where several metal containers full of documents had been buried.

"They wanted to blame it all on Kamel," Mr Ekeus said. "But Kamel was just carrying out the government's policy."

Letter from Ambassador

Brady Kiesling, a political conselor at the Amreican Greek embassy, resigned on February 27th. He wrote a remarkable letter announcing his recommendation to Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Dear Mr. Secretary:

I am writing you to submit my resignation from the Foreign Service of the United States and from my position as Political Counselor in U.S. Embassy Athens, effective March 7. I do so with a heavy heart. The baggage of my upbringing included a felt obligation to give something back to my country. Service as a U.S. diplomat was a dream job. I was paid to understand foreign languages and cultures, to seek out diplomats, politicians, scholars and journalists, and to persuade them that U.S. interests and theirs fundamentally coincided. My faith in my country and its values was the most powerful weapon in my diplomatic arsenal.

It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State Department I would become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic motives that sometimes shaped our policies. Human nature is what it is, and I was rewarded and promoted for understanding human nature. But until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer.

The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security.

The sacrifice of global interests to domestic politics and to bureaucratic self-interest is nothing new, and it is certainly not a uniquely American problem. Still, we have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic manipulation of American opinion, since the war in Vietnam. The September 11 tragedy left us stronger than before, rallying around us a vast international coalition to cooperate for the first time in a systematic way against the threat of terrorism. But rather than take credit for those successes and build on them, this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to so to ourselves. Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo?

We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. We have over the past two years done too much to assert to our world partners that narrow and mercenary U.S. interests override the cherished values of our partners. Even where our aims were not in question, our consistency is at issue. The model of Afghanistan is little comfort to allies wondering on what basis we plan to rebuild the Middle East, and in whose image and interests. Have we indeed become blind, as Russia is blind in Chechnya, as Israel is blind in the Occupied Territories, to our own advice, that overwhelming military power is not the answer to terrorism? After the shambles of post-war Iraq joins the shambles in Grozny and Ramallah, it will be a brave foreigner who forms ranks with Micronesia to follow where we lead.

We have a coalition still, a good one. The loyalty of many of our friends is impressive, a tribute to American moral capital built up over a century. But our closest allies are persuaded less that war is justified than that it would be perilous to allow the U.S. to drift into complete solipsism. Loyalty should be reciprocal. Why does our President condone the swaggering and contemptuous approach to our friends and allies this Administration is fostering, including among its most senior officials. Has oderint dum metuant really become our motto?

I urge you to listen to America's friends around the world. Even here in Greece, purported hotbed of European anti-Americanism, we have more and closer friends than the American newspaper reader can possibly imagine. Even when they complain about American arrogance, Greeks know that the world is a difficult and dangerous place, and they want a strong international system, with the U.S. and EU in close partnership. When our friends are afraid of us rather than for us, it is time to worry. And now they are afraid. Who will tell them convincingly that the United States is as it was, a beacon of liberty, security, and justice for the planet?

Mr. Secretary, I have enormous respect for your character and ability. You have preserved more international credibility for us than our policy deserves, and salvaged something positive from the excesses of an ideological and self-serving Administration. But your loyalty to the President goes too far. We are straining beyond its limits an international system we built with such toil and treasure, a web of laws, treaties, organizations, and shared values that sets limits on our foes far more effectively than it ever constrained America's ability to defend its interests.

I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration. I have confidence that our democratic process is ultimately self-correcting, and hope that in a small way I can contribute from outside to shaping policies that better serve the security and prosperity of the American people and the world we share.

Cloture for Estrada

You heard it here first. This afternoon, Republicans in the Senate are going to file a cloture motion in the Senate, which be the beginning of the end for the Estrada confirmation filibuster. Significantly, Republicans are divided on this -- some think fighting the filibuster is right, and others think its sets a bad precedent by creating a de facto 60 vote requirement for confirmations. Word has it that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) is going to keep filing clotures until Estrada is nominated. Minority Whip Harry Reid (D-NV) says he's got 41 solid votes against Estrada, which would keep the vote from occuring with or without cloture. More than ever, this is a P.R. battle -- the Senate has a boatload of work on its agenda, and the side that can make their opponents look like radical obstructionst whackos is the side that will win.

Expanded Archives

For those of you who followed the previous incarnation of OnePeople, and missed the endless analysis of Iraq coverage, this is your lucky day. We've expanded the monthly archives.

Highlights include the US leaving the Biological Weapons Convention just as it's launching the Iraq diplomatic campaign, Condoleeza Rice hinting at connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda way back in September, Hillary Clinton claiming her vote for the war resolution was the only way to avoid the war, Scott Ritter's credibility gap, and the NYT calling the French two-step Resolution 1441 a "triumph" for the Bush Administration.

Clinton Gets Jury Duty

Clinton is fulfilling his civic duty. Says the judge, "I suspect there has never been anyone who answered yes to so many questions and survived the voir dire process." Yes, the Secret Service protection detail comes with him. This is what makes America great -- I hope he enjoyed the orientation video as much as I did.

My Precious

A few thousand years ago...we were hanging out at an underground lake in the mountains. You - my own, my love...petite, golden glow, almost EVIL; sleek and quite overpowering.

Me - 4'5", dark, fine hairs, physical atrophy, into loincloths and raw meat/fish. Refreshing diving pool a +. We sings for you about it sometimes. Come back to us.

Harvard Dialect Maps

My aunt has been to the creek with her umbrella as a flourish.

Four linguistics students at Harvard are conducting an online dialect survey, and map the results geographically.

Weeks or Months

"Weeks not months," has been the big phrase thrown around in the last month. It's used to describe how long Iraq has to give in to real disarmament and so, effectively, how long we have before the war starts.

The issue of when this phrase first became the policy is probably going to become relevant very soon. That's because soon it will have been policy for months, not weeks.

I went back looking for the first reference. It seems to have been Donald Rumsfeld on Jan 19. Within a week it was the catchphrase in both London and Washington.

Will they meet their own deadline?

New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
01/20/2003
Mr. Rumsfeld said the decision on whether Iraq was cooperating with the United Nations, a determination generally regarded as a possible precursor to war, would be made ''in a matter of weeks, not in months or years.'' He added, ''That judgment call will just have to be made.''

New York Times
01/22/2003
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and JAMES DAO
Administration officials said the timetable was still to press for a decision from the Council in a matter of weeks rather than months, on the ground that Mr. Hussein's defiance of the demand for cooperation was already obvious. The French may disagree, one official said, but their argument that the inspections are working to disarm Iraq ''won't stand up to scrutiny.''

01/26/2003
The Sunday Telegraph
Washington and London were agreed last night that Iraq would be given "weeks not months" to disarm or face attack.

01/26/2003
Associated Press Newswires
Asked whether they should have weeks or months, Blair replied "Well, I don't believe it will take them months to find out whether he is cooperating or not, but they should have whatever time they need."

01/28/2003
By JOHN TAGLIABUE
The New York Times
Some legislators said tonight that the inspectors should be given more time, and that Mr. Blair's mention on Sunday of ''weeks, not months'' was not sufficient.

01/28/2003
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
The New York Times
In Mr. Powell's memoirs, one of his dictums is: ''Remain calm. Be kind.'' But the time for talking to allies calmly and kindly, aides readily concede, is most likely a matter of weeks now rather than months

01/30/2003
By ALEX BERENSON
The New York Times
After Mr. Bush's speech, ''the market expects a resolution within weeks instead of months,'' said Harvey Hirschhorn, the head of asset allocation and strategy for the Columbia Management Group, which manages $150 billion, including more than $50 billion in stocks.

01/31/2003
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 -- President Bush all but set a timetable for war today, warning Saddam Hussein that Iraq has ''weeks, not months'' to disarm or face an invasion led by the United States.