Monday, June 09, 2003

Re: Media commentary: Coming home Dear Friends: Photojournalists have provided us with some of the most incredible conflict pictures covering the war in Iraq. Many of these have been featured in the prior two issues of The Digital Journalist. Now, many of them are coming home, and for some, the readjustment process can be more daunting than combat. Dick Halstead, editor and  publisher of The Digital Journalist, offers some advice on this transition from the battlefield back to the day-to-day world. The Digital Journalist, a monthly online magazine for visual journalism. ____________________________ The Digital Journalist June 2003 Issue Commentary: Coming Home by Dirck Halstead   The photographers are coming home. Hundreds of photojournalists found themselves on the battlefields of Iraq in the past few months. They took some of the most remarkable photographs of combat ever seen. The Digital Journalist has been proud to presents many of them in our pages. Although there were many combat veterans, such as Jim Nacthwey, Bob Nickelsberg, Jerome Delay and David Leeson covering the war, there were also scores of newbies, who had never seen a shot fired in anger. One minute they were under intense fire, watching people die around them, and then in what seemed a blink of an eye they were home, catching up with family and friends, paying bills, and cutting grass. Some of them, even the veterans realized that something was wrong. David Leeson, of The Dallas Morning News writes, "It's tough to enjoy the beauty of dinner with friends, or simple tasks like mowing the yard, when the week before you saw and smelled dismembered and decomposed bodies. And those around you cannot understand-nor should they be expected to-so you retreat and bury your struggles in a thousand different ways. All is well as long as the memories remain buried." I have often been interviewed, especially during the Iraq war, about what it is like to cover combat. Generally one of the first questions is "tell me about your close calls." Like most photojournalists who have actually been under fire, this is one place we won't go. We don't like to even think about those times, and certainly won't share them with people who have never been there. It's just bad joss. In fact, most photographers who have covered conflicts rarely talk about their experiences. Anyone who invites us to cocktail parties expecting to be regaled by war stories, find we are boring guests. It's only among colleagues who have shared the experience that the stories emerge. The transition back to normal life can be wrenching. After covering the Vietnam War in 1965 and 1966 for UPI, the months after returning to New York were traumatic. I nearly quit on a daily basis. It just seemed to me that the things that people talked about, whether it was politics, demonstrations, or worst of all expenses and the budget, seemed utterly trivial. More than once after spending a few hours at the bar, I started to hail a cab to take me to Kennedy airport so I could get back to Saigon. War is defining experience. Faced with life or death around the next bend, life becomes very simple. Adrenalin rushes through your body. There is nothing that makes a person feel more alive that the imminent prospect of death. The experience gets mixed up with many other basic things, such as friendship and love and the process of maturation. Author Michael Herr put it best in his book on being a war correspondent in Vietnam in the 60s, "War is what we had instead of a happy childhood." It is common among journalists who covered war to go into a deep depression weeks after returning from the battlefield. Soldiers are often faced with the same thing, called "PTSD", but it is different with photographers. The reason is that we are actually creating our own art during combat. Individual decisions are made on a minute-by-minute basis that can then be shared with millions of people around the world. These decisions in retrospect seem to be the most significant of a person's life. Covering a movie opening, or a society event, or even the World Series, can become flat and meaningless. The danger is that to compensate, we turn to alcohol and drugs, while our relationships crumble. We become "difficult" to our friends, employers, and families. This is when we need to remember that we have been privileged to cover that war, and to recognize that we did our best, and have had an effect on many minds. We were not just indulging our desire for adventure, but serving. Once put into that perspective, it may help to realize that you have grown, and have a responsibility to live up to the person who has emerged. In the last minutes of "Saving Private Ryan", the character, standing over the grave of the Ranger who had given his life to save him, turns to his family and says, "have I been a good person? Have I lived my life the best I could?" That is what should be the question we ask ourselves in the years to come. © Dirck Halstead dhalstead@austin.rr.com © The Digital Journalist _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 4:29:20 PM

Dear Friends: When one stands up for an unpopular idea, or speak their truth, they sometimes feel alone and vulnerable. Rest assured that they are not. In bearing witness, in acting with integrity, they are joined by a vast community of like-minded individuals. The definition of community is a group of people living together as a smaller social unit within a larger one, and having interests, beliefs, work, etc. in common. It might also be thought of as those who commune with others, sharing the sacred sacrament of knowledge, wisdom, and compassion. Our War and Peace Watch community spans the globe, with readers in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Scandinavia, France, Pakistan, Australia, and South Africa, and we continue to grow daily. You do not stand alone. Thank you for your support. In Peace, Otoño ___________________________________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ 2:43:30 PM

Re: Thoughts on the corruption of truth Dear Friends: Contemplations upon truth, community, and integrity seem to be in the air this weekend. Carla Binion's commentary on the conscious corruption of truth eloquently addresses the Bush administration's massaging of language in order to shade or conceal the truth and to mislead others. Once again we are reminded that we must remain vigilant and keep an ever-watchful eye upon those who would harm or deceive others in pursuit of their own self-serving agenda. _______________________________ Buzzflash June 7, 2003 Buzzflash Reader Commentary by Carla Binion Lie - 1. To make an untrue statement with intent to deceive. 2. To create a false or misleading impression. -- Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition Some say the Bush cabal has lied about reasons for war. Others say the word "lie" is too strident, although the facts show the administration's actions fit the dictionary definition of lying. If we bleach the English language and call lies "intelligence failures," and (as Donaldo Maceo has said) if "battlefield bloodbaths" become "theaters of operation" and preemptive aggression is called "Operation Iraqi Freedom," this language jiggering is just another lie. Worse than that, it perpetuates destructive myths and holds corruption in place. Journalist I.F. Stone often spoke before journalism students, offering the following advice: "Among all the things I'm going to tell you today about being a journalist, all you have to remember is two words: governments lie." Speaking the truth about such facts brings blood flow to the head, energizes, empowers and invigorates the American public and democracy. When an already-powerless public speaks in hushed, intimidated tones, calling governmental lies "intelligence failures" when we verbally sugar coat the pill that poisons us, we the people feel limp and anemic - even more politically debilitated than before we spoke. In a long ago Independence Day Speech, Frederick Douglass said of his era's tolerating slavery, "At a time like this, scorching iron, not convincing argument, is needed. O! Had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced." We need the same straightforward enlivened language in the Bush-Cheney era, because what we're witnessing today is the administration's frontal assault on civil liberties, democracy and honest government. _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 2:42:30 PM

Re: War evidence distorted and inconclusive Dear Friends: As we gaze upon the rubble that was once Iraq, we continue to ask the Bush administration, who lied? Who benefited? Are we viewing a reoccurrence of "a cancer in the White House?" Journalist John Lumpkin reports that according to a retired intelligence official who served during the months prior to the war, the Bush administration distorted intelligence and presented unsubstantiated and inconclusive evidence to justify a U.S. invasion of Iraq.  When will steps be taken to rectify this abuse of power? _____________________________   Associated Press June 7, 2003 Ex-Official: Evidence Distorted for War by John J. Lumpkin, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - The Bush administration distorted intelligence and presented conjecture as evidence to justify a U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a retired intelligence official who served during the months before the war. "What disturbs me deeply is what I think are the disingenuous statements made from the very top about what the intelligence did say," said Greg Thielmann, who retired last September. "The area of distortion was greatest in the nuclear field." Thielmann was director of the strategic, proliferation and military issues office in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. His office was privy to classified intelligence gathered by the CIA and other agencies about Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear programs. In Thielmann's view, Iraq could have presented an immediate threat to U.S. security in two areas: Either it was about to make a nuclear weapon, or it was forming close operational ties with al-Qaida terrorists. Evidence was lacking for both, despite claims by President Bush and others, Thielmann said in an interview this week. Suspicions were presented as fact, contrary arguments ignored, he said. The administration's prewar portrayal of Iraq's weapons capabilities has not been validated despite weeks of searching by military experts. Alleged stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons have not turned up, nor has significant evidence of a nuclear weapons program or links to the al-Qaida network. Bush has said administration assertions on Iraq will be verified in time. The CIA and other agencies have vigorously defended their prewar performances. CIA Director George Tenet, responding to similar criticism last week, said in a statement: "The integrity of our process was maintained throughout, and any suggestion to the contrary is simply wrong." On Friday, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency acknowledged he had no hard evidence of Iraqi chemical weapons last fall but believed Iraq had a program in place to produce them. Also Friday, Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (news - web sites), said he was not prepared to place blame for any intelligence shortcomings until all information is in. "There are always times when a single sentence or a single report evokes a lot of concern and some doubt," Warner told reporters after a closed hearing of his committee. "But thus far, in my own personal assessment of this situation, the intelligence community has diligently and forthrightly and with integrity produced intelligence and submitted it to this administration and to the Congress of the United States." Thielmann suggested mistakes may have been made at points all along the chain from when intelligence is gathered, analyzed, presented to the president and then provided to the public. The evidence of a renewed nuclear program in Iraq was far more limited than the administration contended, he said. "When the administration did talk about specific evidence--it was basically declassified, sensitive information--it did it in a way that was also not entirely honest," Thielmann said. In his State of the Union address, Bush said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The Africa claim rested on a purported letter or letters between officials in Iraq and Niger held by European intelligence agencies. The communications are now accepted as forged, and Thielmann said he believed the information on Africa was discounted months before Bush mentioned it. "I was very surprised to hear that be announced to the United States and the entire world," he said. Thielmann said he had presumed Iraq had supplies of chemical and probably biological weapons. He particularly expected U.S. forces to find caches of mustard agent or other chemical weapons left over from Saddam's old stockpiles. "We appear to have been wrong," he said. "I've been genuinely surprised at that." One example where officials took too far a leap from the facts, according to Thielmann: On Feb. 11, CIA Director Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Iraq "retains in violation of U.N. resolutions a small number of Scud missiles that it produced before the Gulf War." Intelligence analysts supposed Iraq may have had some missiles because they couldn't account for all the Scuds it had before the first Gulf War, Thielmann said. They could have been destroyed, dismantled, miscounted or still somewhere in Saddam's inventory. Some critics have suggested that the White House and Pentagon policy-makers pressured the CIA and military intelligence to come up with conclusions favorable to an attack-Iraq policy. The CIA and military have denied such charges. Thielmann said that generally he felt no such pressure. Although his office did not directly handle terrorism issues, Thielmann said he was similarly unconvinced of a strong link between al-Qaida and Saddam's government. Yet, the implication from Bush on down was that Saddam supported Osama bin Laden's network. Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks frequently were mentioned in the same sentence, even though officials have no good evidence of any link between the two. @2003 The Associated Press _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 2:41:52 PM

Re: Is activism dead? Dear Friends: In the 60's and 70's, there was a saying, "Don't trust anyone over 30." In a recent interview with Mark Rudd, former member of the Weathermen and the Students for a Democratic Society, he commented that perhaps now we shouldn't trust anyone under 40. What he meant, of course, is that in the US today there is sense of complacency and lack of activism. People claim to be too busy, or that they don't have time to read and discuss informative articles, or they don't want to get bogged down in a quagmire of negativity. However, if we do not live our lives in accordance with what is true, what can we say about our lives? The search for truth and validity is not something we do in addition to our lives, but should be the guiding force of our lives. Witnessing in depth, and often experiencing the underbelly of the beast, is not dwelling upon negativity or carping. It is the state of being in the world, but not of it. It is an objective acknowledgment of the truth, and the willingness to take action in response. Such action must always be appropriate to who we are and our own philosophical beliefs. The key point is that we witness, we acknowledge, and we take action of some kind. Newsweek reporter Dalton Conley suggests protest marches and demonstrations may be the peace movement's equivalent of heavy armor and lots of infantry--which has now been replaced by high-tech weaponry that supposedly requires fewer troops. Perhaps rather than taking to the streets, those seeking change should take to the Internet. _____________________________ Newsweek Web Exclusive June 5, 2003 Is Activism Dead? Protests as we know them seem to have lost their urgency. But guess where it's gaining steam  by Dalton Conley         June 5--The build-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq triggered the largest antiwar rallies since the Vietnam era, both in America and abroad. Yet the chants of millions of protestors--including "Regime change starts at home" and "Support our troops, bring them home" seemed to fall on deaf ears in Washington.     The decision to invade had apparently been set in stone long before grass-roots opposition had really gotten rolling. Of course, had the military conflict dragged on, then street rallies might have mattered. But the word "quagmire" never did rise to the headlines, and in the end, the peace rallies didn't stop the war.         One way of interpreting the failure of the peace movement to affect U.S. foreign policy is that it failed strategically. While Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld planned (and perhaps executed) a 21st-century war plan in Iraq, antiwar protestors largely relied on 20th-century tactics. Street marches may be the peace movements equivalent of heavy armor and lots of infantry--which has been supplanted by high-tech weaponry that supposedly requires fewer troops. Maybe rather than taking to the public square, protestors should have taken to the new commons: the Internet.         Recent online social movements range from relatively straightforward petitioning drives (many of which can be found at the clearinghouse thepetitionsite.com) to the innovative (like voteswap.com, which allowed people in hotly contested states who wanted to vote for Nader in the 2000 elections but did not want to tip the state into Bush's column to trade their vote with Gore supporters in states where the outcome was pretty much already determined). Straightforward approaches, like e-mail and Web-based petition drives, generally adapt a classical political strategy and apply it to the relatively new medium of the Internet. The upside of the ease by which letters can be e-mailed to senators and petitions can be drawn up and circulated is also their downside: they get more easily ignored by public officials who know that e-mail is cheap, so to speak. Voteswap.com, by contrast, does something through the Internet that would not have been possible in the early 1990s. Likewise, underdog Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean has used the Internet site meetup.com to organize local volunteer campaign groups. So far, there are 25,000 people who have signed up and about 225 monthly meetings across the country.         The most interesting uses of Net technology for political protest are even more innovative and radical than Voteswap and Meetup. One interesting example is Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT): a New York-based group that organizes virtual sit-ins (www.thing.net/%7Erdom/ecd/ecd.html ). How EDT works is this: they publicly distribute an applet called FloodNet that, when activated, sends automatic browser "reload" requests to the targeted Web site every few seconds. EDT then organizes specific times where certain Web sites will be hit by thousands of protestors. The hope is to bring down the site. For example, in 1998, in support of the Zapatista autonomy movement in Chiapas, Mexico, EDT targeted the servers of the Pentagon and Mexico's president Ernesto Zedillo. In January 2002, 160,000 people downloaded FloodNet from the EDT Web site and deluged the World Economic Forum site; the server failed after a few hours and stayed down for the rest of the week. Ricardo Dominguez, EDTs cofounder, claims that the official goal of such sit-ins is not necessarily to disable Web servers but merely to disturb them; in fact, EDT calls the actions "performances." Of course, the distinction between disturbing and hacking is a fine line that is walked with a wink and a nod.        Another fairly radical group is the Bureau of Inverse Technology (bureauit.org), or BIT. Like many of these groups, this is an anonymous organization that straddles the line between activism and art, billing itself as an "information agency serving the information age." One of the latest BIT projects is the antiterror line. This is a phone number--actually two, one in the United States and one in Britain--to monitor infringements on civil rights by government authorities in the wake of antiterror legislation. The principle is simple: you, the user, preprogram the number into your cell phone and if you are ever confronted by the police, press the number and the machine at the other end of the line will record the interaction as evidence. Marchers going off to a protest might gear their phones up; blacks who are likely to experience racial profiling might also want one-touch dialing, and of course other populations that are particularly vulnerable under the USA Patriot Acts and its possible successors--such as foreigners, particularly those from Islamic countries--might want to be on the ready. If you are not able to record the actual interaction (after all, it's pretty hard to get your cell phone to work if you are being bludgeoned by a policeman's billy club), then you can call to report the event to the phone number after the fact. In this way, the Web server will build an archive of information about the government that--in its public accessibility--stands in stark contrast to the way the Feds are increasingly collecting secreted information about the population.               A common thread in the online activist and arts community is the use of "kits" to enlist other activists. A kit can be as simple as EDTs FloodNet program or a complicated as BIT Radio: instructions on how to build a transmitter to jam local radio programming, overriding it with an activist message. BIT did this in New York City during the World Economic Forum, broadcasting environmental information over National Public Radios frequency. The brevity of the illicit broadcasts prevents the transmitter stations from being found out. Anyone across the world can theoretically set up a BIT Radio station if they follow the instructions that are downloadable at the BIT site.         Another "hactivist" tradition is that of impersonation. While impersonation for political purposes has a long tradition--dating at least as far back as 1703, when Daniel Defoe was arrested for distributing his satire of Anglican Tories, which was taken to be serious at first--the Net opens up completely new possibilities. For example, the Yesmen (theyesmen.org ) have pretended to be the World Trade Organization, by registering the site of the organization that the WTO was meant to replace (gatt.org). They then issue press releases that fly in the face of official WTO policy; some unwitting journalists then publish stories based on them, all the while documenting the reaction. They also accept speaking invitations on behalf of the WTO through the Web site.         The Yesmen also registered the site dow-chemical.com. They used this platform to explain why Dow Chemical will not take responsibility for the 1984 Bhopal, India, chemical disaster nor offer more than $500 compensation per victim. The response was overwhelming. However, for added irony, when they registered the site they chose to list it under "James Parker," the son of the Dow's CEO, and used his real address. When the real Dow found out about what was going on, they immediately got James Parker to re-register the domain name as his own, deleting the misinformation. End of story--for now at least. No worries for the Yesmen--they had already achieved their purpose by getting plenty of media attention to the issue, which had been long forgotten by most Americans.         To varying degrees, what EDT, BIT and the Yesmen share in common is the ability to generate media attention for their actions and to draw together like-minded individuals across vast spaces, thereby reducing the need to generate a crowd in any particular locality. One BIT engineer calls this "scale." Beside unifying a geographically diverse protesting community, another benefit of this kind of networked activism that BIT points to is the fact that--for the most part--the police cannot shut you down with horses, water hoses, rubber bullets and mass lock-ups; they can merely reregister your domain name or take down your server.         Whereas Ricardo Dominguez claims that street protest is a relic of a bygone era, the Yesmen and BIT demure. "There is nothing that can replace the generative power, the connections that are made in face-to-face contact during protests," claims a BIT spokesperson. Says, "Andy," one of the Yesmen, in an e-mail interview: "It's clear that traditional forms of protest are still the most powerful. It's always hard to measure the effects of such things, but we know that people taking to the streets helped shut down the [WTOs] Seattle Ministerial [meeting], forced [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair to stop pretending he was representing the majority, etc.--lots of signs that it works."        The biggest payoffs may to be in the linkage of the Net to actual live protest marches. The peace marches of Feb. 15 represented the largest worldwide protests ever recorded. As it turns out, they were not completely 20th century. They had been coordinated by many Net activists, but they still required people to show up, shout, beat drums, get arrested and so on. They just happened to not work. But maybe they are just the beginning. If the Bush administration has more war plans lurking up its sleeve, the protestors will be ready--on line and off.   --Dalton Conley directs the Center for Advanced Social Science Research at New York University. He is a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the author of "Honky," a memoir, and "The Pecking Order: Which Siblings Succeed and Why" (due out in February).        © 2003 Newsweek, Inc. _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ===================================== 2:41:23 PM

Re: Blair and Bush administrations on the defensive Dear Friends: Same old, same old. It seems that questions about the existence of weapons of mass destruction have gone on ad infinitum. And so they have, but without results that satisfy the public. The case for the invasion of Iraq has been primarily based upon the putative existence of such WMD, but both Bush and Blair are still at a loss to locate such devices. This week Tony Blair is facing fresh pressure to explain why an intelligence report saying there was no proof Saddam Hussein posed a growing threat to the West was suppressed. The Bush administration was also on the defensive yesterday, vigorously denying the contention that it exaggerated the danger of Iraq's purported arsenal of weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion. And, if they do in fact locate such an arsenal, would you really believe that it was genuine? Bush has much too much at stake to let this be the tipping point that causes him to fail to win the next election. ___________________ The Independent (UK) June 9, 2003 MPs Press Blair and Campbell to Explain WMD Report by Marie Woolf and David Usborne in New York Downing Street faces fresh pressure this week to explain why an intelligence report saying there was no proof Saddam Hussein posed a growing threat to the West was suppressed. MPs said yesterday the Prime Minister and Alastair Campbell should be forced to appear before a parliamentary committee to explain why the intelligence dossier produced in March last year was shelved. The six-page report, from the Joint Intelligence Committee staff, said there was no evidence Saddam posed a significantly greater threat than in 1991. It was written in the same month Mr Campbell, the Prime Minister's communications and strategy chief, told journalists in America the Government would produce evidence within two weeks proving Saddam was building weapons of mass destruction. The report was delayed, but six months later Tony Blair said Saddam was continuing to produce chemical and biological weapons. Mr Campbell has written a personal apology to Sir Richard Dearlove, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, for discrediting the service. He apologised for the release to the media in January of the so-called dodgy dossier on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The dossier "had not met the required standards of accuracy", he said. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, told BBC1's Politics Show that he thought the dossier was "just an honest appraisal by Alastair Campbell", adding: "I think it would be better if we hadn't published that dossier because it was about the background to Iraq; it wasn't about the identification of weapons of mass destruction." The apology will fuel claims that Downing Street quoted selectively from intelligence reports and missed out crucial qualifying facts, such as the number and reliability of sources, to make the case for war against Iraq. Downing Street does not deny the existence of the six-page March 2002 report. A spokesman said its content was reflected in the longer September dossier, which is alleged to have been "sexed up" by Downing Street before being released. Yesterday the former health secretary Frank Dobson was among MPs calling for Mr Campbell to appear before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee to answer questions on the Iraq dossiers. The Bush administration was also on the defensive yesterday, vigorously denying the contention that it exaggerated the danger of Iraq's purported arsenal of weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion. Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser to President George Bush, said that "if you join the dots" of all that was known about Iraq in the Nineties, there could be no doubt the arms existed and "that this was an active programme, that this was a dangerous programme, this was a programme that was being effectively concealed". Ms Rice and Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, appeared on Sunday news magazine programmes to try to answer claims that the administration hyped the case for invading Iraq. The weapons controversy has been growing in America in recent days, just as it has become a severe political problem for Mr Blair. Mr Powell denied that Dick Cheney, the Defence Secretary, had visited CIA headquarters to ensure intelligence reports reflected Bush administration policy objectives. He also insisted evidence of the weapons - if not the weapons themselves - would soon be unearthed. "I think all the documents now coming forward, and people who are being interviewed will tell us more about what they have hidden and where they have hidden it," he added. Ms Rice, asked where the weapons were, said: "This is a programme that was built for concealment. We've always known that. We've always known it would take some time to put together a full picture of his weapons of mass destruction programmes." Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency were surveying a looted storage area at the main Tuwaitha nuclear plant south of Baghdad yesterday. After weeks of trying, the IAEA finally won permission from America to inspect the plant last week. The team, escorted by US troops, began work on Friday. © 2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 2:40:15 PM

Re: America is beginning to wake up to the truth Dear Friends: America is beginning to stir from its dream state and acknowledge the truth about the purported weapons of mass destruction, and the attempt of the US government to twist the truth and fabricate evidence to serve its own purpose. These are grave misdeeds, and the beginning of a potential nightmare for Bush and his administration. Bush faces increasing pressure from influential lawmakers like Democratic senators Robert Byrd and Bob Graham who demand to know whether the administration manipulated intelligence to make the case for war. We wish them Godspeed. ____________________ The Sunday Herald (Scotland) June 8, 2003 Why America is Waking Up to the Truth About WMD  by Marion McKeone in New York   The leak of part of a Department of Defense report has added fuel to the firestorm over Bush administration claims about the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The top-secret report by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) last September concluded that it could find no evidence of chemical weapons activity in Iraq. 'There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons,'its one-page summary said. The leak has put the White House on the defensive as controversy over the non-discovery of WMD grows. Hours after the report summary -- written by Defense Department in-house intelligence experts -- was leaked, the head of the DIA was dispatched to deny it contradicted the Bush administration's warnings of a dire, imminent threat to the US from Iraqi chemical weapons. DIA Director Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby said the report showed his agency 'could not specifically pin down individual facilities operating as part of the WMD programs'. Pressed to explain the discrepancies between the report and administration claims, he said the report was 'not in any way intended to portray the fact that we had doubts that any program existed, that such a program was active, or that such a program was part of the Iraqi WMD infrastructure'. The leak appeared to catch the White House by surprise. One official said: 'Look, we are not the only people who claimed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. The rest of the world, including the UN Security Council, believed it too. The only person who claimed that Saddam didn't have weapons was Saddam.' But the belief Saddam had stockpiled weapons -- and the imminent threat they posed -- was the core reason cited by Bush during his historic address to the UN last September. He cited evidence of a massive WMD program, which he said was based on US intelligence and laid down an ultimatum to the UN: either disarm Saddam, or the US will. Asked whether Bush was aware of the DIA report when he warned the UN about the threat , the official declined to comment, saying it was 'unclear' whether Bush or any senior members of the administration had seen the report. It would, however, be unusual if Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, one of the most vigorous supporters of the war, had not read a report issued by his own in-house intelligence agency on the very issue upon which the war was predicated. The alacrity of the White House response to the leak suggests it now believes the issue is a political danger for the President . Bush faces increasing pressure from influential lawmakers like Democratic senators Robert Byrd and Bob Graham who demand to know whether the administration manipulated intelligence to make the case for war. That doubts about Iraqi weapons existed as far back as a year ago raises a number of unanswered questions . There is growing unease on Capitol Hill, as even Republican lawmakers feel the issue is a symptom of the massive increase in power Rumsfeld has awarded himself at the expense of the CIA and the Department of State. 'The basic problem here is that the office of the secretary of Defense has become too powerful,'Patrick Lang, a former senior official in the DIA told the Senate. Others, including retired CIA analyst Larry Johnson, have publicly criticized CIA director George Tenet for allowing Rumsfeld to annex the CIA's role. 'Tenet sided with the Defense crowd and cut the legs out from under his own analysts,'Johnson said. Senior CIA officials have distanced themselves from Rumsfeld's claims that WMD posed an imminent threat. They say these claims are based on information passed directly to Rumsfeld's office by Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress and a Pentagon favorite to become the next Iraqi leader. But the CIA regarded his sources as deeply suspect and said his claims were largely based on hearsay from other defectors with vested interests in regime change. The big question now is: was Bush was duped himself, or did he dupe the people into believing war was necessary? Some Democrats, sniffing blood, are poised to attack. Bob Graham, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has claimed that before the war the administration embarked on 'a pattern of hiding information'. Classified evidence that supported its claims about weapons was made public, he said. 'But as a member of the Intelligence Committee I saw much evidence that didn't support its case,' he added. 'That evidence was never declassified. ' Tracey Schmitt, a Republican spokeswoman, dismissed Graham's comments. 'Senator Graham sounds increasingly more like a conspiracy theorist than a presidential candidate,'she said. But even as CIA and Senate investigations into the quality of intelligence used in the build up the war in Iraq get under way, officials are denying that top members of the Bush administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, pressured the CIA into coming up with intelligence that would bolster the administration's case. It has been claimed by CIA officials that Cheney made repeated visits to the CIA to discuss intelligence about Iraq -- a highly unusual move for a vice-president. 'The vice president values the hard work of the intelligence community, but his office has a practice of declining to comment on the specifics of his intelligence briefings,' his public affairs director responded. ©2003 smg sunday newspapers ltd. _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 2:39:35 PM

Re: Key aide leaving Powell Dear Friends: The announcement that the State Department's director for policy planning, Richard Haass, is leaving to become the next president of the Council on Foreign Relations marks the latest sign of the eclipse of Secretary of State Colin Powell's influence in the Bush administration. Next to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Haass was seen as Powell's closest adviser. The fact that Powell has not nominated anyone of Haass' stature or with whom he has a long-standing relationship as a replacement is being interpreted as an indication that he probably intends to step down after next year's election, if not before. _____________________________________ Asia Times June 7, 2003 Loss of Key Aide Another Setback for Powell by Jim Lobe WASHINGTON - The announcement that the State Department's director for policy planning, Richard Haass, is leaving to become the next president of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), marks the latest sign of the eclipse of Secretary of State Colin Powell's influence in the Bush administration. Next to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Haass was seen as Powell's closest adviser. While there is no doubt that his new job, which begins on July 1, has real attractions - a lengthy contract to direct the oldest and most prestigious US foreign policy think tank - Haass has historically preferred to be in the thick of the action. He played a key role on the National Security Council (NSC) under George H W Bush during the Gulf War in 1991 and its aftermath, including the Madrid peace talks in the early 1990s. While no official announcement has been made, his most likely replacement is said to be the current ambassador to Turkey, Robert Pearson, a career foreign service officer who, while highly regarded as a diplomat and administrator, lacks Haass' reputation as a thinker and grand strategist. The fact that Powell has not nominated anyone of Haass' stature or with whom he has a long-standing relationship as a replacement is being interpreted as an indication that he probably intends to step down after next year's election, if not before. Long targeted by neo-conservative forces centered in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office, as well as their counterparts outside the administration, Haass has served as an influential voice in favor of traditional Republican realism, a protege of Bush Sr's national security adviser, retired General Brent Scowcroft. During his mere two-and-a-half years in one of the State Department's most coveted positions, Haass led efforts to define and argue Powell's positions internally and to enunciate more general ideas about where he thought US foreign policy should be headed. A consummate "realist" in the conservative but pragmatic mould of Scowcroft and Bush Sr's secretary of state James Baker, Haass argued in favor of engaging Iran, a harder line with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and treating China more as a partner than a rival, although he is best known for his statement early in the first months of the administration that Washington should pursue a general policy of "a la carte multilateralism". That he would even use that noun, however, probably helped to confirm administration hawks that he was far too sensitive to European and international opinion for their taste. Haass has been a fixture of Washington foreign policy politics for a remarkably long time given his relatively youthful 51 years. After receiving his doctorate, he worked in Congress, then briefly in the Pentagon under Jimmy Carter and in various posts in the State Department under Ronald Reagan. He directed Mideast policy in the NSC throughout the first Bush administration (1989-1993), work that earned him the lasting distrust of neo-conservatives, many of whom had served in the Reagan administration and have since returned under the younger Bush to senior policy making positions. Closely allied with Israel's right-wing Likud Party, neo-conservatives - such as Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith; the former chairman of the Pentagon Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle; and Elliott Abrams, who currently holds Haass's old job on the NSC - strongly and publicly opposed the elder Bush's efforts to force Israel to take part in the Madrid peace conference that eventually led to a Labor-led government and the Oslo peace process. During the Bill Clinton administration, Haass remained a major player as director of foreign policy studies at one of Washington's most established think tanks, the Brookings Institution. He maintained his staunchly realist outlook in his area of expertise, arguing in favor of an even-handed approach to the Oslo process and engagement with Iran. He also adopted a strong pro-business stance in foreign policy by co-authoring a study on the use of unilateral US economic sanctions against foreign countries, which concluded that in virtually every case they had proved either ineffective or counter-productive and lost many billions of dollars in trade and investment opportunities for US business. In 1997, he published The Reluctant Sheriff, a book on future US foreign policy that attacked the notion that Washington should try to establish and preserve a "unipolar" world order in which it was hegemonic. "Primacy is not to be confused with hegemony," he wrote. Calling for the return of "great-power politics", he stressed that "the United States cannot compel others to become more democratic". The book even criticized a now-famous draft 1992 strategy document that called for a global-dominance strategy, drafted by two of the most powerful neo-conservatives in the current Bush administration, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Cheney's Chief of Staff I Lewis Libby. Virtually all of its recommendations - which were strongly rejected by Scowcroft, Baker and Powell, who was then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - were codified last September by the younger Bush in the National Security Strategy (NSS). By the time he was appointed to office, Haass had become in some ways like a red flag to the neo-conservative bulls who were eager to put their 1992 strategy into practice, and were able to do so after the September 11 attacks. As director of the policy planning office, Haass continued to argue his positions. He opposed, for example, tightening sanctions against Iran early in the administration. Neo-conservative columnists, such as the New Republic's Lawrence Kaplan and The Weekly Standard's Marc Reuel Gerecht, attacked him as a "shill for big oil". His importance to Powell became clear after September 11 when he was made the State Department's point man on Afghanistan. In April 2002, Haass gave a major policy address on a new grand strategy that he said should aim to "integrate other countries and organizations into arrangements to sustain a world consistent with US interests and values". He called his approach "hard-headed multilateralism", stressing that, while Washington could and should lead, it could not do so without enduring allies. Within six months, the administration released its NSS document on grand strategy, and CFR had reportedly begun talking to Haass about changing jobs. It appears that nothing happened in the intervening months - including the road map for Middle East peace that Haass played a role in drafting - that persuaded him to stay on. In an interview reported in the New York Times on Thursday, Haass denied that he was leaving because he was discouraged. "Obviously, in this job you spend a lot of your time in debates," he said. "Of course, that isn't the reason I'm leaving. The reason I'm leaving is that this offer came along, and the opportunity to lead an organization with such tremendous influence is not something anyone would lightly pass up." Apparently, the State Department no longer fits that definition. (Inter Press Service)  No material from Asia Times Online may be republished in any form without written permission. Copyright 2003, Asia Times Online, 4305 Far East Finance Centre, 16 Harcourt Rd, Central, Hong Kong _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 2:38:46 PM