Thursday, June 26, 2003

Re: You Want to Watch This One Dear Friends: Several months back, we ran an article on arch-neo-conservative Michael Ledeen ("Who is Michael Ledeen", May 10, 2003). I remember thinking at the time what a frightening character he was, and one to keep an eye one. Well, he's back. Ledeen has very strong views that war and violence are integral parts of human nature. And when it comes to Iran, it's war he wants--a conviction that he is all too keen to share with George W. Bush's closest advisor. [As a service to our readers, we have reprinted the May 10 article on our web site: http:// www.warandpeacewatch.com. Please see the "Newsletter" section, containing the June 26, 2003 issue.] __________________________________ Asia Times June 26, 2003 Veteran Neo-con Advisor Moves on Iran by Jim Lobe WASHINGTON - When The Washington Post published a list of the people whom Karl Rove, President George W Bush's closest advisor, regularly consults for advice outside the administration, foreign policy veterans were shocked when Michael Ledeen popped up as the only full-time international affairs analyst. "The two met after Bush's election," the Post reported cheerfully, quoting Ledeen about Rove's request that "any time you have a good idea, tell me". "More than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas, faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric," noted the newspaper. "When I saw that, I couldn't believe it," said one retired senior diplomat. "But then again, with this administration, it seemed frighteningly plausible." Michael A Ledeen, resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he works closely with the better-known former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle, has been a fixture of Washington's neo-conservative community for more than 20 years. But he is now out front, in a public campaign for the United States to confront Iran, warning that Tehran will cause Washington problems in both Iraq and Afghanistan and that "the mullahs are determined to obliterate Israel". "We are now engaged in a regional struggle in the Middle East, and the Iranian tyrants are the keystone of the terror network," he wrote in Monday's Post. "Far more than the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the defeat of the mullahcracy and the triumph of freedom in Tehran would be a truly historic event and an enormous blow to the terrorists." Along with Morris Amitay, a former top lobbyist for the most powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Ledeen has already co-founded a new group, called the Coalition for Democracy in Iran (CDI), which is pressing Congress to approve a pending bill that would, among other things, provide some US$50 million in aid to both exile groups and opposition forces in Iran. To Ledeen, whose own contacts with the mullahs in the Iran-Contra affair 15 years ago remain the source of some mystery, Iran is "the mother of modern terrorism". And terrorism has been Ledeen's bread and butter since at least the late 1970s, when he consulted for Italian military intelligence, which in turn enabled him to expose Billy Carter's dealings with the Muammar Gaddafi regime in Libya to the great satisfaction of Republicans, who were revving up their campaign against Billy's brother, then president Jimmy Carter. Ledeen's right-wing Italian connections - including alleged ties to the P-2 Masonic Lodge that rocked Italy in the early 1980s - have long been a source of speculation and intrigue, but he returned to Washington in 1981 as "anti-terrorism" advisor to the new secretary of state, Al Haig. Over the next several years, Ledeen used his position as consultant to Haig, the Pentagon and the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan to boost the notion of a global terrorist conspiracy based in the Kremlin, whose KGB pulled the strings of all of the world's key terrorist groups, especially in the Middle East. He was a heavy promoter of the thesis that it was the KGB that was behind the 1981 attempted assassination by Turkish right-winger, Mehmet Ali Agca, of Pope John Paul II, a view he continues to expound today and which also helps explain his contempt for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), whose analysts never accepted the "Bulgarian Connection", as it was called. In the mid-1980s, when Ledeen was working for the National Security Council, he tangled with the CIA again over his efforts with Israeli spy David Kimche to gain the release of US hostages in Beirut through an Iranian arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar, in the opening stages of what would become the Iran-Contra affair. But Ghorbanifar did not come through. Despite Ledeen's assessment of the middleman as "one of the most honest, educated, honorable men I have ever known", he flunked four lie detector tests administered by the CIA, which had long warned that the Iranian "should be regarded as an intelligence fabricator and a nuisance". Undaunted and untouched by the Iran-Contra investigation, Ledeen recorded his experience in Perilous Statecraft: An Insider's Account of the Iran-Contra Affair, one of more than 10 books he has written on US foreign policy, de Tocqueville, Machiavelli and terrorism, the latest of which is titled The War Against the Terror Masters: Why It Happened. Where We Are Now. How We'll Win. Ledeen has been no less prolific in his organizational work, although, besides AEI - where he works with fellow foreign policy neo-cons Perle, former United Nations ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Joshua Muravchik and Reuel Marc Gerecht - his main institutional forum over the past 25 years has been the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs (JINSA), an activist group that promotes a strategic alliance between the United States and Israel. He has also served on the board of the US Committee for a Free Lebanon and has taken an organizing role in CDI. His co-founder there, Amitay, also works for JINSA. He is also close to key figures in the administration, particularly Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith, whose pro-Likud politics he largely shares; Vice President Dick Cheney's powerful chief of staff, I Lewis Libby; and Elliott Abrams, the director for the Near East on the National Security Council. To that list can now apparently be added Rove, who is as close to Bush as it is possible to get. Throughout his career, Ledeen has insisted that war and violence are integral parts of human nature and derided the notion that peace can be negotiated between two nations. He was a fierce opponent of the Oslo peace process. "I don't know of a case in history where peace has been accomplished in any way other than one side winning a war [and] imposing terms on the other side," he said two years ago. He also has expressed little faith in traditional US allies, notably in "Old Europe", which he spent much of the 1980s attacking for being insufficiently anti-Soviet. As Washington moved toward war in Iraq, for example, he even questioned whether France and Germany were in league with al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. "The Franco-German strategy was based on using Arab and Islamic extremism and terrorism as the weapon of choice, and the United Nations as the straitjacket for blocking a decisive response from the United States," he wrote, suggesting three weeks later, as the US offensive stalled on its way to Baghdad, that France and Germany be treated as "strategic enemies". For Ledeen, Iraq was only the beginning of the broader struggle against the "terror masters". "As soon as we land in Iraq, we're going to face the whole terrorist network," he told an interviewer in March. "Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia are the big four, and then there's Libya." "You can't solve all problems I grant that," he told the BBC. "I mean, I wrote a book about Machiavelli, and I know the struggle against evil is going to go forever." (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.) ============================================================ 6:12:57 PM

Re: William Gibson on Orwell    Dear Friends: Novelist William Gibson muses on George Orwell, 1984, and 2003. In our current information age, it is becoming unprecedentedly difficult for anyone to keep a secret. In the age of the leak, the blog, and of evidence extraction, truths will be outed.  In the end, we are all accountable, and by our works we will be known and judged. ________________________ The New York Times June 25, 2003 The Road to Oceania by William Gibson Vancouver, British Columbia Walking along Henrietta Street recently, by London's Covent Garden, looking for a restaurant, I found myself thinking of George Orwell. Victor Gollancz Ltd., publisher of Orwell's early work, had its offices there in 1984, when the company published my first novel, a novel of an imagined future. At the time, I felt I had lived most of my life under the looming shadow of that mythic year--Orwell having found his title by inverting the final digits of the year of his book's completion. It seemed very strange to actually be alive in 1984. In retrospect, I think it has seemed stranger even than living in the 21st century. I had a valuable secret in 1984, though, one I owed in large part to Orwell, who would have turned 100 today: I knew that the novel I had written wasn't really about the future, just as "1984" hadn't been about the future, but about 1948. I had relatively little anxiety about eventually finding myself in a society of the sort Orwell imagined. I had other fish to fry, in terms of history and anxiety, and indeed I still do. Today, on Henrietta Street, one sees the rectangular housings of closed-circuit television cameras, angled watchfully down from shop fronts. Orwell might have seen these as something out of Jeremy Bentham, the utilitarian philosopher, penal theorist and spiritual father of the panoptic project of surveillance. But for me they posed stranger possibilities, the street itself seeming to have evolved sensory apparatus in the service of some metaproject beyond any imagining of the closed-circuit system's designers. Orwell knew the power of the press, our first mass medium, and at the BBC he'd witnessed the first electronic medium (radio) as it was brought to bear on wartime public opinion. He died before broadcast television had fully come into its own, but had he lived I doubt that anything about it would have much surprised him. The media of "1984" are broadcast technology imagined in the service of a totalitarian state, and no different from the media of Saddam Hussein's Iraq or of North Korea today--technologically backward societies in which information is still mostly broadcast. Indeed, today, reliance on broadcasting is the very definition of a technologically backward society. Elsewhere, driven by the acceleration of computing power and connectivity and the simultaneous development of surveillance systems and tracking technologies, we are approaching a theoretical state of absolute informational transparency, one in which "Orwellian" scrutiny is no longer a strictly hierarchical, top-down activity, but to some extent a democratized one. As individuals steadily lose degrees of privacy, so, too, do corporations and states. Loss of traditional privacies may seem in the short term to be driven by issues of national security, but this may prove in time to have been intrinsic to the nature of ubiquitous information. Certain goals of the American government's Total (now Terrorist) Information Awareness initiative may eventually be realized simply by the evolution of the global information system--but not necessarily or exclusively for the benefit of the United States or any other government. This outcome may be an inevitable result of the migration to cyberspace of everything that we do with information. Had Orwell known that computers were coming (out of Bletchley Park, oddly, a dilapidated English country house, home to the pioneering efforts of Alan Turing and other wartime code-breakers) he might have imagined a Ministry of Truth empowered by punch cards and vacuum tubes to better wring the last vestiges of freedom from the population of Oceania. But I doubt his story would have been very different. (Would East Germany's Stasi have been saved if its agents had been able to mouse away on PC's into the 90's? The system still would have been crushed. It just wouldn't have been under the weight of paper surveillance files.) Orwell's projections come from the era of information broadcasting, and are not applicable to our own. Had Orwell been able to equip Big Brother with all the tools of artificial intelligence, he would still have been writing from an older paradigm, and the result could never have described our situation today, nor suggested where we might be heading. That our own biggish brothers, in the name of national security, draw from ever wider and increasingly transparent fields of data may disturb us, but this is something that corporations, nongovernmental organizations and individuals do as well, with greater and greater frequency. The collection and management of information, at every level, is exponentially empowered by the global nature of the system itself, a system unfettered by national boundaries or, increasingly, government control. It is becoming unprecedentedly difficult for anyone, anyone at all, to keep a secret. In the age of the leak and the blog, of evidence extraction and link discovery, truths will either out or be outed, later if not sooner. This is something I would bring to the attention of every diplomat, politician and corporate leader: the future, eventually, will find you out. The future, wielding unimaginable tools of transparency, will have its way with you. In the end, you will be seen to have done that which you did. I say "truths," however, and not "truth," as the other side of information's new ubiquity can look not so much transparent as outright crazy. Regardless of the number and power of the tools used to extract patterns from information, any sense of meaning depends on context, with interpretation coming along in support of one agenda or another. A world of informational transparency will necessarily be one of deliriously multiple viewpoints, shot through with misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories and a quotidian degree of madness. We may be able to see what's going on more quickly, but that doesn't mean we'll agree about it any more readily.  Orwell did the job he set out to do, did it forcefully and brilliantly, in the painstaking creation of our best-known dystopia. I've seen it said that because he chose to go there, as rigorously and fearlessly as he did, we don't have to. I like to think there's some truth in that. But the ground of history has a way of shifting the most basic of assumptions from beneath the most scrupulously imagined situations. Dystopias are no more real than utopias. None of us ever really inhabits either--except, in the case of dystopias, in the relative and ordinarily tragic sense of life in some extremely unfortunate place. This is not to say that Orwell failed in any way, but rather that he succeeded. "1984" remains one of the quickest and most succinct routes to the core realities of 1948. If you wish to know an era, study its most lucid nightmares. In the mirrors of our darkest fears, much will be revealed. But don't mistake those mirrors for road maps to the future, or even to the present. We've missed the train to Oceania, and live today with stranger problems. --William Gibson is author of the novels "Neuromancer" and, most recently, "Pattern Recognition." Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company _______________________________ 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.) ============================= 6:12:32 PM

Re: The Trailers of Doom        Dear Friends: Well, so much for the trailers of doom. Whistle-blowers and people of conscience continue to come forth to tell the truth about what we really knew, who knew, and when they knew. _______________________________ The New York Times June 26, 2003 Agency Disputes C.I.A. View of Trailers as Iraqi Weapons Labs by Douglas Jehl   WASHINGTON, June 25--The State Department's intelligence division is disputing the Central Intelligence Agency's conclusion that mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making biological weapons, United States government officials said today. In a classified June 2 memorandum, the officials said, the department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research said it was premature to conclude that the trailers were evidence of an Iraqi biological weapons program, as President Bush has done. The disclosure of the memorandum is the clearest sign yet of disagreement between intelligence agencies over the assertion, which was produced jointly by the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency and made public on May 28 on the C.I.A. Web site. Officials said the C.I.A. and D.I.A. did not consult with other intelligence agencies before issuing the report. The report on the trailers was initially prepared for the White House, and Mr. Bush has cited it as proof that Iraq indeed had a biological weapons program, as the United States has repeatedly alleged, although it has yet to produce any other conclusive evidence. In an interview with Polish television on May 30, Mr. Bush cited the trailers as evidence that the United States had "found the weapons of mass destruction" it was looking for. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell echoed that assessment in a public statement the next day, saying that the accuracy of prewar assessments linking Iraqi trailers to a biological weapons program had been borne out by the discovery. Some intelligence analysts had previously disputed the C.I.A. report, but it had not been known that the C.I.A. report did not reflect an interagency consensus or that any intelligence agency had later objected to its finding. The State Department bureau raised its objections in a memorandum to Mr. Powell, according to Congressional officials. They said the memorandum was cast as a dissent to the C.I.A. report, and that it said that the evidence found to date did not justify the conclusion that the trailers could have had no other purpose than for use as mobile weapons laboratories. The State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, said tonight: "I'm not in a position to comment on reports of classified memorandum from our intelligence folks." But a State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity said: "We do rely on I&R for their best judgment on things, but when you weigh in all the factors, the C.I.A. and D.I.A. folks are the ones who have been out there, and their conclusion was that these trailers were mobile labs." An administration official sympathetic to Mr. Powell said the memo put him in an uncomfortable position, but would not characterize Mr. Powell's view of its findings. The reasons cited in the State Department memorandum to justify its dissent could not be learned. But in interviews earlier this month in Washington and the Middle East, American and British analysts with direct access to the evidence also disputed the C.I.A.'s claims, saying that the mobile units were more likely intended for other purposes and that the evaluation process had been damaged by a rush to judgment. Administration officials said one argument made in the State Department report was that each of the two trailers and one laboratory discovered by the United States in Iraq could constitute only part of what the C.I.A. report said it believed had been two- or three-trailer systems necessary for the manufacture of chemical weapons. The missing trailers have not been found. Among the alternative purposes for the trailers that the State Department report described as plausible were that they had been intended for the refueling of Iraqi missiles, one administration official said. The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research is a small but important agency in the intelligence community. Its principal purpose is to provide the Secretary of State and his top advisers with intelligence analysis independent of other agencies, but it also has a voice in the drafting of national intelligence estimates and other documents that are supposed to reflect the consensus of the intelligence community. The fact that the C.I.A. and the D.I.A. did not consult with other agencies in producing the so-called white paper reflects a rare but not unknown approach, officials from the intelligence agencies and Congress said. The government's intelligence apparatus spans more than a dozen agencies, and officials usually try to reach consensus before making their findings public. The exclusion of the State Department's intelligence bureau and other agencies seemed unusual, several government officials said, because of the high-profile subject. Administration officials said the State Department agency was given no warning that the C.I.A. report was being produced, or made public. A C.I.A. official defended the process by which the agency reached its conclusion, saying that the C.I.A. and the D.I.A. were most intimately familiar with the physical evidence and human intelligence related to the trailers, and were thus most qualified to issue public findings. But a Defense Department official acknowledged today that some analysts in the D.I.A. in Iraq had also objected to the conclusions. The C.I.A. has said that its initial information about the use of mobile trailers as biological weapons laboratories came from a former Iraqi scientist, and that the discovery of the trailers appeared to have confirmed intelligence that he provided. "We didn't shop that paper around because we were the ones who were most knowledgeable about it," the C.I.A. official said. "We were the ones who knew from a former Iraqi scientist what to expect, and we didn't have to ask a handful of people in small agencies." But administration officials sympathetic to the State Department said that the department's intelligence bureau felt it had been deliberately shut out of the process. The intelligence bureau has been more skeptical than the C.I.A. and D.I.A. on matters related to Iraq's suspected illicit weapons program and its ties to terrorism. An intelligence official sympathetic to the C.I.A. view said the State Department intelligence bureau's skepticism had been well known and that seeking its input on the report would have served no useful purpose. The C.I.A. official said the State Department document was an internal memorandum and that it had not been read by George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, or other officials at the agency. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company ________________________________ 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.) ============================================================ 6:12:06 PM

Re: Expert Pressured to Distort Evidence Dear Friends: When the Watergate scandal was breaking years ago, it took the continuous drip-drip-dripping of articles by The Washington Post to keep the story of "a third-rate burglary" in the news, ultimately resulting in the exposing of a corrupt president, his administration, and a major regime change. Today's times are not much different, except that America has become even more complacent, "refusing to be bothered" by "things it can do nothing about." And so, we at the War and Peace Watch continue to put forth articles about the non-existence of WMD, misused faulty intelligence, and analysts who were pressured into bending the truth to serve their masters. I hope that you too are adding to this constant dripping in your own way, so that we may wear away the false facade of the Bush administration, the neo-cons, and their shadowy right-wing think tanks, and let the light back in. _________________________ The New York Times June 25, 2003 Expert Said to Tell Legislators He Was Pressed to Distort Some Evidence by James Risen and Douglas Jehl   WASHINGTON, June 24--A top State Department expert on chemical and biological weapons told Congressional committees in closed-door hearings last week that he had been pressed to tailor his analysis on Iraq and other matters to conform with the Bush administration's views, several Congressional officials said today. The officials described what they said was a dramatic moment at a House Intelligence Committee hearing last week when the weapons expert came forward to tell Congress he had felt such pressure. By speaking out, they said, the senior intelligence expert, identified by several officials as Christian Westermann, became the first member of the intelligence community on active service to make this sort of admission to members of Congress. The House Intelligence Committee was examining questions concerning the Bush administration's handling of prewar reports on evidence that Iraq had illegal weapons and ties to terrorist groups. Mr. Westermann, officials said, is an analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, a small but important office at the State Department that is intended to provide the secretary of state with intelligence analysis independent of the C.I.A. and other agencies. Mr. Westermann told lawmakers last week that while he felt pressure, he never actually changed the wording of any of his intelligence reports. He did not immediately provide lawmakers with details about his complaints, and it remains uncertain the degree to which his concerns related to Iraq or other regional issues. Administration officials said his most specific complaints concerned issues related to intelligence on Cuba, and he has not yet provided similar specific complaints about the handling of intelligence on Iraq. Mr. Westermann, who is in his mid-40's, has worked as a State Department expert on unconventional weapons for the last several years and is viewed within the department as a careful and respected analyst of intelligence. An administration official said he had served previously as a Navy officer and had not worked for the C.I.A. or other intelligence agencies. Mr. Westermann's decision to speak out has caused a stir inside the House and Senate intelligence committees, even though he did not go into details and indicated he was not comfortable doing so in front of the large group of officials around him in the House hearing. But he said he was prepared to discuss the matter further. In a second hearing last week with the Senate Intelligence Committee, he made it clear that he had felt pressure from John Bolton, the under secretary of state for arms control and international security, that originally dated to a clash the two had over Mr. Bolton's public assertions last year that Cuba had a biological weapons program. Mr. Westermann argued those assertions were not supported by sufficient intelligence. Mr. Bolton declined to comment on the matter. Mr. Westermann also declined to comment. The State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, said tonight, "We don't comment on closed hearings, but I can tell you that the secretary and deputy secretary have full confidence in John Bolton." A number of analysts at the C.I.A. and other agencies have privately complained over the past few months that they felt pressure from administration officials to write reports that they believe overstated evidence that Iraq had illegal weapons programs and terrorist links. Mr. Westermann was one of a large group of officials from several intelligence agencies who had been summoned to appear at the opening session of the House intelligence panel's review on Iraq last week. Addressing the group, Representative Silvestro Reyes, a Texas Democrat, asked whether any of them had felt political pressure in the development of their intelligence reports, which are supposed to be objective. All of the intelligence officials remained silent - except for Mr. Westermann. Staff members from the House and Senate committees have begun to pursue the matter in greater detail with him, Congressional officials said. Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat and a ranking member on the House panel, declined to discuss the matter. A spokesman for Mr. Reyes, Kira Maas, said, "The congressman does not comment on closed hearing information." The failure of the United States to find evidence of Iraq's weapons programs or its links to Al Qaeda has raised questions about whether the administration overstated the threat posed by Baghdad as it made the case for going to war. Both the House and Senate intelligence committees have begun investigations into the matter, and the C.I.A. has begun an internal review of its prewar intelligence reports. Pressure to politicize intelligence is often subtle and extremely difficult to corroborate or quantify. A number of analysts have said that the pressure they felt came in the form of intensive questioning from senior administration officials, particularly about reports that concluded that there was little evidence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. A number of analysts have suggested that they felt less direct pressure on reports concerning the status of Iraq's unconventional weapons, but were angered that senior Bush administration officials selectively disclosed classified intelligence reports that supported the worst-case scenario concerning Iraq's weapons programs, making it seem as if there was an imminent threat to the United States. The analysts believe that in some cases, White House and Pentagon officials made public statements about Iraq's weapons based on intelligence that was far from definitive. An administration official said that Mr. Westermann had clashed repeatedly with Mr. Bolton. A State Department official sympathetic to Mr. Bolton's views said of Mr. Westermann, "He doesn't have anything that he can point to, and he doesn't have anything more recent than Cuba." That official added, "We're in a period where people are looking for particular evidence of intelligence being altered, and he's talking about mood swings." But other administration officials said there had been ongoing tensions between the two since the Cuban issue first came up, to the point that Mr. Bolton has unsuccessfully sought to have Mr. Westermann reassigned. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company _______________________________ 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.) ============================================================ 6:11:33 PM

Re: Big Brother is Watching You Dear Friends: One hundred years ago today, George Orwell was born. His dark vision of the future, portrayed in his 1984, is chilling, and closer than we might think. "On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran." How similar in design to the Air Force's Eagle Eyes anti-terrorist program and the Department of Defense's new database of "suspicious" characters. Are you on the list? Are you sure? _________________________ Wired News June 25, 2003 DoD Logging Unverified Tips  by Brian McWilliams   To track domestic terrorist threats against the military, the Pentagon is creating a new database that will contain "raw, non-validated" reports of "anomalous activities" within the United States. According to a Department of Defense memorandum, the system, known as Talon, will provide a mechanism to collect and rapidly share reports "by concerned citizens and military members regarding suspicious incidents." Talon was described in a May 2 memorandum to top Pentagon brass from Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. In the memo, Wolfowitz directed the heads of military departments and agencies to begin producing Talon reports immediately. A similar reporting system proposed by Attorney General John Ashcroft was shelved last year following opposition from privacy groups and others. Known as Operation TIPS, the Department of Justice system was intended to enlist civilian workers nationwide to report possible terrorist activity. The Talon antiterrorism database was first reported by Kitetoa, a French security site. An anonymous source, who said he obtained a copy of the Talon memo from a website operated by the Department of Defense, provided Wired News with access to a copy marked "official use only." Ken McLellan, a Department of Defense spokesman, said the document "certainly looked authentic," but he declined to discuss the contents of the memo or the potential intrusion into DISA's network. McLellan said the agency was investigating the matter. According to Peter S. Probst, a former Pentagon terrorism expert, the Talon program is necessary to protect DoD property and personnel. "It would be derelict not to keep track of anomalous incidents. This is just common sense," said Probst, currently a Virginia-based terrorism consultant and program director for the Institute for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence. In the memo, Wolfowitz instructs DoD personnel to report -- "in accordance with existing policy and law" -- suspicious activities, including surveillance of DoD facilities, tests of security and "elicitation" attempts that suggest intelligence gathering. The memo acknowledged that Talon reports may be "fragmented and incomplete," but that "rapid reporting" is the goal of the system, which is not designed to replace the DoD's formal intelligence reporting process. Lee Tien, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online rights group, said Talon raises many of the same questions as those that plagued the unsuccessful Operation TIPs. "What is the value in accelerating the speed of the rumor mill?" said Tien. "You have a wealth of really weak data that ends up percolating its way through the system. How will they ensure that there's no opportunity for people's dossiers to become tainted?" It was not clear from the memo whether Talon reports would become part of the Pentagon's controversial Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) program, or whether the data would be shared with other government agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security. According to the Wolfowitz memo, reports of potential threats are to be sent to the DoD's Counterintelligence Field Activity office using "automated information systems or via e-mail attachment." The CIFA will be responsible for incorporating the information into a database that will be accessed by DoD organizations, including the Defense Intelligence Agency and Joint Intelligence Task Force Combating Terrorism, according to the report. The Talon system appears to have grown out of Eagle Eyes, an antiterrorism project developed by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Launched in April 2002, Eagle Eyes is a neighborhood watch-type program that "enlists the eyes and ears of Air Force members and citizens in the war on terror," according to the OSI website. Since hijackers crashed an American Airlines jet into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, no reports have been published of terrorist attacks within the United States on military personnel or facilities. However, the DoD regularly experiences "a high volume of probes, casing, and surveillance" from potential terrorists in the United States, according to Probst. Wired News: Staff © Copyright 2003, Lycos, Inc. All Rights Reserved. _______________________________ 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.) ============================================================ 6:11:10 PM

Re: The Arsenal of Truth Dear Friends: Harvey Wasserman, senior advisor to Greenpeace USA, and senior editor of The Free Press, is truly a kindred spirit. He writes: "The Bush assault is foundering on the shoals of Truth. The Republicans have seized control of the American judicial, legislative and executive branches. Their immensely effective corporate mass media misinforms, misleads and manipulates. They control the world's most powerful army, and are glad to use it without provocation. Their goal is to shock and awe the opposition into extinction....But history teaches that, ultimately, Truth is more powerful than image: All the people can't be fooled all the time." _____________________ The Free Press June 18, 2003 Truth is the Weapon of Bush's Self-destruction: the Superpower of Peace Has the Ultimate Force June 18, 2003 "If we look at history, we find that in time, humanity's love of peace, justice and freedom always triumphs over cruelty and oppression...."--The 14th Dalai Lama   "The Truth shall set you free."--Jesus Christ The Bush assault is foundering on the shoals of Truth. The Republicans have seized control of the American judicial, legislative and executive branches. Their immensely effective corporate mass media misinforms, misleads and manipulates. They control the world's most powerful army, and are glad to use it without provocation. Having stolen the election of 2000, Bush's minions are rigging America's voting machines and erasing countless suspected Democrats from voter rolls nationwide. Their goal is to shock and awe the opposition into extinction. If "image is everything," Bush sits atop a dictatorial fortress, not likely to fall soon. But history teaches that, ultimately, Truth is more powerful than image: All the people can't be fooled all the time. Globally, George W. Bush has become history's most hated US president. After being gifted near-total support by Osama bin Laden, Bush has sunk to unprecedented scorn. In the global village, American's unelected chief is under quarantine. Why? Because outside the United States, the Truth is being told. The world media and the internet seethe with serious reporting and outrage against escalating deceit. In the US, the corporate media has polluted the information flow. So we are compelled, more than ever, to compile and refute the lies, and to spread their antidote far and wide. Our arsenal of Truth includes: SADDAM'S WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION: Obviously, if he had them, he would have used them. It took years for the lies about the Vietnamese non-attack at Tonkin Gulf to unravel; it's taken mere days to establish that Bush blatantly lied in no less a venue than the State of the Union. Who will believe him next time? SADDAM'S NUKES: He had none, and Colin Powell lied to the United Nations and the world based on undergraduate forgeries. Who will believe him next time? BOGUS INTELLIGENCE: The Republicans forced intelligence operatives to sacrifice their credibility to provide a pretext for war. Who will believe them next time? THE REAL REASONS FOR WAR: Bush used terrorism, WMDs and (incredibly) human rights as pretexts for war in Iraq and Afghanistan; but everything since has confirmed what the world knew all along: it's about oil and the pipelines to carry it, with some Christian fanaticism thrown in; SPINNING PRIVATE LYNCH: This contrived mocku-drama, complete with threats from the Pentagon against reporters (such as Robert Scheer of the Los Angeles Times) who document what really happened, was in fact a tale of Iraqi bravery and compassion. TOP GUN: Bush's handlers blew a million taxpayer dollars to spin an aircraft carrier so Bush could play Tom Cruise. That jump suit now symbolizes chickenhawk hypocrisy. AN AWOL WAR RECORD: Bush deserted his cushy National Guard unit, then joked that raising twins was harder than being in combat, which he never saw; MISSION ACCOMPLISHED?: Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq has been liberated or conquered; the "dancing in the streets" promised by the wars' perpetrators has become a desert Vietnam, where locals and Americans continue to die; SEPTEMBER 11: The terrorist attacks occurred while George W. Bush was officially responsible for protecting the American people; his bitter fight against a full Congressional investigation belies something very serious to hide. FLAUNTING TRAGEDY: To the horror of many 9/11 victims' families, Bush has manipulated the terrorist attacks into what he called a personal political "trifecta," desecrating the sacrifice of 3,000 innocent civilians; ATTACKING THE HEROES: While praising police and firefighter heroes, Bush slashed their benefits and attacked their (and other) unions; ATTACKING THE VETERANS: On the brink of the Iraq attack, the Republicans slashed veterans benefits by nearly $30 billion; HOMELAND SECURITY: To fund tax cuts for the rich, the security of America's ports, airports and borders has been compromised, and they may be less safe than before 9/11. INTERNAL SECURITY: Using 9/11 as pretext, Bush has shredded the Bill of Rights, with no gain for public safety, but creating a powerful weapon against his opponents; OFFICIAL SECRECY: Bush is the most secretive US president ever; his relentless campaign against open government belies much to hide; HOME OF THE FREE: While claiming to spread "American freedom," Bush keeps two million citizens in jail, a quarter of all the world's prisoners, forty percent of them held on victimless drug charges; GUANTANAMO: While claiming to spread "American freedom," Bush has established a concentration camp on conquered land where human rights are shredded in contempt for global treaties, and where a death chamber may soon be added; THE TAX CUT: Selling a handout to the rich as a stimulus package, and lying about its true cost, Bush surreptitiously doomed the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs that have been the backbone of American social democracy; JOBS JOBS JOBS: Bush's mantra about job creation has proved a hollow lie as the economy continues to slide, with Hooveresque joblessness and homelessness soaring in traditional Republican style; LIMITED GOVERNMENT: While campaigning against "big government" Bush has pushed official spying into every corner of American private life, including reproductive rights and our ability to choose what to smoke and whom to marry; in fact Bush supports limiting the government's power only when it comes to regulating his corporate cronies; AN AMERICAN THEOCRACY?: Empowered by the hellish marriage of corporate power with right-wing Christian fundamentalism, separation of Church and state has disappeared in a global "Crusade" that uses taxpayer money to support reactionary churches and the concept of an American Ayatollah; ARMAGEDDON OVERDUE?: Bush's foreign policy , especially in the Middle East, features a psychotic sectarian belief in an "end of days" scenario where a chosen few with a peculiar view of Christ ascend to a very private Heaven, leaving the rest of us to burn; STATES RIGHTS: While arguing for states rights, Bush sends federal troops to arrest harmless pot smokers in states that have legalized medical marijuana; THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT: While endorsing a wide range of government functions (like providing security), Bush really supports just three: funding the military, subsidizing client corporations, and suppressing opposition; A FREE MARKET ECONOMY: While mouthing the platitudes of Adam Smith, Bush demands huge bailouts for nuclear power and the other obsolete, polluting industries that fund his campaigns; EDUCATION: While claiming to support education, Bush is robbing Head Start to fund further tax cuts for his fellow rich; PERSONAL FINANCES: Bush's road to financial wealth is littered with Enron-style insider trading, especially at Harken Energy and the Texas Rangers, which have avoided media scrutiny while making Martha Stewart seem a piker; A POPULAR PRESIDENT?: Bush lost the 2000 election by 500,000 votes and his approval ratings regularly sag between crises, but the corporate media grovels over his alleged "popularity" while refusing to pursue anything that would seriously damage him; AN AFFABLE PRESIDENT: Bush's good-ol-boy veneer hides the meanness of spirit and coarse ruthlessness essential to a corporate-fundamentalist attack on civil society; TEFLON PRESIDENT?: Like Ronald Reagan (and unlike Bill Clinton) the media refusal to pursue damaging (and felonious) presidential misdeeds guarantees Bush a free ride. Or does it? Bush's litany of lies grows daily. In the short term, they demoralize the opposition. The mainstream media does its part by dismissing those abundant, articulate critics who don't, like Paul Wellstone, conveniently wind up dead. But in a world that demands non-violent resistance, there is no alternative to perseverance, and no greater weapon than an adversary's own lies. It took a world war and forty million deaths to rid the world of the Nazi plague. Thus far Bush has killed thousands to conquer Afghanistan and Iraq, and shows no compunction about killing more. His environmental and other policies have doomed millions worldwide, and threaten the life support systems on which we all depend. But the Superpower of Truth can number his days. It's been said a lie can circle the globe before Truth gets its boots on. But once shod, Truth and only Truth can crush tyrants, kick down prison doors and walk the world back into the sunshine of freedom. Bush himself has handed an organized, focused and optimistic Superpower of Peace the tools it needs to get stomping. So let's roll. --Harvey Wasserman is senior editor of www.freepress.org and author of THE LAST ENERGY WAR (Seven Stories Press). He helped start the No Nukes movement against atomic power. _______________________________ 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.) ============================================================ 6:10:39 PM

Re: Remarks by Senator Robert Byrd Dear Friends: Once again, the honorable Senator Robert Byrd has eloquently hit the nail on the head. In his latest remarks, addressed to the president, he expresses concern about the looming crisis of trust in America. The people have questions that need to be answered about why we went to war with Iraq.  To attempt to deny the relevance of these questions is to trivialize the people's trust. To the administration he counsels: do not circle the wagons.  Do not discourage the seeking of truth in these matters. Congress has the obligation to investigate the use of intelligence information by the Administration, in the open, so that the American people can see that those who exercise power, especially the awesome power of preemptive war, must be held accountable.  We must not go down the road of cover-up.  That is the road to ruin. [Note: You may re-visit this article, and others from the newsletter, at our web site www.warandpeacewatch.com] __________________________ June 24, 2003 Remarks by U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd   "The Road to Coverup Is the Road to Ruin" Remarks by U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd     Mr. President, last fall, the White House released a national security strategy that called for an end to the doctrines of deterrence and containment that have been a hallmark of American foreign policy for more than half a century. This new national security strategy is based upon pre-emptive war against those who might threaten our security. Such a strategy of striking first against possible dangers is heavily reliant upon  interpretation of accurate and timely intelligence.  If we are going to hit first, based on perceived dangers, the perceptions had better be accurate.  If our intelligence is faulty, we may launch pre-emptive wars against countries that do not pose a real threat against us.  Or we may overlook countries that do pose real threats to our security, allowing us no chance to pursue diplomatic solutions to stop a crisis before it escalates to war.  In either case lives could be needlessly lost.  In other words, we had better be certain that we can discern the imminent threats from the false alarms.  Ninety-six days ago [as of June 24], President Bush announced that he had initiated a war to "disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger."  The President told the world: "Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly -- yet, our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder." [Address to the Nation, 3/19/03] The President has since announced that major combat operations concluded on May 1. He said: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.  In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."  Since then, the United States has been recognized by the international community as the occupying power in Iraq.  And yet, we have not found any evidence that would confirm the officially stated reason that our country was sent to war; namely, that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction constituted a grave threat to the United States. We have heard a lot about revisionist history from the White House of late in answer to those who question whether there was a real threat from Iraq. But, it is the President who appears to me to be intent on revising history.   There is an abundance of clear and unmistakable evidence that the Administration sought to portray Iraq as a direct and deadly threat to the American people.  But there is a great difference between the hand-picked intelligence that was presented by the Administration to Congress and the American people when compared against what we have actually discovered in Iraq.  This Congress and the people who sent us here are entitled to an explanation from the Administration. On January 28, 2003, President Bush said in his State of the Union Address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."  [State of the Union, 1/28/03, pg. 7] Yet, according to news reports, the CIA knew that this claim was false as early as March 2002.  In addition, the International Atomic Energy Agency has since discredited this allegation. On February 5, Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations Security Council: "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent.  That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets."  [Remarks to UN Security Council, 2/5/03, pg. 12] The truth is, to date we have not found any of this material, nor those thousands of rockets loaded with chemical weapons.   On February 8, President Bush told the nation: "We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons  the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."  [Radio Address, 2/8/03] Mr. President, we are all relieved that such weapons were not used, but it has not yet been explained why the Iraqi army did not use them.  Did the Iraqi army flee their positions before chemical weapons could be used? If so, why were the weapons not left behind?  Or is it that the army was never issued chemical weapons?  We need answers. On March 16, the Sunday before the war began, in an interview with Tim Russert, Vice President Cheney said that Iraqis want "to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that."  He added, "...the vast majority of them would turn [Saddam Hussein] in in a minute if, in fact, they thought they could do so safely."  [Meet the Press, 3/16/03, pg. 6]  But in fact, Mr. President, today Iraqi cities remain in disorder, our troops are under attack, our occupation government lives and works in fortified compounds, and we are still trying to determine the fate of the ousted, murderous dictator. On March 30, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, during the height of the war, said of the search for weapons of mass destruction: "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat." [This Week, 3/30/03, pg. 8] But Baghdad fell to our troops on April 9, and Tikrit on April 14, and the intelligence Secretary Rumsfeld spoke about has not led us to any weapons of mass destruction. Whether or not intelligence reports were bent, stretched, or massaged to make Iraq look like an imminent threat to the United States, it is clear that the Administration's rhetoric played upon the well-founded fear of the American public about future acts of terrorism.  But, upon close examination, many of these statements have nothing to do with intelligence, because they are at root just sound bites based on conjecture.  They are designed to prey on public fear. The face of Osama bin Laden morphed into that of Saddam Hussein.  President Bush carefully blurred these images in his State of the Union Address. Listen to this quote from his State of the Union Address: "Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans  this time armed by Saddam Hussein.  It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known."  [State of the Union, 1/28/03, pg 7] Judging by this speech, not only is the President confusing al Qaeda and Iraq, but he also appears to give a vote of no-confidence to our homeland security efforts.  Isn't the White House, the brains behind the Department of Homeland Security?  Isn't the Administration supposed to be stopping those vials, canisters, and crates from entering our country, rather than trying to scare our fellow citizens half to death about them? Not only did the Administration warn about more hijackers carrying deadly chemicals, the White House even went so far as to suggest that the time it would take for U.N. inspectors to find solid, 'smoking gun' evidence of Saddam's illegal weapons would put the U.S. at greater risk of a nuclear attack from Iraq.  National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice was quoted as saying on September 9, 2002, by the Los Angeles Times, "We don't want the 'smoking gun' to be a mushroom cloud."  [Los Angeles Times, "Threat by Iraq Grows, U.S. Says," 9/9/02] Talk about hype!  Mushroom clouds?  Where is the evidence for this?  There isn't any. On September 26, 2002, just two weeks before Congress voted on a resolution to allow the President to invade Iraq, and six weeks before the mid-term elections, President Bush himself built the case that Iraq was plotting to attack the United States.  After meeting with members of Congress on that date, the President said: "The danger to our country is grave.  The danger to our country is growing.  The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons.... The regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material, could build one within a year." These are the President's words.  He said that Saddam Hussein is "seeking a nuclear bomb."  Have we found any evidence to date of this chilling allegation? No.  But, President Bush continued on that autumn day:  "The dangers we face will only worsen from month to month and from year to year.  To ignore these threats is to encourage them.  And when they have fully materialized it may be too late to protect ourselves and our friends and our allies.  By then the Iraqi dictator would have the means to terrorize and dominate the region.  Each passing day could be the one on which the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX--nerve gas--or some day a nuclear weapon to a terrorist ally." [Rose Garden Remarks, 9/26/02] And yet, seven weeks after declaring victory in the war against Iraq, we have seen nary a shred of evidence to support his claims of grave dangers, chemical weapons, links to al Qaeda, or nuclear weapons. Just days before a vote on a resolution that handed the President unprecedented war powers, President Bush stepped up the scare tactics.  On October 7, just four days before the October 11 vote in the Senate on the war resolution, the President stated: "We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy--the United States of America.  We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade."  President Bush continued: "We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gasses.... Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints." President Bush also elaborated on claims of Iraq's nuclear program when he said: "The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.  Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his 'nuclear mujahideen'--his nuclear holy warriors.... If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year." [Cincinnati Museum Center, 10/7/02, pg. 3-4] This is the kind of pumped up intelligence and outrageous rhetoric that were given to the American people to justify war with Iraq.  This is the same kind of hyped evidence that was given to Congress to sway its vote for war on October 11, 2002.  We hear some voices say, but why should we care?  After all, the United States won the war, didn't it?  Saddam Hussein is no more; he is either dead or on the run.  What does it matter if reality does not reveal the same grim picture that was so carefully painted before the war?  So what if the menacing characterizations that conjured up visions of mushroom clouds and American cities threatened with deadly germs and chemicals were overdone? So what? Mr. President, our sons and daughters who serve in uniform answered a call to duty.  They were sent to the hot sands of the Middle East to fight in a war that has already cost the lives of 194 Americans, thousands of innocent civilians, and unknown numbers of Iraqi soldiers.  Our troops are still at risk.  Hardly a day goes by that there is not another attack on the troops who are trying to restore order to a country teetering on the brink of anarchy.  When are they coming home? The President told the American people that we were compelled to go to war to secure our country from a grave threat.  Are we any safer today than we were on March 18, 2003?  Our nation has been committed to rebuilding a country ravaged by war and tyranny, and the cost of that task is being paid in blood and treasure every day.  It is in the compelling national interest to examine what we were told about the threat from Iraq.  It is in the compelling national interest to know if the intelligence was faulty.  It is in the compelling national interest to know if the intelligence was distorted.  Mr. President, Congress must face this issue squarely.  Congress should begin immediately an investigation into the intelligence that was presented to the American people about the pre-war estimates of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and the way in which that intelligence might have been misused.  This is no time for a timid Congress. We have a responsibility to act in the national interest and protect the American people.  We must get to the bottom of this matter. Although some timorous steps have been taken in the past few days to begin a review of this intelligence--I must watch my terms carefully, for I may be tempted to use the words "investigation" or "inquiry" to describe this review, and those are terms which I am told are not supposed to be used--the proposed measures appear to fall short of what the situation requires.  We are already shading our terms about how to describe the proposed review of intelligence: cherry-picking words to give the American people the impression that the government is fully in control of the situation, and that there is no reason to ask tough questions.  This is the same problem that got us into this controversy about slanted intelligence reports.  Word games.  Lots and lots of word games. Well, Mr. President, this is no game.  For the first time in our history, the United States has gone to war because of intelligence reports claiming that a country posed a threat to our nation.  Congress should not be content to use standard operating procedures to look into this extraordinary matter.  We should accept no substitute for a full, bipartisan investigation by Congress into the issue of our pre-war intelligence on the threat from Iraq and its use. The purpose of such an investigation is not to play pre-election year politics, nor is it to engage in what some might call "revisionist history."  Rather it is to get at the truth.  The longer questions are allowed to fester about what our intelligence knew about Iraq, and when they knew it, the greater the risk that the people--the American people whom we are elected to serve--will lose confidence in our government.  This looming crisis of trust is not limited to the public.  Many of my colleagues were willing to trust the Administration and vote to authorize war against Iraq.  Many members of this body trusted so much that they gave the President sweeping authority to commence war.  As President Reagan famously said, "Trust, but verify."  Despite my opposition, the Senate voted to blindly trust the President with unprecedented power to declare war.  While the reconstruction continues, so do the questions, and it is time to verify. I have served the people of West Virginia in Congress for half a century. I have witnessed deceit and scandal, cover up and aftermath.  I have seen Presidents of both parties who once enjoyed great popularity among the people leave office in disgrace because they misled the American people.  I say to this Administration: do not circle the wagons.  Do not discourage the seeking of truth in these matters. Mr. President, the American people have questions that need to be answered about why we went to war with Iraq.  To attempt to deny the relevance of these questions is to trivialize the people's trust.    The business of intelligence is secretive by necessity, but our government is open by design.  We must be straight with the American people.  Congress has the obligation to investigate the use of intelligence information by the Administration, in the open, so that the American people can see that those who exercise power, especially the awesome power of preemptive war, must be held accountable.  We must not go down the road of cover-up.  That is the road to ruin. _______________________________ 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.) ===================================== 6:10:19 PM

Re: Bush Credibility Gap Dear Friends: Sometimes more is less. In the debunking of Bush--preferably by a long, painful, and embarrassing impeachment--we may accomplish more by doing less. Bush, if his unvarnished statements were publicized, and if the word got out, and was read by others, could easily be his own undoing. The key words here are "if the word got out" and "was read by others". So,whatever your political persuasion might be, if you love your country and don't want to see it, along with the Bill of Rights, further violated, and if you truly seek regime change at home, be sure you get the word out to others. You are powerful--use that power to accomplish your desires. ___________________________ The Christian Science Monitor June 24, 2003 Bush Credibility Gap - a Slow, Quiet Crumble By Dante Chinni WASHINGTON - President Bush is not really an "issue guy." He never has been and probably never will be. As CEO of America Inc. - an image he likes to sell - he isn't one to get bogged down in minutiae. He's content to let an army of wonks go about their wonkery while he sits in the big office and oversees the big picture. And for 2-1/2 years this model had served him well. People don't necessarily trust that George W. Bush knows and understands the workings of the EPA or the FCC or the Treasury, but they trust him to oversee it all fairly and honestly. This was, in fact, one of the primary reasons he won the presidency in the first place, in that unbelievably close election in 2000. Many voters thought that former Vice President Al Gore, a member of troubled administration, had trouble telling the truth. Mr. Gore might have been more experienced and more knowledgeable about the workings of government, but Mr. Bush resonated with people as a down-to-earth guy they could trust. In the past few weeks some questions have begun to arise about just how candid this White House is being in a variety of areas. The accusations aren't really of lying, per se, but rather they center on this administration's ability to give people the entire truth, the full picture of reality. Slowly and quietly, a credibility gap is opening, and this White House needs to be careful. If not, the gap may open wide enough to swallow up Bush's high poll numbers. The highest-profile case concerns Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Not long ago these weapons were called the principal reason the United States went to war. Now, as days go by without any revelatory discoveries in Iraq, even members of the administration are backing away from talk of their existence. Congress has begun closed-door hearings into whether the intelligence given to the White House was shaded to let the administration hear what it wanted. Last week, at a Monitor breakfast, former Congressman Lee Hamilton, himself once chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the intelligence reports he saw were almost always ambiguous and in this case the intelligence gathered was "probably used selectively." The question, of course, is by whom and at what level of command. In the area of tax cuts, one of the president's favorites, the $350 billion cut designed to bring relief to "everyone who pays income taxes," will in fact give cuts to the vast majority of Americans - if not actually all of them. But according to an analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, the plan will give half of all taxpayers a cut of less than $100. That may be "tax relief," but if most Americans knew how little "relief" they were going to be in line for, it's hardly likely they would have backed this sweeping set of cuts. And last week, The New York Times reported that a soon-to-be-released environmental report from the EPA was edited by the White House so that an entire section on global warming is whittled down to just a few paragraphs. The White House struck sections about the possible human effects on global warming and a study that showed sharp increases in temperature over the past decade. They, instead, added a reference to a study funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute that questioned those findings. The report was not some leftover effort from the Clinton administration - it was put together by Bush's own EPA to offer a picture of the state of the environment. It's easy to discount these problems as little bumps in the road for the president. As 2004 nears, his approval numbers are in the 60s, as people continue to put faith in him as governmental CEO, and assume that every politician stretches the truth now and again. But there's a saying in journalism. "One is an event. Two is a coincidence. Three is a trend." And this trend could be particularly troubling for the president. Bush's support doesn't come from his positions; it comes from something more personal. People like him in large part because they believe he's being straight with them. If that changes, his ride toward reelection may have more than a few twists and turns. Copyright © 2003 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved. _______________________________ 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.) ============================================================ 6:09:09 PM

Re: Rummy and His Friends Dear Friends: Only the Bush administration could make the CIA seem sympathetic. As we begin to close in on the WMD investigations, the administration is going to need a fall guy. Will the spooks be the target? In scrutinizing those who gathered the intelligence, Congress is looking in the wrong place. It's those who handed down the order and who set the agenda that we most need to question, not the low-level analysts who were pressured into massaging the data to please those higher up. _________________________ International Herald Tribune    June 24, 2003 Rummy vs. Saddam  by Maureen Dowd NYT  Desert double feature   WASHINGTON Looking back, you have to wonder if Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein were in two completely different movies, Rummy starring in a heroic war adventure like "Sands of Iwo Jima" while Saddam was scheming in a slick heist caper like "Ocean's 11." (With a soundtrack by Frank Sinatra using the Iraqi dictator's favorite song, "Strangers in the Night.") Could America have been at war with someone who wasn't fighting back? In Iraq, Rummy wanted to prove that the sleek, high-tech American military could be used to fight in unconventional ways. But maybe Saddam, who gives creepy new meaning to the phrase ultimate survivor, was playing an even more unconventional game. What if he never meant to mount a last stand in Baghdad but merely spread word that there was a dread "red line" of chemical and germ warheads ringing the capital to give himself time to melt away into subterranean safety? Two nights before the war began, Saddam's son Qusay or his minions were busy plundering a billion dollars from Iraq's central bank. As U.S. tanks sped through Iraq, meeting little opposition, Saddam may have been burning records of his weaponizing and terrorizing. He had probably already hidden or destroyed any bad stuff during the year the Bushies spent trash-talking about whupping him. Maybe he decided that rather than hit America with biological warfare, he would use psychological warfare, discrediting the United States with allies by stripping the anthrax cupboards. Was the tyrant sending out doubles in public while he plotted his getaway? Or making loyalists pretend to be double agents, dishing fake tips to the CIA about where the Ace of Spades was dining so the United States would bomb the wrong places? Saddam knew how hard it would be for America to rely on trust and understanding in a part of the world that it doesn't understand and where no one trusts Americans. He had 12 years between wars and Bushes, after all, to plot ruses. His captured top lieutenant has told American interrogators that he fled to Syria with Saddam's sons after the war (until Syria expelled them) and that Saddam was hiding in Iraq. Maybe Saddam has been chortling from the sidelines as his guerrillas kill enough U.S. soldiers to make Americans queasy. Maybe he could inflame a rebellion, to expel the occupiers who came with no occupation plan. Or, if Saddam brought a plastic surgeon underground with him, perhaps he could resurface as a fresh face, a populist candidate in Viceroy Bremer's first democratic elections. After all, Ba'ath, the name of his party, translates as Resurrection. On Friday, senators on the intelligence committee cut a deal that lets "a thorough review" - i.e. a Republican whitewash - go forward into whether the spy community ginned up prewar intelligence. The Democrats, already Fausted by their prewar fear of being pantywaists, naturally caved on open hearings. Open, closed, who cares? Congress is looking in the wrong place. They're scrutinizing those who gathered the intelligence, rather than those who pushed to distort it. George Tenet, the CIA director, might have buttered up his bosses by not objecting loudly enough when the Bushies latched onto bogus or exaggerated claims, but if obsequiousness is a subject of congressional investigation, we're in for a busy summer. The hawks started with Saddam's demise and worked backward. As the latest issue of The New Republic reports in its "Deception and Democracy" cover article: "In the summer of 2002, Vice President Cheney made several visits to the CIA's Langley headquarters, which were understood within the agency as an attempt to pressure the low-level specialists interpreting the raw intelligence. 'That would freak people out,' said one former CIA official. 'It is supposed to be an ivory tower. And that kind of pressure would be enormous on these young guys.'" It's scary, all right. Dick Cheney's hot breath on your raw files. E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com                  Copyright © 2003 the International Herald Tribune All Rights Reserved _______________________________ 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.) =========================== 6:08:32 PM

Re: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency   Dear Friends: Given our government's propensity for thought control and surveillance, one would be wise to keep a cynical eye on Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and its offspring. _______________________   BuzzFlash June 24, 2003   DARPA, PNAC and the Perfect Killing Machine   by Maureen Farrell   "We appear to be edging towards an era of 'mind control' -- a time when human brains might be manipulated routinely by highly sophisticated technology. On the bright side, the powers of this science could be used to mend broken and diseased brains. On the dark side, there would be plenty of opportunity to tinker with consciousness and control human behavior in menacing fashion," -- Nicholas Regush, ABC News   Earlier this month, Popular Science featured an article on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-funded quest to create "the world's first prosthetic brain part," a silicon microchip, which, when inserted in someone's brain, can either compensate for brain damage -- or create the perfect killing machine. According to the chip's inventor, biomedical engineer Theodore Berger, this technology, (only a few months away from testing) will help Alzheimer's patients and stroke victims, and could "one day lead to cyborg soldiers and robotic servants."   While Stepford soldiers may not be marching onward just yet, technology is headed in that direction. Researchers at the State University of New York in New York City successfully implanted electrodes into a rat's brain and turned it into a remote controlled robo-rodent ; Cybernetics professor and would-be cyborg Kevin Warwick has interacted with machines via an implant in his arm ; and robots are already serving in the US military. By 2010, DARPA's X-45 (a pilotless, windowless W-shaped plane) will be independently able to discriminate between friend and foe -- and bomb accordingly . "The real challenge is to mix man and machines," Colonel Leahy, director of the Gnat drone program, recently said. "It will be a loose ballet at first. But eventually, the systems will be linked to each other, sharing information and deciding among them who has the best shot."   Though that's all well and good, what happens when "mixing man and machines" is taken to extremes? Will physically (or pharmaceutically) altered soldiers become fearless, merciless and remorseless? Could future populations be branded and tracked? And how can we be sure the government won't recycle old tricks?   This is Your Brain on DARPA   Given the US government's history in mind control  and other sordid experiments , skepticism is prudent. A closer look at DARPA reveals why.   In an article published on DARPA's Web site, Dr. Alan Rudolph explains the agency's "Brain Machine Interfaces Program" which will "create new technologies for augmenting human performance" by "access[ing] codes in the brain" and "integrat[ing] them into peripheral device or system operations." In other words, machines and man will most decidedly "mix," giving US soldiers a sizable edge. While some of this sounds benign, and in many ways, even desirable, there are deeper, more frightening implications.   "Feedback could be received from peripheral systems or sent directly into appropriate brain regions," Rudolph writes, shortly before entering into "it puts the lotion in the basket" dehumanization mode. "Demonstrations of plasticity from the neural system and from an integrated working device or system that result in real time control under relevant conditions of force perturbation and cluttered sensory environments from which tasks must be performed," he adds.    Regardless how many times one wades through this difficult-to-decipher techno lingo, it's nearly impossible to differentiate the "neural system" from the machine. After a while, one gets the idea that that's the idea.     In December, 2002, DARPA also announced, as ABC News reported, that the government was "tinkering with a soldier's brain using magnetic resonance" in order to fool the body into believing it was well-rested, even after being awake for up to seven consecutive days and nights. "Eliminating the need for sleep during an operation ... will create a fundamental change in war fighting and force employment," DARPA officials asserted. Though sleep deprivation during combat carries certain risks -- as evidenced when two pilots accidentally killed Canadian troops in Afghanistan after taking Air Force-issued amphetamines  -- DARPA has no qualms about fooling Mother Nature. "This program is really out of the box," John Carney, director of DARPA's Continuous Assisted Performance program reported. "We want to look at capabilities in nature and leverage it so we can apply it in ways that no one thought possible."   And if that's not unsettling enough, DARPA's Information Awareness Office, under the stewardship of John Poindexter, plans to use "biometric signatures of humans," which means that data will be collected on individuals' gaits, faces and irises -- in addition to fingerprints.     Skin-Patch Pharmaceuticals: Be All You Can Be!     Much has been written about the Project for a New American Century's (PNAC) not-so-secret goal of global supremacy, as well as the sizable influence PNAC members Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Lewis Libby, John Bolton had in drafting Bush's policy of preemption. In their view, the US military is "the cavalry on the new American frontier" whose mission is to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars." Yet they also acknowledge that the military needs to be radically transformed -- and, according to PNAC's published report, "Rebuilding America's Defenses," the Army is in for some interesting alterations. "Consider just the potential changes that might effect the infantryman," they wrote. "Future Soldiers may operate in encapsulated, climate-controlled, powered fighting suits, laced with sensors and boasting chameleon-like 'active' camouflage while 'skin-patch' pharmaceuticals help regulate fears, focus concentration and enhance endurance and strength." ( , p. 62).   In keeping with PNAC's vision (and thanks to a $50 million grant from the US Army), MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies is manufacturing military uniforms in which, as Clamor Magazine put it,  "Human soldiers themselves are being transformed into modern cyborgs through robotic devices and nanotechnology." And though the Navy has addressed "performance enhancement" medications , there is no word yet on the long-term effects of the proposed mind-altering pharmaceutical patch.   The Virtual Soldier   If you've ever visited Universal Studio's "Terminator II: 3D" attraction, you probably recall the chirpy PR infomercial in which a child is tucked in bed by a steel robotic claw, as her mother phones from half a world away. One gets the same surreal sense of artificial caring while reading DARPA's plans for a virtual soldier.   "The [Virtual Solider] program," Dr. Richard Silva explains, "will create the mathematical modeling approaches to develop an information (computational) representation of an individual soldier (a holographic medical electronic representation or holomer) that can be used to augment medical care on and off the battlefield with a new level of integration." In other words, injured soldiers will be treated by a hologram that will perform certain tasks, including, "the automatic diagnosis of battlefield injuries" and "prediction of soldier performance."  What happens, however, if the diagnosis is dire and predictions of solider performance aren't up to snuff? Hopefully, the hologram won't be named "Hal."   The Scariest Thing Ever   During last summer's missing children scare, U.S. citizens were treated to surreal super-hyped moments -- despite the fact that incidents of kidnapping had actually decreased. One particular low point came when a mother from Texas, whose infant was stolen the day before, gave a nationally televised, "we interrupt this program" press conference, even though she didn't speak English and her baby was returned unharmed. Creepily enough, the following day, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a front page story on why parents should consider having their children implanted with microchips -- and safely tracked by global satellite positioning systems. "We have [global positioning system (GPS)] units for our cars," Applied Digital spokesperson Matthew Cossolo said "If your car is stolen, we can locate it. Do we love our cars more than our children?"   Soon to be mounted on soldiers' helmets   (or perhaps one day implanted in soldiers' bodies, as UCLA's  Journal of Law and Technology predicts ), GPS technology will also be implanted in remote-controlled rats and used for military functions . And though the benefits are undeniable, "chipping," has disturbing undertones -- particularly considering the potential to eventually control humans. "I think that a lot of people are very wary of that sort of thing and understandably so," Kate Rears, a policy analyst at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington told the Associated Press. "I don't think it's a sign of paranoia to react against this because it is very odd. It's Brave New Worldish."   University of Kansas research professor Jerome Dobson (who created the maps used in global satellite tracking systems) takes it a step further, and says that this technology has created a threat of "geoslavery," that, in his opinion, that could make "George Orwell's 'Big Brother' nightmare...look amateurish." "I've spoken about this at academic conferences," Dobson said. "I find that the first reaction people have is, maybe, disbelief. But if I talk for two minutes, suddenly they begin to turn somber and say, 'This is the scariest thing I have ever seen.'"   A Tale of Two Realms   Lately, several op-eds have centered on the movie The Matrix's apt commentary on our illusionary, propagandized world  -- and though ruminations on the gap between "what is real and what Americans perceive as real" are all too relevant, the sci-fi thriller is also a cautionary tale about where technology might lead. "It's so weird to say this," producer Joel Silver told the Sydney Morning Herald, "but it's a treatise on our times and where we're going and how to not go there." Matrix cast members were reportedly required to read Kevin Kelly's Out of Control: The Rise of Neo-biological Civilization, which centers on "Singularity," the place, for lack of a better definition, where man and machine merge. "The realm of the born -- all that is nature -- and the realm of the made -- all that is humanly constructed -- are becoming one," Kelly wrote in 1994.    Acclaimed author and award-winning inventor Ray Kurzweil also says this man/machine meld is inevitable. "The union of human and machine is well on its way," he wrote. "Ultimately we will become more nonbiological than biological."  And though an enthusiastically willing subject, "Professor Cyborg" Warwick made an unnerving observation after being implanted with the "smart card" microchip that connected him to machines. "I feel mentally different," he told ABC News in 1998. "When I am in the building I feel much more closely connected with the computer. I am not a separate thing."   Renowned scientist Bill Joy believes technology is "threatening to make humans an endangered species,"  while more than a decade ago, San Diego University Professor of Computer Science Vernor Vinge warned, "Within 30 years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will end." Is this hyperbole? Or do implanted microchips and DARPA's "man-as-machine" approach to soldiering give real cause for concern? And how on earth does the government get away with "tinkering with a soldier's brain," while the general population considers this "the home of the free?"   Welcome to the Monster State   "Man should not be in the service of society, society should be in the service of man," the late Joseph Campbell told PBS' Bill Moyers. "When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state, and that's what is threatening the world at this minute. . . [the movie Star Wars] shows the state as a machine and asks, "Is the machine going to crush humanity or serve humanity?"   Anyone appalled by the laundry list of lies the Bush administration told to justify their pre-planned war  realizes that Americans are now in the service of a monster state. We are deliberately fed fabrications ; our public coffers are pilfered by those who supposedly work for us  ; and no one has honestly addressed the ultimate cost or the length of the Iraq occupation. And when are Iraqis going to view us as liberators? .  No matter. Provided we pay our taxes and feed the Carlyle/Halliburton/Bechtel/WorldCom beast , it's "Mission Accomplished!"   As The Matrix's Morpheus reminds, "What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. But what is it? . . . It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth."   In the meantime, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is scheduled for release July 2.   --Maureen Farrell is a writer and media consultant who specializes in helping other writers get television and radio exposure.   © Copyright 2003, Maureen Farrell _______________________________   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.) ============================================================ 6:07:35 PM

Re: Anti-terror Agency Turns Heads Dear Friends: The Technical Support Working Group has been toiling against terror for years, but its technologically-advanced work has been overshadowed by DARPA. Now TSWG is stepping into the limelight. _________________________ Wired News June 24, 2003 Anti-Terror Agency Turns Heads by Ryan Singel Lie-detecting dogs and bullet-detecting radar sound like science fiction, but the brains behind these ideas aren't writers. These projects are just two of many being funded by a little-known Pentagon counterterrorism research group called the Technical Support Working Group, or TSWG. The group, pronounced tis-wig, began funding anti-terrorism projects in 1986 and has been known for its intra- and inter-agency cooperation in developing tools for fighting terrorism. "TSWG is, in effect, a kind of mini-DARPA, except it is more clearly focused on a counterterrorism mission," according to Stephen Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). TSWG funds projects that range from the commonsensical, like better chemical weapons sensors, to the far out, like intelligent video camera arrays. TSWG has historically focused on short-term projects that create usable prototypes to solve real-world problems. The group's 2002 annual report (PDF) points to the group's success in creating a better flat-panel X-ray machine to help bomb squads and a counterterrorism kit to help educate law enforcement and emergency workers how to recognize, by sight and smell, chemical, biological and radiological materials. Chemical- and biological-weapon escape masks developed by TSWG have been ordered in the thousands by the Pentagon and Capitol Hill, according to Jeff David, deputy director of the Combating Terrorism Technology Support Office, which oversees TSWG. Other current projects include a luggage irradiation machine that would destroy undetected biological and chemical weapons, better bomb disposal robots, bullet-detecting radar to prevent assassinations, a project to extract DNA from fingerprints, a cooling system for body armor and a mass transit surveillance camera system. Since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, TSWG's activities have grown and the group will be central to the new Department of Homeland Security's research efforts. TSWG's budget has grown from $8 million in 1992 to $111 million in 2002 and to over $200 million in 2003. Still, TSWG, under the joint control of the Pentagon and the State Department, remains a tiny operation when compared to DARPA, which will spend almost $2.8 billion dollars on research this year. However, some, such as Jim Lewis of the hawkish Washington think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, see a lack of focus and some overreaction in the broad range of proposals. "DARPA programs are linked to problems they have," said Lewis, who directs the Technology and Policy program at CSIS. "We don't have that clearly defined mission on the Homeland Security side. It's hard to know what areas to target." "I wonder, are we going a little overboard?" said Lewis. "If you look at other countries that have faced terrorist threats, it was a combination of intelligence and police work that has solved the problem." David disputed the idea that the group's approach is scattershot or unrealistic. Every January, he said, TSWG hosts "threat day," where law enforcement and intelligence officials brief TSWG staff on the threats that they should be aware of. Even Lewis agreed that TSWG has traditionally been very effective at creating usable technologies. "TSWG does good stuff," said Lewis. "They are short-term and focused on mission needs." Others, such as Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), charge that the government's anti-terrorism research efforts, including the newly formed Homeland Security Advanced Research Programs Agency (HSARPA), have not gone far enough and that critical work is being neglected. "After 9/11 we made a communal decision that we were vulnerable and we needed to take steps to become more secure" said Lofgren, who is the ranking member on the House Committee on Homeland Security's Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Science, and Research and Development. "Since that day and today, little has been done. There are some known things we need to do that have been ignored." However, the level of industry interest in the group is high. Just after Sept. 11, the group issued a wide call for proposals, called a Broad Agency Announcement. That announcement garnered 12,000 responses, according to David. Other BAAs have followed, asking for proposals that include a machine that could detect a terrorist from a few feet away by measuring blood-vessel dilation and brain activity, and a bag-screening system for the nation's rail system. One of the most recent announcements, which closed on June 13, includes a call for the development of a system that can test the effectiveness of complex data-mining and pattern-matching systems like DARPA's controversial Total Information Awareness system. Aftergood, who leads the Federation of American Scientist's project on government secrecy, is cautiously optimistic about TSWG. "You have to give [TSWG] credit for doing this on an unclassified basis," he said. "They do this so they can cast the widest possible net for new technologies but it makes it possible for interested observers to track these projects. "If you do this [kind of research], you want participants to be bold and ambitious. On the other hand, you want adult supervision in place. But since these activities have such a low profile, it is a cause of concern." Wired News © Copyright 2003, Lycos, Inc. All Rights Reserved. _______________________________ 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.) ============================================================ 6:07:05 PM