CERTAINLY not the government, given our experience of the last years — we stopped trusting blindly the day Tricky Dick got on the helicopter … and with Bush in charge, we’ve stopped trusting … period.
As we howl for accountability and oversight, here are a couple of little “projects” to keep an eye on — we can never be certain whom Dubby will declare the “enemy.”
In the morality v. technology race, morality is the tortoise … and the hare has fangs.
Jude
Say Hello to the Goodbye Weapon
David Hambling, Wired
Dec, 05, 2006
The crowd is getting ugly. Soldiers roll up in a Hummer. Suddenly, the whole right half of your body is screaming in agony. You feel like you’ve been dipped in molten lava. You almost faint from shock and pain, but instead you stumble backwards — and then start running. To your surprise, everyone else is running too. In a few seconds, the street is completely empty.
You’ve just been hit with a new nonlethal weapon that has been certified for use in Iraq — even though critics argue there may be unforeseen effects.
According to documents obtained for Wired News under federal sunshine laws, the Air Force’s Active Denial System, or ADS, has been certified safe after lengthy tests by military scientists in the lab and in war games.
The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves — 94 GHz (= 3 mm wavelength) compared to 2.45 GHz (= 12 cm wavelength) in a standard microwave oven.
The longer waves are thought to limit the effects of the radiation. If used properly, ADS will produce no lasting adverse affects, the military argues.
Documents acquired for Wired News using the Freedom of Information Act claim that most of the radiation (83 percent) is instantly absorbed by the top layer of the skin, heating it rapidly.
The beam produces what experimenters call the “Goodbye effect,” or “prompt and highly motivated escape behavior.” In human tests, most subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none of the subjects could endure more than 5 seconds.
“It will repel you,” one test subject said. “If hit by the beam, you will move out of it — reflexively and quickly. You for sure will not be eager to experience it again.”
But while subjects may feel like they have sustained serious burns, the documents claim effects are not long-lasting. At most, “some volunteers who tolerate the heat may experience prolonged redness or even small blisters,” the Air Force experiments concluded.
The reports describe an elaborate series of investigations involving human subjects.
The volunteers were military personnel: active, reserve or retired, who volunteered for the tests. They were unpaid, but the subjects would “benefit from direct knowledge that an effective nonlethal weapon system could soon be in the inventory,” said one report. The tests ranged from simple exposure in the laboratory to elaborate war games involving hundreds of participants.
The military simulated crowd control situations, rescuing helicopter crews in a Black Hawk Down setting and urban assaults. More unusual tests involved alcohol, attack dogs and maze-like obstacle courses.
In more than 10,000 exposures, there were six cases of blistering and one instance of second-degree burns in a laboratory accident, the documents claim.
The ADS was developed in complete secrecy for 10 years at a cost of $40 million. Its existence was revealed in 2001 by news reports, but most details of ADS human testing remain classified. There has been no independent checking of the military’s claims.
The ADS technology is ready to deploy, and the Army requested ADS-armed Strykers for Iraq last year. But the military is well aware that any adverse publicity could finish the program, and it does not want to risk distressed victims wailing about evil new weapons on CNN.
This may mean yet more rounds of testing for the ADS.
New bombs can be rushed into service in a matter of weeks, but the process is more complex for nonlethal weapons. It may be years before the debates are resolved and the first directed-energy nonlethal weapon is used in action.
The development of a truly safe and highly effective nonlethal crowd-control system could raise enormous ethical questions about the state’s use of coercive force. If a method such as ADS leads to no lasting injury or harm, authorities may find easier justifications for employing them.
Historically, one of the big problems with nonlethal weapons is that they can be misused. Rubber bullets are generally safe when fired at the torso, but head impacts can be dangerous, particularly at close range. Tasers can become dangerous if they are used on subjects who have previously been doused with flammable pepper spray. In the heat of the moment, soldiers or police can forget their safety training.
Steve Wright of Praxis, the Center for the Study of Information and Technology in Peace, Conflict Resolution and Human Rights, notes that there are occasions when this has happened in the past. He cites British soldiers, who increased the weight of baton rounds in Northern Ireland.
“Soldiers flouted the rules of engagement, doctoring the bullets by inserting batteries (to increase the weight) and firing at closer ranges than allowed,” says Wright.
There may also be technical issues. Wright cites a recent report on CS gas sprays which turned out to be more dangerous in the field than expected.
“No one had bothered to check how the sprays actually performed in practice, and they yielded much more irritant than was calculated in the weapon specification. This underlines the need for independent checking of any manufacturers’ specifications. Here secrecy is the enemy of safety.”
Eye damage is identified as the biggest concern, but the military claims this has been thoroughly studied. Lab testing found subjects reflexively blink or turn away within a quarter of a second of exposure, long before the sensitive cornea can be damaged.
Tests on monkeys showed that corneal damage heals within 24 hours, the reports claim.
“A speculum was needed to hold the eyes open to produce this type of injury because even under anesthesia, the monkeys blinked, protecting the cornea,” the report says.
The risk of cancer is also often mentioned in connection with the ADS system, despite the shallow penetration of radiation into the skin.
But the Air Force is adamant that after years of study, exposure to MMW has not been demonstrated to promote cancer. During some tests, subjects were exposed to 20 times the permitted dose under the relevant Air Force radiation standard. The Air Force claims the exposure was justified by demonstrating the safety of the ADS system.
The beam penetrates clothing, but not stone or metal. Blocking it is harder than you might think. Wearing a tinfoil shirt is not enough — you would have to be wrapped like a turkey to be completely protected. The experimenters found that even a small exposed area was enough to produce the Goodbye effect, so any gaps would negate protection. Holding up a sheet of metal won’t work either, unless it covers your whole body and you can keep the tips of your fingers out of sight.
Wet clothing might sound like a good defense, but tests showed that contact with damp cloth actually intensified the effects of the beam.
System 1, the operational prototype, is mounted on a Hummer and produces a beam with a 2-meter diameter. Effective range is at least 500 meters, which is further than rubber bullets, tear gas or water cannons. The ammunition supply is effectively unlimited.
The military’s tests went beyond safety, exploring how well the ADS works in practice. In one war game, an assault team staged a mock raid on a building. The ADS was used to remove civilians from the battlefield, separating what the military calls “tourists from terrorists.”
It was also used in a Black Hawk Down scenario, and maritime tests, which saw the ADS deployed against small boats.
It might also be used on the battlefield. One war game deployed the ADS in support of an assault, suppressing incoming fire and obstructing a counterattack.
“ADS has the same compelling nonlethal effect on all targets, regardless of size, age and gender,” says Capt. Jay Delarosa, spokesman for the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, which decides where and how the ADS might be deployed.
“It can be used to deny an area to individuals or groups, to control access, to prevent an individual or individuals from carrying out an undesirable activity, and to delay or disrupt adversary activity.”
The precise results of the military’s war games are classified, but Capt. Delarosa insists that the ADS has proven “both safe and effective in all these roles.”
The ADS comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. As well as System 1, a smaller version has been fitted to a Stryker armored vehicle — along with other lethal and nonlethal weapons — for urban security operations. Sandia National Labs is looking at a small tripod-mounted version for defending nuclear installations, and there is even a portable ADS. And there are bigger versions too.
“Key technologies to enable this capability from an airborne platform — such as a C-130 — are being developed at several Air Force Research Laboratory technology directorates,” says Diana Loree, program manager for the Airborne ADS.
The airborne ADS would supplement the formidable firepower of Special Forces AC-130 gunships, which currently includes a 105-mm howitzer and 25-mm Gatling guns. The flying gunboats typically engage targets at a range of two miles or more, which implies an ADS far more powerful than System 1 has been developed. But details of the exact power levels, range and diameter of the beam are classified.
Bush “Developing Illegal Bioterror Weapons” for Offensive Use
Sherwood Ross, t r u t h o u t
Wednesday 20 December 2006
In violation of the US Code and international law, the Bush administration is spending more money (in inflation-adjusted dollars) to develop illegal, offensive germ warfare than the $2 billion spent in World War II on the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb.
So says Francis Boyle, the professor of international law who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by Congress. He states the Pentagon “is now gearing up to fight and ‘win’ biological warfare” pursuant to two Bush national strategy directives adopted “without public knowledge and review” in 2002.
The Pentagon’s Chemical and Biological Defense Program was revised in 2003 to implement those directives, endorsing “first-use” strike of chemical and biological weapons (CBW) in war, says Boyle, who teaches at the University of Illinois, Champaign.
Terming the action “the proverbial smoking gun,” Boyle said the mission of the controversial CBW program “has been altered to permit development of offensive capability in chemical and biological weapons!” [Original italics.]
The same directives, Boyle charges in his book Biowarfare and Terrorism (Clarity Press), “unconstitutionally usurp and nullify the right and the power of the United States Congress to declare war, in gross and blatant violation of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution.”
For fiscal years 2001-2004, the federal government funded $14.5 billion “for ostensibly ‘civilian’ biowarfare-related work alone,” a “truly staggering” sum, Boyle wrote.
Another $5.6 billion was voted for “the deceptively-named ‘Project BioShield,’” under which Homeland Security is stockpiling vaccines and drugs to fight anthrax, smallpox and other bioterror agents, wrote Boyle. Protection of the civilian population is, he said, “one of the fundamental requirements for effectively waging biowarfare.”
The Washington Post reported December 12 that both houses of Congress this month passed legislation “considered by many to be an effort to salvage the two-year-old Project BioShield, which has been marked by delays and operational problems.” When President Bush signs it into law, it will allocate $1 billion more over three years for additional research “to pump more money into the private sector sooner.”
“The enormous amounts of money” purportedly dedicated to “civilian defense” that are now “dramatically and increasingly” being spent,” Boyle writes, “betray this administration’s effort to be able to embark on offensive campaigns using biowarfare.”
By pouring huge sums into university and private-sector laboratories, Boyle charged, federal spending has diverted the US biotech industry to biowarfare.
According to Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright, over 300 scientific institutions and 12,000 individuals have access to pathogens suitable for biowarfare and terrorism. Ebright found that the number of National Institute of Health grants to research infectious diseases with biowarfare potential has shot up from 33 in 1995-2000 to 497.
Academic biowarfare participation involving the abuse of DNA genetic engineering since the late 1980s has become “patently obvious,” Boyle said. “American universities have a long history of willingly permitting their research agendas, researchers, institutes, and laboratories to be co-opted, corrupted, and perverted by the Pentagon and the CIA.”
“These despicable death-scientists were arming the Pentagon with the component units necessary to produce a massive array of … genetically-engineered biological weapons,” Boyle said.
In a forward to Boyle’s book, Jonathan King, a professor of molecular biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote that “the growing bioterror programs represent a significant emerging danger to our own population” and “threaten international relations among nations.”
While such programs “are always called defensive,” King said, “with biological weapons, defensive and offensive programs overlap almost completely.”
Boyle contends the US is “in breach” of both the Biological Weapons and Chemical Weapons conventions and US domestic criminal law. In February 2003, for example, the US granted itself a patent on an illegal long-range biological-weapons grenade.
Boyle said other countries grasp the military implications of US germ-warfare actions and will respond in kind. “The world will soon witness a de facto biological arms race among the major biotech states under the guise of ‘defense,’ and despite the requirements of the Biological Warfare Convention.”
“The massive proliferation of biowarfare technology and facilities, as well as trained scientists and technicians all over the United States, courtesy of the Neo-Con Bush Jr. administration will render a catastrophic biowarfare or bioterrorist incident or accident a statistical certainty,” Boyle warned.
As far back as September 2001, according to a report in the New York Times titled “US Pushes Germ Warfare Limits,” critics were concerned that “the research comes close to violating a global 1972 treaty that bans such weapons.” But US officials responded at the time that they were more worried about understanding the threat of germ warfare and devising possible defenses.
The 1972 treaty, which the US signed, forbids developing weapons that spread disease, such as anthrax, regarded as “ideal” for germ warfare.
According to an article in the Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel of last September 28, Milton Leitenberg, a veteran arms-control advocate at the University of Maryland, said the government was spending billions on germ warfare with almost no analysis of threat. He said claims terrorists will use the weapons have been “deliberately exaggerated.”
In March of the previous year, 750 US biologists signed a letter protesting what they saw as the excessive study of bioterror threats.
The Pentagon has not responded to the charges made by Boyle in this article.
What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
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December 21st, 2006
It would appear that “Had enough?” is a cry heard ’round the world — are we entering a return to reality, not just here but elsewhere? Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust — Bush denies damned near everything. Could it be that we’re ALL finally fed up with Neverland??
Welcome news from Iran, the Bushies get their knuckles rapped, more.
Jude
Ahmadinejad opponents win elections
ALI AKBAR DAREINI, AP
1 hour, 50 minutes ago
TEHRAN, Iran - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s opponents won local council elections in Iran, final results showed Thursday, in an embarrassing blow to the hard-line leader that could force him to change his staunch anti-Western stance and focus more on domestic issues.
Last week’s elections for local councils in towns and cities across Iran were widely seen as a referendum on Ahmadinejad’s 18 months in office.
Since taking power, Ahmadinejad has escalated Iran’s confrontation with the United States and the West, drawing the threat of U.N. sanctions for pushing ahead with uranium enrichment in Iran’s nuclear program. He has also provoked international outrage for his comments against Israel and casting doubt on the Nazi Holocaust.
His hard-line stances are believed to have divided the conservatives who voted him into power last year, with some feeling Ahmadinejad has spent too much time confronting the West and has failed to deal with Iran’s struggling economy.
Moderate conservatives opposed to Ahmadinejad won a majority of the seats in Friday’s elections followed by reformists who were suppressed by hard-liners in 2004, according to final results announced by the Interior Ministry.
The final results also represented a partial comeback for reformists, who were crushed over the past five years by hard-liners who drove them out of the local councils, parliament and the presidency. The reformists favor closer ties with the West and further loosening of social and political restrictions under the Islamic government.
In Tehran, the capital, candidates supporting Mayor Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, a moderate conservative, won seven of the 15 council seats. Reformists won four, while Ahmadinejad’s allies won three. The last seat went to wrestling champion Ali Reza Dabir, who won a gold medal in the 2000 Sydney Olympics and is considered an independent.
Final results for the rest of the country also showed a heavy defeat for Ahmadinejad supporters, and analysts said his allies won less than 20 percent of local council seats nationwide. None of his candidates won seats on the councils in the cities of Shiraz, Bandar Abbas, Sari, Zanjan, Rasht, Ilam, Sanandaj and Kerman. Many councils in other cities were divided along similar proportions as Tehran’s.
Last week’s election for local councils, which handle community matters in cities and towns, does not directly effect Ahmadinejad’s administration and is not expected to bring immediate policy changes.
But it was the first time the public has weighed in on Ahmadinejad’s stormy presidency since he took office in June 2005. The results are expected to pressure him to change his populist anti-Western tone and focus more on Iran’s high unemployment and economic problems at home.
Leading reformist Saeed Shariati said the results of the election was a “big no” to Ahmadinejad and his allies.
“People’s vote means they don’t support Ahmadinejad’s policies and want change,” Shariati, a leader of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, Iran’s largest reformist party told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Shariati accused Ahmadinejad of harming Iran’s interests with his hard line.
“We consider this government’s policy to be against Iran’s national interests and security. It is simply acting against Iran’s interests,” he said. His party seeks democratic changes within Iran’s ruling Islamic establishment and supports relations with the United States.
Similar anti-Ahmadinejad sentiment was visible in the final results of a parallel election held to select members of the Assembly of Experts, a conservative body of 86 senior clerics that monitors Iran’s supreme leader and chooses his successor.
A big boost for moderates within the ruling Islamic establishment was visible in the big number of votes for former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who lost to Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential election runoff.
Rafsanjani, who supports dialogue with the United States, received the most votes of any Tehran candidate to win re-election to the assembly. Also re-elected was Hasan Rowhani, Iran’s former top nuclear negotiator whom Ahmadinejad has repeatedly accused of making too many concessions to the Europeans.
Iran started having council elections after a reform introduced in 1999 by then President Mohammed Khatami.
More than 233,000 candidates ran for more than 113,000 council seats in cities, towns and villages across the vast nation on Friday. All municipal council candidates, including some 5,000 women, were vetted by parliamentary committees dominated by hard-liners. The committees disqualified about 10,000 nominees, reports said.
Iran President Facing Revival of Students’ Ire
NAZILA FATHI, NYT
December 21, 2006
TEHRAN, Dec. 20 — As protests broke out last week at a prestigious university here, cutting short a speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Babak Zamanian could only watch from afar. He was on crutches, having been clubbed by supporters of the president and had his foot run over by a motorcycle during a less publicized student demonstration a few days earlier.
But the significance of the confrontation was easy to grasp, even from a distance, said Mr. Zamanian, a leader of a student political group.
The student movement, which planned the 1979 seizure of the American Embassy from the same university, Amir Kabir, is reawakening from its recent slumber and may even be spearheading a widespread resistance against Mr. Ahmadinejad. This time the catalysts were academic and personal freedom.
“It is not that simple to break up a president’s speech,” said Alireza Siassirad, a former student political organizer, explaining that an event of that magnitude takes meticulous planning. “I think what happened at Amir Kabir is a very important and a dangerous sign. Students are definitely becoming active again.”
The protest, punctuated by shouts of “Death to the dictator,” was the first widely publicized outcry against Mr. Ahmadinejad, one that was reflected Friday in local elections, where voters turned out in droves to vote for his opponents.
The students’ complaints largely mirrored public frustrations over the president’s crackdown on civil liberties, his blundering economic policies and his harsh oratory against the West, which they fear will isolate the country.
But the students had an additional and potent source of outrage: the president’s campaign to purge the universities of all vestiges of the reform movement of his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami.
Last summer the newly installed head of the university, Alireza Rahai, ordered the demolition of the office of the Islamic Association, which had been the core of student political activities on campus since 1963 and had matured into a moderate, pro-reform group.
Since then, students say, more than 100 liberal professors have been forced into retirement and many popular figures have been demoted. At least 70 students were suspended for political activities, and two were jailed. Some 30 students were given warnings, and a prominent Ph.D. candidate, Matin Meshkin, was barred from finishing his studies.
The students also complain about overcrowded and crumbling dormitories and proscriptions against women wearing makeup or bright colors, rules that were relaxed when Mr. Khatami came to power in 1997.
Amir Kabir University of Technology, a major polytechnic institute, has been a hotbed of student activism since before Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution of 1979. Drawing on networks at universities around the country through an office that links their Islamic associations, students can organize large protests on a moment’s notice. There are also student guilds, which are independent, and more than 2,000 student publications.
Mr. Zamanian, the head of public relations of the Islamic Association at Amir Kabir, said that while the situation had not been ideal in the Khatami years, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s antireformist campaign had led students to value their previous freedoms.
They were permitted to hold meetings and invite opposition figures to speak, he said, and could freely publish their journals. Now, he said, their papers are forbidden to print anything but reports from official news agencies.
The students also complain about the president’s failure to deliver economic growth and jobs. At last week’s protest, which coincided with a now infamous Holocaust conference held by the Foreign Ministry, students chanted, “Forget the Holocaust — do something for us.”
A student who identified himself only as Ahmad, for fear of retribution, said: “A nuclear program is our right, but we fear that it will bring more damage than good.”
Another student said: “It is so hard and costly to come to this university, but I don’t see a bright future. Even if you are lucky enough to get a job, the pay would not be enough for you to pay your rent.”
Mr. Zamanian said that the protest had not been planned ahead of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s visit, but that students were further enraged when they saw supporters of the president being bused in.
Although the auditorium was almost filled with the president’s supporters by the time any students were let in, the protesters forced their way inside, chanted, “Death to the dictator,” and held banners calling him a “fascist president.” They also held up posters of the president with his picture upside down and set fire to three of them. Many of the students are now in hiding.
At one point, the head of a moderate student guild complained to Mr. Ahmadinejad that students were being expelled for political activities and given three stars next to their names in university records, barring them from re-entering. The president responded by ridiculing him, joking that the three stars made them sergeants in the army.
The president was eventually forced to cut his speech short and leave. But angry students stormed his car, kicking it and chanting slogans. His convoy of four cars collided several times as they tried to leave in a rush. Eventually the students were dispersed.
An entry on Mr. Ahmadinejad’s Web log, posted Wednesday, played down the scale and significance of the protest, writing that the president had a “good feeling when he saw a small group amid the dominant majority insulting him without any fear.”
A few days after the protest, former Amir Kabir students affiliated with the Islamic associations’ coordinating office wrote a letter to Mr. Ahmadinejad. In it, they turned down what they said was his invitation to share their problems with him, because they believed that he wanted to use the occasion to bolster his candidates in the local elections.
The students also wrote that the president had insulted their intelligence by talking to them in the same language he uses in remote villages on his provincial trips.
“You should know that what happened at Polytechnic University was the voice of universities and the real voice of the people,” they wrote. Tehran Polytechnic was the university’s name before the revolution.
Censored former official: White House blocked op-ed with no classified data
Brian Beutler, Raw Story
Monday December 18, 2006
At a public discussion today of his proposal for American diplomatic overtures to Iran, a retired Bush administration official blasted the White House, not only for its unwillingness to negotiate with the Islamic Republic, but also for threatening him with criminal prosecution pending publication of a column he penned.
Former CIA analyst Flynt Leverett had planned to publish a one-thousand word New York Times op-ed chronicling several of the U.S. government’s missed opportunities to engage senior officials from Tehran.
But Leverett, who was described by discussion host Steve Clemons as a “dissident Republican,” is contractually bound to have all of his written work vetted by the CIA’s pre-publication review board to ensure that it does not contain classified information. That board, after intervention from the White House, blocked his article from being published.
In response to a question from RAW STORY about the technical obligations of his disclosure agreement with the CIA, Leverett highlighted the fact that, “Up until last week with regard to this particular op-ed at this particular time…they have cleared on the order of thirty drafts that I have sent them in three and a half years out of government.”
Leverett went on to add, “Until last week they never asked to change a word.”
The contract, described at the CIA’s website, requires the signer to submit for review any work that:
“I contemplate disclosing publicly or that I have actually prepared for public disclosure, either during my employment…or at any time thereafter, prior to discussing it or showing it to anyone who is not authorized to have access…. I further agree that I will not take any steps toward public disclosure until I have received written permission to do so from the Central Intelligence Agency.”
But Leverett contends that the op-ed in question is based on a larger paper that passed the same oversight process without a change made to a single word, and that people who work on the review board have told him that the piece would have been approved–were it not for intervention by the White House.
Leverett said the op-ed contains “no classified information” and called the claims of those who are involved in the campaign to see it go unpublished “fraudulent.” It details, he says, publicly revealed though ultimately unsuccessful diplomatic discussions with Tehran.
Despite his insistence that the op-ed does not contain classified information, and political motivations for the censorship notwithstanding, he added that he will meet his “obligation to respect” his contract with the CIA and will not press forward with publication.
However, he did finger three senior NSC officials who he thinks were most likely behind the “unprecedented” White House intrusion into the pre-publication review process. On Saturday, Leverett wrote:
“My understanding is that the White House staffers who have injected themselves into this process are working for Elliott Abrams and Megan [sic] O’Sullivan, both politically appointed deputies to President Bush’s National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley.”
Today, Leverett added Michael Doran, Senior Director for Near East and North African Affairs on the National Security Council to that list. All three have been widely described as “Iran hawks” and have been subjected to criticism for their part in what many have concluded is the administration’s failed Middle East policy.
However, speculation was also raised today that the intervention could have come from within the Vice President’s office, perhaps as a result of potential diplomatic operations underway that could be derailed by the op-ed.
A successful diplomatic operation, noted Clemons and former member of the National Security Council and State Department Hillary Mann, would require an “amnesia” about missed chances to negotiate with Iran, and the stricken portions of the op-ed were largely a historical recounting of those chances.
Hillary Mann is Leverett’s wife and is co-author of the op-ed. Leverett says it will not run without written approval from the CIA.
Slaughter asks Bush why he censored op-ed
Brian Beutler, Raw Story
Wednesday December 20, 2006
The White House’s controversial handling of an unpublished op-ed by a former official continued to draw ire from policy makers and critics today as Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) sent President Bush a letter asking him to explain his rationale for redacting major portions of former CIA official Flynt Leverett’s New York Times column, RAW STORY has learned.
In the letter, Slaughter suggests that, because Leverett’s op-ed was based on his more detailed, but fully-cleared policy paper, the CIA’s rubric for censoring published work of former officials must have been inconsistently applied:
“If, indeed, redacting the information from the op-ed was necessary for national security purposes, then the CIA’s failure to deem the information in the previously published version of the article as classified may have put our security at risk. If classifying information in the previously published version of the article was not necessary, then I am left to believe that your Administration redacted information for political purposes.”
Slaughter also questioned the administration’s rationale for, as RAW STORY reported on Monday, redacting several paragraphs of the op-ed despite assurances from people working on the pre-publication review board that the column contained not a word of classified information.
The full text of the letter appears below, and an actual pdf copy is available here. RAW STORY will continue to follow the controversy as the story evolves.
December 19, 2006
The President The White House Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President:
I am writing to seek clarification of the processes and policies employed by your Administration in determining whether materials contain classified information and when to withhold information from the public. According to an article published in the Washington Post today, Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council Advisory, who left the Administration in 2003, suggested that the White House had redacted substantial passages of an opinion article on Iran. According to Mr. Leverett, this article was ‘only a summary of a longer paper’ he had written a few weeks earlier which the CIA had cleared as ‘containing no classified information.’
I am concerned that your Administration is employing inconsistent policies when classifying information. If, indeed, redacting the information from the op-ed was necessary for national security purposes, then the CIA’s failure to deem the information in the previously published version of the article as classified may have put our security at risk. If classifying information in the previously published version of the article was not necessary, then I am left to believe that your Administration redacted information for political purposes.
I would also appreciate an explanation behind your Administration’s decision to redact substantial passages from Mr. Leverett’s op-ed, even though reportedly the CIA had already cleared the information based on which Mr. Leverett had drafted those passages.
Given the questions this incident raises about your Administration’s consistency in applying policies and processes to reviewing classified information and your willingness to allow criticism by the national security and intelligence communities that disagree with your policies, I ask that you clarify and explain policies pertaining to how and when information is deemed classified and also your decision to intervene in the publication of the article written by Mr. Leverett.
Thank you for reviewing my request, and I await your response.
Sincerely, Louise M. Slaughter Member of Congress
US Considers Naval Build-up as Warning to Iran
· Administration concern at nuclear programme
· Security situation in Iraq ‘tragic’ as attacks grow
Suzanne Goldenberg, the Guardian/UK
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
The Bush administration is weighing options for a naval build-up in the Gulf as a show of force and a warning to Iran on its nuclear programme and its support for Shia militias in Iraq, it emerged yesterday.
Under the proposed build-up, first reported by CBS television, the Pentagon would send an aircraft carrier to join one already in the region. The proposed deployment was described as a message to Tehran not to take provocative steps, and was not preparation for an attack.
The idea of sending a second aircraft carrier was raised this month by the commander of US forces in Iraq, General John Abizaid. But it also comes amid mounting pressure from Saudi Arabia against a withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.
Pentagon officials were considering Gen Abizaid’s request, but few other details were immediately available. A Pentagon spokesman said there would be no comment on military movements.
“The administration has been pretty clear about Iran’s role in the region, which is that Iran has to stop being provocative,” the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, told reporters.
The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D Eisenhower has been in the region since September, along with four other ships and submarines carrying 6,500 sailors. The navy could move other carriers into the region within six weeks. The USS Stennis, a cruiser which was scheduled to deploy in early 2007 in any event, would be the most likely ship to be deployed.
However, if the US were to contemplate a military strike, it would need far more than two carriers, said Reva Bhalla, an analyst at Strategic Forecasting Inc. The US deployed five carriers ahead of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Outgoing UN secretary general Kofi Annan said yesterday that military intervention in Iran would be “unwise and disastrous”, as the Security Council debated a resolution that would impose sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear programme. “I believe that the council, which is discussing the issue, will proceed cautiously and try and do whatever it can to get a negotiated settlement,” he said.
The latest draft resolution would order all countries to ban the supply of specified materials and technology that could contribute to Iran’s nuclear programmes.
Reports that the US is leaning towards an even stronger posture against Iran reflects indications that Washington wants to deepen its military presence in the region. It follows warnings from Saudi Arabia that it would fund Sunni militias in Iraq in the event of a US troop withdrawal. “The aircraft carrier is a way of assuring the Saudis that the inclination is to do more rather than less, and that we are not going to leave them in the lurch,” said John Pike, a military analyst.
The tougher posture on Iran and a temporary troop surge in Iraq would both run counter to the findings of the Iraq Study Group earlier this month which recommended a withdrawal of US combat forces from Iraq by early 2008, and the opening of diplomatic talks with Iran and Syria.
George Bush has yet to unveil his new strategy for Iraq, postponing a planned policy address until the new year. However, a series of leaks suggest that the White House is in favour of sending an extra 20,000 to 30,000 more troops to Iraq for the next six or eight months. Bush told Washington post on Tuesday he plans to expand the size of the US military to deal with the long-term fight against terrorism.
The Pentagon believes the US can only bolster its forces in Iraq by extending deployments, a course that would eventually wear down the army.
Meanwhile, the administration is concerned at evidence that Shia militias are receiving support and training from Iran.
A Pentagon report on Monday said that the Mahdi Army, the armed militia loyal to the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, had eclipsed al-Qaida as the most dangerous agent of sectarian violence.
The quarterly assessment from the Pentagon was the bleakest to date, describing the security situation in Iraq as “tragic”. Violence rose by 22% over the past three months to a new high of 959 attacks a week against US and Iraqi forces, and the Pentagon warned that the continued bloodshed was eroding the legitimacy of the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.
The growing power of Shia militias has come to occupy a greater share of US attention, and fuelled frustration with Mr Maliki. The Iraqi prime minister is dependent on both militia, and so far has resisted US pressure to confront them.
Escalating violence
The Pentagon report said attacks on US and Iraqi troops and Iraqi civilians jumped in recent months to the highest level since Iraq regained its sovereignty in June 2004.
· From mid-August to mid-November, the weekly average number of attacks increased 22% from the previous three months
· There were an average of 959 attacks a week on US and Iraqi forces during the three months ending in November
· Ninety-three Iraqi civilians are killed or injured every day. Attacks against Iraqi security forces reached a new high at 33 a day
· Injuries and deaths among US forces stood at 25 a day.
What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
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December 21st, 2006