Monday, August 04, 2003
The Second Nuclear Age
8/4
No Nukes?:
Some of us mark the "anniversary" of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by participating in vigils or similar activities. The Bush Administration has a different way to mark the occasion. They are planing to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons! The latest report on such from the front page of the NY Times [William J. Broad].
Topping the wish list are weapons meant to penetrate deep into the earth to destroy enemy bunkers. The Pentagon believes that more than 70 nations, big and small, now have some 1,400 underground command posts and sites for ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.
Determined to fight fire with fire, the Defense Department wants bomb makers to develop a class of relatively small nuclear arms — ranging from a fraction the size of the Hiroshima bomb to several times as large — that could pierce rock and reinforced concrete and turn strongholds into radioactive dust.
Welcome to the second nuclear age and the Bush administration's quiet responses to the age's perceived dangers.
WHAT's HAPPENING, IRAQ:
WMD Missing, destroyed (Slobodan Lekic, AP) Still another report that quotes "a close aide to Saddam Hussein", that Saddam blustered about his dire weapons, but actually had destroyed them. This is almost identical to the account of Saddam's son-in-law who after defecting told the CIA that stocks had been destroyed.
According to the aide, by the mid-1990s "it was common knowledge among the leadership" that Iraq had destroyed its chemical stocks and discontinued development of biological and nuclear weapons.
According to the dailytelegraph.co.uk (David Harrison) the Administration has warned the Niger government to keep out of the controversy about Saddam Hussein seeking to buy uranium for his nuclear weapons from the impoverished Niger.
Herman Cohen, a former assistant secretary of state for Africa and one of America's most experienced Africa hands, called on Mamadou Tandja, Niger's president, in the capital Niamey last week to relay the message from Washington, according to senior Niger government officials.
One said: "Let's say Mr Cohen put a friendly arm around the president to say sorry about the forged documents, but then squeezed his shoulder hard enough to convey the message, 'Let's hear no more about this affair from your government'. Basically he was telling Niger to shut up."
Try him or kill him: The NY Times has followed the storyline of the Administration seeking to show its responsiveness to Iraqi public opinion by allowing the Iraqis to try a captured Saddam. However, its Boston Globe (Bryan Bender) has tracked the theme of killing Saddam to avoid a trial where Saddam could have a potentially embarrassing soapbox, embarrassing us as to our past coddling of him or having him confirm the destruction of their wmd in the mid 90's
Meanwhile, Saddam's bravado, or delusional state, results in his Al Jazeera tape where he promises law and order and the protection of state property when "things return to normal."
Lest we forget:
- This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year. - Bush, 9/28/02
- Should Iraq acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year. Bush at the UN, 9/12/02
And, then Condi says on PBS on 7/30, He trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Nobody ever said that it was going to be the next year.
First Blair, then Bush? The ongoing question. Tony is in dire shape. A perusal of the British media finds the Daily Mail noting "Broken promises, wasted years"; A poll last week noted that 2/3 of Britons see a "culture of deceit" at the heart of the government.
Here, we're still looking at each individual deceit, one at a time, since that's all the American public/media seem capable of handling. We've had little focus on the aluminum tubing misrepresentation, cited by Powell at the UN, amongst other venues. Perhaps the biggest lie of all was the Administration’s claim that it was pursuing the diplomatic route to resolve the Iraqi situation, when it had early-on locked into a late winter-early Spring invasion.
Media: Local reports try to emphasize the positive, that many soldiers have been gracious w/ the Iraqi public under declining circumstances. But, as I blogged a while back as to the end of embeddedism and the increasing limitations put on the press, the military has been much less friendly to the press.
arabnews.com (Paul Michaud) notes that Reporters sans frontieres said yesterday in Paris that it "deplored the worsening attitude" of US troops toward journalists in Iraq and called on US Administrator Paul Bremer to explain exactly why two Iranian newsmen, Said Aboutaleb and Soheil Karimi, of the public TV station IRIB, have been held since July 1 for alleged "security violations."
RSF spokesman Severine Cazes-Tschann said that "confiscations of equipment, arrests of journalists and incidents between the media and US soldiers had increased in recent days." He also expressed concern at the worsening conditions under which journalists have to work in Iraq, and recent statements by US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz who accused pan-Arab satellite TV stations Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya of "putting out reports encouraging violence against US troops."
As to one recent incident:
A spokesman for the US-British forces said the journalists had been arrested for "security violations" because when they were picked up "they were not behaving like journalists," although the spokesman did not say what he or the US-British forces of occupation considered "proper journalistic behavior.
Air travel hassles: I look, generally forlornly, for U.S. media to be commenting on this; found the best source for now to be, (sigh), the UK. The Independent (independent.co.uk, Andrew Gumbel) tracks the issue:
After more than a year of complaints by some US anti-war activists that they were being unfairly targeted by airport security, Washington has admitted the existence of a list, possibly hundreds or even thousands of names long, of people it deems worthy of special scrutiny at airports.
The list had been kept secret until its disclosure last week by the new US agency in charge of aviation safety, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). And it is entirely separate from the relatively well-publicised "no-fly" list, which covers about 1,000 people believed to have criminal or terrorist ties that could endanger the safety of their fellow passengers.
The strong suspicion of such groups as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is suing the government to try to learn more, is that the second list has been used to target political activists who challenge the government in entirely legal ways. The TSA acknowledged the existence of the list in response to a Freedom of Information Act request concerning two anti-war activists from San Francisco who were stopped and briefly detained at the airport last autumn and told they were on an FBI no-fly list.
Military Purge:
If you’re a fan of Seven Days in May, the book (Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II) and film (John Frankenheimer) re an attempted coup by the U.S. military, you might shiver a tad about this report from Newsweek (John Barry)
Military: The Army Cleans House
In a move widely seen within the Pentagon as a purge, a dozen or more Army generals are being ushered into retirement as Army’s new chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, takes over.
In advance of Shoomaker’s swearing-in last Friday, the Army’s acting chief, Gen. John Keane- who is himself retiring- spoke with a list of three- and four-star generals, thanked them for their services and told them it was time to go. Sources say Keane first contacted half a dozen names, but by the end of the week the list had reportedly grown to 11- "with more to come within 30 days.
According to one Army source. The Army has a total of 50 three- and four-star generals. A senior Pentagon civilian called the move "housecleaning…"
The list of retirees was, sources, say, drawn up in discussions between Rumsfeld, Shoomaker and Keane. Most of those going are being axed not for personal failings but to open by job slots that are viewed as key to Army transformation But Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita said any suggestion the moves were at Rumsfeld’s behest was "utter nonsense."
9/11: The prescient Alex Cockburn: Long familiar to many of us from The Nation, Cockburn is known for his acerbic bluntness. And, he's often terribly 'right-on.' Witness the following, posted 2 days after 9/11 in the LA Times: (excerpts)
The Next Casualty: Bill of Rights?
Tuesday's onslaughts on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are being likened to Pearl Harbor. The comparison is just. The attacks were near miracles of logistical calculation, timing, execution and devastation inflicted on the targets.
There may be another similarity. The possibility of a Japanese attack in early December 1941 was known to U.S. naval intelligence and to President Roosevelt. On Tuesday, derision at the failure of U.S. intelligence was widespread. The Washington Post quoted an unnamed top official at the National Security Council as saying, "We don't know anything here. We're watching CNN too." Are we to believe that the $30-billion annual intelligence budget, immense electronic eavesdropping capacity, thousands of agents around the world, produced nothing in the way of a warning?
In fact, the editor of the London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, said he heard three weeks ago that Osama bin Laden, now the prime suspect, planned "very, very big attacks against American interests."
* From the nuclear priesthood comes the demand that mini-nukes be deployed on a preemptive basis against the enemies of America.
* The targets abroad will be all the usual suspects—the Taliban or Saddam Hussein, who started off as creatures of U.S. intelligence. The target at home will be the Bill of Rights.
* Tuesday's explosions were not an hour old before terror pundits such as Anthony Cordesman, Wesley Clark, Robert Gates and Lawrence Eagleburger were saying that these attacks had been possible "because America is a democracy," adding that now some democratic perquisites might have to be abandoned? What might this mean? Increased domestic snooping by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies? Ethnic profiling? A national ID card system?
* Tuesday did not offer a flattering exhibition of America's leaders. President Bush gave a timid and stilted initial reaction in Sarasota, Fla., then disappeared for an hour before resurfacing in at a base in Barksdale, La., where he gave another flaccid address with every appearance of being on tranquilizers. He was then flown to a bunker in Nebraska, before someone finally had the wit to suggest that the best place for the U.S. president at time of national emergency is the Oval Office.
* Bush will have no trouble in raiding the famous lock-box, using Social Security trust funds to give more money to the Defense Department.
* Three planes are successfully steered into three of America's most conspicuous buildings and America's response will be to put more money in missile defense as a way of bolstering the economy.
http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la-091301cockburn§ion=/printstory
Courts: More shamelessness. The Right’s tactic is to accuse the Democrats of outright prejudice in rejecting their reactionary nominees. So, Pryor is opposed allegedly because of the Democrats’ anti-Catholicism, Estrada because the Dems are anti-Hispanic. As Josh Marshall points out at talkingpointsmemo.org, "No one with a shred of intellectual honesty thinks that this is really the case in any of these cases."
Australian T.V.: As my daughter has long talked about spending a chunk of time there next year, I’ve been following its rigidly pro-US stance, and, thus far, isolated terrorist threats. Now, different news: "State Terror", a new game show where question and subject matter depart from the usual and focus on crimes of states, especially the US / UK and allies. It will focus both on current events and historical matters, and is slated to air in September in Sydney and Melbourne.
-R
No Nukes?:
Some of us mark the "anniversary" of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by participating in vigils or similar activities. The Bush Administration has a different way to mark the occasion. They are planing to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons! The latest report on such from the front page of the NY Times [William J. Broad].
Topping the wish list are weapons meant to penetrate deep into the earth to destroy enemy bunkers. The Pentagon believes that more than 70 nations, big and small, now have some 1,400 underground command posts and sites for ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.
Determined to fight fire with fire, the Defense Department wants bomb makers to develop a class of relatively small nuclear arms — ranging from a fraction the size of the Hiroshima bomb to several times as large — that could pierce rock and reinforced concrete and turn strongholds into radioactive dust.
Welcome to the second nuclear age and the Bush administration's quiet responses to the age's perceived dangers.
WHAT's HAPPENING, IRAQ:
WMD Missing, destroyed (Slobodan Lekic, AP) Still another report that quotes "a close aide to Saddam Hussein", that Saddam blustered about his dire weapons, but actually had destroyed them. This is almost identical to the account of Saddam's son-in-law who after defecting told the CIA that stocks had been destroyed.
According to the aide, by the mid-1990s "it was common knowledge among the leadership" that Iraq had destroyed its chemical stocks and discontinued development of biological and nuclear weapons.
According to the dailytelegraph.co.uk (David Harrison) the Administration has warned the Niger government to keep out of the controversy about Saddam Hussein seeking to buy uranium for his nuclear weapons from the impoverished Niger.
Herman Cohen, a former assistant secretary of state for Africa and one of America's most experienced Africa hands, called on Mamadou Tandja, Niger's president, in the capital Niamey last week to relay the message from Washington, according to senior Niger government officials.
One said: "Let's say Mr Cohen put a friendly arm around the president to say sorry about the forged documents, but then squeezed his shoulder hard enough to convey the message, 'Let's hear no more about this affair from your government'. Basically he was telling Niger to shut up."
Try him or kill him: The NY Times has followed the storyline of the Administration seeking to show its responsiveness to Iraqi public opinion by allowing the Iraqis to try a captured Saddam. However, its Boston Globe (Bryan Bender) has tracked the theme of killing Saddam to avoid a trial where Saddam could have a potentially embarrassing soapbox, embarrassing us as to our past coddling of him or having him confirm the destruction of their wmd in the mid 90's
Meanwhile, Saddam's bravado, or delusional state, results in his Al Jazeera tape where he promises law and order and the protection of state property when "things return to normal."
Lest we forget:
- This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year. - Bush, 9/28/02
- Should Iraq acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year. Bush at the UN, 9/12/02
And, then Condi says on PBS on 7/30, He trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Nobody ever said that it was going to be the next year.
First Blair, then Bush? The ongoing question. Tony is in dire shape. A perusal of the British media finds the Daily Mail noting "Broken promises, wasted years"; A poll last week noted that 2/3 of Britons see a "culture of deceit" at the heart of the government.
Here, we're still looking at each individual deceit, one at a time, since that's all the American public/media seem capable of handling. We've had little focus on the aluminum tubing misrepresentation, cited by Powell at the UN, amongst other venues. Perhaps the biggest lie of all was the Administration’s claim that it was pursuing the diplomatic route to resolve the Iraqi situation, when it had early-on locked into a late winter-early Spring invasion.
Media: Local reports try to emphasize the positive, that many soldiers have been gracious w/ the Iraqi public under declining circumstances. But, as I blogged a while back as to the end of embeddedism and the increasing limitations put on the press, the military has been much less friendly to the press.
arabnews.com (Paul Michaud) notes that Reporters sans frontieres said yesterday in Paris that it "deplored the worsening attitude" of US troops toward journalists in Iraq and called on US Administrator Paul Bremer to explain exactly why two Iranian newsmen, Said Aboutaleb and Soheil Karimi, of the public TV station IRIB, have been held since July 1 for alleged "security violations."
RSF spokesman Severine Cazes-Tschann said that "confiscations of equipment, arrests of journalists and incidents between the media and US soldiers had increased in recent days." He also expressed concern at the worsening conditions under which journalists have to work in Iraq, and recent statements by US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz who accused pan-Arab satellite TV stations Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya of "putting out reports encouraging violence against US troops."
As to one recent incident:
A spokesman for the US-British forces said the journalists had been arrested for "security violations" because when they were picked up "they were not behaving like journalists," although the spokesman did not say what he or the US-British forces of occupation considered "proper journalistic behavior.
Air travel hassles: I look, generally forlornly, for U.S. media to be commenting on this; found the best source for now to be, (sigh), the UK. The Independent (independent.co.uk, Andrew Gumbel) tracks the issue:
After more than a year of complaints by some US anti-war activists that they were being unfairly targeted by airport security, Washington has admitted the existence of a list, possibly hundreds or even thousands of names long, of people it deems worthy of special scrutiny at airports.
The list had been kept secret until its disclosure last week by the new US agency in charge of aviation safety, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). And it is entirely separate from the relatively well-publicised "no-fly" list, which covers about 1,000 people believed to have criminal or terrorist ties that could endanger the safety of their fellow passengers.
The strong suspicion of such groups as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is suing the government to try to learn more, is that the second list has been used to target political activists who challenge the government in entirely legal ways. The TSA acknowledged the existence of the list in response to a Freedom of Information Act request concerning two anti-war activists from San Francisco who were stopped and briefly detained at the airport last autumn and told they were on an FBI no-fly list.
Military Purge:
If you’re a fan of Seven Days in May, the book (Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II) and film (John Frankenheimer) re an attempted coup by the U.S. military, you might shiver a tad about this report from Newsweek (John Barry)
Military: The Army Cleans House
In a move widely seen within the Pentagon as a purge, a dozen or more Army generals are being ushered into retirement as Army’s new chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, takes over.
In advance of Shoomaker’s swearing-in last Friday, the Army’s acting chief, Gen. John Keane- who is himself retiring- spoke with a list of three- and four-star generals, thanked them for their services and told them it was time to go. Sources say Keane first contacted half a dozen names, but by the end of the week the list had reportedly grown to 11- "with more to come within 30 days.
According to one Army source. The Army has a total of 50 three- and four-star generals. A senior Pentagon civilian called the move "housecleaning…"
The list of retirees was, sources, say, drawn up in discussions between Rumsfeld, Shoomaker and Keane. Most of those going are being axed not for personal failings but to open by job slots that are viewed as key to Army transformation But Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita said any suggestion the moves were at Rumsfeld’s behest was "utter nonsense."
9/11: The prescient Alex Cockburn: Long familiar to many of us from The Nation, Cockburn is known for his acerbic bluntness. And, he's often terribly 'right-on.' Witness the following, posted 2 days after 9/11 in the LA Times: (excerpts)
The Next Casualty: Bill of Rights?
Tuesday's onslaughts on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are being likened to Pearl Harbor. The comparison is just. The attacks were near miracles of logistical calculation, timing, execution and devastation inflicted on the targets.
There may be another similarity. The possibility of a Japanese attack in early December 1941 was known to U.S. naval intelligence and to President Roosevelt. On Tuesday, derision at the failure of U.S. intelligence was widespread. The Washington Post quoted an unnamed top official at the National Security Council as saying, "We don't know anything here. We're watching CNN too." Are we to believe that the $30-billion annual intelligence budget, immense electronic eavesdropping capacity, thousands of agents around the world, produced nothing in the way of a warning?
In fact, the editor of the London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, said he heard three weeks ago that Osama bin Laden, now the prime suspect, planned "very, very big attacks against American interests."
* From the nuclear priesthood comes the demand that mini-nukes be deployed on a preemptive basis against the enemies of America.
* The targets abroad will be all the usual suspects—the Taliban or Saddam Hussein, who started off as creatures of U.S. intelligence. The target at home will be the Bill of Rights.
* Tuesday's explosions were not an hour old before terror pundits such as Anthony Cordesman, Wesley Clark, Robert Gates and Lawrence Eagleburger were saying that these attacks had been possible "because America is a democracy," adding that now some democratic perquisites might have to be abandoned? What might this mean? Increased domestic snooping by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies? Ethnic profiling? A national ID card system?
* Tuesday did not offer a flattering exhibition of America's leaders. President Bush gave a timid and stilted initial reaction in Sarasota, Fla., then disappeared for an hour before resurfacing in at a base in Barksdale, La., where he gave another flaccid address with every appearance of being on tranquilizers. He was then flown to a bunker in Nebraska, before someone finally had the wit to suggest that the best place for the U.S. president at time of national emergency is the Oval Office.
* Bush will have no trouble in raiding the famous lock-box, using Social Security trust funds to give more money to the Defense Department.
* Three planes are successfully steered into three of America's most conspicuous buildings and America's response will be to put more money in missile defense as a way of bolstering the economy.
http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la-091301cockburn§ion=/printstory
Courts: More shamelessness. The Right’s tactic is to accuse the Democrats of outright prejudice in rejecting their reactionary nominees. So, Pryor is opposed allegedly because of the Democrats’ anti-Catholicism, Estrada because the Dems are anti-Hispanic. As Josh Marshall points out at talkingpointsmemo.org, "No one with a shred of intellectual honesty thinks that this is really the case in any of these cases."
Australian T.V.: As my daughter has long talked about spending a chunk of time there next year, I’ve been following its rigidly pro-US stance, and, thus far, isolated terrorist threats. Now, different news: "State Terror", a new game show where question and subject matter depart from the usual and focus on crimes of states, especially the US / UK and allies. It will focus both on current events and historical matters, and is slated to air in September in Sydney and Melbourne.
-R
