United States News Digest
In Belfast, Bush and Blair Deny Differences Over Postwar UN Role
The leaders of the United States and Great Britain held a press conference April 8 in Belfast, denying any split over the role of the United Nations in postwar Iraq. However, their statements seemed to indicate continued problems.
President George W. Bush said: "The rebuilding of Iraq will require the support and expertise of the international community. We're committed to working with international institutions, including the United Nations, which will have a vital role to play in this task.... We'll move as quickly as possible to place governmental responsibilities under the control of an interim authority composed of Iraqis from both inside and outside the country. The interim authority will serve until a permanent government can be chosen by the Iraqi people."
Prime Minister Tony Blair said: "The important thing is not to get into some battle about words of the precise role here or there, [but to] work together internationally ... to do what we really should be doing, which is making sure that the will of the Iraqi people is properly expressed in institutions that in the end they own, not any outside power or authority."
In a joint statement, Blair and Bush restated their commitment to seek new UN resolutions to "affirm Iraq's territorial integrity, ensure rapid delivery of humanitarian relief, and endorse an appropriate post-conflict administration for Iraq."
Meanwhile, while Bush and Blair were meeting in Belfast, Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice arrived in Moscow April 6, where she meet with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, and Russian Security Council chief Vladimir Rushailo. Her meeting coincided with the unexplained coalition attack, in wartime Iraq, on a Russian diplomatic convoy that had left Baghdad and was travelling toward the Syrian border.
Wolfowitz Sent To Lie That Iraq Occupation Is 'Not Colonialism'
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was sent to Congress to lie that Iraq occupation is "not colonialism," as the White House battles Congress over funds for postwar Iraq. But the real issue isthere is no "postwar" Iraq. Commenting April 6, Lyndon LaRouche said that what there is, is a perpetual war with no exit strategy. The occupation government is nothing but another phase of the war.
According to the Washington Post, there is a brawl in Congress over where both the House and Senate, led by some senior GOPers, rewrote a $2.5-billion grant to prevent it going to the White Housewhich would disburse the money to the Pentagon. Under National Security Directive 24, which Bush signed before the war began, administration of Iraq is under the Defense Department. Congress rewrote the appropriations bill, giving the money to the State Department. Vice President Cheney was making calls to the GOP leadership to get them to back off, but failed to reverse the move.
A memo prepared by the senior GOP staff to the House Appropriations Committee warned that giving the money to the White House would erect a "wall of executive privilege that would deny Congress and the Committee access to the management of the Fund. Decision-makers determining the allocation ... could not be called as witnesses before hearings, and most fiscal data would be beyond the Committee's reach." National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said the White House will continue to press for Congress to give the money "to the President for distribution."
The UN will not operate under the command of an occupation force, says the article; the European Union will not contribute funds to institutions that are not operating under UN Security Council resolutions, and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Britain is going to put a resolution before the UN Security Council, to "ensure" the UN overseas the aid administration.
Against growing domestic and international outrage over the imperial moves by the U.S., Wolfowitz took to the airwaves, to rebut the accusations about "regional war" and "imperialism and colonialism." Appearing on Face the Nation, Wolfowitz said, "This is not colonialism," but the chance "to prove" that Arabs "are capable" of having democratic institutions. He was confronted by questions of whether this is "World War IV," and a broader war, in answer to which he repeated what Cheney repeatedly said on March 16after Sept. 11, anything goes in the war against terrorism. He also said that since the war has already started, the decision was made to change the mission from disarming Iraq to making it "an example" for the rest of the region.
State Department Chickenhawk Bolton Warns Iran, Syria, North Korea
John Bolton, resident State Department Chickenhawk, last week was warning Iran, Syria, and North Korea to "draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq"namely, that they should stop the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. In addition, he cautioned Syria and other countries in the Middle East to consider "new possibilities" for peace in the region.
As reported by Reuters, Bolton, U.S. Undersecretary of State for arms control and international security, made the threat at an April 9 news conference in Rome, where he was meeting with Vatican and Italian officials, including Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican Foreign Minister.
Powell Says U.S. Will Seek UN Endorsement of its Plans for Iraq
In an April 10 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked what he thinks about the French, German, and Russian belief that the United Nations should play the "central role in reconstruction, not just a vital role," in Iraq.
Powell insisted that "the UN has a vital role to play." What that "vital" role is, he elaborated with the rest of his answer: "We need an endorsement of the authority, an endorsement of what we're doing, in order to begin selling oil in due course, and in order to make sure that the humanitarian supplies continue...." To make his point very clear, he ridiculed the "suggestion" that some of his "colleagues" in the Security Council had made that, now that the "coalition has done all of this," it could "step aside" and let the Security Council "become responsible for everything." He said that this "is incorrect and they know it and they were told it."
Say Lack of WMD 'Smoking Gun' Could Wreck U.S. International Relations
The lack of a WMD "smoking gun" in Iraq could destroy the United States' already-reeling international relations, warned columnist Robert Novak April 7. Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the latest reason for the invasion, wrote Novak, have neither been used by Iraq, nor found by the invading American and British forces. Some U.S. officials, he noted, fear that this will cause even bigger opposition to the U.S. war. Some other U.S. officials say that WMD will be found. The secondary mission for U.S. forces, as Novak put it, is to substantiate the purported reason President Bush gave for overthrowing Saddam. "At stake may be the ruptured international relations of the United States."
U.S. Diplomats Leave Their Posts Because of War, Terrorism, and SARS
The April 12 New York Times reported that the war in Iraq, the threat of terrorism, and the spread of SARS in Asia, taken altogether, have resulted in the largest withdrawal of U.S. diplomats and dependents from overseas posts since the 1991 Gulf War. Thirty-three embassies and consulates in 17 countries have so far been affectedmost are in the Middle East, in the neighborhood of Iraq, but an increasing number of diplomats and dependents are also leaving China and Vietnam, out of fear of the SARS epidemic. In all but two of those countries, the departures are voluntary, and the State Department is having increasing difficulty filling posts that are considered "hardship," despite higher pay and greater chances for advancement.
DOJ Detaining Arab-American, a U.S. Citizen, Without Charges
Since mid-March, Maher Hawash, a 38-year-old software engineer at Intel Corp., has been held in solitary confinement by the U.S. Justice Department, with no public record of his arrest and confinement, or of the searches conducted by the FBI at Hawash's home and office. Bail was denied at a secret hearing, and a Federal judge has issued a gag order prohibiting Hawash's lawyers and Federal officials from talking about the case.
A group of Intel employees have started a legal defense fund for their colleague. "Our friend has fallen into some kind of 'Alice in Wonderland'-meets-Franz Kafka," said former Intel executive Steven McGeady. "You hear about this happening in other countries and to immigrants and then to American citizens. And finally you hear about it happening to someone you know. It's scary."
Washington Post coverage says it has identified about 50 people who have been arrested and jailed for some period of time as material witnesses since Sept. 11, 2001, and that as late as last year, many had not even been brought before a grand jurythe alleged reason for holding them.
Judge Blasts Justice Department Secrecy in Moussaoui Case
The Federal judge presiding over the prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was once hyped by the Justice Department as being the "20th hijacker," has issued a strong denunciation of the "shroud of secrecy" under which the case is being run, which includes denying Moussaoui access to key documents and witnesses.
According to the New York Times and Washington Post, Federal Judge Leonie Brinkema said that she is "disturbed" by the extent to which the government is using classified materials in the case, and she said she "agrees with the defendant's skepticism of the government's ability to prosecute this case in open court." Moussaoui is asking for a transcript of a secret court hearing in January, at which prosecutors outlined their theory of the case against him.
Separately, the Justice Department is appealing to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals another order by Judge Brinkema, that allows Moussaoui's lawyers to have access to Ramsi Binalshibh, an al-Qaeda leader captured in Pakistan, who is reported to have told U.S. interrogators that Moussaoui was not part of the planning or execution of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Observers point out that this case is shaping up as a key test of the government's right to secrecy in terrorism cases, versus a defendant's right to evidence needed to defend himselfespecially in a capital case. It is widely expected that the government may transfer Moussaoui to military custody, and then try him before a military tribunalif it tries him at all.
DOJ Schemes with Some GOP Congressmen To Make Patriot Act Permanent
The Justice Department is scheming with some Congressional Republicans to make permanent the "USA/Patriot Act," passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, according to the April 9 New York Times.
The Act, rushed though Congress after Sept. 11, 2001, contained a "sunset" provision so that certain key parts of the law would automatically expire at the end of 2005 unless extended. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has been in discussions with the Justice Department and other Senate Republicans to add to another anti-terrorism bill a provision repealing the sunset provision.
That bill, sponsored by Sens. John Kyl (R-Ariz) and Charles Schumer (D-NY) and called the "lone wolf" bill, would eliminate the need for Federal agents to show that a target is affiliated with a foreign power in order to get a secret order for electronic surveillance or a break-in.
But several Democrats have said they want to add an amendment to the bill imposing tougher restrictions on the use of secret warrants, and also requiring the Justice Department to provide information to Congress as to how these secret court orders are being used. Hatch's proposal is being seen as a counter-move against these Democratic amendments. A former Democratic aide said that Hatch "is throwing down the gauntlet to people who think the USA/Patriot Act went too far and who want to cut back its powers."
Canada's Top 100 CEOs Visit Washington To Mend Fences
Canada's top 100 CEOs visited Washington, D.C. April 7, meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, Gen. (ret.) Wesley Clark, Richard Perle, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), former Clinton chief of staff Thomas (Mack) McLarty, David Hale, Joseph Jockel, and others, in the context of the Spring Members Meeting of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE).
The unofficial reason for the meeting, according to the Toronto Globe & Mail, is that recent derogatory remarks about the U.S. and President Bush, made by MPs belonging to the ruling Liberal Party of Prime Minister Jean Chretien, plus Canada's decision not to join the "coalition of the willing," has unhinged the Canadian business and financial elite. So while the CCCE had already, in January, established a 30-member CEO Action Group on North American Security and Prosperity, whose mandate was to launch "a new initiative for action on five fronts: reinventing borders, maximizing economic efficiencies, negotiation of a comprehensive resource security pact, sharing the burden of defense and security and creating a new institutional framework," the meeting looked more like an attempt to get the Canadian business community to agree to read the riot act to Chretien.
Two weeks ago, Tom Donahue, president of the American Chamber of Commerce, was in Toronto to mend fences and reassure the Canadian business community that regardless of some criticism from Canada, US$1.3 billion still crosses the border in both directions every day, that this still represents 25% of U.S. exports, that the U.S. still exports more to Canada "than we export to all 15 member states of the European Union combined," and that 87% of Canadian exports are still going into the United States.
Some Canadian CEOs who went to Washington, were still not reassured, perhaps because some are looking not just at the war and the fudged economic figures, but have begun to realize that the economic crisis is systemic and global, and the collapse is accelerating.
Philip Morris Default Could Clobber State Budgets Even More
States across the country have been spending their funds from the famous national tobacco-case settlements to replace their disappeared tax revenues, but the tobacco funds may now disappear, according to the April 6 Washington Post. Philip Morris, the largest cigarette maker, pays $2.5 billion a year into the tobacco fund, and it now says it will have to default on that payment if it has to post a $12-billion appeals bond just ordered in an Illinois smoking-damages case. "The states are counting on this money," said National Conference of State Legislatures analyst Lee Dixon, in an understatement. "It's already in their budgets."
Say U.S. Response Time on SARS Far Faster Than on Anthrax
An article in the April 13 Washington Post by Peter Hotez, professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology and Tropical Medicine at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.and a senior fellow of the Sabin Vaccine Institutesays the U.S. health establishment response on SARS has been markedly swifter than the response 18 months earlier to the anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001.
He writes that when the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta first learned of the outbreak in China's Guangdong Province, in February 2003, "they sprang into action, collaborating intensively with the World Health Organization to determine the cause." Within two weeks of the WHO's first international alert on SARS, issued March 12, the CDC had determined that the cause was not influenza, but a coronavirus.
The swift response on the part of the CDC and "other components of the Department of Health and Human Services has been unlike anything I have ever seen," writes Hotez, citing not just the CDC but the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, and others at HHS.
This helps to explain the relatively low infection rate in the U.S., and the absenceso farof any deaths from SARS. That is in part the result of the post-9/11, post-anthrax ramp-up of bioterror training at U.S. hospitals.
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