In this issue:

Byrd Blasts Syria Accountability Act

GOP Shuts Down Congress

CIA Man Who Ran Afghan War Draws Parallel To Iraq Fiasco

House Votes To Send Defense Authorization Bill to Bush

Supreme Court Will Hear Guantanamo Cases

House Passes Yet Another Continuing Resolution

Military Readiness Concerns Aired at House Hearing

From Volume 2, Issue Number 46 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Nov. 18, 2003

United States News Digest

Byrd Blasts Syria Accountability Act

On Nov. 11, the Senate voted 89 to 4 to pass the Syria Accountability Act, in yet another act of cowardice, that bows down to neo-conservative disinformation.

However, the conscience of the Senate, Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) made sure that the Senate knew the dangers it was walking into. Byrd noted that of the 22 pages of the bill, only six deal with the sanctions that are to be imposed on Syria. The other 15 contain 51 clauses of findings, senses of Congress, and statements of policy. None of these assertions are documented to reflect actual intelligence assessments.

"These nonbinding provisions," he warned, "could later be used to build a case for a military intervention against Syria." He said that many of the clauses appear to "gloss over the complex situation" with respect to Syria. Notably, one clause speaks of "hostile actions" by Syria against U.S.-led forces in Iraq. "Yet the evidence," he said, "is inconclusive as to the role of the Government of Syria in the attacks" against U.S. troops in Iraq. "Such insinuations," he said, "could be used to build a case for a preemptive military intervention against Syria, which, unfortunately, is a very real possibility because of the dangerous doctrine of preemption hatched by this administration."

Secondly, Byrd noted the "ill-considered" language in the bill regarding Syria's alleged biological weapons programs. One clause quotes a CIA report that says it is "highly probable" that Syria is working on biological weapons. The next clause quotes an Undersecretary of State claiming that Syria "is pursuing" the development of biological weapons. "It is exactly this kind of shading of intelligence probabilities becoming certainties for which Congress has criticized the administration and its intelligence agencies for creating the hysteria that led to war in Iraq," Byrd said. "Could Congress be so willing to make the same mistake with respect to Syria?"

He concluded that, "The findings, statements of policy, and sense of Congress provisions in the Syria Accountability Act could be used to build a case against Syria that could be too easily hyped to imply Congressional support for preemptive military action" against Syria. "I will vote against this bill because of that dangerous course that it may portend."

GOP Shuts Down Congress

Senate Republicans, on the pretext of frustration at the Democrats' obstruction of a number of judicial nominees, ran a marathon 40-hour session that stretched from 6 PM Nov. 12, until the early morning hours of Nov. 14, but failed to break the Democratic filibusters. Three cloture votes, to force the Senate to vote on a nomination, needed to proceed with consideration of three of the nominations, fell seven votes short of the required 60 votes.

In announcing the strategy of forcing the 36-40 hours of non-stop debate, on Nov. 6, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn) said that, "the goal is to break these partisan filibusters and give, not necessarily approval of these nominees, but that up-or-down vote, consistent with advice and consent in the Constitution of the United States." Frist has also put forward a proposed change to Senate rules so that judicial nominations cannot be filibustered indefinitely, but decided not to vote on it during the marathon session because it was clear the Democrats would be able to block that, too.

The House Republicans, rather than following the example of their Senate colleagues, have simply not scheduled anything, other than the occasional conference report, for much of November.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) complained that it was, in effect, a lockout. "[A]t a time when our troops are in harm's way in Iraq, and the American people are battling for their economic survival, Congress is missing in action, Pelosi said. "Once again, the Republicans have taken a break from doing the public's business." The Minority Leader further charged that the Democrats have been locked out of conference committee meetings on both the Medicare bill and the energy bill. While Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Billy Tauzin (R-La) announced a deal on the energy bill Nov. 14, the Medicare bill remains stalled in conference.

"What the Republicans are doing," Pelosi said, "is fighting to protect the special interest provisions in the bill, giving millions of dollars in windfall profits to the pharmaceutical industry," rather than negotiating a "real Medicare prescription-drug plan that will bring down drug prices and provide guaranteed benefits under Medicare."

CIA Man Who Ran Afghan War Draws Parallel To Iraq Fiasco

Milt Bearden, a retired senior CIA officer, who was in charge of the U.S. Afghan war operations in the 1980s, penned a devastating op-ed in the Nov. 9 New York Times, in which he drew a strong parallel between the U.S.-backed mujahideen, who drove the Soviet Red Army out of Afghanistan, and the Iraqi partisans, who are now using the same irregular-warfare methods against U.S. forces inside Iraq.

Bearden cited three basic tenets of Chinese military historian Sun Tzu's work on warfare, and showed that all three are applicable to both the Afghan and Iraq wars: 1. attack the enemy's strategy; 2. attack his alliances; and 3. attack his army. Bearden drew several other vital parallels: When military forces begin brutally killing off civilians, it is a good rule of thumb that, for every one partisan killed, six friends, relatives and neighbors join the cause. And, he concluded, "There are two stark lessons in the history of the 20th century: no nation that launched a war against another sovereign nation ever won. And, every nationalist-based insurgency against a foreign occupation ultimately succeeded. This is not to say anything about whether or not the United States should have gone into Iraq or whether the insurgency there is a lasting one. But it indicates how difficult the situation may become."

House Votes To Send Defense Authorization Bill to Bush

On Nov. 7, the House of Representatives passed, by a vote of 362 to 40, and with too little debate, the fiscal 2004 defense authorization bill. Included in that bill, was legislative language giving Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld the authority to reorganize the Defense Department's civilian workforce as he sees fit. Instead of the Congress creating a new civilian personnel system, Rumsfeld has been given that authority, and that authority includes the ability to bypass much of the present civil service law, including the provisions on collective bargaining and employee appeals.

The defense bill came out of the conference committee with the original House language largely intact, and then was rammed through the House so quickly, that many Democrats complained that they had no time to read the bill before having to vote on it. Rep. Martin Frost (D-Texas), who voted for President Bush's Iraq war resolution last year, complained that the Republican leadership shut Democrats out of the conference committee meetings on the bill. He said that this was part of a "clear and dangerous pattern" by the Republicans to exclude the Democrats from the legislative process.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif) noted that Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) had crafted a bipartisan compromise on the civil service reform that gave the Defense Department flexibilities in managing its civilian workforce, while protecting worker rights, but that the conference negotiators had rejected it. "This bill makes a mockery of labor relations at the Defense Department," he said. He added that the bill gives the Pentagon the authority to waive collective bargaining rights for the next six years, as well as the authority to decide what issues will be bargained and how labor-management impasses will be resolved.

Even though the civil-service reform was only one of many provisions in the bill that made many House members uncomfortable, few were willing to take the risk of being seen as "not supporting the troops," given that the bill included many benefits for military personnel, including health-care benefits, that had wide support in the House.

The Senate followed the House action, on Nov. 12, voting up the conference report 95 to 3.

Supreme Court Will Hear Guantanamo Cases

Over the Bush Administration's opposition, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Nov. 10 to review two cases involving persons picked up in Afghanistan, and held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo, Cuba. The court will decide the issue of whether the courts have jurisdiction to hear challenges to such detentions. It will not necessarily decide on the legality or the constitutionality of the detentions.

The two cases at issue were brought by families and lawyers for two Britons and two Australians, in one of the cases, and by families of 12 Kuwaiti prisoners, in the second case.

The cases were dismissed in Federal district court in New York, on the grounds of World War II-era precedents which said that the courts have no jurisdiction over prisoners captured and held by the U.S. military in time of war. The Federal Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York upheld the dismissals.

The Justice Department, in the person of neo-con Solicitor General Theodore Olson, argued adamantly that the courts have no jurisdiction over the detainees, and therefore that the Supreme Court should not review the cases. The Administration contended that for the Supreme Court or any other court, to hear the cases, would constitute "interference" with the war powers of the President, and "judicial interference in military affairs."

Olson, whose wife was killed on 9/11, and the Justice Department, also argued that the Supreme Court does not have the right to determine if the Guantanamo prisoners are being held in violation of international law, any more than they can determine if their detention violates the U.S. Constitution.

A number of observers believe that the Supreme Court's decision to hear the cases, at the minimum, sends a message to the Administration that its handling of the Guantanamo detainees is being watched, and that the courts do not like being told that they have no role in such crucial matters. A ruling is not likely until late Spring of 2004.

House Passes Yet Another Continuing Resolution

As the Senate fights over judicial nominations, the fiscal 2004 appropriations process continues to languish. Under these circumstances, the House passed another continuing resolution, on Nov. 5, to keep the government open, this one running until Nov. 21. Only four of the thirteen annual spending bills have been sent to President Bush for his signature; the defense, homeland security, legislative branch and Interior Department appropriations bills. The Senate has sent six others to conference committee, the most recent being the Agriculture Department bill on Nov. 6, but has yet to act on the three remaining bills. The House had finished the last of its bills in early September.

Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.), the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, attributed the difficulties in the appropriations process to two problems. One was the Senate GOP leadership's inability to schedule consideration of appropriations bills. The other was the insertion into some of the bills provisions that are so outrageously partisan that agreement cannot be reached. Obey gave as one example of the second problem the school vouchers provision in the District of Columbia appropriations bill. The Republican majority, he said, "went beyond where they could go and still maintain a bipartisan consensus for that bill, and in the process lost the votes of" most of the Democrats.

In the Senate, meanwhile, rumblings of finishing up the year with an omnibus package continue, despite Majority Leader Bill Frist's assertions to the contrary. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), almost alone in defending the Constitutional prerogatives of the Senate, warned, during debate on the defense authorization bill, on Nov. 11, that an omnibus bill would compromise the Constitutional powers of the Senate. He said that the House can open the door to appropriations legislation, "but if the Senate is denied the opportunity to consider amendments, or is severely limited in the number of amendments which it may consider, Senators are thereby denied the opportunity to offer amendments of their own and the potential for the achievement of good legislation in the final results, accordingly, lessened."

Military Readiness Concerns Aired at House Hearing

The ability of the U.S. military to sustain its current overseas commitments at its present level of personnel strength and dependency on the National Guard and Reserves came into question, on Nov. 5, during a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee. It began with Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo), who, after noting that both active duty and reserve units are deploying more frequently, warned that, "our ability to deal with contingencies may be at risk, because our strategic reserve will shrink." He suggested that winning the war on terrorism may mean "expanding the force structure."

The two Administration witnesses, Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness David Chu, and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace, both insisted that they were taking measures to make more people available, short of asking for an increase in force structure. Chu told the committee that, "we have a lot of individuals who we believe are performing jobs that could, in fact, be done by civilians, freeing up a soldier, so to speak, to go back to another unit." Pace insisted that "All of the war games that we have done tell us that we will not need" an extra division, based on considerations such as the training of new Iraqi security forces expected to take over security in Iraq from U.S. troops. "But," he added, "it is clearly a judgment about current status, future needs, and the ability to transform within the sized force that we currently have."

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