Creepy Disclosures Weblog

Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#42


  • US-UK Military War Misinformation Said 'Worst Ever' - BBC
    By Julie Hyland
    WSWS.org
    3-29-3
    The BBC has become so concerned at false and misleading information being put out on the war against Iraq that it has stressed to its journalists that they must clearly attribute military sources.
    According to the Guardian, BBC news chiefs met to discuss the problem after the broadcaster carried several reports later shown to be inaccurate. The misleading reports were all favourable to the US/UK forces and so their exposure has undermined the BBC?s claims to be providing unbiased coverage.
    On Sunday March 23, British military sources claimed to have taken the port of Umm Qasr in southern Iraq. Three days later, they were still fighting to quell resistance.
    The BBC then ran headlines with reports of the discovering of a chemical weapons factory in An Najaf, which was later dropped.
    On Tuesday, March 25, the British news was filled with reports of an uprising under way in Basra, Iraq?s second largest city. Claims of the ?popular uprising? were first made by British military forces, but were later found to be untrue.
    On Wednesday, March 26, the British military were cited reporting that ?up to 120 tanks? were leaving Basra. The convoy was later found to be just three-strong.
    Numerous other examples can be cited, including the continuous downplaying of the extent of popular opposition to the US/UK invasion and the particularly cynical claim that the Iraqi regime was responsible for the missile attack on a Baghdad market that killed 17 civilians.
    A BBC spokeswoman confirmed that a meeting had been held to discuss recent events.
    ?There?s been a discussion about attribution and it?s been reinforced with people that we do have to attribute military information,? she said. ?We have to be very careful in the midst of a conflict like this one to be very sure when we?re reporting something we?ve not seen with our own eyes that we attribute it.?
    An unnamed ?senior BBC news source?, cited by the Guardian, went further, stating: ?We?re getting more truth out of Baghdad than the Pentagon at the moment.?
    ?We?re absolutely sick and tired of putting things out and finding they?re not true. The misinformation in this war is far and away worse than any conflict I?ve covered, including the first Gulf war and Kosovo.?
    Many news sources in Britain are now admitting that much of the key information they are relaying has been proven to be inaccurate. But this is often put down to the pressures of 24- hour coverage and the ?fog of war?. For example, the BBC source cited by the Guardian went on to claim that the misinformation was an accident, rather than deliberate deceit: ?I don?t know whether they [the Pentagon] are putting out flyers in the hope that we?ll run them first and ask questions later or whether they genuinely don?t know what?s going on?I rather suspect the latter.?
    In truth, much of the British and US media is simply a propaganda tool of their respective military forces. Some 900 journalists and reporters are ?embedded? with US/UK troops, effectively functioning as part of an act of armed aggression against the Iraqi people and paid to conceal that fact. The concern expressed by the BBC?s top brass is that this fact has become so obvious to millions in Britain and around the world that its own credibility?and hence its considerable political influence internationally?will never recover.
    http://wsws.org/articles/2003/mar2003/bbc-m29_prn.shtml

  • The uprising that wasn't, mythical chemical weapons and other items of 'breaking news'
    By Paul Peachey
    29 March 2003
    (UKINDEPENDENT)
    The real war pauses occasionally. The information war goes on 24 hours a day. Every opportunity, every scrap of information, has been deployed to reassure British and American public opinion that the war is being won – and won painlessly.
    Rumours and half-truths have been seized on and presented as facts with enormous propaganda power. As the tide of war, and of information, moves on, to recall what was true and what was not has often been difficult.
    THE DEFECTION OF TARIQ AZIZ 19 March
    In the House of Commons on 19 March, rumours began to circulate that the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister had fled to Bulgaria. If true, the suggestion, put about by American officials, would have been a huge coup for the Allies.
    Intelligence sources were united in their disbelief. And they were soon vindicated by the appearance the same day of Tariq Aziz on television in Baghdad, quashing the latest rumour that he had been killed while trying to flee the country.
    BATTLE FOR UMM QASR 20 March, 7.33pm
    Rarely can a military target have been captured as often as Umm Qasr. Nine days ago, a Kuwaiti news agency set the ball rolling when it claimed that the port had been overrun. From then it seemed to be captured day after day.
    On Friday, US Marines raised the Stars and Stripes – only for it to be removed hastily for public relations reasons – and Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, decreed the area "secure". An hour after the BBC had announced that Umm Qasr and Basra had fallen in the early days, an Iraqi opposition leader said: "It is quite untrue. There is still heavy fighting in both places."
    On Saturday, "pockets of resistance" remained, the British said. The next day in the "taken" area US Marines encountered snipers, then machine-gun fire and grenades. By Tuesday, and the arrival of British Royal Marines, the port was declared "open and secure". Baghdad continues to deny having lost control of the strategic port.
    DISAPPEARING IRAQI TROOPS 21 March, 3am
    Intelligence reports had predicted the capitulation of Iraq's 51st Division before war had even started. With thousands of propaganda leaflets having been dropped on to the troops and dark hints of American contacts with Iraqi generals, large-scale desertions were a given. "In the southern area, where there are six Iraqi divisions, 50 per cent of their officers are planning to surrender once the campaign opens," one intelligence officer claimed.
    As the war started, Pentagon sources said the Iraqi military was "breaking from within". No surprise then, when Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of the UK defence staff, said last Saturday that the 51st Division, one of those defending Basra, had surrendered and "that we have many thousands of prisoners of war". Geoff Hoon did not take long to assert that the 51st had "stopped" fighting. The commander and his deputy had given themselves up with 8,000 soldiers surrendering or deserting, said reports. The New York Times reported that the division had "melted away".
    Within days, elements of the 51st were back at war. It soon became clear that the man who surrendered was a junior officer masquerading as his commander. Maj-Gen Wall confirmed that elements of the 51st had returned to the city, taking up arms again. Predict-ions of the scale of the desertions have proved wildly over-optimistic: yesterday US officials said they had only 4,000 prisoners of war.
    CHEMICAL WEAPONS 24 March, 1.33am
    On the day of the first significant Allied combat casualties, the discovery of a "chemical weapons complex" was a welcome propaganda coup for US-led forces.
    If the reports were true, it would have been the first find by the invasion force validating allegations that Iraq still had weapons of mass destruction.
    The discovery came after a weekend of minor setbacks and tough fighting in the early days of the war. Doubts arose almost as quickly as the reports that appeared overnight on Sunday in the Jerusalem Post, which had a reporter with the troops as they entered the complex, and the US news channel Fox, quoting unnamed Pentagon officials. By then the other networks had already got in on the act. ABC News cited one unidentified official who said an Iraqi general captured at the site "was a potential gold mine of evidence about the weapons Saddam Hussein said he does not have".
    Former weapons inspectors said the discovery of the site near Najaf by the 1st Brigade of the US 3rd Infantry division was probably insignificant.
    US defence officials soon began to row back, saying the factory "may turn out to be a chemical weapons site, or it may be a site that was producing something else". They remained non-committal. Two Iraqi generals in custody were providing useful information, they said. Tests were being carried out at the area, which remained a "site of interest".
    Asked about the claims, General Tommy Franks, the coalition commander, told reporters: "It would not surprise me if there were chemicals in the plant and it would not surprise me if there weren't ... It's a bit early for us to have any expectation ... we'll wait for the days ahead." And we still are.
    BASRA UPRISING 25 March, first reports 5.15pm
    The desire of the Iraqi people to use the Allied invasion as an opportunity to rise up against their hated dictator was seen as the key to a rapid victory. Hence the excitement when reports began to come in on Tuesday that Shias in Basra, Iraq's second city, were engaged in another attempt to settle their scores with President Saddam. Tony Blair told the Commons that there had been "some limited form of uprising". Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, went further, saying the regime had "lost control of southern Iraq".
    Military sources were more cautious at US Central Command in Qatar. Major-General Peter Wall, a British officer, said the rebellion was in its "infancy" and it was wrong to predict a "rapid outcome". Tales of people on the streets came from "intelligence sources", but they were leapt onby British newspapers. Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based broadcaster that actually had a correspondent in the city, said the streets were calm.
    More definitive was the verdict of an Iraqi Shia group based in Iran with every reason to encourage insurgency. "Some disturbances took place ... but it was not widespread and it was not an intifada. The people chanted slogans against Saddam Hussein."
    Yesterday, ColChris Vernon, a British military spokesman, said: "Basra is clearly nowhere near yet in our hands and we have no way at the moment of getting humanitarian aid into Basra." Funny then that the GMTV reporter, Richard Gaisford, pictured top left, who broke the story, was still insisting yesterday that the military had sanctioned his report.
    THE EXECUTIONS 27 March, 4.20pm
    After al-Jazeera broadcast pictures of the bodies of two British prisoners-of-war, Tony Blair was quick to express his outrage. At a joint news conference with George Bush on Thursday, Mr Blair condemned the "execution" of the men.
    Unfortunately, the family of Luke Allsopp, 24, said a senior Army officer had told them that the soldier had died in action. "It makes a big difference to us knowing that he died quickly," she said. "We can't understand why people are lying about what happened."
    By yesterday the Government's tone had changed. The Prime Minister's spokesman was claiming that the two men "may well have been" executed and said that further inquiries would be made. The Ministry of Defence defended itself, saying the execution charge was based on the fact that Sapper Luke Allsopp and Staff Sergeant Simon Cullingworth were lying some distance from their vehicle and had been stripped of their helmets and body armour after being caught in an ambush last weekend.
    Later, Adam Ingram, the Armed Forces minister, expressed "regret" for any distress caused to the families, a statement interpreted as an admission that the Prime Minister got it wrong.


  • Robert Fisk: Raw, devastating realities that expose the truth about Basra
    28 March 2003
    (UKINDEPENDENT)
    Two British soldiers lie dead on a Basra roadway, a small Iraqi girl – victim of an Anglo American air strike – is brought to hospital with her intestines spilling out of her stomach, a terribly wounded woman screams in agony as doctors try to take off her black dress.
    An Iraqi general, surrounded by hundreds of his armed troops, stands in central Basra and announces that Iraq's second city remains firmly in Iraqi hands. The unedited al-Jazeera videotape – filmed over the past 36 hours and newly arrived in Baghdad – is raw, painful, devastating.
    It is also proof that Basra – reportedly "captured'' and "secured'' by British troops last week – is indeed under the control of Saddam Hussein's forces. Despite claims by British officers that some form of uprising has broken out in Basra, cars and buses continue to move through the streets while Iraqis queue patiently for gas bottles as they are unloaded from a government truck.
    A remarkable part of the tape shows fireballs blooming over western Basra and the explosion of incoming – and presumably British – shells. The short sequence of the dead British soldiers – over which Tony Blair voiced such horror yesterday – is little different from dozens of similar clips of dead Iraqi soldiers shown on British television over the past 12 years, pictures which never drew any condemnation from the Prime Minister.
    The two Britons, still in uniform, are lying on a roadway, arms and legs apart, one of them apparently hit in the head, the other shot in the chest and abdomen.
    Another sequence from the same tape shows crowds of Basra civilians and armed men in civilian clothes, kicking the soldiers' British Army Jeep and dancing on top of the vehicle. Other men can be seen kicking the overturned Ministry of Defence trailer, which the Jeep was towing when it was presumably ambushed.
    Also to be observed on the unedited tape – which was driven up to Baghdad on the open road from Basra – is a British pilotless drone photo-reconnaissance aircraft, its red and blue roundels visible on one wing, shot down and lying overturned on a roadway. Marked "ARMY'' in capital letters, it carries the code sign ZJ300 on its tail and is attached to a large cylindrical pod which probably contains the plane's camera.
    Far more terrible than the pictures of dead British soldiers, however, is the tape from Basra's largest hospital that shows victims of the Anglo-American bombardment being brought to the operating rooms shrieking in pain.
    A middle-aged man is carried into the hospital in pyjamas, soaked head to foot in blood. A little girl of perhaps four is brought into the operating room on a trolley, staring at a heap of her own intestines protruding from the left side of her stomach. A blue-uniformed doctor pours water over the little girl's guts and then gently applies a bandage before beginning surgery. A woman in black with what appears to be a stomach wound cries out as doctors try to strip her for surgery. In another sequence, a trail of blood leads from the impact of an incoming – presumably British – shell. Next to the crater is a pair of plastic slippers.
    The al-Jazeera tapes, most of which have never been seen, are the first vivid proof that Basra remains totally outside British control. Not only is one of the city's main roads to Baghdad still open – this is how the three main tapes reached the Iraqi capital – but General Khaled Hatem is interviewed in a Basra street, surrounded by hundreds of his uniformed and armed troops, and telling al-Jazeera's reporter that his men will "never'' surrender to Iraq's enemies. Armed Baath Party militiamen can also be seen in the streets, where traffic cops are directing lorries and buses near the city's Sheraton Hotel.
    Mohamed al-Abdullah, al-Jazeera's correspondent in Basra, must be the bravest journalist in Iraq right now. In the sequence of three tapes, he can be seen conducting interviews with families under fire and calmly reporting the incoming British artillery bombardment. One tape shows that the Sheraton Hotel on the banks of Shatt al-Arab river has sustained shell damage.
    On the edge of the river – beside one of the huge statues of Iraq's 1980-88 war martyrs, each pointing an accusing finger across the waterway towards Iran – Basra residents can be seen filling jerry cans from the sewage-polluted river.
    Five days ago the Iraqi government said 30 civilians had been killed in Basra and another 63 wounded. Yesterday, it claimed that more than 4,000 civilians had been wounded in Iraq since the war began and more than 350 killed.
    But Mr Abdullah's tape shows at least seven more bodies brought to the Basra hospital mortuary over the past 36 hours. One, his head still pouring blood on to the mortuary floor, was identified as an Arab correspondent for a Western news agency.
    Other harrowing scenes show the partially decapitated body of a little girl, her red scarf still wound round her neck. Another small girl was lying on a stretcher with her brain and left ear missing. Another dead child had its feet blown away. There was no indication whether American or British ordnance had killed these children. The tapes give no indication of Iraqi military casualties.
    But at a time when the Iraqi authorities will not allow Western reporters to visit Basra, this is the nearest to independent evidence we have of continued resistance in the city and the failure of the British to capture it. For days the Iraqi have been denying optimistic reports from "embedded'' reporters – especially on the BBC – who gave the impression that Basra was "secured'' or otherwise in effect under British control. This the tape conclusively proves to be untrue.
    There is also a sequence showing two men, both black, who are claimed by Iraqi troops to be US prisoners of war. No questions are asked of the men, who are dressed in identical black shirts and jackets. Both appear nervous and gaze at the camera crew and Iraqi troops crowded behind them.
    Of course, it is still possible that some small-scale opposition to the Iraqi regime broke out in the city over the past few days, as British officers have claimed. But, seeing the tapes, it is hard to imagine that it amounted, if it existed at all, to anything more than a brief gun battle.
    The unedited reports therefore provide damaging proof that Anglo-American spokesmen have not been telling the truth about the battle for Basra. And in the end this is far more devastating to the invading armies than the sight of two dead British soldiers or – since Iraqi lives are as sacred as British lives – than the pictures of dead Iraqi children.


  • Scientists Warn on Bush Bioweapons Push
    By PAUL ELIAS
    Mar 28, 7:02 PM EST
    AP Biotechnology Writer
    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A Bush administration program to add at least three bioweapons labs is troubling many scientists and arms control experts, who say it can't be good to train more microbiologists in the black art of bioterror.
    The field is suddenly awash with billions of dollars to combat bioterrorism and much more is promised under President Bush's Project BioShield plan. The money will fund a building boom of at least three new airtight laboratories where scientists in space suits handle the world's deadliest diseases.
    At least six universities and the New York State Department of Health are competing for contracts to build one or two labs, where scientists can infect research monkeys and other animals with such lethal agents as the Ebola, Marburg and Lassa viruses. Those African hemorrhagic diseases are often fatal and always painful, marked by severe bleeding.
    They'll also likely create new classes of toxins - including genetically engineered ones - as part of the process of constructing weapons they want to defeat. Developing antidotes or vaccines for those toxins might take years.
    "It's perversely increasing the risk of exposure," said Richard Ebright, a Rutgers University chemistry professor and bioweapons expert who believes one additional lab is all that is needed.
    Ebright and others believe labs managed by universities could prove less secure than government facilities, which have had their own security lapses.
    Many believe the anthrax attacks that killed five people and briefly paralyzed Capitol Hill in 2001 were launched by a scientist with access to one of the government's high-security facilities - called Biosafety Level 4 labs, or BSL-4 for short.
    Federal investigators searched a former apartment of one such microbiologist, Steven Hatfill, but never stated publicly that he was a suspect. Hatfill has denied involvement.
    In his state of the union speech in January, President Bush called for nearly $6 billion to make vaccines and treatments against potential bioterror pathogens. The National Institutes of Health bioterrorism budget, meanwhile, has increased 500 percent this year to $1.3 billion - a large part of which will be used to build at least three labs.
    Government officials and leaders of universities vying for the bioterrorism largesse are unapologetic.
    NIH officials say that only two of the five U.S. facilities equipped do such work are effectively in use today, and they're overburdened. One is at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta - the only place in the United States that handles live smallpox.
    The other full-scale lab is the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Maryland's Fort Detrick. The government is already going ahead with additional labs at Fort Detrick and in Hamilton, Mont.
    "What we have is not adequate to meet the current biodefense efforts," said Rona Hirschberg of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
    Officials said they don't know how many scientists work in the biosafety labs, but that the number is tiny and many more trained researchers are needed.
    One of the byproducts of such endeavors will be the study of emerging diseases like the West Nile virus, which has infected 4,000 people and killed 274.
    "The emerging diseases that we have to deal with are intense," said Virginia Hinshaw, provost of the University of California-Davis, which hopes to build one of the new labs. "The public health need is very large."
    But mistrust runs deep, especially in the California college town of Davis. Lobbied intensely by vocal residents, the city council voted to oppose the school's application to build a lab.
    The Davis protests reached a crescendo in February with the escape of a lab monkey, which is still missing. Davis officials said it was disease-free and probably now dead. Still, the school's $200 million bid for a BSL-4 lab has been jeopardized.
    Government officials insist that the labs will be secure and serve only defensive purposes. But the U.S. military has a history of dabbling in biological agent programs that push up against a 30-year-old international treaty banning them.
    Most recently, it was revealed that researchers at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah have been developing anthrax for use in testing biological defense systems.

  • Hong Kong Doctors Work to Save Each Other
    Mar 29, 2:29 AM EST
    HONG KONG (AP) -- Not even the comfort of human touch can be given at the hospital at the center of the fight against the deadly mystery disease.
    Inside are doctors who are treating the sick and doctors who are among the sick.
    "It's a tough environment," said Dr. Gavin Joynt, director of the intensive care unit at Prince of Wales Hospital.
    "It's not possible to sit down and have a meal together anymore. It's not possible to give someone a pat on the shoulder as a sign of encouragement - all of these things potentially spread the virus."
    Outside of mainland China, Hong Kong has been hardest hit by the global crisis, suffering 11 of the more than 50 deaths blamed on severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS. Globally, more than 1,400 people are sick, including 59 in the United States.
    The U.S. State Department has urged American travelers to watch for symptoms of the disease, including a fever greater than 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit and signs of respiratory illness such as cough or shortness of breath.
    In Hong Kong, six of the deaths and more than 150 SARS patients have been at Prince of Wales Hospital.
    Joynt has a team of 150 doctors and nurses working in the ICU day and night, trying to bring the disease under control. The hospital is seeing some encouraging success - officials said about 60 patients had recovered, although not well enough to go home yet, and about 60 more were improving.
    About a half-dozen SARS patients spoke to reporters for the first time this week in a teleconference linkup so there would be no chance of contact with journalists who might spread the disease further into the community.
    "We have experienced very hard times," said an infected Prince of Wales cardiologist, who was identified only as Raymond. "Some colleagues were having high fevers, great difficulty breathing, and I was so sick that I couldn't even get off the bed."
    An infected doctor, who was identified only as C.M., encouraged patients at other hospitals: "Don't be afraid because as long as you have confidence, it can be cured."
    The doctors waved into the camera, but their surgical masks made it impossible to see if they could smile.
    Joynt called the disease "frightening," and said that as experts struggle to understand it, only one or two of the 20 patients in ICU are showing slight improvements; 15 were on respirators.
    One worrying trend, Joynt said, has been that some patients in their 30s and 40s - young, fit patients - are struggling. Why, he doesn't know.
    Although Hong Kong health officials have said most victims here can be traced to a mainland Chinese man who infected seven people in a hotel, Joynt worries the disease could become more widespread.
    He has seen one in four patients become critically ill and fears those who are sick for an extended period will suffer residual lung damage.
    "If it spreads to a lot of people in the community, very soon resources will be overwhelmed," he said. "This is what we are all really very scared about."
    The mysterious illness first struck down three medical workers in ward 8A at Prince of Wales on March 8. It swiftly spread to almost 70 hospital staff and 16 medical students working there.
    With a strained medical staff, the hospital has shut down its accident and emergency ward and specialist clinics, partly to avoid further spreading of the disease. Eerie silence prevails in hospital corridors, and nearly all remaining workers are donning surgical masks as they walk around the hospital.
    Joynt said the disease, believed to be from a virus family that produces the common cold, "spreads relatively easily from person to person," such as through sharing utensils or being near someone who coughs in a confined space.
    To keep loved ones safe, many doctors and nurses at the ICU have been staying away from home and sleeping in offices or rooms provided by the hospital. They've also been working up to 16 hours a day to save the sickest patients.
    "My staff," Joynt said, "every one of them is a hero."


  • Mystery Illness's Mortality Rate 4%, WHO Official Says
    By Rob Stein
    Washington Post Staff Writer
    Thursday, March 27, 2003; Page A15
    At least 80 percent of people stricken by a mysterious new lung infection spreading around the globe appear to recover, but the rest become critically ill and about half of them die, health officials said yesterday.
    Victims who are older than 40 and have other health problems, such as heart or liver disease, are most likely to move to the life-threatening phase of the infection, officials said.
    New details about the disease, dubbed severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), emerged yesterday when about 80 doctors treating patients in 13 countries participated in an unprecedented electronic meeting organized by the World Health Organization. The "electronic grand rounds" enabled doctors trying to save patients worldwide to exchange information over the telephone and Internet about how best to diagnose and treat the disease.
    "For the first time, we brought all the clinicians together," Mark Salter, who is coordinating WHO's clinical response to the new disease, said in a telephone interview. "The WHO has never brought together this many clinicians with such rapidity. It's groundbreaking."
    SARS, which emerged in southern China in November, has spread to at least 13 countries in Asia, Europe and North America, sickening more than 1,300 people and killing at least 49. U.S. health officials are investigating 45 possible cases in 20 states, including three in Virginia.
    A distinctive pattern of symptoms has become clear, Salter said. Two to seven days after being exposed, patients suddenly develop a high fever -- 104 degrees Fahrenheit or higher -- start shaking and experience chills, shortness of breath and a dry cough. Some also experience headache, muscular stiffness, loss of appetite, malaise, confusion, rash and diarrhea.
    Laboratory tests show that white blood cell and platelet counts drop in some patients. Chest X-rays usually reveal a distinctive pattern in which a cloudy area appears in one part of a lung and then spreads across both lungs.
    After about six or seven days, about 80 percent to 90 percent of patients begin to improve. The remaining 10 percent to 20 percent deteriorate and require intensive care, with many needing a mechanical ventilator to help them breathe.
    About 40 percent to 50 percent of those patients die, making the overall mortality rate for the disease about 4 percent. Salter said that mortality rate is similar to that of the mosquito-borne West Nile virus, which first appeared in the United States in 1999.
    No antibiotics appear to work against SARS. The antiviral drug ribavirin has been used by a number of doctors, but its effectiveness remains unclear. During yesterday's meeting, doctors agreed to quickly organize a study to determine ribavirin's usefulness.
    Treatment has been complicated, because many of the victims have been doctors and nurses who were infected by some of the first patients. That left hospitals, particularly in Hanoi and Hong Kong, short-staffed.
    "Clinicians around the globe are stretched to the limit," Salter said. "Everybody is working very hard to try to not only identify the agent that's causing this, but to find methods that might be effective in treating it."
    The disease appears to be spread by tiny droplets that become airborne when a sick person coughs, or through contact with other body fluids, such as blood.
    Scientists from at least 11 laboratories are racing to identify the cause. Researchers have found two previously unknown viruses in patients and are trying to determine whether either one, alone or in combination, causes the disease. One is a previously unknown strain of a virus that usually causes the common cold. Both also cause illnesses in animals.
    "Hypotheses include a virus known to cause disease in an animal that has jumped the species barrier to infect humans, or a known human virus that has mutated to acquire properties that are causing much more severe disease in humans," WHO's statement said. "It is increasingly certain, however, that SARS is a serious new disease caused by a newly recognized pathogen."

  • Hong Kong Considers Sweeping Quarantine as Virus Spreads
    1 hour, 4 minutes ago Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo!
    HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong was expected on Thursday to announce sweeping quarantine measures to contain a mystery pneumonia that has killed more than 50 people worldwide as scientists zeroed in on two viruses as suspected culprits.
    A day after Singapore ordered all schools closed, Hong Kong was considering its options in trying to stop severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) racing through the city of seven million after the deaths of 11 people, the government said.
    More than 300 people have been infected in the former British colony, many developing severe pneumonia.
    Adding to fears in Hong Kong was China's announcement on Wednesday that a mystery pneumonia outbreak there was far worse than previously thought, with 31 people dead in southern Guangdong province, bordering Hong Kong, and about 800 infected. Three people have also died in Beijing.
    More than 1,300 people have been infected with a mystery pneumonia worldwide, leading to people canceling holidays and business trips to Asia, hitting airlines and tourism.
    British rockers the Rolling Stones, along with a huge retinue of support staff, postponed two concerts scheduled for this weekend in Hong Kong after two performances this week in Singapore.
    "Forget about Scud missiles and smart bombs, we could all die if someone with the disease merely coughs," said Shirley Li, a worried Hong Kong mother who sent her son to school in a surgical mask.
    Panic is growing in Hong Kong and demand for surgical masks is so great that many pharmacies have run out or are rationing them. In some places, HK$10 (US$1.30) masks are selling for HK$100.
    In Singapore, where two people have died and more than 70 have been infected, 861 people have been quarantined at home. Classes have been suspended, affecting 500,000 children.
    DOUBLE TROUBLE As scientists raced to identify the virus, more cases emerged around the world.
    Ontario, Canada's largest province, declared the pneumonia to be a provincial emergency after a jump in cases to 27 from 18, with another 30 cases under investigation. Three people have died.
    The United States said it was monitoring 45 suspected cases in 20 states but the numbers fluctuate because pneumonia is common and many people have traveled to Southeast Asia recently.
    Cases have also surfaced in Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan and European countries including Germany and Italy. The disease is being spread by air travelers, leading to airlines to impose strict health measures on travelers.
    Health experts said on Wednesday the actual culprit is far from being identified but said laboratories had found two different viruses in patients.
    One is from a family called coronaviruses -- a cause of the common cold -- and one is from the paramyxovirus family, which cause measles and respiratory disease in babies.
    Health officials around the world are running tests to see if they can more accurately identify the viruses, and then see if they are the actual cause of the disease.
    Once confirmed, a vaccine can be made.
    Canada became the latest country to issue a warning against travel to Hong Kong, southern China, Singapore and Hanoi.
    The virus most likely started in southern China late last year before spreading to Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam, Canada and Germany. The World Health Organization (news - web sites) says it is highly likely the illness in China is the same as SARS.
    WHO said on Thursday the outbreak in southern China appeared to have peaked and numbers of infections were falling.
    Initial symptoms of SARS include high fever, dry cough, chills and severe breathing problems. Even healthy and athletic adults can end up on a respirator within five days. Experts say most people recover but many develop severe pneumonia and it has a mortality rate of three to five percent.
    Hong Kong said for the first time on Wednesday that the virus was spreading in the general community.
    Director of Health Margaret Chan told a radio talk show that measures being considering included quarantining those who had been in contact with infected patients in a special isolated area, or confining them to their homes during the virus's incubation period, which is up to seven days.
    A third option would require anyone exposed to the disease to report to a hospital or clinic on a daily basis until the incubation period was over.
    Some doctors said a quarantine would come too late, or be nearly impossible to enforce.
    "Cases are now scattered in different areas so there is no way that the government can implement forced isolation," said Lo Wing-lok, a legislator and infectious disease expert.

  • Fateful Wait For Elevator Infected Two With SARS
    By Carolyn Abraham
    Globe and Mail Medical Reporter
    3-26-3
    It was, as the Chinese might say, an astonishing case of bad luck.
    Hong Kong health officials now suspect that some or all of the people who picked up a mysterious pneumonia at the Metropole Hotel on the Kowloon peninsula -- including a Toronto woman and a Vancouver man -- spent a few unfortunate moments together waiting for an elevator in the ninth-floor corridor on the afternoon of Feb. 21.
    Among them was a 64-year-old medical professor from Guangzhou, capital of China's Guangdong Province. The professor, a physician who had checked in that day, had been feeling poorly for a week before he left the mainland. But he opted to make the trip to attend a relative's wedding reception.
    "We think he must have been coughing and sneezing while he was waiting for that lift," said John Tam, chief information officer of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, "and that's when he infected the other guests."
    By Feb. 22, the professor, who died on March 4, was so ill he checked out of the hotel and into a hospital, contaminating within 24 hours enough of his fellow hotel guests to help spread the disease to more than a dozen countries over the next three weeks.
    Yeoh Eng-kiong, Hong Kong's Secretary of Health, told reporters yesterday that the infectious agent, believed to be an unknown virus, travelled through respiratory droplets in the tight space of the elevator waiting area and proved to be "very, very infectious."
    "It appears that when people are very sick, they are infectious. So this is consistent with the picture we've seen that it's really the health-care workers and family members that have looked after very sick patients [who contract the disease]," said Dr. Yeoh, "because it's probably when they're very sick they shed a lot of virus."
    Hong Kong health officials are now working with the Guangdong government to investigate the source of the infection. The disease has killed six in Hong Kong, the latest fatality being a relative of the Guangzhou professor, and sickened 173 people, including five schoolchildren.
    The World Health Organization hopes to send a team to the coastal province, where an unusual pneumonia outbreak that infected more than 300 and killed five first began last November, Guangdong officials recently confirmed. But until the hotel connection became apparent, the current international cases of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome -- now numbering a suspected 306 infections and at least 10 deaths worldwide, two of them in Canada -- had only been traced as far back as Feb. 26.
    That day, a 48-year-old American businessman became the SARS index patient, or the first person known to die of the disease, after he stepped off a plane in Hanoi, feverish, coughing and struggling to breathe, and went to a hospital.
    But Hong Kong officials have now confirmed that the businessman, who spent time in Hong Kong before landing in Hanoi, was also a guest on the ninth floor of the three-star Metropole Hotel at the same time as the Guangdong professor. The man was eventually transferred back to a Hong Kong hospital where he died March 13.
    Other guests at the hotel during the professor's brief stay who later fell ill included three young women from Singapore, a local Hong Kong resident who visited a friend at the hotel, a 55-year-old Vancouver man and the 78-year-old Toronto woman who died at home March 5.
    "The story of this hotel is incredible," said Donald Low, chief of microbiology at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital. "My basic contention is that none of this would be happening in Canada if they didn't all end up at the Metropole on those days."
    In fact, Dr. Low said, the Toronto woman and her husband were actually checking out of the hotel on the afternoon of Feb. 21, just as the Guangdong doctor was checking in.
    After spending the night with their son in Hong Kong, the Toronto couple returned to Canada on Feb. 23, where the disease would devastate their family. The woman's son died March 13 and her husband, daughter and other son would end up in intensive care. Her five-month-old grandchild is now fatherless and is being monitored at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children.
    The Vancouver man, who remains in critical condition, and his wife had stayed at the hotel between Feb. 20 and Feb. 24.
    © 2003 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
    http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNe
    ws/TPStory/LAC/20030321/UBUGGN/TPHealth/

  • Cheney Daughter To Be Human Shield In Baghdad?
    Al Bawaba.com
    3-25-3
    The London based Arabic daily Al Quds Al Arabi reported on Tuesday, March 25 that the American vice president, Dick Cheney, would soon head to the Jordanian capital, Amman.
    The newspaper claimed that the visit would be an attempt by Cheney to convince his daughter, who was in the Jordanian capital, to back down her decision to go to Baghdad within a group of volunteers who want to form human shields against the US led attacks on Iraq.
    Al Quds Al Arabi cited news reports it claimed circulating in Amman as saying that Cheney would arrive in the Jordanian capital soon on a special visit it described as having a "social mission." "News agencies cited sources as saying that Cheney will arrive in Amman next Friday. He will try to convince his daughter who is currently staying at a hotel in Amman not to go to Baghdad along with a group of volunteers who want to go to Iraq and form human shields against the Anglo American attacks," said the report.
    A U.S. Embassy spokesman in the Jordanian capital, denied that Cheney was on his way to Jordan: "The embassy has no information that the U.S. vice president will arrive in Jordan to convince one of his daughters not to travel to Iraq to join human shields opposed to war," he said.
    However, some sons of western officials have already volunteered as human shields in Iraq against the American invasion, including the son of the Canadian Foreign Minister, Bill Graham
    Although not mentioned in the the Arabic newspaper, it is likely refers to Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney. Mary, 34, is a lesbian, and she has not kept her homosexuality a secret -- either to her friends or to her employer, Coors Brewing Co., where she was the gay and lesbian corporate relations manager. Mary Cheney
    The controversy around Mary has emerged in the US media during her father's vice presidential campaign during 2000. During that time, Mary told Time magazine in some of her few public words to date, "I love my father. I don't want to be a distraction."
    However, when Lynne Cheney was asked about her daughter being openly gay, Mrs. Cheney said her daughter is "bright" and "hard-working" and "decent," and yes, she loves her.
    Now, after the war started, it seems there are not just political but also financial reasons for Mr. Cheney's strong support for the raids on Iraq. When it comes to making money from a war in Iraq, few can match the firepower of the company once headed by Dick Cheney, Reuters reported.
    Houston-based Halliburton Co. can build roads and bridges and camps for US forces. It can transport personnel and provide other logistics. And after the war, assuming a U.S. victory, it can help restore Iraq's infrastructure and oil production.
    At the same time, the company's oilfield services business, which is second only to Schlumberger Ltd., is likely to supply most of the heavy equipment to fight fires in oil wells and oil fields.
    And should the U.S. emerge victorious, Halliburton -- which develops oil fields and drills for oil all over the world -- has the connections and businesses to play a major role in "rebuilding" Iraq.
    "They have the businesses. They have the government relationship already well-established, and, as we all know, Cheney was the CEO, so it makes logical sense," said Denis Walsh, an equity analyst who covers the energy sector for State Street Research and Management.
    For all these reasons, one should not be surprised that the American VP will hurry to Amman and try to bring his "rebellious" daughter back home....(Albawaba.com)
    © 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)


  • Pat Buchanan Blasts Israel- First Neocon Cabal
    http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html#anchorWhose%20War?
    One wonders how this will play with his supporters in Palm Beach, Florida.

  • Bitter Rice
    By Uri Avnery
    Media Monitors.com
    3-24-3
    Some thoughts about the war:
    Beware of the Shiites
    The troubles of the occupation will start after the fighting is over.
    Here is a personal story and its lessons:
    On the forth day of the 1982 Israeli attack on Lebanon, I crossed the
    border at a lone spot near Metulla and looked for the front, which had
    already reached the outskirts of Sidon. I was driving my private car,
    accompanied only by a woman photographer. We passed a dozen Shiite
    villages and were received everywhere with great joy. We extracted
    ourselves only with great difficulty from hundreds of villagers, each
    one insisting that we have coffee at their home. On the previous days,
    they had showered the soldiers with rice.
    A few months later I joined an army convoy going in the opposite
    direction, from Sidon to Metulla. The soldiers were now wearing
    bulletproof vests and helmets, many were on the verge of panic.
    What had happened? The Shiites received the Israeli soldiers as
    liberators. When they realized that they had come to stay as occupiers,
    they started to kill them.
    When the Israeli troops entered Lebanon, the Shiites were a
    down-trodden, powerless community, held in contempt by all the others.
    After a year of fighting the occupiers, they became a political and
    military power. The Shiite Hizbullah is the only military force in the
    Arab world that has beaten the mighty Israeli army.
    Sharon is the real father of the Shiite force in Lebanon. Bush may well
    become the father of Shiite power in Iraq. The Shiites, 60% of the
    Iraqi population, have been until now down-trodden and powerless. When
    they will realize that the Americans intend to stay, they will start a
    deadly guerilla war. Bush does not intend to leave Iraq, as Sharon did
    not intend to leave Lebanon.
    Then what? America will argue that Iran, the great Shiite neighbor, is
    behind the Shiite guerilla. In Iran there is a lot of oil. Thatís the
    next target.
    Blood for Oil
    George Bush is a primitive man, but the people behind him are far from
    being stupid. They are the oil barons and the arms industry giants.
    They want to do what great powers have always done: use their military
    might in order to acquire economic hegemony. In simple words: to rob
    the poor peoples in order to enrich themselves even more.
    The military occupation of Iraq will last many years and secure for
    America the control over the vast oil reserves of Iraq, as well as the
    Caspian Sea reserves and all the Arab oil. That will give it control
    over the worldís economy and prevent the emergence of a competing,
    independent European economic bloc. America is fighting against Europe
    as much as against Iraq. That is part of the reason for Europeís angry
    response.
    Germany
    Germany is against the war. Against any war. In no other country was
    the anti-war outburst so authentic, emanating from the innermost
    feelings of the masses.
    And who is furious about this? Israel, the country of the Holocaust
    survivors. How do they dare, these damn Germans, to object to the war?
    A sad irony of history: all German TV stations show citizens,
    intellectuals and ordinary folk, who pray for peace, all Israeli TV
    screens show retired generals, obviously enjoying themselves,
    discussing with great relish how to employ giant bombs and other
    instruments of death.
    Intoxication of power
    This is the first war of the 21st century, and it bodes ill.
    This century has inherited from its predecessor a world containing one
    sole super-power. America has no competitors, no possible combination
    of other forces can measure up to it. It can literally do what it
    wants, and now it is doing just that openly and brutally.
    When America won its cheap and easy victory in Afghanistan, using smart
    bombs and suitcases filled with cash, it was clear it could not stop
    itself anymore. A huge machine like that wants to go on fighting and is
    searching for an enemy. Now itís Iraq. Who next? Iran? North Korea?
    That is what happened to the Roman Empire. That is what happened to
    Napoleon and Hitler. The intoxication of power knows no boundaries. And
    no one of these was in the situation of the United States now: alone in
    the world, without enemies that can stand up to it.
    A Jewish War?
    The anti-Semites proclaim that this is not a war for American
    interests, but for Israel. As proof, they point to the group of
    American Jews that took a leading part in initiating this war, people
    like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith at the Defence
    Department, Elliott Abrams at the National Security Council (as well as
    Ari Fleisher at the White House and even Dan Kerzer, the US ambassador
    in Tel-Aviv). These people support haron and the extreme right in
    Israel, some of them speak Hebrew, a group of them has acted as
    advisors to Benyamin Netanyahu, when he became prime Minister. Together
    with the two non-Jews, Cheney and Rumsfield, they pushed Washington
    into the war. Thus say the anti-Semites.
    That is true by itself, but this is first and foremost a war for
    American interests. However, Bush and Sharon believe that American and
    Israeli interests are practically identical. The Jewish war group in
    Washington acts in close cooperation with the Christian
    fundamentalists, who now control the Republican party and who have a
    hidden anti-Semitic agenda.
    The anti-Semites will point to another obvious fact: Israel is the only
    country in the world where not one single politician nor any part of
    the media has raised their voices against the war. While millions march
    all over the world, only one single anti-war demonstration, organized
    by Gush Shalom and some other peace organizations, has taken place in
    Israel. It attracted 2500 people.
    In the struggle between Bush and world opinion, the government of
    Israel has chosen chose Bush. On the face of it, that seems sensible,
    since Bush has might on his side and sides with Sharon. But in the long
    run, it may turn out to be the wrong bet.
    The popeís divisions
    "How many divisions does the pope have?" Stalin asked sarcastically
    when told that the Holy Father objects to his actions. Today, the
    question is: how many divisions does world public opinion command?
    All over the world, the public opposes the war. There is an immense
    majority against it even in countries whose leaders have joined Bushís
    "coalition". For the first time, there is something that can be called
    "world opinion".
    Only the future will tell if this constitutes a real force. Thomas
    Jefferson, one of the fathers of American democracy, once said that no
    country could conduct its affairs without "a decent respect for world
    opinion."
    Perhaps the 21st century will witness a struggle between the brute
    force of a mighty military-economic super-power and world public
    opinion, assisted now by modern technology.
    Mercenaries
    This is a war fought by mercenaries. The fighters are professional
    soldiers, the sons of the poor, many of them black. Therefore it is
    easy for middle class citizens, and especially the Republican voters,
    to approve of the war. It is not their sons who will be killed.
    In the past, the European left demanded the abolition of the
    professional army and the introduction of general conscription. At the
    time, that was a "progressive" idea. When the left put on weight, it
    forgot all about it.
    The Vietnam war was still fought by drafted soldiers. Resistance to the
    war grew when the body bags started to arrive. George W. Bush, who
    supported the war with all his heart, took no part in the fighting.
    Father arranged a job for him back home. He was just another shirker.
    Jefferson again: "Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that
    God is just."
    http://www.mediamonitors.net/uri111.html

  • Operation Anglosphere
    Today's most ardent American imperialists weren't born in the USA.
    By Jeet Heer, 3/23/2003
    (Boston Globe)
    EMPIRE IS A DIRTY word in the American political lexicon. Just last summer, President Bush told West Point graduates that ''America has no empire to extend or utopia to establish.'' In this view, the power of the United States is not exercised for imperial purposes, but for the benefit of mankind.
    Since the Sept. 11 attacks, however, many foreign policy pundits, mostly from the Republican right but also including some liberal internationalists, have revisited the idea of empire. ''America is the most magnanimous imperial power ever,'' declared Dinesh D'Souza in the Christian Science Monitor in 2002. ''Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets,'' argued Max Boot in a 2001 article for the Weekly Standard titled ''The Case for American Empire.'' In the Wall Street Journal, historian Paul Johnson asserted that the ''answer to terrorism'' is ''colonialism.'' Columnist Mark Steyn, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, has contended that ''imperialism is the answer.''
    ''People are now coming out of the closet on the word `empire','' noted Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer. ''The fact is no country has been as dominant culturally, economically, technologically and militarily in the history of world since the Roman Empire.'' Krauthammer's awe is shared by Harvard human rights scholar Michael Ignatieff, who asked earlier this year in The New York Times Magazine, ''What word but `empire' describes the awesome thing America is becoming?'' While acknowledging that empire may be a ''burden,'' Ignatieff maintained that it has become, ''in a place like Iraq, the last hope for democracy and stability alike.''
    Today's advocates of American empire share one surprising trait: Very few of them were born in the United States. D'Souza was born in India, and Johnson in Britain - where he still lives. Steyn, Krauthammer, and Ignatieff all hail from Canada. (Krauthammer was born in Uruguay, but grew up in Montreal before moving to the United States.) More than anything, the backgrounds of today's most outspoken imperialists suggest the lingering appeal and impact of the British empire.
    ''I think there's more openness among children of the British Empire to the benefits of imperialism, whereas some Americans have never gotten over the fact that our country was born in a revolt against empire,'' notes Max Boot, currently afellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. ''But lots of people who are advocating pro-imperial arguments - such as Bill Kristol and me - are not Brits or Canadians.'' (Boot, who was born in Russia, moved to the United States as a baby.)
    Imperialism is often seen as an expanding circle, with power radiating outward from a capital city like London or Paris to hinterlands. But a quick review of history shows that imperial enthusiasm doesn't emanate only from the center. Often, the dream of empire is nursed by those born on the periphery of power, precisely because empire would give them a place in a larger framework. Alexander the Great, for example, was born in Macedonia and went on to create an Hellenic empire. And France's greatest empire-builder was the Corsican Napoleon.
    Odd as it sounds, Canadians once nursed similar dreams of taking over the world. At the end of the 19th century, Canada had the ambiguous status of being a dominion, governed by its own parliament yet embedded within the British empire. While some Canadian nationalists wanted constitutional sovereignty (a status not gained until 1982), many others believed that Canada could punch well above its weight if it worked within the British Empire. University of Toronto historian Carl Berger summarizes their view: ''Just as New England exerted an influence in the political and cultural life of the United States far out of proportion to her population . . . in time, Canada would likewise prevail within the Empire.''
    The Canadian poet Charles Mair has one of his characters voice such ideas in his 1886 historical verse-drama ''Tecumseh'':
    For I believe in Britain's Empire, and
    In Canada, its true and loyal son, Who yet shall rise to greatness,
    and shall stand
    At England's shoulder helping her to guard
    True liberty throughout a faithless world.
    For many years, supporters of the British empire tended to be anti-American in outlook; they regarded the upstart republic as disorderly and disloyal. But with the rise of German power in the late 19th century, ''Anglo-Saxon unity'' became the watchword and British imperialists began encouraging American expansionism. Rudyard Kipling's famous imperialist paean, ''The White Man's Burden,'' often mistakenly linked to England's rule over India, was specifically written in 1899 to support Theodore Roosevelt's campaign to extend the American sphere of influence into the Philippines.
    In the 20th century, as Britain was increasingly weakened by two World Wars, the locus of imperial ambition shifted from London to Washington. ''These Americans represent the new Roman Empire and we Britons, like the Greeks of old, must teach them how to make it go,'' said future Tory prime minister Harold Macmillan in 1943. Like Winston Churchill, Macmillan had an aristocratic English father and an American mother. It was hybrid (and high-bred) identities of this sort that provided the glue for a century of Anglo-American concord. Echoing the Canadians of the previous century, Macmillan thought that his country's global position would be enhanced by serving as a junior partner in a very large empire. On another occasion, Macmillan even compared Britain to ''the Greek slaves'' who ''ran the operations of the Emperor Claudius.''
    The promotion of ''Anglo-Saxon unity'' was particularly attractive to transnational business leaders like the Canadian-born newspaper tycoon William Maxwell Aitken (later known as Lord Beaverbrook). In 1910 Aitken moved to Britain, where he used his newspapers, Daily Express and the Evening Standard, to argue for free trade and the strengthening of imperial ties. In recent years, Beaverbrook's ideas have been given new currency by another newly ennobled Canadian-born newspaper magnate, Conrad Black, also known as Lord Black of Crossharbour.
    While he has recanted his belief that the English-speaking provinces of Canada should join the United States, Black has been campaigning for the inclusion of the United Kingdom into the NAFTA trade accord. For Black, Britain's destiny is to be primarily an Atlantic power, not a European one.
    Among conservative intellectuals, Black's dream of an Anglo-American concert of nations is part of a larger desire to strengthen ''the Anglosphere.'' Apparently coined by science-fiction writer Neal Stephenson in his 1995 novel ''The Diamond Age,'' the term has been popularized lately by journalists like James C. Bennett, who writes a weekly column covering ''The Anglosphere Beat'' for United Press International, and Andrew Sullivan, as well as by the English historian Robert Conquest. The proponents of an anglosphere want a loose and informal alliance of English-speaking peoples, modelled on the ''soft'' imperialism that governed Britain's relationship with dominions like Canada and Australia, not the ''hard'' imperialism of the Raj.
    The enthusiasm for the old Pax Britannia has been bolstered by the revisionist scholarship of Scottish historian Niall Ferguson, whose new book ''Empire'' argues that the British Empire was a progressive force in world history that lay the foundations of our current global economy.
    But the idea of a new American empire remains controversial on the American right, and not just among isolationists. Take the case of David Frum, the Canadian-born former Bush speechwriter who famously helped coin the term ''axis of evil.'' Though his writing shows touches of imperial nostalgia (among other thing, he has argued that Canada should jettison the nationalist Maple Leaf flag and return to the Union Jack), he rejects the imperial analogies drawn by writers like Max Boot. ''If `empire' means anything, it certainly does not describe what the US is proposing to do in Iraq,'' notes Frum. ''The big story, it seems to me, is the ascendancy of neo-Wilsonianism on the political right, not neo-imperialism.''
    For Boot, that's just a language game. ''I don't think David and I disagree on any substantive point of foreign policy,'' Boot says. Another name for ''`hard' Wilsonianism,'' he points out, is liberal imperialism. After all, Wilson, who took over Veracruz, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, was one of our most imperial presidents. Boot adds: ''I prefer the more forthright if also more controversial term American Empire - sort of like the way some gays embrace the `queer' label.''
    But even those most nostalgic for the British empire don't necessarily support a new American version. ''When I was a kid in England I spent a great deal of time studying imperialism, of which I approved and got into a great deal of fights about,'' says conservative writer Peter Brimelow, a British-born naturalized US citizen who edits the anti-immigration Web site vdare.com. ''But I personally am very skeptical about the new imperialism. I don't think you can unmake an omelet. I think obviously it would be better for everybody if the British and French had not left the Middle East. But the fact is that they did leave the Middle East and it is going to be very difficult to go back in.''
    He continues, ''Part of the problem with people like Max Boot is that they are so young. They simply don't remember the Algerian war or what it's like to hold these people down. You have to go in there and kill a lot of people and fight these constant low-level conflicts.''
    Kipling, whose poem ''The White Man's Burden'' supplied the title for Boot's recent book ''The Savage Wars of Peace,'' might well have agreed. For all his pro-imperialist bombast, Kipling never underestimated the difficulty and danger of ruling other lands. In words directed toward Theodore Roosevelt, Kipling wrote:
    Take up the White Man's Burden-
    And reap his old reward:
    The blame of those ye better,
    The hate of those ye guard.''
    Jeet Heer writes frequently for the National Post of Canada and the Boston Globe.

  • Sunday March 23, 3:55 AM
    28 baby girls found in suitcases on Chinese bus
    AFP
    Police in southwestern China discovered 28 baby girls hidden in suitcases on a long-distance bus and apparently destined to be sold, police and a state-run newspaper said.
    One of the babies had died by the time police, acting on a tip-off, found them Tuesday night on the bus at a highway toll gate in Bingyang, Guangxi province, the Beijing Morning News said.
    Police at the Bingyang police station confirmed the case and told AFP more than 20 suspects had been arrested.
    "The babies are fine. More than 20 people have been arrested," one police officer said, refusing to comment further.
    Another officer said the youngest babies were only a few days old. "They had been on the bus for four or five hours before they were found," he said.
    The oldest baby was no more than three months old, the newspaper reported.
    Some of the infants were two or three to a suitcase. The nylon suitcases were stacked on the luggage rack, the back row of seats and along the sides of the bus.
    The babies appeared to have been drugged to keep them from crying and being found.
    Police officers recounted their disbelief when they found one baby after another on the bus.
    "After I found three to four infants, I felt shocked," one officer told the newspaper.
    Police said they did not know where the babies came from and where they were headed. The bus was travelling from Yulin city in the poverty-stricken Guangxi province to central China's similarly poor Anhui province.
    The 27 surviving babies were in stable condition. The cheeks of some of them had turned purplish as temperatures had dropped on the bus during the night.
    The infants are being kept at the Minorities Weisheng School in nearby Nanlin district, one of the police officers told AFP.
    "Nurses are taking care of them. The local government has set aside money to care for the infants. Local residents are taking milk powder to the school for the babies," he said.
    Most of the infants were a few months old and some had been kept in large leather bags near the passengers, he said.
    Those who were arrested included passengers on the bus, the officer said.
    "Most of the people arrested were middle-aged women from Bingyang. They probably wanted to make some money. They might have been headed for Guangdong," he said.
    Police are seeking other suspects. "They haven't arrested all of them yet," he said.
    So far no one had claimed the infants.
    "It's possible the parents gave the babies away. Family planning policy is very strict and they probably had exceeded their birth limit and wanted to give the babies away to avoid fines," the officer said.
    "Perhaps some of them were born to unwed mothers or migrant workers."
    Child and female trafficking is a serious problem in China with cases regularly reported in Chinese newspapers. Children are sold to families who lack children or want more, while older girls or women are sold as brides to poor farmers.
    A report issued by UNICEF in 2001 said more than a quarter of a million women and children have been victims of trafficking in China in recent decades.

  • What if the US Loses?
    Date: 3/20/03
    http://www.worth1000.com/cache/gallery/contestcache.asp?contest_id=597
    Some of these are kinda funny.

  • Bin Laden niece envisions career as pop singer
    March 16, 2003
    Sunday Telegraph
    LONDON--A niece of Osama bin Laden is launching a career as a pop singer after rejecting her Muslim background and throwing herself into the London party scene.
    Waffa bin Laden, whose father Yeslam is a brother of the world's most wanted man, hopes to release a single by the end of the year after being told that she has the looks and voice to become a star.
    She has been working on a demo tape and reportedly has been advised on her musical ambitions by acclaimed rap artist Wyclef Jean.
    Bin Laden, 26, has become a fixture on the London club scene since moving here six months ago.
    Bin Laden, who trained as a lawyer in America, dissociated herself from her notorious uncle long before the Sept. 11 attacks. At the time, she was living less than a mile from the World Trade Center.
     
  • Is there more to the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than meets the eye?
    Date: 3/5/03
    http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/completetimeline/main/essayksmcapture.html
    Some great reporting here.

  • French Doctor Critically Ill With Mystery Pneumonia Virus
    3-25-3
    TOURCOING, France (Reuters) - A French doctor was critically ill on Tuesday with a suspected case of a virus that has killed 23 people worldwide, after visiting the Vietnam hospital where the mystery illness was first identified.
    "His condition is stable but he is in danger. We will need to wait four or five days before we can come to a decision," hospital specialist Yves Mouton told a news conference.
    French authorities were contacting passengers who were on the man's flight from Hanoi, which landed in Paris on Sunday morning, as well as a taxi driver who drove him from the airport to his home near the northern city of Lille.
    The 65-year-old heart specialist flew to Hanoi last month to work in a hospital where a Vietnamese nurse and a French doctor died from severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) after treating a U.S. businessman.
    The deadly disease is believed to have surfaced in China late last year before showing up in Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam, Canada and Germany in recent weeks, killing 23 people worldwide and infecting hundreds.
    Shortly after his return on Sunday, the Frenchman was admitted with breathing problems to a hospital in Tourcoing, near Lille. By Tuesday he was on a respirator in a serious condition, hospital doctors said.
    "(We) believe this is a case of SARS," the French Health Ministry said in a statement. Hong Kong now has 290 infected, the newest victims having caught the virus from an infected man on a flight to Beijing.
    In Vietnam, four people have died and 35 are battling the disease. Beijing may be looking at 100 cases, and Singapore has ordered 740 people who may be at risk into quarantine.
    In France, 11 people with suspicious symptoms were under observation in hospitals by Tuesday, the Health Ministry said. Suspected cases have also been reported in the United States, Britain, Australia, Japan and Macau.
    The French heart specialist was in contact with the entire team treating the disease in Hanoi, and in particular with the two other doctors who succumbed to the fast-spreading virus.
    Mouton noted the disease could only be caught by "prolonged contact" with an infected person. "This is why we are looking for people who were sitting near the cardiologist in the plane."
    Tourcoing hospital has evacuated half its medical staff to avoid the disease spreading further.
    World Health Organization scientists trying to pin down the cause of the illness believe they have identified two viruses as "very strong contenders."
    Experts in Hong Kong and Germany have said they think it is caused by a new virus from the paramyxovirus family, a large group of microbes that includes the germs behind measles, mumps and respiratory infections.

  • Deadly Virus Infects Five Who Toured Beijing
    By Tan Ee Lyn
    3-24-3
    HONG KONG (Reuters) - Five people who returned to Hong Kong from a holiday in Beijing have contracted a mystery pneumonia virus which has killed more than 20 people around the world, a government spokesman said on Tuesday.
    Desperate to halt a wave of infections and break the cycle, Singapore on Monday ordered 740 suspected victims to be quarantined in their homes or face hefty fines.
    Canadian health officials said they had identified a fifth suspected case of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Ontario, its most populous province, and in the United States, experts said a new strain of a virus that causes the common cold may be responsible for the mystery disease.
    In Hong Kong, where debate is raging over whether the government reacted quickly enough, an official said the latest victims were among a tour group of 39 to the Chinese capital.
    Six of their fellow travelers were in hospital and may have also been infected, the government spokesman said.
    "We are still tracing the source, where and how they were infected," he said.
    The group returned to Hong Kong on March 19. The virus usually takes between two and seven days to incubate before a victim starts showing symptoms.
    SARS is widely believed to have started in southern China late last year before showing up in Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam, Canada and Germany in recent weeks.
    Suspected cases have also been reported in the United States, Britain, France, Australia and Macau.
    Chinese officials say 305 people had been infected by an atypical pneumonia since November and five had died, but both Chinese and World Health Organization experts say they have yet to determine if the virus is the same.
    Canada has linked three deaths to the virus. Its officials have identified a fifth suspected victim in Ontario, in addition to 10 "probable" cases.
    The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Monday that a new strain of a virus that causes the common cold may be responsible.
    Tissue samples from two patients had tested positive for a new form of coronavirus, the second leading cause of colds in humans and often responsible for upper respiratory infections in premature infants, CDC said.
    Experts in Hong Kong and Germany earlier said they believed the sickness was caused by a new virus from the paramyxovirus family, a large group of microbes that includes germs that cause measles, mumps and respiratory infections.
    In Singapore, those isolated at home are mostly friends and relatives of 65 patients now battling for their lives.
    Of these, eight are being kept alive on ventilators. The government has also banned patients from receiving visitors.
    A task force will help those quarantined to buy groceries and run other errands. The government has pledged financial assistance.
    Lo Wing-lok, legislator and infectious disease expert in Hong Kong, said the Singapore quarantine was one of the biggest in the world in recent years but warned the tough action could backfire.
    "The government will be able to track the 740. But there will be others who will be so scared they may hide away and not seek medical help and these may spread the disease," Lo said.
    Fears in Hong Kong grew on Tuesday after its Hospital Authority chief, William Ho, was hospitalized with symptoms of the disease, which is linked to the deaths of 11 people in the former British colony.
    Ho had been briefing top government officials, including leader Tung Chee-hwa, about the outbreak before he fell sick.
    Tung's spokeswoman said on Tuesday Tung was in good health.


  • Hospital Chief Ill With Mystery Pneumonia, Fears Spread
    By Tan Ee Lyn
    3-24-3
    HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong's hospital chief has been hospitalized with symptoms of pneumonia, fueling fear that a killer respiratory virus could be spreading faster in the territory of nearly seven million people than first thought.
    William Ho, chief executive of the Hospital Authority, was admitted on Sunday, a government spokeswoman said on Monday.
    A senior Hong Kong doctor blasted the government for not doing enough to contain the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus that has killed 18 people worldwide and infected hundreds.
    It has also taken a heavy toll on tourism.
    "The government must work faster than the virus," said Henry Yeung, president of the Hong Kong Doctors' Union.
    "It must get everyone to wear surgical masks and all schools must shut for two weeks," Yeung told Reuters.
    The virus has spread to Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore, Canada and Germany after first showing up in southern China late last year. Suspected cases have been reported in the United States, Britain and Australia.
    In Hong Kong, 247 people are infected, with 242 having developed full-blown pneumonia.
    Ho, chief executive of the Hong Kong's Hospital Authority, had been working on the outbreak for the past few weeks, visiting hospitals, briefing senior government officials, including leader Tung Chee-hwa, and meeting the press.
    The government spokeswoman said it was not yet known if he was suffering from SARS, which has killed eight people in Hong Kong.
    The South China Morning Post said three office workers had apparently caught the disease from a colleague -- the sister of an airport employee who had spread it to dozens of staff at a hospital.
    It was believed to be the first time that people had been infected by a co-worker in an office.
    Workers disinfected a handful of schools over the weekend after six children were taken ill with the disease and will begin cleaning about 2,000 more schools on Monday.
    Experts believe the disease is caused by a new virus from the paramyxovirus family, a large group of microbes that includes germs that cause measles, mumps and respiratory infections.
    Initial symptoms include high fever, dry cough, chills and severe breathing problems. Even healthy, athletic adults can end up on a respirator within five days.
    Education Secretary Arthur Li has ordered about 180 children with infected family members to stop attending classes for a week from Monday.
    Fears of a wider outbreak have been growing since six schoolchildren and a growing number of private clinic doctors and nurses were taken ill.
    While the disease is believed to have started late last year in southern China, killing five and infecting 300 others, Hong Kong is now at its epicenter.
    Airports and airlines around the world have begun barring passengers showing flu-like symptoms.
    Hong Kong doctors have been treating patients with ribavirin -- an anti-virus drug -- and steroids. They say the regimen works for most patients if treated early.
    A delegation of five experts from the World Health Organization met health officials in China on Monday, but no details of their talks were immediately available.
    Washington urged U.S. citizens on Sunday to consider leaving Vietnam because of the disease and said it was offering free flights out of the country to family members of U.S. diplomats.
    Two people, a doctor and a nurse, have died from the pneumonia in Vietnam, which has more than 50 cases. Singapore had 51 cases as of Sunday.

  • SARS Virus First Discovered In 1998?
    By Ian Gurney
    Author of 'The Cassandra Prophecy'
    3-18-3
    ProMED, the International Society for Infectious Diseases yesterday reported that the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) microbe has been identified as a virus in the Paramyxoviridae family. Professor John Tam of the Department of Microbiology at the Chinese University, said the virus was detected by electron microscopy. Asked if the virus was curable, Tam said they still needed to monitor individual patients before they could conclude that the virus was curable. SARS is an atypical pneumonia that rapidly attacks lung tissue and first showed up, according to most reports, in February 2003 when 305 people became ill in Guangdong Province, China.
    However, further research shows that this is not absolutely true, as it appears the Paramyxoviridae virus which could infect humans was originally discovered some five years ago. It also throws up a strange coincidence that has linkages with the "unusual" death of a prominent microbiologist.
    In December 2001 I published an article entitled The Very Mysterious Deaths Of Five Microbiologists (www.rense.com/general18/five.htm). One of the deaths involved a skilled microbiologist named Set Van Nguyen. On December 14th, Van Nguyen was killed at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation's animal diseases facility in Geelong, Australia. The microbiologist had worked for 15 years at the facility. Victoria Police said: "Set Van Nguyen, 44, appeared to have died after entering an airlock into a storage laboratory filled with nitrogen. His body was found when his wife became worried after he failed to return from work. He was killed after entering a low temperature storage area where biological samples were kept. He did not know the room was full of deadly gas which had leaked from a liquid nitrogen cooling system. Unable to breathe, Mr. Nguyen collapsed and died."
    Van Nguyen's death was one of possibly twenty one fatalities involving microbiologists in a five month period between the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002, including the death of Dr. Steven Mostow, nicknamed Dr. Flu, in an air crash in March 2002.
    So what's the connection, if indeed there is one, and what has this to do with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, only yesterday identified as a virus in the Paramyxoviridae family? Well, try this for starters.
    In Australia at the beginning of 1998, a group of microbiologists announced the discovery of a new virus, a member of the Paramyxoviridae family of viruses, which could be passed from animals to humans. In their report (www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol4no2/philbey.htm) the microbiologists said: "Viruses in the family Paramyxoviridae have been associated with new diseases in a variety of species, including humans, throughout the world. We have isolated an apparently new virus in the family Paramyxoviridae from stillborn piglets with abnormalities of the brain, spinal cord, and skeleton at a commercial piggery with 2,600 sows in New South Wales, Australia. Serologic studies indicate that at least two humans exposed to affected pigs have been infected with the virus, possibly with resultant illness, and that fruit bats are a potential source of infection. A large breeding colony of gray-headed fruit bats (Pteropus poliocephalus), as well as little red fruit bats (P. scapulatus), roosts within 200 metres of the affected piggery from October to April."
    So, it seems that a virus of the Paramyxoviridae family that could infect humans was discovered over five years ago, but where's the coincidence in all this. Well, the microbiologists that first reported the discovery of the virus in 1998 where Peter W. Daniels, Allan R. Gould, and Alex D. Hyatt. All of them worked for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation's animal diseases facility in Geelong, Australia. That's the same place where Set Van Nguyen died, and the same organisation where, as the journal Nature announced in January 2002:
    "Australian scientists, Dr Ron Jackson and Dr Ian Ramshaw, accidentally created an astonishingly virulent strain of mousepox, a cousin of smallpox, among laboratory mice. They realised that if similar genetic manipulation was carried out on smallpox, an unstoppable killer could be unleashed."
    ©Copyright Ian Gurney 2003. This article can be reproduced or redistributed when the following is included: Ian Gurney is the author of "The Cassandra Prophecy-Armageddon Approaches" (www.caspro.com)
    Comment From Patricia Doyle, PhD
    [email protected]
    3-19-3
    Hello Ian - I had written about the emerging/mutating paramyxoviruses a year or so ago. I think that this is something with which the medical/scientific community should be concerned. Paramyxoviruses infect everything from plants, to snakes to animals to humans.
    The newest memebers of the group are Hendra, (infects horses,) Nipah virus and now a NipahLIKE (measles encephalitis) Virus then in 2000, we learned of Tioman. Like Nipah, Tioman is also vectored by fruitbats.
    There is also a parapneumonia virus which, I believe this latest outbreak may be some sort of sibling to. Metapneumona virus and many others appear to be emerging. When a newly discovered virus like Nipah, mutates it is time for worry. Nipah was first discovered in 1999 in Malaysia where it killed one hundered people and caused the destruction of thousands of pigs. When a new virus like Nipah mutates a few years later, it tells me that it is very unstable.
    The good news is that I believe this A-typical pneumonia virus is not as virulent as the flu. It appears that it spreads via noscomial contact such as we see doctor-to-patient. It also spreads in families. It does not seem to be very airborne.
    I hope and pray that the outbreak will be controlled soon. I had been concerned that the outbreak was a revival of the Spanish 1918 flu. As you may know, there were a couple of expeditions to exhume tissue containing live H1N1 Spanish Flu virus. I know that the expedition to Alaska was successful and did bring back live virus (albeit I do not know the condition of the virus i.e. if it would still infect.)
    I was very much against such an expedition. I have been researching Chinese research and have been unable to find any expedition to retreve live Spanish Flu virus. So, that is some good news.
    I do think that the news stories regrding this outbreak is missing the point. I feel that they are concentrating on the outbreak and missing the point about the emerging and mutating of so many paramyxoviruses. There was even a mutation of measles and, also mumps virus over the past two years. One must ask WHY? Will paramyxoviruses mutate into a virulent strain that would cause a pandemic? Will they mutate so deadly as to kill 70% of the infected, as we see with Ebola? My concern is WHY are paramyxoviruses emerging and mutating? They, unlike other viral families, infected the widest range of life on earth, i.e. plants to animals, snakes, humans etc etc.
    I will post your article. BTW that was a very interesting addition re the microbiologists and Dr. Nguyen's CSIRO lab. Excellent.
    Patricia
    Patricia A. Doyle, PhD
    Please visit my "Emerging Diseases" message board at:
    http://www.clickitnews.com/emergingdiseases/index.shtml

    The Bacteria Whisperer
    Bonnie Bassler discovered a secret about microbes that the science world has missed for centuries. The bugs are talking to each other. And plotting against us.
    http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.04/quorum.html


  • Toddler survives 10-hour ordeal in UK countryside
    LONDON, March 1 (Reuters) - A toddler was safely back with his family after surviving a 10-hour solo trek through the cold, wet and dark British countryside, newspapers reported on Saturday.
    Two year-old Merlin Reid wandered from his grandparents' garden and then trudged for a mile over a railway line, through a slurry pit and past a disused sewage farm.
    Superintendent Mark Streater of Sussex police in southern England told the Daily Telegraph newspaper it was "truly amazing" that Merlin had survived unharmed after walking through "a minefield of dangers."
    The pint-sized adventurer's excursion late on Thursday came to an end after he became entangled in tree roots by a stream.
    "If he had fallen into the stream he would clearly have drowned, and even if he had been missing for another two hours he would have succumbed to the cold," Streater said.
    Despite a massive police hunt that involved helicopters and sniffer dogs it was a local farmer who found the boy.
    "He had a look of complete shock on his face. The little thing never made a sound. His eyes were as wide as dinner plates," farmer Jason Fisher said.

  • The real reason Tom Daschle didn’t run for president
    JANUARY 17 - 23, 2003
    LAWEEKLY
    by Doug Ireland
    The national press corps didn’t bother to tell you why Tom Daschle, the Democrats’ Senate leader, decided at the 11th hour not to run for president: In the end, he calculated that he couldn’t survive scrutiny of his persistent service to the clients of his wife. Linda Daschle has been one of the airline industry’s top lobbyists for two decades — when she wasn’t busy running the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which explains why, just 11 days after the 9/11 attacks, her husband rushed through the Democratic Senate, which he controlled, the $15 billion bailout for the airline industry, a notorious taxpayer rip-off.
    Right after then-Congressman Tom Daschle dumped his first wife for a younger, prettier one, the former Miss Kansas Linda Daschle went to work as chief lobbyist for the Air Transport Association, the airline industry’s main lobby; she then became the senior vice president of the American Association of Airport Executives; and these days hangs her hat at the pricey top Washington law/lobby shop Baker, Donelson, Bearman & Caldwell, headed by former GOP Senate leader and ex–Reagan chief of staff Howard Baker — where she peddles influence on behalf of a long list of lucrative aviation clients. The clients for whom Linda lobbied brought more than $5.86 million into Baker, Donelson in one three-year period, including Northwest Airlines ($870,000 from 1997 through 2001) and American Airlines ($1.26 million in fees). Northwest was already teetering on the edge of bankruptcy even before 9/11. American, which has had six fatal crashes since 1994 (not counting 9/11) and has been repeatedly fined by the FAA for a skein of safety violations, had the reputation as the most unsafe major U.S. carrier.
    Yet these two clients of Linda Daschle’s got nearly $1 billion from the airline bailout her husband pushed into law — thanks to which Northwest (which was the second largest contributor to Senator Daschle’s 1998 campaign, and which scooped up $404 million in government cash) actually posted a $19 million profit in the third quarter after the twin-towers attacks. And, as the lone senator to vote against the bailout, Illinois GOPer Peter Fitzgerald, decried, “The only people who got bailed out were the shareholders. The 1 million airline employees were left twisting in the wind.” So much for the populist noises that occasionally come from Senator Daschle’s mouth. The Daschles also made sure that the bailout exempted American (which has consistently lobbied against tougher airline safety standards) and other carriers with lousy safety records from any real liability to lawsuits from the families of 9/11 victims. Moreover, the General Accounting Office found that the airline industry’s representations to Congress to secure the bailout overstated its anticipated losses from 9/11 by as much as $5 billion.
    Before 9/11, Senator Daschle pushed through the sleazy deal in the backrooms of Capitol Hill that forced the FAA to buy defective baggage scanners from one of Linda’s other clients, L-3 International (from which Linda’s firm raked in $440,000 in the ’97–’01 period). Under a provision Linda’s husband had slipped into the 2000 budget for the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), the FAA was required to buy one of L-3’s scanners for every one it purchased from the company’s competitors. The L-3 scanners were found to be substandard by DOT’s inspector general; FAA tests of the scanners showed high failure rates; and most have not yet been installed because of their defects (the one at the Dallas–Fort Worth airport — another of Linda’s clients — leaked radiation), which is a major reason DOT says it won’t be able to screen all luggage for explosives for years to come.
    In one of those corporate-coddling moves for which the Clinton administration became infamous, President Bubba appointed Linda Daschle deputy administrator of the FAA, putting her in charge of regulating her once-and-future clients; and she wound up running the agency as acting administrator. This, of course, significantly boosted the Daschle family income by hyping the amount Linda could charge her clients when she left government service. She didn’t wait long to cash in. Example: While running the FAA, she awarded Loral Space Technologies (a major Democratic contributor that figured in the ’96 campaign-finance scandals) a nearly $1 billion contract from the federal government; after Linda passed through the revolving door to Baker, Donelson, Loral paid the lobby shop $740,000 in 2000-2001 for Linda’s services. When the FAA was pondering making mandatory a criminal-background check for all airport employees, Linda, who was then running the agency, vigorously opposed this common-sense move — echoing the position of the airline-industry lobby that had previously employed her.
    A particularly odiferous episode involved charges that the senator and his wife had tried to sabotage safety inspections of an air-charter firm owned by Murl Bellew, a Daschle family friend who taught Tom how to fly. The scandal erupted and triggered an official investigation when a Bellew small plane chartered by the Indian Health Service crashed in North Dakota, killing the pilot and three doctors en route to an Indian-reservation clinic. Forest Service inspectors had been arguing that Bellew’s firm should be banned from getting government contracts because the operation had been unsafe for years. Senator Daschle obligingly pushed legislation taking the Forest Service out of the business of inspecting small-plane carriers, and senior FAA bureaucrats said Linda had also tried to submarine a proposal to train Forest Service inspectors to conduct FAA investigations. An FAA inspector reported a cover-up: Documents showing the Daschles’ assiduous efforts to minimize inspections of Bellew’s planes were shredded by FAA officials under Linda’s thumb. While an I.G. report failed to find Linda guilty of any lawbreaking, there’s an old saying in Washington: The scandal isn’t what’s illegal, the real scandal is what’s legal.
    It’s a sign of how lazy, blinkered and source-coddling the Beltway’s national press corps is when one considers that none of all this made the dissections of the senator’s presidential withdrawal — even though a tough piece by the Washington Monthly’s Stephanie Mencimer in the January 2002 issue laying out much of it was still on newsstands. As she observed, “It doesn’t take Lee Atwater to see how Mrs. Daschle’s professional life might play out in a nasty re-election or presidential campaign: ‘Sen. Daschle’s wife lobbyist for nation’s most dangerous airline,’ or ‘majority leader’s wife lobbied to make airlines less safe.’”
    Linda Daschle has tried to pooh-pooh her obvious conflicts of interest as an influence peddler, telling The New York Times last August that the staff members she lobbies “are pretty junior and may or may not know who I am” — a mind-boggling, risible assertion. But her senator/leader husband has always refused to make public his and his wife’s tax returns, despite repeated press requests. As a presidential candidate, Tom Daschle could not have avoided giving the press a look at those returns — which would have spelled out just how much cash Linda brings in from her clients.
    And that, children, was the ticking time bomb that would inevitably have exploded if the senator had sought the White House — and is the bottom-line reason he chose not to run.

  • Guide Horses for the Blind
    http://www.guidehorse.com/
    Like the website says, "guidehorses for the blind are not for everyone"

  • Experts Sent to Probe Asian Disease Outbreak
    Pneumonia-Like Illness Fatal in 1 Case
    Washington Post
    Friday, March 14, 2003
    The U.S. government yesterday dispatched experts to help investigate outbreaks of a mysterious pneumonia-like illness in Hong Kong and Hanoi that have killed an American businessman and sickened dozens of hospital workers.
    The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent a team of epidemiologists and infectious-disease control experts to Hanoi to help identify the cause and stem any further spread, according to CDC spokesman David Daigle. The CDC is also analyzing blood samples from patients and has alerted health officials around the United States, Daigle said.
    In Geneva, the World Health Organization issued an alert Wednesday to notify health officials around the world to be on the lookout for similar cases. So far none have been reported.
    "It's very serious," said Dick Thompson, a spokesman for WHO, which is coordinating the investigation. "It's an unusual thing to issue a global alert, and it's taking a long time to determine what's causing this."
    The outbreaks began Feb. 26, when an American-born businessman arrived in Hanoi from Shanghai and Hong Kong suffering from a "severe, acute respiratory syndrome of unknown origin" similar to pneumonia, WHO said.
    The 48-year-old man, who had been living in China and was not identified, was hospitalized and transferred back to China on March 2, officials said. His death was announced yesterday.
    Twenty-eight workers at the Hanoi hospital in which he was treated developed similar symptoms, which include "initial flu-like illness," WHO said. Those symptoms include the rapid onset of high fever followed by muscle aches, headache and sore throat.
    Tests showed the patients also had low blood counts. In some cases, patients developed pneumonia, which progressed to a life-threatening condition known as respiratory distress.
    "Some patients are recovering, but some patients remain critically ill," WHO said.
    The hospital has been evacuated except for the affected patients, and all remaining hospital workers are taking extra precautions.
    A similar outbreak was also reported at two Hong Kong hospitals, affecting at least 26 workers, including 10 who developed signs of pneumonia. Their conditions are stable, WHO said.
    The Hong Kong outbreaks occurred at hospitals other than the one in which the American patient died. No direct link between the outbreaks has been confirmed.
    In mid-February, health officials in China had reported 305 cases of "atypical pneumonia" in the Guangdong province, including five deaths. That epidemic is over, officials said. Initial tests indicated that an organism known as chlamydia may have been involved, but that remains unclear, according to David Heymann, executive director of WHO's communicable disease program.
    Adding to the concern is that two cases were reported Feb. 19 in Hong Kong of people infected with a strain of influenza virus known as A(H5N1), or the "bird flu," because it is believed to have originated in chickens. It is worrisome because it tends to be deadly. So far, however, tests for that virus on the outbreak patients have been negative.
    "You're always worried when you can't find a diagnosis," Heymann said. "Is it a new agent that's showing for the first time in humans? Is it an agent we know but can't identify?"
    Stephen Morse, an infectious-disease expert at Columbia University, said that the biggest concern is that the outbreaks are the beginning of a global flu epidemic.
    "In the back of everyone's mind, of course, is the 1918-1919 Spanish flu. That's the fear," said Morse, referring to the most deadly global flu pandemic in history. Flu viruses historically have originated in Asia and spread, he said.

  • Comet NEAT - from Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)

  • COMET NEAT: It was lovely. Comet NEAT swung by the Sun last week even closer to our star than the planet Mercury. A coronagraph onboard the orbiting Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) recorded the lovely encounter. The SOHO movie, which spans 4 days, highlights the comet's bright billowing tail and its apparent intersection with a solar coronal mass ejection. Feb 26th 02

  • Glow-in-dark bug strikes
    February 21, 2003
    The Daily Telegraph
    A BACTERIA which glows in the dark and shares genes with the bubonic plague has caused a series of unexplained infections along Australia's east coast.
    The photorhabdus bacteria, first identified in an 11-year-old Melbourne girl in 1994, causes excruciatingly painful ulcers and abscesses.
    Five more cases have since been reported in Australia and six in the US.
    A sixth Australian is understood to be currently infected but not yet reported, taking the total number to 13.

  • A metallic asteroid may have coincided with the fall of Rome, says Duncan Steel
    Thursday February 6, 2003
    The Guardian
    In the early fifth century, rampaging Goths swept through Italy. Inviolate for 1,100 years, Rome was sacked by the hordes in 410 AD. St Augustine's apologia, the City of God, set the tone for Christians for the next 16 centuries.
    But the Rome of that era came close to suffering a far worse calamity. A small metallic asteroid descended from the sky, making a hypervelocity impact in an Apennine valley just 60 miles east of the city. This bus-sized lump of cosmic detritus vaporised as it hit the ground. In doing so, it released energy equivalent to around 200 kilotonnes of TNT: around 15 times the power of the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima in 1945.
    Pescara is on the Adriatic coast, located across the Italian peninsula from Rome. Housed there is the International Research School of Planetary Sciences, where staff and students study topics ranging from planetary geology to astrobiology. In 1999, a young impact cratering specialist from Sweden, Jens Ormö, arrived to take up a three-year position funded by the European Union.
    Ormö, it happens, is keen on hill walking, and just inland from Pescara are some of the most spectacular mountains in the Apennines. He decided that some hiking in the area of the Sirente Massif was in order, and so he consulted a local guidebook. As he thumbed its pages, Ormö came across a photograph of something that amazed him. What he saw, labelled as a natural lake, was surely an impact crater.
    An expedition to the site of the putative impact, on the Sirente plain, was hastily organised. Colleagues confirmed Ormö's initial suspicion. Here was an impact crater about 140 metres wide, previously unrecognised despite lying only a short distance from a busy road, and visible from miles away. It has appeared on maps for centuries, and in guidebooks for decades - but no one had recognised its significance.
    Natural lakes are common in the area. But this one has a raised rim, now about two metres high, but originally rather thicker. This was produced by the asteroid throwing material out from the impact zone, as it crashed at a speed of around 20km per second, producing a huge explosion. Later filled with rainwater, the crater is now only a few metres deep, and occasionally dries up during hot summers. But it was more than 30 metres to the bottom when first formed. Centuries of weathering has eroded its bank and gradually filled it in.
    Relatively modest craters like this are unusual, because small asteroids can only reach the ground intact if they are metallic, and thus strong enough to withstand the physical shock of slamming into the atmosphere at such speeds. The best guess at present is that the asteroid was about 10 metres across, and had a composition similar to nickel-iron meteorites. If it had been stony in composition, as most asteroids are, it would have shattered in flight and released all of its energy in a phenomenal explosion. This is what happened when a 50-metre rock blew up over Siberia in 1908, leaving no crater.The expectation of a metallic impactor is backed up by the identification of rust grains in the surrounding soil.
    Confirmation of the impact origin comes from 17 smaller craters, typically 10 metres wide, scattered around the Sirente plain. These are due to fragments of the asteroid that separated in flight through the atmosphere. A magnetic survey shows that most are associated with anomalously high fields, indicating sub-surface metallic lumps.
    Crater fields like this are not unusual. In central Australia, 120km south of Alice Springs, the Henbury craters were formed in a similar way. What is peculiar about the Sirente crater is where it occurred, and its youth. Dozens of ancient craters are known in northern Europe, geological stability allowing their long-term preservation. Two examples are the Ries and Steinheim basins in Germany. Many others are known in Scandinavia. But these are all huge, and millions of years old. There is a small, recently formed crater in Estonia, but the Sirente crater is of far greater interest: it was excavated around the time of the fall of the Roman Empire, and close to Rome itself.
    The crater has been dated through radiocarbon analysis of a drill core cut down through the bank. The uppermost material, having been thrown out of the cavity, contains organic matter older than the impact. At the original ground level the radiocarbon ages minimise, and then deeper down the material is older again.
    The data indicate that the crater was formed in about 412 AD, with an uncertainty of 40 years in either direction. Additional sampling may allow this spread to be reduced, but it is clear that the event occurred close to the fall of Rome: some time between 370 AD and 450 AD, when the city was again under attack, this time by the Vandals.
    No matter what the trajectory of the asteroid entry, it would have been a phenomenal sight from Rome, and scarier still for those closer to ground zero. The fireball produced would have only lasted 10 seconds or so, but would have been brighter than the sun, and so visible even in daytime. The smoke trail left in the atmosphere would have been visible for some hours.
    Another remarkable aspect of the event is that the main crater sits squarely in the middle of the Sirente plain, which is only about a mile long, and half that wide, being surrounded by mountainous terrain. It could be that this is just luck. Alternatively, the array of craters now identified might represent only a tiny fraction of the havoc wreaked, with many other impacts on the mountainsides having long since eroded or been hidden by tree growth.
    Even considering simply the energy involved in forming the known crater, it is sobering to ponder what might have happened should the impact zone have been on the flat coastal plains nearer Rome, rather than in the mountains. Scaling from nuclear bomb tests indicates that a 200 kilotonne surface explosion would devastate an area of 100 square kilometres.
    A frequently used aphorism says that Rome was not built in a day. That's true. But it did come awfully close to being destroyed in seconds.

  • Methane on ice: a climate shock in store?
    Friday, 21 February 2003
    (abc.net.au)

    Known frozen methane sites around the world: a nasty climatic surprise in store? (Pic: Oak Ridge National Lab)
    Vast stockpiles of frozen methane on the seafloor are more unstable than previously thought, and their sudden release may have been linked to global warming in the past.
    Led by Dr Kai-Uwe Hinrichs of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, USA, the new evidence is published in this week's issue of Science.
    The researchers examined the by-products of ancient methane-using bacteria in sediments of the Santa Barbara Basin, off the coast of California. They found evidence that methane trapped in ice crystals (known as methane hydrates) on the seabed was released into the water 44,000 years ago - at the same time there was a rapid, but as yet unexplained, rise in global temperatures.
    Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, about 10 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Scientists estimate that approximately 3,000 times the volume of methane in the atmosphere is currently trapped in hydrates at the bottom of the sea.
    While conclusive proof is still lacking that the seabed methane released into ocean sediments 44,000 years ago reached the atmosphere, the fact that the hydrates are not as stable as scientists believed raises the possibility that they could be a climatic time-bomb in the future.
    Methane hydrates are formed under conditions of low temperatures and high pressures. The methane release of long ago might have resulted from large-scale landslides, or a sea temperatures rising and melting the ice that traps the methane. Since their discovery, scientists have been investigating them as a future source of energy.
    "It looks like the destabilisation of the hydrates could have been triggered by the warming that occurred about that time," said Dr David Ethridge, of CSIRO Atmospheric Research, a specialist division of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation.
    While other factors, such as rotting wetlands, can trigger a rise in atmospheric methane, destabilisation of methane hydrates would lead to a very large spike of methane in the atmosphere and an enormous increase in the rate of warming, Ethridge told ABC Science Online.
    The methane pulse released in the incident 44,000 years ago was about 90 million tonnes. Today, this would represent nearly 20% of the annual emissions of methane from all sources on Earth and about a third of the emissions from human activity.
    "If you go into the climate world and ask for a prediction of climate for the next 100 years, people can give you a range of estimates for warming," Ethridge said.
    "But then people often talk about surprises - things that we may not have understood which could happen - this might be one of those," he added. "It has a low chance of happening but a high impact if it does."

  • Key Countries that are Resisting War have Big Stakes in Current Iraqi Oil Industry
    Feb. 20, 2003
    (AP / CBS)The crisis in Iraq is not about oil, the world's diplomats say. But as CBS News Correspondent Anthony Mason reports, some key countries that are resisting a war have a big stake in Iraqi oil fields.
    "In the whole oil arena, Russia is Iraq's number one partner. They've signed billions of dollars in deals to develop fields. They are also their biggest trade partner by far," says Karen Matusic of Oil Daily.
    Under U.N. sanctions, Saddam can sell oil only to raise money for humanitarian supplies. Iraq pumps about 2.5 million barrels a day and Russian companies broker and handle about 40 percent of those oil exports.
    "The Iraq business is very important to some players, including some Russian companies that are close to the Kremlin," says Thane Gustafson, an analyst at Cambridge Energy Research.
    Saddam has often rewarded his political allies with oil deals. And if Russia is Saddam's favorite, Gustafson says, "The French are right behind."
    France's largest oil company Total-Fina-Elf, has been negotiating to develop 2 giant Iraqi oil fields. In fact, France, which has strongly resisted military action against Baghdad, is Iraq's third largest trading partner -- like the Russians.
    "They definitely have a vested interest in this financially. Who knows what's gonna happen in a post war Iraq. They stand to lose billions of dollars in future revenues," says Phil Flynn of Alaron Trading.
    Moreover, a new Iraqi government would likely void Saddam's oil deals. As exiled Iraqi opposition leader Ahmad Chalabi told 60 Minutes, "Any contracts are either illegal or unfair."
    The U.S. has quietly reassured Russia that its interests will be protected in a post-Saddam Iraq. But President Putin has other concerns. Oil exports are crucial to the Kremlin's tax revenues. If Saddam's successors begin to flood the market with crude, the price could slide.
    "If the price of oil goes down, then it's the whole Russian government that takes a big hit. That's 60 percent of their revenues directly and indirectly that start to head downhill," explains Gustafson.
    The debate at the U.N. may be about a dictator and his weapons, but the diplomacy over Iraq is also clouded by the politics of oil.

  • Three mystery Iraqi ships are tracked over suspected WMD cargo
    19 February 2003
    (UKIndependent)
    Three giant cargo ships are being tracked by US and British intelligence on suspicion that they might be carrying Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
    Each with a deadweight of 35,000 to 40,000 tonnes, the ships have been sailing around the world's oceans for the past three months while maintaining radio silence in clear violation of international maritime law, say authoritative shipping industry sources.
    The vessels left port in late November, just a few days after UN weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix began their search for the alleged Iraqi arsenal on their return to the country.
    Uncovering such a deadly cargo on board would give George Bush and Tony Blair the much sought-after "smoking gun" needed to justify an attack on Saddam Hussein's regime, in the face of massive public opposition to war.
    The ships were chartered by a shipping agent based in Egypt and are flying under the flags of three different countries. The continued radio silence since they left port, in addition to the captains' failure to provide information on their cargoes or their destinations, is a clear breach of international maritime laws.
    The vessels are thought to have spent much of their time in the deep waters of the Indian Ocean, berthing at sea when they need to collect supplies of fuel and food. They have berthed in a handful of Arab countries, including Yemen.
    American and British military forces are believed to be reluctant to stop and search the vessels for fear that any intervention might result in them being scuttled. If they were carrying chemical and biological weapons, or fissile nuclear material, and they were to be sunk at sea, the environmental damage could be catastrophic.
    Washington and London might also want to orchestrate any raids so that they can present the ships as "evidence" that President Saddam is engaged in "material breach" of UN resolutions. This could provide the trigger for military strikes. While security sources in London last night were unable to provide information on any surveillance operation, the movement of the three ships is the source of growing concern among maritime and intelligence experts.
    A shipping industry source told The Independent: "If Iraq does have weapons of mass destruction, then a very large part of its capability could be afloat on the high seas right now. These ships have maintained radio silence for long periods and, for a considerable time, they have been steaming around in ever-decreasing circles."
    The ships are thought to have set sail from a country other than Iraq to avoid running the gauntlet of Western naval vessels patrolling the Gulf. Defence experts believe that, if they are carrying weapons of mass destruction, these could have been smuggled out through Syria or Jordan.
    Despite hundreds of searches by UN inspectors, no evidence has yet been found of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programmes. A succession of "dossiers" presented by Downing Street has been criticised for providing inaccurate information, with the most recent one subject to ridicule because a student's 11-year-old doctoral thesis was being passed off as current intelligence. There was a further setback for Washington and London when the accuracy of satellite photographs shown to the United Nations by Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, purporting to show Iraqi officials moving incriminating evidence from a suspected site, was questioned by Hans Blix.
    Mr Blix said: "The reported movement of munitions at the site could just as easily have been a routine activity as a movement of proscribed munitions in anticipation of an imminent inspection."
    Attempts to link the Iraqi regime to al-Qa'ida and other Islamist groups have also been met with scepticism. The UN says, though, that Iraq has failed to account for 1,000 tonnes of chemical agents from the war against Iran; to reveal the whereabouts of 6,500 missing chemical rockets; to produce evidence it has destroyed 8,500 litres of anthrax; and to account for 380 rocket engines smuggled into Iraq with chemicals used for missile propellants and control systems.
    Intelligence reports, and some Iraqi defectors, have maintained that incriminating material and documents relating to weapons of mass destruction have been buried in remote parts of the country and have also been hidden in a variety of locations including homes of officials and scientists, as well as mosques. There have also been claims that chemical and biological products have been smuggled into Syria.

  • Mohammed Atta And Flight School Owner Rudi Dekkers Seen Together Just Weeks Before 911
    By Daniel Hopsicker
    2-18-3
    http://www.madcowprod.com
    Mohamed Atta was twice seen with flight school owner Rudi Dekkers in Venice, FL. during the final month before he crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center Sept. 11 2001, directly contradicting Dekker's account of his relationship with the terrorist ringleader.
    Atta took numerous cab rides in August to and from Huffman Aviation as well as other locations in Venice, according to Venice Yellow Cab employees interviewed by the FBI three days after the attack.
    In an exclusive interview with the MadCowMorningNews one Yellow Cab driver stated that on two of these occasions Atta was accompanied by Rudi Dekkers.
    "They knew each other well - really well - they were friends," said long-time Venice resident and Yellow Cab driver Bob Simpson. "They were going to a nightclub in Sarasota, talking and very sociable with each other. He and Atta were friends, you could tell."
    Simpson said he first took Atta and Dekkers from Huffman Aviation to a restaurant in downtown Venice; on a second ride he picked them up at the Pompano Road residence of former Huffman employee Charlie Voss (in whose home Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi lived for a week when they arrived in Venice) and took the two to a Sarasota nightclub Atta is known to have frequented.
    Simpson said he has no trouble stating categorically that it is Rudi Dekkers who was with Mohamed Atta in his cab, since he knew Dekkers from numerous trips to Huffman Aviation to pick up arriving flight students.
    “He (Dekkers) would walk them out to the cab, and give me the address to take them to,” states Simpson.
    “Then a lot of times, with a new flight student, Rudi would take them over to Sharkey’s for lunch, and I’d get the call to pick them up. Dekkers also regularly used our cabs to do things like go to lunch, because he usually flew in by helicopter and didn’t have a car at the Venice Airport.”
    Has official story been 'rendered inoperative?'
    Simpson, a U.S. Navy veteran who saw duty off Libya and Iran during the early 1980's, comes from a family steeped in law enforcement. His father is a police chief in California, his brother is a cop, and an uncle works for the DEA. He appears neither mentally disordered nor suicidal.
    The Yellow Cab office manager in Sarasota confirmed that the trips were recorded in the firm's cab logs, and said the FBI had also expressed a keen interest in cab rides Atta had taken with the company's other driver, who worked nights (Simpson worked days).
    News of Atta's presence in Venice during final preparations for the attack directly contradicts the FBI's official chronology of Atta's movements in the last month before Sept. 11. It also contradicts numerous statements made by the controversial Dekkers to the news media.
    In sworn testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee in March 2002, Dekkers, recently charged with criminal fraud in Florida, insisted that his relationship with the terrorist ringleader had been distant, and had ended the previous December, nine months before the attack.
    “On December 24th, 2000, Atta and Alshehhi rented a Warrior (N555HA) from Huffman Aviation for a flight,” the Dutch national stated, telling of his last encounter with Atta.
    Dekkers told the hearing about complaints from his staff that Atta and Alshehhi had behavioral problems, that they were not following instructions, and that they also had bad attitudes.
    “Atta and Alshehhi returned to Huffman Aviation to make final payments on their outstanding bills. Because they were not taking any more flying lessons, they were asked to leave the facility due to their bad attitudes and not being liked by staff and clients alike. Huffman never heard about or from them again until September 11th, 2001.”
    Speaking with reporters, he had been more colloquial. "They did not socialize with anyone," Dekkers said three days after the attack. "They did not go to the bar with us. That Atta guy was an asshole."
    The Sarasota FBI office, responsible for the Venice airport investigation, has still not offered their version of what-all Rudi Dekkers was up to.
    Long cab rides to Orlando Executive Airport
    The new information first came to light during interviews with two Venice Yellow Cab drivers being questioned by the FBI. On Friday, Sept. 14, three days after the Sept. 11 attack, cab driver Simpson was contacted by the FBI, who he says questioned him closely about an associate of Atta's, a Middle Eastern man who owned a local convenience store.
    “I heard a voice say ‘this is Special Agent Joe Anderson from the FBI calling,’” remembers Simpson. “My heart sort of skipped a beat. Then he said don’t worry, you haven’t done anything wrong, and asked if I’d seen pictures of the terrorists, and if I had, wanted to know if I recognized any.”
     “I said yes, I recognized Mohamed Atta,’" Simpson continued. “I’m the day driver for Yellow Cab in Venice, and he was in my cab a bunch of times in August. The night driver had him even more than I did.”
    “They were especially interested in a rich Saudi guy that I’d been sent to pick up at the Orlando Executive Airport. They said they already knew that he'd ridden in my cab because they’d gotten my cab number from a surveillance camera there.”
    The FBI agents asked specific and direct questions focused on several trips to the Orlando Executive Airport beginning in December 2000, said Simpson, who told them he had been asked to drive there by a mysterious Middle Eastern convenience store owner in Venice who was an associate of Atta's, and who left town shortly after the attack.
    The convenience store owner, Makram Chams, rode along in the cab to the airport, where they picked up a wealthy Saudi businessman, dressed in Armani and shades, as well as his wife, who was wearing traditional Arab clothing.
    After clearing international customs, they proceeded back to the Venice apartment of the convenience store owner, where Simpson said he picked up Atta several times.
    Zacharias Moussaoui in Venice
    Weeks later, Simpson said he drove the wealthy Saudi's wife back to the same Orlando Airport, leaving from the convenience store owner's Venice apartment. When he arrived to pick up his fare they asked him to help carry a chest down to the cab so heavy it took two people to carry.
    "A big bald guy who was there helped me," Simpson said, identifying Zacharias Moussaoui, the so-called 19th hijacker whose trial may be transferred from Federal Court to military tribunal, as the man who had helped carry the chest.
    The positive I.D. of Moussaoui in Venice confirms a MadCowMorningNews report from last Sept. 9 stating that Arne Kruithof, one of the two ‘Magic Dutch Boys’ at the Venice FL Airport, had been grilled for two days at the Sarasota FL court house about his connections to Moussaoui by a Justice Dept. Asst. Attorney General and top-level officials from the FBI taking depositions from potential witnesses in Moussaoui's upcoming trial.
    Simpson also spoke of several occasions around this same time when he drove Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al Shehhi from Venice to the Orlando Executive Airport on one-way trips.
    In the official chronology of the period, from January to April, 2001, FBI investigators state they are not sure where Atta and al-Shehhi were, and that they may have traveled back to Germany, since Atta reportedly received a visitor's visa in Hamburg and reentered the United States during this time.
    Orlando Executive Airport is also where Huffman Aviation’s owner Wallace J. Hilliard’s Learjet had been confiscated just months earlier, by DEA agents with guns drawn, after 43 pounds of heroin was found aboard. Hilliard also owns a flight school and commuter airline, Discover Air, there as well.
    Was Mohamed Atta flying out of Orlando Executive Airport for Wally Hilliard?
    In interviews after Sept. 11, Richard Boehlke, Dekkers' partner in a failed airline venture, told a reporter for ABC News in Portland that Dekker's had proposed using flight students to ride along as co-pilots on their flights as a way to save money and also give the students cockpit experience, which Boehlke said is patently illegal.
    "The thought that terrorists might have been allowed access to secure airport facilities is chilling," said Boehlke.
    Here's another thought even more chilling:
    If Rudi Dekkers has been lying about the nature of his relationship with Mohamed Atta, as now seems likely, why have federal authorities as yet done nothing about it?
     Daniel Hopsicker is the author of Barry & 'the boys: The CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History.

  • Israelis warned U.S. of al Qaida "misinformation" campaign
    By CapitolHillBlue Staff
    Feb 16, 2003,
    Israeli intelligence professionals warned the United States that Osama bin Laden's al Qaida network lacked sufficient resources to mount a 9-11 type large-scale attack on American targets but would instead use misinformation to keep intelligence agencies guessing just when and where the next attack would come.
    A report given to the Central Intelligence Agency by Mossad, Israel’s highly-regarded intelligence agency, concluded American attacks against al Qaida in Afghanistan, coupled with seizure of assets in banks around the world, had, for the time being, crippled bin Laden’s ability to mount any large-scale attacks against the United States.
    However, the Israelis warned bin Laden would use “misinformation” planted through CIA assets and captured al Qaida operatives to keep America guessing on just when and where such attacks might come and force the United States to waste time and resources preparing for attacks that would not come.
    “Misinformation has always been a primary weapon of the terrorist,” says a highly-placed source within the Israeli intelligence community. “When properly utilized, such misinformation can cause an enemy to forfeit important resources and energy.”
    The Mossad report , delivered to the CIA five months ago, detailed information gathered by Israeli assets in al Qaida and other terrorist organizations as well as information provided by Aman (Israeli military intelligence) and Shin Bet, Israel’s general security service.
    While the report warned that splinter al Qaida “cells” could still launch small-scale attacks against U.S. targets at both home and abroad, the Israelis said the terrorist group did not have the money to carry out any large-scale attack involving “dirty bombs” or biological weapons.
    “It was our conclusions, based on the best information available from within the terrorist community, that neither bin Laden nor any splinter group within al Qaida could deploy a large-scale attack along the lines of September 11,” the Israeli operative said.
    To Israel’s dismay, the U.S. ignored the report and elevated the national threat level from yellow to orange, triggering a nationwide run on “survival” supplies at grocery and hardware stores along with an increase in anxiety among Americans.
    The alert's credibility came into question last week when information from a key al Qaida informant turned out to be fabricated.
    “Totally unnecessary,” says an FBI agent who saw the Mossad report and recommended the Department of Homeland Security follow its recommendations. “We ignored a valid assessment from an agency that has far more experience dealing with terrorism.”
    Israeli intelligence professionals feel their recommendations were ignored because their assessment did not fit the pre-planned agenda of the Bush Administration, an agenda that needs to keep Americans worried about the threat of terrorism as the country prepares for war against Iraq.
    The Israeli report also discounts U.S. claims of a provable link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. The report points to bin Laden’s deep Muslim convictions against smoking, drinking and womanizing, three traits of Hussein that angers many strict Muslims.
    Instead, the Israeli report details stronger ties that it says exists between bin Laden and Saudi Arabia, a country the Bush administration considers an ally even though its support for war with Iraq has been minimal.
    Spokesmen for the White House, CIA, FBI and the Israeli government would not return phone calls seeking comment on this article.

  • HAMAS TOYS WITH DEATH
    February 18, 2003
    DebkaFile
    A leading Palestinian militant has been killed by, of all things, a remote-controlled toy plane. Hamas chieftain Nidal Farahat and others had been working on a way to load explosives onto such toys and use them as weapons of terror.
    On Sunday, Farahat appeared to fall victim to his own designs. He and five other Hamas operatives died in a Gaza City car bombing. A toy plane was found inside the vehicle.
    "This is an assassination done by Israel," Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a leader of Hamas, told the New York Times.
    In January, DebkaFile claimed that Yasser Arafat was arranging for the deployment of new weapons: "Model planes packed with explosives and operated by remote control."
    Last month, Palestinian toy importers in Jerusalem and Ramallah were told to order hundreds of these toys for distribution to Palestinian children in hospitals. Subsidies from European Union member-governments could legitimately be allocated to this humanitarian purpose. The model airplanes were purchased in Europe and shipped quite openly to the Palestinian shopkeepers.
    According to our sources, not a single toy reached an injured Palestinian child. The model planes were sent to Palestinian workshops for conversion into miniature air bombers with explosive payloads.
    DebkaFile estimated that the modified toys could fly for about a kilometer, and an altitude of 300 meters.

  • Shin Bet takes US lawyer's computer
    Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
    Thursday February 20, 2003
    The Guardian
    Israel's intelligence service confiscated a computer from a controversial American lawyer this week as he left the country after gathering evidence for a legal action in the US courts against Ariel Sharon, George Bush and weapons manufacturers.
    Members of Shin Bet stopped Stanley Cohen as he was flying out of Tel Aviv on Tuesday and told him to hand over his computer for a routine security check. They refused to return the machine even when he said he would rather keep it and not fly.
    Mr Cohen, an American Jew, represents 19 US citizens of Palestinian origin who are suing over alleged torture, illegal arrests and other breaches of international human rights law. He spent a fortnight gathering testimony and evidence in Israel and the occupied territories in preparation for the lawsuit.
    As well as Mr Bush and Mr Sharon, the targets of the action include members of the Israeli cabinet, Israeli army officers, and US arms manufacturers which supply weapons to the Israeli military.
    "This is a critical blow to attorney-client relations, and I advise the Israeli authorities not to make any use of the data in the computer against my clients. I intend to add myself to the claim I filed in Washington on behalf of the Palestinians," Mr Cohen said.
    Mr Cohen was already known to the authorities as the lawyer who successfully prevented a Hamas leader, Mousa Abu Marzuk, being extradited from the US to Israel. He also drew criticism in America when he questioned whether Osama bin Laden was responsible for the September 11 attacks and said the American government would use them as an excuse to target Israel's enemies.
    Mr Cohen's lawyer in Israel, Leah Tsemel, is petitioning the high court to prevent the state from making use of any information on the computer or revealing its contents.
    "Why did they have to keep it unless they want to take the data?" she asked. "I immediately wrote to the state attorney seeking an assurance that they will not take the information but I haven't received a reply."
    Shin Bet claimed the seizure of the computer was a routine security measure to ensure the safety of the plane and passengers, and said the machine would be sent to Mr Cohen "after a further security check".
    Last year, Shin Bet confiscated a computer from a French journalist at Tel Aviv airport. That machine was never returned.


  • http://www.forward.com/issues/2002/02.03.15/news2.html
    Spy Rumors Fly on Gusts of Truth
    Americans Probing Reports of Israeli Espionage
    By MARC PERELMAN
    FORWARD STAFF Despite angry denials by Israel and its American supporters, reports that Israel was conducting spying activities in the United States may have a grain of truth, the Forward has learned.
    However, far from pointing to Israeli spying against U.S. government and military facilities, as reported in Europe last week, the incidents in question appear to represent a case of Israelis in the United States spying on a common enemy, radical Islamic networks suspected of links to Middle East terrorism.
    In particular, a group of five Israelis arrested in New Jersey shortly after the September 11 attacks and held for more than two months was subjected to an unusual number of polygraph tests and interrogated by a series of government agencies including the FBI's counterintelligence division, which by some reports remains convinced that Israel was conducting an intelligence operation. The five Israelis worked for a moving company with few discernable assets that closed up shop immediately afterward and whose owner fled to Israel.
    Other allegations involved Israelis claiming to be art students who had backgrounds in signal interception and ordnance. (See related story, Page 8.)
    Sources emphasized that the release of all the Israelis under investigation indicates that they were cleared of any suspicion that they had prior knowledge of the September 11 attacks, as some anti-Israel media outlets have suggested.
    The resulting tensions between Washington and Jerusalem, sources told the Forward, arose not because of the operations' targets but because Israel reportedly violated a secret gentlemen's agreement between the two countries under which espionage on each other's soil is to be coordinated in advance.
    Most experts and former officials interviewed for this article said that such so-called unilateral or uncoordinated Israeli monitoring of radical Muslims in America would not be surprising.
    In fact, they said, Israeli intelligence played a key role in helping the Bush administration to crack down on Islamic charities suspected of funneling money to terrorist groups, most notably the Richardson, Texas-based Holy Land Foundation last December.
    "I have no doubt Israel has an interest in spying on those groups," said Peter Unsinger, an intelligence expert who teaches justice administration at San Jose University. "The Israelis give us good stuff, like on the Hamas charities."
    According to one former high-ranking American intelligence official, who asked not to be named, the FBI came to the conclusion at the end of its investigation that the five Israelis arrested in New Jersey last September were conducting a Mossad surveillance mission and that their employer, Urban Moving Systems of Weehawken, N.J., served as a front.
    After their arrest, the men were held in detention for two-and-a-half months and were deported at the end of November, officially for visa violations.
    However, a counterintelligence investigation by the FBI concluded that at least two of them were in fact Mossad operatives, according to the former American official, who said he was regularly briefed on the investigation by two separate law enforcement officials.
    "The assessment was that Urban Moving Systems was a front for the Mossad and operatives employed by it," he said. "The conclusion of the FBI was that they were spying on local Arabs but that they could leave because they did not know anything about 9/11."
    However, he added, the bureau was "very irritated because it was a case of so-called unilateral espionage, meaning they didn't know about it."
    Spokesmen for the FBI, the Justice Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service refused to discuss the case. Israeli officials flatly dismissed the allegations as untrue.
    However, the former American official said that after American authorities confronted Jerusalem on the issue at the end of last year, the Israeli government acknowledged the operation and apologized for not coordinating it with Washington.
    The five men — Sivan and Paul Kurzberg, Oded Ellner, Omer Marmari and Yaron Shmuel — were arrested eight hours after the attacks by the Bergen County, N.J., police while driving in an Urban Moving Systems van. The police acted on an FBI alert after the men allegedly were seen acting strangely while watching the events from the roof of their warehouse and the roof of their van.
    In addition to their strange behavior and their Middle Eastern looks, the suspicions were compounded when a box cutter and $4,000 in cash were found in the van. Moreover, one man carried two passports and another had fresh pictures of the men standing with the smoldering wreckage of the World Trade Center in the background.
    The Bergen County police immediately handed the suspects to the INS, which turned them over to a joint police-FBI terrorism task force set up after September 11 to deal with all possible links with the attacks.
    The five Israelis were detained in the high-security Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn in solitary confinement until mid-October. On September 25, they all signed papers acknowledging violations of Uimmigration law. At the end of October, the INS issued a deportation order which was enforced a month later after a review by the Justice Department and prodding by Jewish and Israeli officials.
    However, the former official said, this is just the official story.
    In fact, he said, the nature of the investigation changed after the names of two of the five Israelis showed up on a CIA-FBI database of foreign intelligence operatives, he said. At that point, he said, the bureau took control of the investigation and launched a Foreign Counterintelligence Investigation, or FCI.
    FBI investigations into possible links to the September 11 attacks are usually carried by the bureau's counterterrorism division, not its counterintelligence division.
    "An FCI means not only that it was serious but also that it was handled at a very high level and very tightly," the former official said. That view was echoed by several former FBI officials interviewed.
    Steven Gordon, an American lawyer hired by the families to help secure their release, said he could not confirm which FBI division was in charge of the investigation. However, he acknowledged that "there were a lot of people involved, including counterintelligence officials from the FBI."
    The men all underwent at least two polygraph tests each, the lawyer added. He said one of the Israelis took the test seven times, a very unusual total according to several polygraph experts interviewed by the Forward.
    After the men were arrested, FBI agents searched the warehouse of Urban Moving Systems in Weehawken, N.J., seizing computer hard drives and documents. The warehouse was closed on September 14, said Ron George, a spokesman for the New Jersey State Division of Consumer Affairs.
    On December 7, a New Jersey judge ruled that the state could seize the goods remaining inside the warehouse. The state also has a lawsuit pending against Urban Moving Systems and its owner, Dominik Otto Suter, an Israeli citizen.
    The FBI questioned Mr. Suter once. However, he left the country afterward and went back to Israel before further questioning. Mr. Suter declined through his lawyer to be interviewed for this article.
    Earlier this year, the New York State Department of Transportation revoked Urban Moving System's license after discovering that the company's midtown Manhattan base was only a mailing address.
    After they returned to Israel at the end of November, the five men told local media that they were kept in solitary confinement, beaten, deprived of food and questioned while blindfolded and in their underwear.
    Mr. Ellner, one of the five Israelis, said on two occasions in recent weeks that the five men had decided not to grant any interviews right now "because we went through a very difficult period and we are not ready for this."
    Their Israeli lawyer, Ram Horwitz, told the Forward he was still waiting for the results of the medical tests undertaken by the men in Israel to make a decision on an eventual lawsuit in the United States for mistreatment.
    Mr. Horwitz insisted the men were not intelligence officers.
    Irit Stoffer, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said the allegations were "completely untrue" and that there were "only visa violations."
    "The FBI investigated those cases because of 9/11," Ms. Stoffer said.
    Charlene Eban, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Washington, and Don Nelson, a Justice Department spokesman, said they had no knowledge of an Israeli spying operation.
    "If we found evidence of unauthorized intelligence operations, that would be classified material," added Jim Margolin, a spokesman for the FBI in New York.
    One leading expert in American intelligence operations, Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at the Boston-based Political Research Associates, explained that there "is a backdoor agreement between allies that says that if one of your spies gets caught and didn't do too much harm, he goes home. It goes on all the time. The official reason is always a visa violation."

  • Nixon aide tells of plan to bomb think tank
    By ELIZABETH MEHREN
    Los Angeles Times
    February 18, 2003
    BOSTON — Even by the standards of the Nixon White House, the plan to blow up Washington’s pre-eminent think tank seemed crazy, presidential counselor John W. Dean III recalled here Monday.
    But there was White House aide John Ehrlichman on the phone one day in 1971, telling Dean that “Chuck Colson wants me to firebomb the Brookings (Institution).” Describing the incident Monday to several hundred presidential history junkies at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Dean said he was dumbfounded.
    “I said, ‘John, this is absolute insanity,’ ” he remembered. “People could die. This is absurd.”
    Dean, who served four months in prison for his role in the Watergate cover-up, spun the story casually — just another believe-it-or-not factoid from the annals of a dark and complicated presidency — at a two-day conference on the effect of White House taping systems on seven 20th-century presidents. The conference ended Monday.
    The practice began in 1940 with Franklin Roosevelt, who wanted to make sure he was quoted accurately in the media. White House taping ended in 1974, after thousands of tapes exposed illegal and unethical activities that led to the demise of Richard Nixon’s presidency. About 3,700 hours of tapes from the Nixon White House have been transcribed and made public. Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, ordered the practice halted the day he was sworn in.
    The two-day discussion attracted scholars, journalists and two grown White House “children”: University of Pennsylvania Professor David Eisenhower, grandson of President Eisenhower; and Lynda Johnson Robb, elder daughter of President Lyndon Johnson. Also in attendance was Alexander Butterfield, the White House aide who in 1973 informed a Senate committee that all of President Nixon’s White House conversations had been taped. Butterfield, 77, lives in San Diego.
    In a panel Monday titled “The Participant Perspective,” Dean captivated the audience with story after story about Nixon, his tapes and the aides who surrounded the president. As if he had been telling the president about some trivial change in his schedule, Dean recounted the day he told Nixon there was “a cancer on the presidency” — the fateful phrase that became forever linked with the corruption of Watergate.
    Dean, looking fit and tan at 64, said Nixon was careful even with his most trusted aides to guard his involvement in the scandal.
    “When I first started dealing with Nixon, I wasn’t sure how much he knew,” Dean said. “I now know he knew far more than I was ever aware of.”
    Dean was disbarred in 1976. He lives in Beverly Hills, Calif., and works as a writer, lecturer and private investment banker.
    He told the Kennedy Library conference that “by and large I don’t feel bad about anything I said on the tapes,” although he did remember one day in September 1972 that was “quite embarrassing.”
    The occasion was “one of my first one-on-one sessions with the president,” Dean said, and it happened to be “the day all the indictments had been handed down.”
    Summoned to the Oval Office for “a stroking session,” Dean listened in amazement as Nixon talked about “who he is going to get when he gets re-elected.”
    Dean said he quashed his instinct to say something along the lines of “Are you kidding?” Instead he told the president, “Boy, that’s an exciting prospect!”
    Later, when asked if that was an example of delusion, Dean rejoined, “That’s what you call sucking up to the boss.”
    As for the proposed bombing of the Brookings Institution, Dean said Colson floated the idea as a way to retrieve certain documents Nixon wanted that were housed in the research center not far from the White House. Colson suggested that while firefighters were trying to douse the damage caused by a bomb, White House operatives could rush in and seize the papers.
    It seemed incredible, but now that he has listened to earlier tapes, Dean said he has heard Nixon “literally pounding on his desk, saying ‘I want that break-in at the Brookings (Institution).’ ”

  • Concern for US as Iranian-backed troops enter Iraq
    Iranian-backed forces cross into Iraq
    (FT.com)
    February 19 2003
    Iranian-backed Iraqi opposition forces have crossed into northern Iraq from Iran with the aim of securing the frontier in the event of war, according to senior Iranian officials.
    The forces, numbering up to 5,000 troops, with some heavy equipment, are nominally under the command of Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, a prominent Iraqi Shia Muslim opposition leader who has been based in Iran since 1980 and lives in Tehran.
    A US State Department official said he was aware of reports that part of Ayatollah Hakim's Badr brigade had crossed into northern Iraq but declined further comment. Analysts close to the administration of President George W. Bush said the US was concerned about the intentions of this new element in an increasingly complicated patchwork of forces in northern Iraq.
    Turkey has long had a limited military presence in northern Iraq, and US special forces began moving into the region several months ago. The Badr brigade has been trained and equipped by Iran's Revolutionary Guards and could be regarded as a proxy force of the Iranian government.
    Iranian officials insist that force's role in the north is defensive but its presence will exacerbate the concerns of the US and especially the Arab world that military intervention in Iraq will lead to a permanent disintegration of the country. Through inserting a proxy force, Iran is underlining that it cannot be ignored in future discussions over Iraq's make-up.
    Ayatollah Hakim's forces had previously been based in southern Iran, close to Iraq. Two months ago they began moving into the area of northern Iraq governed by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of two Kurdish parties that rule an area the size of Switzerland outside Baghdad's control.
    A senior Iranian official, who asked not to be named, said the presence of Ayatollah Hakim's troops was defensive and aimed at countering a possible attack on Iran by the People's Mujahideen Organisation (MKO), an Iranian opposition group based in Iraq and strongly supported by President Saddam Hussein.
    Another official said the Badr force had moved into an area near Darbandikhan, a depopulated and rugged stretch of hills and ravines about 15 miles from the closest point on the Iranian border.
    The MKO used Iraqi territory to mount attacks on Iran during the 1980-88 war between Iran and Iraq. The Kurdish parties controlling northern Iraq have also expressed fears that Mr Hussein would try to use the MKO against them in the event of a US-led invasion of Iraq.
    Ayatollah Hakim is the head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), a mainly Shia Muslim group that fought in the failed 1991 uprising against Baghdad in southern Iraq. More recently Sciri has taken part in talks between the Iraqi opposition and the US.
    His office in Tehran denied that the Badr brigade had moved into northern Iraq but said Sciri had maintained forces in that region for several years, gathered from Iraqi Shia who had fled the Iraqi regime. A representative of the PUK also denied there had been a recent movement across the border but confirmed a presence of Sciri forces.
     
  • 302 Elite Iranian Soldiers Dead in Plane Crash
    By Ali Akbar Dareini in Tehran
    (Agence France-Presse)
    February 20, 2003
    A PLANE crash which killed 302 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards has been branded the country's worst ever.
    The military plane came down in the mountains of southeastern Iran, killing everyone on board, state-run media reported.
    The plane was en route from Zahedan, on the Pakistan border, to Kerman, about 800kms southeast of Tehran, Tehran television said. It crashed in a mountainous area about 30kms from its destination.
    The Russian-made Antonov airliner lost contact with the control tower at 5.30pm Wednesday local time (1am AEDT today), according to the reports.
    The official Islamic Republic News Agency said rescuers had reached the crash site and that all 302 people on board had been killed, making the crash the deadliest in Iran's history.
    The death toll surpassed the 290 killed on July 3, 1988, when an Iran Air A300 Airbus was shot down over the Persian Gulf by the USS Vincennes.
    The agency said the plane's passengers and crew were all members of the Revolutionary Guards. Earlier reports said 270 were aboard, but the latest media updates did not explain the increase.
    No reason was given for the crash.
    There was heavy snowfall in many parts of Iran on Wednesday, including in Zahedan, which had not seen snow in three years.
    Tehran television quoted an anonymous official as saying the forces had visited the impoverished Sistan-Baluchestan province, of which Zahedan is the capital, for an "important mission."
    The Revolutionary Guards, under the direct control of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are seen as the defenders of Iran's Islamic regime. The guards protect Iran's borders and defend ruling hardliners.
    The Government has issued a statement offering condolences to the families of the victims.
    The crash was the latest in a string of air disasters in Iran mostly involving Russian-built aircraft.
    A Ukrainian An-140 aircraft flew into a mountainside on December 23, 2002, while preparing to land at an airport near the central city of Isfahan, killing all the estimated 46 scientists aboard.
    In February 2002, a Russian-made Tupolev Tu-154 airliner, carrying 119 people, smashed into snow-covered mountains not far from its destination of Khorramabad, 230 miles southwest of Tehran.

  • Iraq's "ghost" troops ready for urban warfare-exiles
    By Khaled Yacoub Oweis
    LONDON, Feb 3 (Reuters) - President Saddam Hussein has decentralised the Iraqi army in preparation for urban combat and will rely on his son Qusay to co-ordinate a defensive war in the cities, according to exiled generals monitoring Iraq.
    "The Americans will be fighting ghosts. They will find it very hard to know where the enemy is. Those who are betting that Saddam will be defeated quickly are mistaken," Lieutenant- General Tawfik al-Yassiri told Reuters.
    "Tens of thousands of elite Iraqi forces have spread underground, above ground, in farms, schools, mosques, churches... everywhere. They are not in camps or major installations. These units are prepared for city warfare and have the experience for it," said Yassiri.
    Yassiri took part in a 1991 uprising against Saddam and now heads a council of exiled officers. The officers say they still maintain contact with their former comrades inside Iraq.
    Another exiled officer, who did not want his name published, said some of the best trained units in house-to-house fighting are not part of the regular Iraqi army.
    "They are vicious," the officer said. "They were trained in Europe and do not even wear uniforms."
    He did not elaborate, but European states supplied Iraq with military equipment and training in the 1980s.
    Saddam's former military aides say secondary systems of communications are in place to help the Iraq army function under U.S. strikes, including simple long range walkie-talkies and fibre optics cables that are hard to hit underground.
    They say the focus of Iraqi defences is Baghdad and that Qusay, Saddam's younger son and most trusted lieutenant, is pivotal in keeping the Iraqi leader in command of his army.
    In a region ruled by autocratic leaders reluctant to delegate power, Saddam has placed Qusay fully in charge of units responsible for the security of the regime, namely the Special Republican Guards and the Special Security Apparatus, the exiled generals say.
    "Qusay still takes orders from Saddam. But Saddam will be trusting few people to see him or know where he is during the war," said Lieutenant General Saad al-Obeidi, who was involved in Iraq's psychological warfare in the 1980's.
    "It will be almost exclusively Qusay, although he does not have any military experience really," Obeidi said.
    Saddam, his former aides say, has divided Iraq into three sectors -- the north, centre and south -- with commanders for each sector delegated almost total power during hostilities.
    They say they have found out the identity of only the southern commander so far -- Saddam's cousin Ali al-Majeed, known as Ali Chemical for leading Iraqi troops that smashed a 1988 Kurdish uprising in the north using chemical weapons.
    Although Saddam is preparing for what could be his last battle, the exiles say the possibility of him leaving office to save his life and prevent a war cannot be discounted totally.
    "Saddam is a politician. We have learned that everything is possible in Iraq. It is a remote possibility," said one former officer.

  • US plans "shock and awe" blitzkrieg in Iraq
    By Henry Michaels
    World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
    30 January 2003
    The war being prepared by the White House and Pentagon on the people of Iraq will be characterized by barbarism on a scale not seen since the horrors of the 1930s and 1940s. The level of brutality will recall scenes seared into the collective consciousness of previous generations, such as the bombing of Guernica and the Nazi blitzkrieg against Poland.
    Washington is making it clear that it considers nuclear weapons an option in Iraq. In recent days Pentagon sources have let it be known that such “weapons of mass destruction” are being readied for use, and there is a real possibility that the Bush administration will unleash them should American forces find themselves in serious difficulty.
    Even without recourse to nuclear arms, the US war plan calls for saturation bombing of Iraq. The Pentagon intends to devastate the country with more missiles in one day than were used throughout the 40-day Gulf War 12 years ago. The World Health Organization is warning that up to half a million Iraqi people will be killed or maimed.
    Purely military considerations cannot explain such savagery. Bush’s war plans are driven by political aims—to terrorize and demoralize the Iraqi people and the Arab masses and send a message of violence and intimidation to the entire world. In the interests of the corporate and financial oligarchy and the pursuit of global hegemony, the Bush administration is preparing to commit war crimes of immense proportions.
    The US is flouting the entire structure of international law, especially that which emerged in the aftermath of the horrors of World War II. Its doctrine of preemptive war makes a mockery of the principles of non-aggression and international legality laid down in the charter of the United Nations, whose resolutions Washington claims to be defending.
    It should be recalled that after the defeat of fascist Germany and Imperial Japan, government and military leaders were charged and convicted for planning and carrying out aggressive war—a charge that carried the penalty of death.
    Former US army intelligence officer William Arkin reported in the Los Angeles Times on January 26, citing US Central Command sources, that a “Theater Nuclear Planning Document” had been prepared for Iraq, listing options and potential targets for the use of nuclear weapons.
    According to the unnamed sources, the planning focuses on attacking Iraqi facilities alleged to be deep underground, as well as thwarting any Iraqi use of biological or chemical weapons. US officials have already accused Saddam Hussein of burying military sites beneath populated areas, establishing a pretext for bombing cities and towns.
    It is clear from the documents quoted by Arkin that the nuclear option is also being considered for the possibility that US forces, despite overwhelming firepower superiority, suffer heavy casualties or become bogged down in Iraq. Under a classified Pentagon nuclear posture review, signed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and issued in final form in early 2002, nuclear weapons could be employed “in the event of surprising military developments.”
    The White House has significantly lowered the nuclear threshold by removing nuclear weapons from their long-established special category and lumping them with all other military options—such as Special Forces, covert operations, cyber warfare, “strategic deception,” psychological warfare and air power.
    On December 11, Rumsfeld sent Bush a memorandum asking for authority to place Admiral James O. Ellis Jr., the Strategic Command (STRATCOM) commander in Omaha, Nebraska, in charge of the full range of “strategic” warfare assets, including nuclear warheads. Earlier this month, with almost no discussion inside the Pentagon, let alone the Congress or in public, Bush approved Rumsfeld’s proposal.
    Admiral Ellis’s own proclivities were revealed in a rhetorical question that he posed last month: “If you can find that time-critical, key terrorist target or that weapons-of-mass-destruction stockpile, and you have minutes rather than hours or days to deal with it, how do you reach out and negate that threat to our nation half a world away?”
    The nuclear planning is being carried out at STRATCOM’s headquarters, by small teams in Washington and at Vice President Richard Cheney’s “undisclosed location” in Pennsylvania. Cheney, who heads a secret “shadow” government set up in the wake of the September 11 attack, could well push the nuclear trigger.
    Iraq is not the only target for the new nuclear doctrine. STRATCOM’s newly created Theater Planning Activity has focused on seven priority target nations—the so-called “axis of evil” of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, plus Syria, Libya, China and Russia. Hence, any crossing of the nuclear threshold in Iraq will signal a new period of nuclear warfare.
    While declining to comment on Arkin’s report, White House spokesmen have bluntly refused to rule out the nuclear scenario. “The United States reserves the right to defend itself and its allies by whatever means necessary,” Bush’s chief of staff Andrew Card declared on January 26.
    “Shock and awe”
    CBS news reported last weekend that the invasion will begin with war planes and ships launching between 300 and 400 cruise missiles on day one. This is more than the number of missiles launched during the whole of “Desert Storm” in 1991. Another 300 to 400 missiles will follow on the second day.
    At an average rate of one weapon every four minutes around the clock, missiles will relentlessly rain down on Baghdad and knock out water supplies, electricity services, communications, government buildings, roads, bridges and other essential infrastructure.
    To prepare for the bombardment, the Air Force has stockpiled 6,000 satellite guidance kits in the Persian Gulf to convert so-called “dumb bombs” into satellite-guided bombs. In the first Gulf War, the Pentagon’s “smart bombs” were responsible for widespread atrocities. Tens of thousands of Iraqis, civilians as well as soldiers, were slaughtered during the brief 1991 war.
    This time, Pentagon officials have declared, the saturation bombing will exceed anything previously seen in history. “The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been contemplated before,” a Pentagon official told CBS. “There will not be a safe place in Baghdad.”
    This co-called “Rapid Dominance” battle plan is based a concept formulated in a report drawn up by the Pentagon-run National Defense University in 1996—that is, under the Clinton administration and well before events of September 11, 2001. The concept is dubbed “Shock and Awe” because it seeks the psychological overwhelming of the enemy, and, by extension, the intimidation of the world’s population.
    Speaking to CBS news, one of the report’s authors, Harlan Ullman, drew a direct parallel to Hiroshima. Within two to five days, the Iraqi people would be “physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted,” he stated. He spoke of having “this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but in minutes.”
    This theme is elaborated in the 1996 report: “The key objective of Rapid Dominance is to impose [an] overwhelming level of Shock and Awe against an adversary on an immediate or sufficiently timely basis to paralyze its will to carry on. In crude terms, Rapid Dominance would seize control of the environment and paralyze or so overload an adversary’s perceptions and understanding of events that the enemy would be incapable of resistance at tactical and strategic levels. An adversary would be rendered totally impotent and vulnerable to our actions...
    “Theoretically, the magnitude of Shock and Awe Rapid Dominance seeks to impose (in extreme cases) is the non-nuclear equivalent of the impact that the atomic weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on the Japanese. The Japanese were prepared for suicidal resistance until both nuclear bombs were used. The impact of those weapons was sufficient to transform both the mindset of the average Japanese citizen and the outlook of the leadership through this condition of Shock and Awe.”
    In the next paragraph, the report emphasizes that the use of nuclear weapons cannot be ruled out. In fact, it declares, Rapid Dominance “must be underwritten” by their destructive capacity.
    Former UN Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday, who headed the UN food-for-oil sanctions program in Iraq in 1997-98, has accused the US and its sole major ally Britain of proceeding with plans to “annihilate Iraqi society, a catastrophe that would be heightened by the threatened use of tactical nuclear weaponry.”
    A group of more than 100 law professors has warned Bush in a letter that senior officials could face prosecutions for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide if the Iraq war proceeds. Despite the US refusal to ratify the treaty establishing the new International Criminal Court, the letter stated, “US officials involved in committing certain international crimes may nonetheless be held responsible under principles of Universal Jurisdiction and the War Crimes Act.”
    Aware of the outrage that its actions will provoke, the US State Department has cabled embassies around the world telling Americans abroad to be ready to evacuate their resident countries quickly in the event of political unrest or “terrorist” attacks. It is the first such blanket warning ever issued by the State Department.
    The US onslaught will horrify millions of people around the world. They will rightly condemn the US government for unspeakable savagery and seek political answers. The long-prepared plans adopted by the Bush administration underscore the fact that protest alone will not halt the war. That requires the international mobilization of the working people to end the economic system responsible for this new eruption of barbarism.

  • Second Photo from Nevada Shows "Electric Zap" Hitting Shuttle
    Columbia Investigation Controversies
    Medium Rare
    By Jim Rarey
    2-20-3
    If the conclusion in the Columbia tragedy is not controversial, the investigators themselves will more than make up for it. What with NASA spokespersons contradicting each other, theories being put forth, then dismissed only to be postulated again and finally admitting to the obvious, if the public isnât confused, they arenât paying attention. And this doesnât even involve the so-called ăindependent ă panel appointed by NASA Administrator Sean OâKeefe.
    Early on the first hypothesis was that tiles had come off that were damaged on takeoff. Then, that was dismissed since that had been investigated a day or two after liftoff, using projections and simulations. A few days later that theory was put back on the table since no better theory arose. That is, no theory they were willing to consider.
    Two photographs, one taken in California and the other in Nevada, showed the shuttle being hit by significant electrical discharges of some kind. NASAâs first reaction to the California picture was that something may have been wrong with the camera or it was jiggled (although on a tripod) when the photo was snapped accounting for the lightning-like streak that appeared to hit the Columbia.
    However that theory died when the camera manufacturer tested 1.000 identical cameras (which were digital contrary to initial reports, thus not requiring film to be developed) and could not duplicate the phenomenon.
    That was before the Nevada photograph surfaced. Then the theory was advanced that the bolt of electricity could have been a ăPixieä a fairly common phenomenon where, in certain weather conditions, electrical discharges jump from clouds to the Ionosphere and vice versa.
    That was immediately discounted by outside scientists and meteorologists (who are also scientists, before I get any hate mail) pointing out that there were no clouds or adverse weather conditions at that time. NASA has on several occasions delayed shuttle re-entry to avoid storm conditions. Since then, NASA and the media have been doing their best to ignore both images.
    Then NASA officials pointed to the fact that, up until then, no debris had been found west of Texas, which didnât support the eyewitness who said he saw pieces breaking off the shuttle over California.
    However, yesterday (Wednesday) NASA finally admitted the obvious. The shuttle started to break up over California. Of course any first year physics student, or even common sense, would tell one that pieces coming off an object traveling at 21 time the speed of sound at an altitude of more than 43 miles, would not touch down anywhere near where they came off. NASA also pledged that any further information would be released through the ăindependentä panel.
    The NASA charter for the panel has already been revised three times in incremental efforts to give the perception of independence from NASA. NASA Administrator Sean OâKeefe has made all the appointments. In this writerâs article of Feb. 8, it was pretty much established that the panel, as it was constituted then, was loaded with military brass with connections to the Air Force directed energy weapons programs.
    It has been acknowledged that one of the experiments carried out on the Columbia was the release of two miniature satellites into space from the shuttle. Called ăpicosatellitesä developed by defense contractor The Aerospace Corporation and funded by DARPA, they are the precursors of inspector satellites to spy on other full-size satellites.
    A local sheriff in Texas has reported some of the shuttle debris recovered is radioactive. So far there has been no confirmation or denial from NASA. One science writer claims an experimental night vision multi-spectral telescope that was powered by a new isotope used in nuclear power named Americium ö242 was used in the Columbiaâs orbiting around the earth to evaluate vapors in Iraq evidencing night-time disposal of chemical weapons material.
    The panel has a momentous task to sort everything out and didnât really need the unnecessary controversies it has brought on itself (or been visited on it by OâKeefeâs appointments).
    For starters, a NASA spokesperson said OâKeefe appointed the panel the day after the Columbia crash. However, OâKeefe later told the press that the panel was in place before the Columbia tragedy as part of a contingency plan following the Challenger disaster.
    Two appointments made over the weekend have stirred the pot. The first, Sheila E. Widnall, a MIT professor seemed innocuous enough although she is also a former Air Force Secretary in the Clinton administration. We now find that she also was a paid consultant to the Boeing Corporation. Boeing and its joint venture partner Lockheed Martin in United Space Alliance manage both the space station and shuttle programs. The joint venture is shielded from liability in the tragedy as NASA has indemnified it.
    MIT and a spinoff (MITRE) are very much involved with the military space program. Widnall has been joined on the MIT faculty by John Deutch, former Director of the CIA and a Director of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and CitiGroup.
    In 1959, MIT spun off its Lincoln Laboratory as a private company and renamed it MITRE. Its first Chairman of the Board of Trustees was H. Rowan Gaither.
    "In the fall of 1953, Norman Dodd, Director of Research for the Reece Committee, was invited to the headquarters of the Ford Foundation by its president, H. Rowan Gaither (CFR).
    According to Dodd, Gaither told him: "Mr. Dodd, all of us here at the policy-making level have had experience, either in O.S.S. or the European Economic Administration, with directives from the White House. We operate under those directives here. Would you like to know what those directives are?" Dodd replied that he would. Gaither said: "The substance of them is that we shall use our grant-making power so to alter our life in the United States that we can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union."
    MITRE has been involved in weapons development with the DOD since inception. Its first facility outside of Massachusetts was at the Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, home of the Air Force Space Command. MITRE also developed the unmanned planes the CIA is now using for reconnaissance (and assassination).
    Most of the DOD appropriations for directed energy weapons go to the Air Force. However, the Department of Energy has played a large role in the research and development of the weapons. At least four of the department's 10 secret laboratories are involved in the general category of "directed energy" weapons. All ten of the labs are "GOCO's" that is government owned, contractor operated.
    For instance, DOE's Sandia lab located at Kirtland Air Force Base is in the forefront of directed energy research and experimentation. It has a 23000 square meter building that houses the world's most powerful gamma simulator. It is capable of generating extremely short bursts of an electron beam of 13 trillion watts. It is used primarily for simulating the effects of prompt radiation from a nuclear burst on electronics and complete military systems. The contractor managing the Sandia lab is Lockheed Martin.
    The Air Force operates 14 space weapons programs in space, and at least two ground based platforms including Sandia and the HAARP installation in Alaska masquerading as a scientific examination into the effects of high auroral activity on the ionosphere.
    OâKeefeâs second appointment over the weekend may be the most controversial. Roger Tetrault was supposed to quell criticism that the panelâs members are too close to NASA. However, the Orlando Sentinel disclosed the day after his appointment that Tetrault is former Chairman and CEO of McDermott, International at the same time that OâKeefe was a director and member of the audit committee on a subsidiary, J. Ray McDermott of which Tetrault was also the chairman of the board.
    Before becoming CEO of McDermott International, Tetrault was vice president of a McDermott subsidiary, Babcock and Wilcox, which made parts for the shuttlesâ solid rocket boosters.
    Another McDermott subsidiary, BWXT is the sole supplier of nuclear fuel for the U.S. Navy and for research and test reactor fuel for DOEâs national laboratories. It also processes enriched uranium. In partnership with Bechtel National, Inc. it manages the DOEâs Oak Ridge uranium enrichment operation. Another joint venture of McDermott International (DynMcDermott) with DynCorp has for the last nine years, and will for the next five years, manage the DOEâs U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
    In 1999, during OâKeefe and Tetraultâs tenure at J. Ray McDermott, former vice-president Littleton Edwards Walker pled guilty to one felony count of bid rigging. On May 16, 2000, the former president of the company, Michael Harless Lam, was indicted on one count of conspiracy in bid rigging and two counts of mail fraud. As far as this writer can determine, the above is the first mention in the media of the guilty plea and indictment in relation to OâKeefe and Tetraultâs involvement with NASA or the Columbia investigation. But you can bet it wonât be the last.
    The author is a freelance writer based in Romulus, Michigan. He is a former newspaper editor and investigative reporter, a retired customs administrator and accountant, and a student of history and the U.S. Constitution.

  • S.F. man's astounding photo-
    Mysterious purple streak is shown hitting Columbia 7 minutes before it disintegrated
    SF Chronicle Staff Writer
    February 5, 2003
    Top investigators of the Columbia space shuttle disaster are analyzing a startling photograph -- snapped by an amateur astronomer from a San Francisco hillside -- that appears to show a purplish electrical bolt striking the craft as it streaked across the California sky.
    The digital image is one of five snapped by the shuttle buff at roughly 5: 53 a.m. Saturday as sensors on the doomed orbiter began showing the first indications of trouble. Seven minutes later, the craft broke up in flames over Texas.
    The photographer requested that his name not be used and said he would not release the image to the public until NASA experts had time to examine it.
    Although there are several possible benign explanations for the image -- such as a barely perceptable jiggle of the camera as it took the time exposure -- NASA's zeal to examine the photo demonstrates the lengths at which the agency is going to tap the resources of ordinary Americans in solving the puzzle.
    Late Tuesday, NASA dispatched former shuttle astronaut Tammy Jernigan, now a manager at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, to the San Francisco home of the astronomer to examine his digital images and to take the camera itself to Mountain View, where it was to be transported by a NASA T-38 jet to Houston this morning.
    A Chronicle reporter was present when the astronaut arrived. First seeing the image on a large computer screen, she had one word: "Wow."
    Jernigan, who is no longer working for NASA, quizzed the photographer on the aperture of the camera, the direction he faced and the estimated exposure time -- about four to six seconds on the automatic Nikon 880 camera. It was mounted on a tripod, and the shutter was triggered manually.
    In the critical shot, a glowing purple rope of light corkscrews down toward the plasma trail, appears to pass behind it, then cuts sharply toward it from below. As it merges with the plasma trail, the streak itself brightens for a distance, then fades.
    "It certainly appears very anomalous," said Jernigan. "We sure will be very interested in taking a very hard look at this."
    Jernigan flew five shuttle missions herself during the 1990s, including three on Columbia. On her last flight, the pilot of the craft was Rick Husband, who was at the controls when Columbia perished.
    "He was one of the finest people I could ever hope to know," said Jernigan.
    It was an astounding day for the San Francisco photographer, who said he had not had any success in reaching NASA through its published telephone hot lines.
    He ultimately reached investigators through a connection with a relative who attends the same church as former astronaut Jack Lousma, who flew 24 million miles in the Skylab 3 mission in 1973.
    Lousma put him in direct touch with Ralph Roe Jr., chief engineer for the shuttle program at Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston.
    After a series of telephone conversations Tuesday afternoon, the photographer had a veteran shuttle mission specialist knocking at his door by dinnertime. Within hours, he was left with a receipt, and his camera was on its way to Houston.
     
  • NASA Probes
    'Electric Zap' Mystery Photo
    Former Astronaut Wowed By Image
    Snapped By California Astronomer
    By Joe Kovacs
    © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
    2-5-3
    "Wow."
    That was astronaut Tammy Jernigan's stunned reaction last night when she viewed a photo of what appears to be space shuttle Columbia getting zapped by a purplish electrical bolt shortly before it disintegrated Saturday morning.
    "It certainly appears very anomalous," Jernigan told the San Francisco Chronicle. "We sure will be very interested in taking a very hard look at this."
    The photo was one of five captured by an amateur astronomer in San Francisco who routinely snaps pictures of shuttles when they pass over the Bay area.
    The pictures were taken just seven minutes before Columbia's fatal demise.
    The Chronicle reports that top investigators of the disaster are now analyzing the startling photograph to try to solve the mystery.
    The photographer continues to request his name be withheld, adding he would not release the image publicly until NASA has a chance to study it.
    "[The photos] clearly record an electrical discharge like a lightning bolt flashing past, and I was snapping the pictures almost exactly ... when the Columbia may have begun breaking up during re-entry," the photographer originally told the paper Saturday night.
    Late yesterday, the space agency sent Jernigan - a former shuttle flyer and now manager at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories - to the astronomer's home to view the image, and have the Nikon 880 camera brought to Houston today.
    It was slated to be flown to the Johnson Space Center by a NASA T-38 jet this morning.
    Jernigan reportedly asked the astronomer about the f-stop setting on his lens, and how long he kept the shutter open - apparently some four to six seconds. A tripod was used to steady the camera, and the shutter was triggered manually.
    "In the critical shot," states the Chronicle, "a glowing purple rope of light corkscrews down toward the plasma trail, appears to pass behind it, then cuts sharply toward it from below. As it merges with the plasma trail, the streak itself brightens for a distance, then fades."
    "I couldn't see the discharge with my own eyes, but it showed up clear and bright on the film when I developed it," the photographer previously said. "But I'm not going to speculate about what it might be."
    David Perlman, science editor for the Chronicle, called the photos "indeed puzzling."
    "They show a bright scraggly flash of orange light, tinged with pale purple, and shaped somewhat like a deformed L," he wrote.
    Jernigan no longer works for NASA, though she's a veteran of five shuttle missions in the 1990s. Ironically, on her final flight, the orbiter's pilot was Rick Husband, who was at the helm at 9 a.m. EST Saturday when Columbia broke apart during re-entry into the atmosphere.
    "He was one of the finest people I could ever hope to know," Jernigan said.
    According to her NASA biography, Jernigan graduated from Stanford in 1981 with a bachelor's degree in physics. She went on to earn master's degrees in engineering science and astronomy from Stanford and UC-Berkeley respectively. She also holds a doctorate in space physics and astronomy from Rice University.
    She's spent over 63 days above the Earth, completing 1,000 orbits, and having walked in space for nearly eight hours during her final mission aboard shuttle Discovery in 1999.
    Before flying on shuttles, she was a research scientist in the theoretical studies branch of NASA Ames Research Center, working on the study of bipolar outflows in the region of star formations, gamma ray bursters and shock-wave phenomena in the interstellar medium.
    Regarding the Columbia disaster, the space agency is additionally investigating reports of possible remnants found in the West, including California and Arizona.
    "Debris early in the flight path would be critical because that material would obviously be near the start of the events," said Michael Kostelnik, a NASA spaceflight office deputy.
    Joe Kovacs is executive news editor for WorldNetDaily.com.
  • Cosmic bolt probed in shuttle disaster
    Scientists poring over 'infrasonic' sound waves
    SF Chronicle Staff Writer
    February 7, 2003
    Federal scientists are looking for evidence that a bolt of electricity in the upper atmosphere might have doomed the space shuttle Columbia as it streaked over California, The Chronicle has learned.
    Investigators are combing records from a network of ultra-sensitive instruments that might have detected a faint thunderclap in the upper atmosphere at the same time a photograph taken by a San Francisco astronomer appears to show a purplish bolt of lightning striking the shuttle.
    Should the photo turn out to be an authentic image of an electrical event on Columbia, it would not only change the focus of the crash investigation, but it could open a door on a new realm of science.
    "We're working hard on the data set. We have an obligation," said Alfred Bedard, a scientist at the federal Environmental Technology Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. He said the lab was providing the data to NASA but that it was too early to draw any conclusions from the sounds of the shuttle re-entry.
    The lab has been listening to the sounds of ghostly electromagnetic phenomena in the upper atmosphere, dubbed sprites, blue jets and elves. For some time, scientists have speculated on whether these events could endanger airliners or returning spacecraft.
    A study conducted 10 years ago for NASA found that there is a 1-in-100 chance that a space shuttle could fly through a sprite, although it concluded that the consequences of such an event were unclear. And in 1989, an upper- atmospheric electrical strike "shot down" a high-altitude NASA balloon 129,000 feet over Dallas.
    NASA officials have said they are looking for a "missing link" to explain the shuttle's breakup that killed seven astronauts Saturday, and they are downplaying the theory that foam insulation falling from the shuttle's extra tank may have contributed to the shuttle's demise.
    The little-known infrasound project at the Environmental Technology Laboratory operates a network of sophisticated electronic ears that can pick up subaudible thuds of waves crashing on either coast of the United States and the hiss of meteors and spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere thousands of miles away.
    Sound waves of this nature are called "infrasonic" and are below the range of human hearing but travel unimpeded for extraordinary distances. Arrays of infrasonic sensors in the high Colorado plains east of Boulder recently have been looking for the crackle of the ghostly electromagnetic events in the Earth's upper atmosphere.
    "We basically detect events at very long ranges," Bedard said. But he stressed that it was too early to draw any conclusions from sounds of the shuttle re-entry. Bedard said the acoustic sensors had previously detected the re-entry of a space shuttle from Northwest Canada to the Kennedy Space Center.
    CELESTIAL THUNDERCLAP
    Originally, it was thought that the electrical charges in the thin atmosphere 50 miles above Earth were too dispersed to create infrasound. But Los Alamos National Laboratories physicist Mark Stanley said that, on closer inspection, "we've seen very strong ionization in sprites" indicating that there were enough air molecules ionized to cause heating and an accompanying pulse -- a celestial thunderclap, as it were.
    NASA administrators confirmed Thursday that the photograph, taken from Bernal Heights in San Francisco by an amateur astronomer, is being evaluated by Columbia crash investigators. However, Shuttle Program Manager Ron Dittemore told reporters at a Houston news briefing that right now NASA is trying only to verify "the validity" of the image.
    The astronomer, who has asked that his name not be used, has declined to release the digital image to the media. But earlier in the week, he permitted Chronicle reporters to view the image and invited one to his home Tuesday evening, when the camera, and a disk of the image, were turned over to former shuttle astronaut Tammy Jernigan for transit to Houston.
    The image was also e-mailed Tuesday evening to Ralph Roe Jr., chief engineer for the shuttle program at Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston.
    Dittemore would not say during the news conference whether NASA has ruled in or ruled out one possible explanation for the photo: that the image could have been caused by jiggling of the camera. It was a Nikon M-880 mounted on a tripod. The automatically timed exposure of four to six seconds was triggered by finger.
    "We have to validate whether it is real," Dittemore said. "This particular one is no different from the others. . . . It has yet to be determined whether this is important to us or not."
    SEEKING EVIDENCE
    NASA officials have stressed the importance of photographic, video or debris evidence from the earliest moments of the shuttle's distress, which sensors indicate began at about 5:53 a.m. above California. That's when sensors in a wheel well blinked out, in the words of NASA investigators, "as if someone cut a wire."
    That is also roughly the time during which the amateur photographer snapped his image of Columbia as it streaked across the sky north of San Francisco. A precise time may be mapped by matching the photo and the strange electrical signature to the crisp background field of stars.
    Physicists have long jokingly referred to the lower reaches of the ionosphere -- which fluctuates in height around 40 miles -- as the "ignorosphere," due to the lack of understanding of this mysterious realm of rarefied air and charged electric particles.
    The family of "transient" electrical effects occupy this part of the sky, including sprites, which leap from the ionosphere to the tops of thunderheads, and blue jets, which leap from thunderhead anvils to the ionosphere.
    Streamers of static electricity can travel these realms at speeds 100 times that of ground lightning, or 20 million miles an hour.
    Ten years ago, Walter Lyons, a consultant with FMA Research Inc. in Fort Collins, Colo., conducted a study of sprite danger for NASA. "We concluded that there is about 1 chance in 100 that a shuttle could fly through a sprite. What impact, we didn't know for certain. It didn't appear at this time that the energy would be enough to cause problems."
    But Lyons conceded that the "ignorosphere" is a mysterious place that has yielded startling surprises. "Since then, with research on electrical streamers, the discovery of blue jets, the doubt has gone up," he said.
    "There are other things up there that we probably don't know about," Lyons said. "Every time we look in that part of the atmosphere, we find something totally new."
    LACK OF RESEARCH FUNDING
    But the field is dominated by a small club of electrophysicists who have seen their money for research dry up. Ironically, an experiment of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, aboard the doomed Columbia, was among the last fully funded work conducted on sprites. Lyons, considered to be one of the leading authorities, said he played a role in the design of the experiment.
    To date, sprites have required the presence of a significant electrical storm on the ground. As the shuttle passed over Northern California, there were some heavy rain showers in the far north of the state, but none of the wild weather normally associated with sprites.
    Hearing a description of the purplish, luminous corkscrew in the San Francisco photograph, Lyons said, "This was not a sprite event . . . but maybe it is another electrical phenomenon we don't know about."
    Whether or not an electrical discharge might be involved in the demise of Columbia, there is precedent for an event like this.
    Scientists have observed interaction between a blue jet and a meteor. And in December 1999, Los Alamos National Laboratories researcher David Suszcynsky and colleagues, including Lyons, published an account of a meteor that apparently triggered a sprite. Their account is published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
    "It was a singular observation that had us all scratching our heads," said Lyons. In the strange world of sprite and elf research, scientists have documented one event in which some sort of high atmospheric event "shot down" a high-altitude balloon over Dallas.
    On June 5, 1989, before the first sprite was ever photographed, a NASA balloon carrying a heavy pack of instruments suffered "an uncommanded payload release" at 129,000 feet, according to Lyons. It landed in an angry Dallas resident's front yard.
    Investigators found scorch marks on the debris and considered it one of the first bits of solid evidence that sprites exist. As a result of the accident, NASA no longer flies balloons over thunderstorms.
    Ironically, the balloon was launched from a NASA facility in Palestine, Texas, one of the towns where debris from the space shuttle Columbia fell Saturday.
     

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