Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (23157)	5/29/2003 5:30:48 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 27740

2 trailers deemed biological arms labs By Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES The CIA yesterday concluded that two truck trailers seized by coalition forces in northern Iraq were designed by Saddam Hussein's regime to produce biological weapons agents. A six-page agency white paper said an examination of the trailers' equipment showed that "BW [biological weapons] agent production is the only consistent, logical purpose for these vehicles." The assessment is the clearest indication yet that Baghdad was in violation of U.N. arms resolutions that required it to disclose all aspects of its weapons of mass destruction programs. Officials said the moving factories would have been capable of producing enough agents to kill thousands of people. However, U.S. inspector teams still had not found the biological weapons themselves or suspected large arsenals of chemical weapons, which the Central Intelligence Agency said existed in Iraq before the United States went to war to oust Saddam from power and rid the country of weapons of mass destruction. The CIA report said the two truck trailers matched the description supplied to the United States by spies, including an Iraqi chemical engineer who managed one of the plants where the equipment was made. It was this description that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell delivered to the U.N. Security Council in February. Mr. Powell's presentation was part of a Bush administration campaign to show that Saddam was not disarming, as demanded by the international community, and that a U.S.-led invasion was justified. "Our analysis of the mobile production plant found in April indicates the layout and equipment are consistent with information provided by the chemical engineer, who has direct knowledge of Iraq's mobile BW program," the CIA concluded yesterday. Richard Boucher, chief State Department spokesman, told reporters the report was "substantiation" of Mr. Powell's U.N. testimony. "It's very important to recognize that programs that we had said existed do exist; that the kind of equipment that we had said existed does exist," Mr. Boucher said. "And I guess I have to point out that this was not information that the Iraqis had ever divulged to inspectors. It was information designed to be hidden from the inspectors. It was a program designed to be undetected." A senior U.S. intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the trailers were assembled in Iraq. Of the components inside the trailers, some were made inside Iraq and others were imported. The official declined to say which countries supplied the equipment. While the CIA conclusion might not be a "smoking gun" proving that Iraq was harboring large quantities of weapons of mass destruction, it did bolster the administration's argument that Baghdad continued to pursue such weapons in violation of the international community. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said on Tuesday that it is too early to say that large weapons stocks will not be found in Iraq. New inspection teams are arriving in Iraq to search hundreds of sites. Mr. Rumsfeld said battlefield chemical weapons might have been destroyed before the coalition invasion began in late March and that other agents could have been buried somewhere in the vast country. In New York, U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix told Reuters news agency that the mobile labs in the CIA report were not disclosed by the Iraqis, as required by U.N. resolutions after Iraq's eviction from Kuwait in 1991. Based on past intelligence reports, U.N. weapons inspectors had asked the Iraqis about such labs. "There were a number of trucks that they showed to us and they had pictures of. But these do not correspond to the ones that are now published by the coalition. They are different," Mr. Blix said. The CIA report said, "Examination of the trailers reveals that all of the equipment is permanently installed and interconnected, creating an ingeniously simple, self-contained bioprocessing system. Although the equipment on the trailer found in April 2003 was partially damaged by looters, it includes a fermenter capable of producing biological agents and support equipment such as water supply tanks, an air compressor, a water chiller and a system for collecting exhaust gases." The CIA paper specifically sought to rebut a lead editorial in the May 13 editions of the New York Times. The New York Times has been a persistent critic of President Bush, and in particular his decision to go to war to oust Saddam. The editorial quoted weapons authorities who said the trailers could have been built to produce biological pesticides near farmland, or as mobile factories to refurbish antiaircraft missiles. The CIA said its specialists investigated both theories and found them unsubstantiated. "The experts cited in the editorial are not on the scene and probably do not have complete access to information about the trailers," the agency report said. The CIA report discussed three mobile facilities: a production trailer found by Kurdish troops in April near Mosul in northern Iraq; a second trailer discovered by American troops at Mosul's Kindi Research, Testing and Development and Engineering facility; and a mobile truck laboratory found in Baghdad that could support biological weapons research or legitimate research. Tests have not detected the presence of any biological agent, such as deadly anthrax, in the trailers. "We suspect that the Iraqis thoroughly decontaminated the vehicle to remove evidence of BW agent production," the CIA said. "Despite the lack of confirmatory samples, we nevertheless are confident that this trailer is a mobile BW production plant because of the source's description, equipment, and design." The report said the United States is looking for another type of trailer. This mobile factory would receive the "unconcentrated liquid slurry" produced in the first trailer and use it to grow and harvest the biological agents. These trailers likely would contain tanks, centrifuges and spray dryers. An October CIA report said Iraq had not accounted for at least 6,000 chemical bombs, 15,000 artillery rockets that could be used for such weapons, and 550 artillery shells filled with mustard gas. It said Iraq "probably" had stocks of 100 tons to 500 tons of chemical weapons agents. URL:http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20030529-122922-6267r.htm

To: calgal who wrote (23157)	6/7/2003 1:01:05 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 27740

The 'E' Word Admit it: America is an empire. BY NIALL FERGUSON Saturday, June 7, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT URL:http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110003596 We may now be witnessing the most radical reshaping of the Middle East since it acquired its modern form (and many of its modern problems) in the wake of World War I. What the British Empire began, the American Empire may be about to finish. Most of us are compulsively pessimistic about the Middle East; too many "road maps" have led over cliffs. But this time there's a real chance it could be different. The overthrow of Saddam Hussein has been the mother of all wake-up calls. Unlike his predecessors, who thought peace could be brought by touchy-feely peace talks, Mr. Bush has grasped that military power is key: the magical spear that heals even as it wounds. By showing them just how easily Saddam could be overthrown, Mr. Bush has made it transparent to Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia that Saddam's fate could befall them too. I don't believe anyone in the Pentagon wants to stage another invasion soon; their hands are full. The aim is to put the frighteners on the region's Muslim powers. And it's working. When five Arab leaders met Mr. Bush on Tuesday, they pledged, with manifest penitence, that they would henceforth actively fight "the culture of extremism and violence." Not just al Qaeda: Hamas and Hezbollah too. And that is precisely why, to the astonishment of many, Ariel Sharon seems ready to make the concessions without which no peace is conceivable. For the first time in his life, he has acknowledged that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have been under Israeli "occupation." He has pledged to "evacuate unauthorized outposts." And he has agreed to the creation of an independent Palestinian state with "territorial contiguity" (the week's key word). None of this would be happening if Mr. Bush had not established his credibility in the region by force. So what's the catch? It lies in the paradoxical nature of American power. In 2000, Mr. Bush talked as if he wanted to diminish America's military presence overseas. But Sept. 11 led to a 180-degree turn in his thinking. His administration produced a National Security Strategy that stated an intention to extend the "benefits of freedom" to "every corner of the world," and asserted the right to pre-emptive military action against any threat to America's security. Many critics have seized upon this "Bush doctrine" as a dangerous, even revolutionary departure from post-1945 U.S. practice. I am not so sure. For one thing, it is eminently desirable that free markets, the rule of law and democracy should be introduced in countries currently languishing under rogue regimes. For another, regime changes of the sort we have seen in Afghanistan and Iraq are an indispensable element of the war against terrorism. Terrorists are sustained by dictatorships and flourish in conditions of anarchy. The terrorist threat will never be contained if the U.S. does not eradicate breeding grounds. And a strategy of global containment is not really a major departure in policy. The radical aspect of the doctrine is not the theory but the practice. When Mr. Bush says he is prepared to fight terror in "every corner of the world," he really can. And he really does. If this isn't imperial power, I don't know what is. But here's the paradox. Vast though America's military power has become, the idea that the U.S. has become an authentic empire remains entirely foreign to the majority of Americans, who uncritically accept what has long been the official line: that the U.S. just doesn't "do empire." "America has never been an empire," Mr. Bush declared during his election campaign. "We may be the only great power in history that had the chance, and refused." Speaking on board the Abraham Lincoln, he echoed that: "Other nations in history have fought in foreign lands and remained to occupy and exploit. Americans, following a battle, want nothing more than to return home." Days earlier, Donald Rumsfeld had been asked by al-Jazeera if the U.S. was engaged in "empire-building in Iraq." "We don't seek empires," shot back Mr. Rumsfeld. "We're not imperialistic. We never have been." The Victorian historian J.R. Seeley famously joked that the British had "conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind." The Americans have gone one better. The greatest empire of modern times has come into existence without the American people even noticing. This is not absence of mind. It is mass myopia. Unfortunately, this myopia is one of the things that makes the American empire very different from--and, I believe, less effective than--the last great Anglophone empire, the British one. Americans have no qualms about sending their troops to fight in faraway countries. But they expect wars to be short and the casualty list to be even shorter. Since the war in Iraq officially ended, 40 U.S. soldiers have lost their lives, some as a result of terrorist attacks. Already there is a queasiness about this. When can our boys come home? The realistic answer is: not for at least five years, the minimum duration of occupation that will stabilize Iraq. And if the British experience of governing Iraq after World War I is anything to go by, 40 years might be more realistic. Alas, nobody in Washington is willing to contemplate a military presence on that time scale. The U.S. may be a "hyperpower," the most militarily powerful empire in history. But it is an empire in denial, a colossus with an attention deficiency disorder. That is potentially very dangerous. I began on a note of optimism, pointing out just how much has been achieved by the war against Iraq. If Saddam's overthrow marks the beginning of a sustained attempt to build peace in the Middle East, we will have cause to celebrate the advent of this American empire. But if Iraq is just another ephemeral military adventure, then I am filled with foreboding. For the moment America loses interest in what it has initiated, the cycle of terror will resume. Mr. Ferguson is author of "Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power" (Basic Books, 2003).