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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: frankw1900 who wrote (22394)	1/1/2004 5:58:43 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793707

God! Some of our State people think we shouldn't have done this. The "raised pinky" crowd never quits. washingtonpost.com Ship Incident May Have Swayed Libya Centrifuges Intercepted in September By Robin Wright Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, January 1, 2004; Page A18 U.S. and British intelligence services discovered in late September that a freighter bound for Libya was hauling thousands of parts for centrifuges, a key component for producing nuclear weapons, senior U.S. officials said yesterday. Officials said the interception of the cargo, worth tens of millions of dollars, was a factor in pressuring Libya to give up its deadliest weapons programs. The shipment was headed from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, an interim transshipment point, aboard a German ship. With help from the German government and the German shipping company, the United States was able to get the freighter, BBC China, diverted to a port in southern Italy shortly after it passed through the Suez Canal. Officials boarded the ship in Italy in early October and seized the cargo, which was not listed on the ship's manifest, U.S. officials said. The craft was less than two days from docking in Libya. The Bush administration believes the intelligence coup accelerated Libya's cooperation. Although secret talks on Libya's programs for producing weapons of mass destruction had begun about six months earlier, Moammar Gaddafi's government had not yet given a date for U.S. and British intelligence to visit weapons-development sites. After the interdiction, U.S. and British inspectors were in Libya within two weeks, U.S. officials said. Other U.S. officials, however, said they were concerned at the time that the seizure might undermine the attempt to win Libya's cooperation. "Quite the contrary. It could have derailed the effort," said a well-placed U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The operation, details of which were reported yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, was the first interdiction under the new Proliferation Security Initiative, an agreement among 11 countries to stop and search planes and ships suspected of carrying banned weapons or missile technology. Seizure of the cargo proves the initiative's importance as a new tool in tracking and curtailing the spread of weapons technology, U.S. officials said. "It's clearly a success for the proliferation initiative, but it's also an allied success, especially for the Germans and Italians," a senior administration official said. He described the German government and the shipping company as "extremely cooperative." The secret shipment also offered insight into Libya's arms programs. Although U.S. intelligence was aware of Libya's chemical weapons program, Washington was surprised by Tripoli's ongoing interest in developing nuclear arms. The administration is reluctant to provide details of the operation or the source of the parts. U.S. officials said the shipment did not come from Pakistan, which has been linked to sales of nuclear technology to other countries. "The technology we're talking about was stolen years ago from Urenco, a European consortium. It was used in Pakistan to enrich uranium, but it was also used elsewhere. There's a black market in this material," the senior U.S. official said. A European official said a private Pakistani arms specialist is being investigated. After the discovery, the United States tracked the German freighter, U.S. officials said. Most of the operation was conducted by U.S. intelligence with no U.S. military involvement. U.S. officials boarded the ship after it docked in Taranto, Italy. U.S. officials aren't sure why Gaddafi was reaching out to the international community and pledging privately to disarm as his government was acquiring a large shipment of weapons-development equipment. Centrifuges of the kind found on the German ship can be used to develop weapons-grade uranium for use in nuclear weapons. On Sunday, U.N. investigators in Libya were shown dozens of centrifuges and other equipment, although no evidence was found that the country had enriched uranium. Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Monday the equipment indicated that Libya was at an "early stage" of its weapons program. Staff writers Dana Priest and Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report. © 2004 The Washington Post Company

To: frankw1900 who wrote (22394)	1/2/2004 3:06:02 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793707

Have you seen this one, Frank? Barbarians Invading By John R. Graham Published 01/02/2004 Tech Central Station The Barbarian Invasions is an impressive Canadian film. (Yes, we do make them). The movie won two awards at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival: Best Screenplay and Best Actress, and is currently playing in a number of US cities. It is the story of a man dying of a terminal disease who renews his relationships with his friends and family, especially his adult son. Much of the action takes place in a hospital in Montreal, Quebec, where director and screenwriter Denys Arcand dissects the Canadian health care system. (I write this review as the province of Quebec recovers from a streak of violence by health workers' unions. The Quebec government recently announced policies to increase the contracting out of some services to private providers, which obviously attacks those unions' interests. Rioters vandalized a children's hospital where the Premier made a speech, and invaded politicians' offices, hurling pig manure.) The film opens with a nun struggling down the corridor of a crowded ward to administer Holy Communion: patients, health professionals, even electricians, are tripping over each other, packed into an environment of general confusion. And yet, there is another floor of the hospital that is completely closed. Why? We learn from the manager that this is due to a government directive. (Although I'm in another province on the other side of the country from Montreal, I know the feeling: our Vancouver General Hospital has an entire cancer pavilion that sat empty for a decade!) The dying man's son is a successful investment banker in London. He's the kind of guy who can awriggle around anything. (He reminded me of Komarovsky, the character played by Rod Steiger in Doctor Zhivago: a wealthy businessman in Tsarist Russia with only contempt for the revolutionaries, he winds up a commissar after the dust settles.) First, he wrangles his way into the hospital's management offices without a pass and corners the manager, who is completely isolated from the chaos outside. He offers her a bribe to get his father moved out of the zoo and into a private space on the empty floor. She quietly takes the bribe, but points out that she can do nothing without the hospital employees' union. The son pays off the union boss to prepare a private room on the empty floor. Painters, carpenters, and other workers quickly make it up. Then, because there is virtually no access to PET scans in Canada, the son takes his father to Vermont to get one. One of the son's friends in Baltimore (one of many Canadian doctors who have emigrated to the US) examines the scan and informs him that his father will have a much better chance in Baltimore than Montreal. Remarkably, the father wants nothing to do with it: "I voted for socialized health care, and I'm prepared to suffer the consequences!" he proclaims. With this line, the father speaks for too many Canadians, who often wrap their national identity up in nationalized health care. For this reason, Canadian politicians have not had the courage to give Canadians more health freedom. However, the pain and inhumanity caused by the Canadian health care system are starting to make even the most nationalistic of us reconsider the amount of control over health services that we've ceded to our governments. This movie tells us a lot about the consequences of government monopoly health care. The hospitals are poorly managed, the doctors and nurses confused, the unions who really run the show thuggish, the patients all but ignored. The film is sparking a debate in Canada about the role of the state in health care. Any American who thinks that health care in the United States would be improved by implementing a single-payer system would learn much from it too. John R. Graham is Director, Health and Pharmaceutical Policy Research, The Fraser Institute.