New World Order supplement, 14-21/1/01

["pbrooke" <pbrooke@DELETETHISukonline.co.uk>]

NEW WORLD ORDER SUPPLEMENT, 14-21/1/01

*  The questionable future of NATO [by Henry Kissinger. The veteran
mass-murderer, responsible for the bombing of Cambodia and Laos, see Simon
Jenkinsı piece later on, suggests that, under Bush, Europe will just have to
come to terms with Americaıs greatness]
*  We must fight the good fight for jingoism [by Michael Gore in The Times.
Another attempt to give credibility to the Bush conception of foreign
affairs. Which has also all of a sudden become the Hague conception, though
in Bushıs absence we didnıt hear much about it]
*  West claimed moral high ground with air power [by John Keegan of the
Daily Telegraph, a classic article that everyone should have framed on their
wall as a reminder of the depths to which we fall when we give free reign to
our propensity for moral self righteousness]
*  U.N. Sanctions Keep Iraqis Poor, Hopeless [The title is very misleading.
The article is actually about the nature of modern weaponry and ends up with
a brief description of the best known items in the American arsenal]
*  Bombs that turn our leaders into butchers [Simon Jenkinsı powerful
description of the Plain of Jars in Laos. After which let no-one think that
we and our allies are in any position to accuse anyone of Œwar crimesı]
*  Condoleeza Rice comments Iraq sanctions, Balkans [Nothingıs gonna change
our world ...]
*  Deadly blast from the past [an account of the virtues and shortcomings of
Œfuel airı weapons. Concludes that cluster bombs are a more effective way of
killing people, though fuel air bombs are good for dispersing the evidence
of a chemical weapons attack]
*  Analysis: Khalilzad and Bush's Afghanistan policy [Account of the Afghani
who may guide the process of sanctions against Afghanistan. He favours
pitting the Pashtun against the Talibani. Since the Talibani are themselves
the present day representatives of the Pashtun, this may be difficult.]
*  Diverse faith groups at prayer lunch [A self indulgence on my part. But
Iım intrigued by the apparent respectability of Sun Myung Moon who, as I
knew, controls the Washington Times and also, as I didnıt know but was
beginning to guess, the United Press International. Both these two organs
seem to be very anti-Iraq]

URLsONLY:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/commentary/printedition/article/0,2669,SA
V 0101160080,FF.html
*  DISPUTE REFLECTS DEEPER CONFLICTS, RIVALRIES BETWEEN EUROPE AND U.S.
by William Pfaff
Chicago Tribune (probably from Los Angeles Times), 17th January

http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/01/17/afghanistan.us.threats.reut/index.html
*  U.S. OFFICIAL SAYS AFGHANISTAN CENTER OF TERRORISM
CNN, January 17, 2001


http://www.dawn.com/2001/01/14/op.htm#1

*  THE QUESTIONABLE FUTURE OF NATO
by Henry Kissinger
Dawn (from Los Angeles Times), 14th January

THE uneasy reaction of European media and political leaders to the American
election, ascribed to a desire for continuity, actually involved a
remarkable paradox. Why continuity when Atlantic relations have been far
from harmonious?

Our allies, Britain largely excepted, have been dissociating, often
demonstratively, from sanctions against Cuba, Iran or Iraq, and from
American policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict and in the Taiwan Straits. They
have disagreed publicly with the concept of a national missile defence,
which French President Jacques Chirac attacked at a press conference at the
side of Russian President Vladimir Putin, explicitly on behalf of all of
Europe.

The European Union is in the process of creating a military force
institutionally distinct from NATO. Since the end of the cold war, common
policy toward the Soviet Union has been replaced by allies seeking their own
"special relationship" with Moscow - not necessarily directed against other
allies but not especially solicitous of their views either.

The disagreements in the economic field are even more visible. The United
States has threatened retaliation against Europe over bananas and beef, and
the European Union has threatened the United States over American taxation
of exports. The two sides are deadlocked on how, or even whether, to launch
a new multilateral trade negotiation. Another dispute over energy policy
looms, especially if oil prices remain high.

Equally striking is the weakening of the emotional bond. More Americans and
Europeans are visiting each others' continents than ever before. But they
travel in the cocoon of their preconceptions or of their professional
relationships, without acquiring a knowledge of the history and politics of
the other side. On the other hand, the United States, as depicted in
European mass media, is defined by the death penalty, the lack of a system
of free medical insurance, the vast American prison population and other
comparable stereotypes. In this atmosphere, many advocates of European
integration are urging unity as an exercise in differentiation from, if not
opposition to, the United States.

The Clinton administration has left a legacy of unanswered questions: Is the
Atlantic Alliance still at the heart of transatlantic relations? If so, how
does it define its purpose in the post-cold war world? If not, what can be
put in its place to undergird transatlantic relations?The paradox is that,
the political vacuum notwithstanding, personal relations among the leaders
of the Atlantic nations during the 1990s remained remarkably close. But they
were based less on shared policy views than on shared personal experiences
as the first group of leaders who had grown up after World War II. The
founding generation of the Alliance presumed the benevolence of American
power and the importance of allied unity. Their sons and daughters, growing
up during the protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s, developed a profound
distrust of American power; at a minimum, they wanted America to use its
power only for universal causes transcending the national interest.

The founding generation viewed the Alliance as the point of departure for a
union of democracies. The generation governing in the 1990s viewed the
Atlantic Alliance as a relic of the cold war, if not an obstacle to
overcoming it. Its goal was less to strengthen the Alliance than to "erase
dividing lines." Thus, in a joint press conference with Russian President
Boris Yeltsin in March 1997, President Clinton described the "old NATO" as
"basically a mirror image of the Warsaw Pact," equating a voluntary
association of democracies with what the Soviet Union had imposed on
subjugated countries.

The key to the paradox is that, throughout the West, foreign relations are
today more than ever a function of domestic politics. Since the European
centre-left governments have disappointed the radical wings of their parties
by implementing economic reform based on the market, they are reluctant to
inflame these further by implementing national security policies identified
with the United States. On the other hand, the domestic opposition to
President Bill Clinton's foreign policy came generally from the right.
Because of this difference in domestic politics, European leaders saw no
contradiction between their personal admiration - and even affection - for
Clinton and vocal opposition to policies they conceived as having been
partly imposed on him.

So it happened that the most harmonious encounters of the European leaders
with President Clinton occurred at "Third Way" get-togethers of world -
mostly European - social democratic leaders. These are gatherings at which
leaders of the centre-left have struggled to define a new agenda after
having acquiesced in the Reagan-Thatcher revolution in market economics.
This is why the Socialist prime minister of Portugal was invited to these
gatherings and the conservative prime minister of Spain was not; why the
Socialist prime minister of France attended but the conservative president
of France was excluded. In attending as a regular participant, Clinton threw
the prestige of the American presidency behind one side in the domestic
politics of the countries represented.

The advent of a Republican administration will inevitably change America's
focus of consultation with Europe's leaders. They will be less geared to
personalities and more designed to bring about a meaningful trans-Atlantic
dialogue based on congruent, permanent national interests regardless of
party. The previous record of service of the new national security team in
Washington makes it very likely that the task of revitalizing the Alliance
will be given high priority.

Nostalgia for cold war certitudes is no guide to a wise policy. But neither
is the rote reiteration of slogans of Atlantic solidarity belied by the
day-to-day conduct of foreign policy. The basic challenge is whether the
Western democracies can rediscover a sense of common destiny. The cold war
has ended but history and geography have not been abolished. Whether the
Atlantic Alliance can remain relevant to the new necessities depends on how
it deals with issues of traditional security, how successful it is in
promoting stability to the east of Europe and stability along Europe's
southern frontier and in the Middle East.

The security issue presents itself as an insurance policy against a
reimperializing Russia, as missile defence and as the new European army
(Euroforce).

A new trans-Atlantic dialogue on missile defence is urgently needed.
European critics must ask themselves whether any American president can
seriously be asked to leave his people permanently vulnerable to the threats
generated by proliferating nuclear technology. American policymakers need to
find a way to show the relevance of their concerns and strategy to European
necessities. Both sides have an obligation to reexamine a concept of
deterrence that, if it fails, would produce millions of casualties in a
matter of hours.

As for the European army, the key issue is not whether Europe should have an
autonomous voice but whether the Euroforce represents a diversion of
resources, and what Europe means by autonomy. Specifically, how can the
strategic objectives of the Euroforce be reconciled with the shrinking
defence budgets in almost all the European countries? Even if existing
budgets are maintained, the Euroforce would avoid a net diminution of allied
defence only if it generated an overall increase of allied defence spending.
And what, in practice, is the meaning of an autonomy according to which, in
EU language, the Euroforce operates only where "NATO as a whole is not
involved"?

An agreed division of labour is conceivable, though care must be taken not
to suggest a degree of American dissociation that invites pressures from
other countries. But what if the EU acts without the concurrence of the
United States - that is, if, in effect, all members of the Alliance except
America and Canada go to war? Would, in such circumstances, the Euroforce
have access to NATO logistics and intelligence that are in the main
American? Would the United States come to the rescue if things went wrong?

Finally, would, at NATO meetings where the use of force is discussed, the
Americans encounter colleagues who have already reached a collective EU
decision, imposing procedures on NATO that are inconsistent with its entire
history? European leaders who question missile defence because it might lead
to the decoupling of American security from that of Europe should take care
not to adopt institutions that drift inevitably toward political decoupling.

The key test is the ability to reestablish political coherence in
trans-Atlantic relations. Absent that, the Euroforce could produce the worst
of all worlds: disruption of NATO procedures and impairment of allied
cooperation without enhanced allied military capability or meaningful
European autonomy.

The trans-Atlantic relationship faces as well major geopolitical and
economic challenges. To the east of NATO and the EU, the domestic
arrangements that followed the demise of the Soviet Union are ending, if
only because the generation that inherited power is passing from the scene.
Chaos (or Russian domination) beckon unless the nations bordering the North
Atlantic define it as a common problem and deal with it energetically as a
common policy. It is particularly important to improve the coherence of
efforts to bring Russia into the international community. Though every ally
asserts that it serves the common cause, the definition of the common cause
has, so far, remained elusive.


http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,248-68661,00.html

*  WE MUST FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT FOR JINGOISM
by Michael Gove
The Times, 16th January

Itıs time for a revival of jingoism. Ten years after the mother of all
battles began, with the godfather of terror, President Saddam Hussein, still
repugnantly in place, and the rising son, George W. Bush, at last restoring
virtue to the White House, the moment is ripe for a restoration of this
grand Victorian principle.

Jingoism has become synonymous in the public mind with bellicose
adventurism. But when the word first emerged, it encapsulated the essence of
prudent foreign policy. In the words of the music-hall song which inspired
the phrase: ³We donıt want to fight, but, by jingo if we do, weıve got the
ships, weıve got the men, weıve got the money too.² And in that raucous
chorus there lies more wisdom than in most contemporary pronouncements on
foreign affairs.

Not least those from our own Government. The foreign policy philosophy of
the Blair administration exemplifies one, flawed, response to the post-Cold
War world ‹ a willingness to intervene and project force beyond any prudent
calculation of national interest or capability. They do want to fight, but
they lack the ships, demoralise the men and flounder the whole way through.

Unfortunately, the most vigorous case made against the Blairite, and as it
happened, Clintonite, approach of promiscuous insertion of military muscle
came from a neoisolationist alliance of Left and Right which doesnıt want to
fight at all. This curious coalition which brought George Galloway and Pat
Buchanan together, which unites continental Greens and Le Penistes and which
has given Bruce Kent a new lease of life, has been strengthened by the Blair
and Clinton Governmentsı mishandling of Kosovo and energised by their
proliferation of military adventures.

There is a strong case for proper suspicion towards Utopian attempts to
achieve a new world order. It can, and has, led to the subversion of
international law and contempt for nationsı rights to make their own
choices. But the neo-isolationists have damaged the case for caution with
their willingness to believe that any enemy of the ³new world order² should
be a friend. The new peaceniks, with their opposition to national missile
defence (NMD), willingness to be Saddamıs stooges in attacking Iraqi
sanctions, and blindness to the resurgent imperial ambitions of Russia and
China, leave the world open to more conflict, not less.

Between these two, idealistic but misplaced, positions there is a rational,
and in the best sense, jingoistic, course. It is the position being advanced
by George W. Bush and eloquently backed last week by William Hague. These
new jingoists appreciate the complexity of the post-Cold War world and
abjure any attempts to impose an overarching order. They are, as Bush has
made clear in his campaign, ³humble² enough not to want to engage in ³nation
building².

They donıt want to fight, but . . .

The new jingoists are aware that there is an emerging hierarchy of threats,
that new thinking is required in dealing with them, and that military
strength must be enhanced, and then properly husbanded to deal with them.

The range of threats to stability in the modern world is, potentially,
endless. Senior Blair advisers, sensitive to the doctrine of the West as
world policeman which their master outlined in his 1998 ³Chicago doctrine²,
can provide a superficially persuasive itinerary of troublespots which Her
Majestyıs Forces might visit.

Africa, Blairite diplomats argue, will become one of the worldıs major oil
suppliers in twenty years so a presence in Sierra Leone is useful, as might
a role in the petrol-rich but inflammable Caucasus. The scourge of drugs on
our streets requires policing not just in Peckham but in Afghanistan and
Colombia. The destabilising effect of mass movements of asylum-seekers
demands involvement in the Balkans, around Kurdistan and perhaps even South
Asia.

Not only is the domestic rationale for this interventionism often specious
(we are in Kosovo in force but the number of asylum-seekers hasnıt
diminished) but it also spreads resources too thinly to deal with real
threats. The Westıs ability to do good abroad, like respect for the rule of
law at home, depends on politicians using their power sparingly, but
forcefully.

The case for robust action to deal with Saddam, and other rogue states such
as North Korea and Libya, is overwhelming. As Richard Butler, the man once
charged with inspecting Iraqıs arsenal, makes clear in his new book, Saddam
Defiant, the order of threat posed by the Iraqi dictator and his playmates
is huge.

His nuclear, chemical and biological arms, whether delivered by ballistic
missile or terrorist fanatic, could devastate Western cities. His agents
have been at work as far afield as Bangkok and the Balkans. Other rogue
states, such as North Korea, have learnt from him that power grows out of a
freshly dug silo and have beggared their people in efforts to build weapons
with which to blackmail the West.

Faced with this danger, the new jingoists argue, correctly, that the old
principle of mutually assured destruction no longer holds. Dictators willing
to gas and starve their own people do not react as predictably as the old
Soviet Union did. New shields, such as the national missile defence, must be
fashioned. And a willingness to cross swords, with the most lethal force
available, must be shown.

The current temporising of the Blair Government on NMD, and indeed its
pusillanimity when defending the use of depleted uranium, sends out
precisely the wrong signal to Saddam and his ilk. It is a mercy we have a
proper jingoist in the White House. Heıs got the ships and heıs got the men.
But he needs a proper ally or two.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=000579381554028&rtmo=lvwlHnot&atmo=99999
999&pg=/et/01/1/16/wirq116.html

*  WEST CLAIMED MORAL HIGH GROUND WITH AIR POWER
by John Keegan, Defence Editor
Daily Telegraph, 16th January

TEN years ago, at just before midnight on Jan 16, 1991, the air phase of the
Gulf war began. It was a beginning in more than one sense - the beginning of
an unusual punishment operation, for breach of international law, but also
the beginning of an experiment in the use of air power.

The air commanders did not declare an intention to bring the Iraqis to heel
by bombing. Wisely so, for "air control" of Iraq had failed in the Twenties.
There is no doubt that the airmen were confident of severely depressing both
the Iraqi means and will to resist before the ground offensive was launched.
Their confidence was to be justified.

There were failures in the air campaign. The targeting of Iraq's Scud
missiles, for which much was claimed, achieved not a single hit. Mounted on
mobile launchers and constantly moved between hiding places - underpasses
were a favourite - the Scuds survived.

The RAF's attacks on runways with its JP-233 penetrator bomb were too costly
to sustain. Much old-style, non-smart ordnance was wasted, as it always had
been in strategic bombing effort. However, even non-smart weapons worked
when used against the targets Saddam laid out for the B-52s.

Saddam, who gave currency to the phrase "the mother of all battles", seems
badly read in military history. Had he even bothered to follow the
newspapers during the l967 Arab Israeli war, he ought to have grasped that
to park an army, unprotected by air power when the enemy has plenty, in the
open desert is to invite its destruction.

The Egyptian army was devastated in Sinai by the Israeli air force in three
days. In the Kuwaiti desert in 1991, the unfortunate low-grade divisions of
the Iraqi army lay out for five weeks, deluged each night by hundreds of
tons of explosive.

By the end, the main thought of most reservists who had survived was how
soon they could surrender. Smart weapons, less than 10 per cent of the
ordnance expended, were destroying the Iraqi infrastructure - bridges, power
stations, telephone exchanges, other communications, and the headquarters of
Saddam's political and military apparatus.

"Supersmart" missile interceptors drew the sting of his last threat, the
Scuds launched against American targets in Saudi Arabia. By the time the
coalition's armoured divisions crossed the start line, Saddam had already
lost his "mother of all battles" - the air war.

His air force had fled to the territory of his old enemy, Iran. His air
defence weapons had not worked. His soldiers had given up the ghost. That is
not to minimise the achievement of the ground forces, whose penetration and
encirclement of the Iraq positions set a model of how a modern military
operation should be conducted.

Nevertheless, it must be recognised that the Gulf war was a new sort of war,
because for the first time the 20th-century vision of a justified war, won
almost without casualties, had been realised.

Had the Gulf war been an isolated phenomenon, its tenth anniversary might
not seem to demand commemoration. However, those who fought and won it - the
Americans foremost, with the British as their most active allies - won
another air war, even more strictly defined, in Kosovo.

The Serb army, bent on expelling a million long-settled Albanians from their
homes, in conditions of great suffering, was forced to desist and to
withdraw. A pattern seems to be emerging. The Western world has, since the
beginning of the 19th century, sought to define itself by two measures that
distinguish it from less evolved parts: its superior technology and its
higher public morality.

For much of that period, it has sought to put the first at the service of
the second. The story of the Second World War, as recounted in American and
British schools, tells how Anglo American industrial might, allied to
democracy, overcame Nazism, fascism and the imperialism of Japan.

The Gulf and, even more so, Kosovo suggest a sequel: that technology and
international morality now march in step. If so, and if the rhythm can be
maintained, there is hope that Saddams and Milosevics may be deterred from
their crimes before bad intention becomes action.

One hard-line Serb nationalist has given herself up for trial to the
International Court of Justice. It is not impossible that Milosevic, despite
his fear of punishment, may open a plea bargain with the court.

Saddam is a harder case. Yet even he is being given reason to fear the long
arm of the law. Air power plus war crimes legislation is a new and novel
brew. Few have the means to survive forever beyond its reach.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi
bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/01/16/MN138517.DTL

*  U.N. SANCTIONS KEEP IRAQIS POOR, HOPELESS
by Keay Davidson, San Francisco Chronicle, January 16, 2001

In the 10 years since high-tech weapons dazzled the world in the Persian
Gulf War, military technology has advanced in new directions.

But the world has changed, too. Old enemies have vanished or have been
vanquished, to be replaced by new ones with different munitions and
motivations.

And, experts fear, the "smart" weapons of Gulf War glory may not be ideal
for fighting the likely foes of tomorrow -- small, shadowy bands of
terrorists who fight for their ideals not with bombers and troops but with
computer keyboards and bottle-sprayed microbes.

The super-weapons of the Gulf War were products of Cold War science, a
titanic enterprise that cost U.S. taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars
and that generated lethal gizmos worthy of James Bond: "smart" bombs that
allegedly zipped down chimneys, unpiloted "drone" aircraft that transmitted
TV images of enemy movements, infrared scanners on space satellites that
detected heat from the engines of enemy trucks rumbling through the desert
night.

The Gulf War "was really the first (time) anyone talked about all these
'smart' weapons as a way to fight a war, rather than with the nuclear
weapons of the Cold War," says Jim Tegnelia, vice president of Defense
Department programs at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque.

Today, the cutting edge of military technology aims at empowering individual
solders in the field. One device could do for biowarfare what cell phones
did for communication: The handheld gadget detects deadly biological agents.

Its inventors at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have dubbed it
HANAA, for Hand-Held Advanced Nucleic Acid Analyzer. They claim it can
distinguish an Ebola virus from a cold germ within 15 minutes.

Killer microbes are exactly the threat dreaded by many military analysts,
now that the traditional U.S. foe -- the former Soviet Union, with its
bulging arsenal of nuclear weapons -- has become our debtor and almost our
pal.

Biological and chemical agents are called "the poor man's nuclear weapons:"
When used against civilian populations, their shock value would more than
compensate for their tactical inefficiency on the battlefield.

If an enemy force sprayed killer germs on U.S. troops, soldiers could use
HANAA to quickly identify the microbes and take an antidote.

For example, if troops inhaled a toxic cloud containing pulmonary anthrax,
they could die within days. Before HANAA, experts might have needed weeks to
identify the killer and protect soldiers.

With the device, the microbes could be identified within "about 15 minutes,
although we have done it as fast as seven," says Ron Koopman, a physicist
who is special projects manager for the "Chem/Bio" National Security Program
at Livermore.

Decades ago, Americans feared death from the sky -- a murderous rain of
inter-continental ballistic missiles fitted with Soviet nuclear warheads.

But nowadays, "the biggest thing we have to worry about are Ryder rental
trucks," says Sunnyvale's Chuck Hansen, creator of the acclaimed CD-ROM
"Swords of Armageddon," a rich mine of documents on Cold War nuclear
weapons.

He was alluding to the truck carrying explosive agents that right-wing
terrorists used to destroy a federal office building in Oklahoma City in
1995.

"Look at that whacked-out cult in Japan that spread (nerve gas) in the
subway system," Hansen adds.

Politicians talk about guarding against terrorists armed with biowarfare
agents, but Hansen is pessimistic: "The border's just too porous, both the
Mexican and Canadian borders. We'd probably have to become a police state to
stop it."

In his view, the era after the Gulf War is one in which America's enemies
are defined by comparatively small, fierce nations like Iraq and affiliated
terrorist groups, not by geopolitical octopi like the old Soviet Union. Less
than a year after the Gulf War, the bankrupt Soviet Union -- which was
humiliated by its inability to intervene on behalf of its Iraqi ally --
vanished into history.

"The nature of the threat has certainly changed," says Hansen, who is
preparing a new edition of his CD-ROM. "Great big nuclear-bombing tank
battles on the plains of Germany probably aren't going to happen now.
Instead, the kinds of threats we face will be the kind we faced in the last
10 to 15 years - - small conflicts in faraway places."

"Take the Cole incident," he says, referring to the October bomb attack on a
U.S. destroyer in Yemen. "Trying to protect against that, the military is
faced with almost the same kind of threat they faced with the (suicide dive-
bombing) kamikazes at the end of World War II.

"If somebody really wants to get through to you and is willing to sacrifice
their lives to do it, they can probably get through to you."

In interviews, military experts cited other post-Gulf War trends in
weaponry:

-- Improved radar for use in bad weather and difficult terrain. The high-
tech weapons of the Gulf War functioned unusually well at least partly
because they were used in a region with relatively simple weather and
terrain -- in other words, sunny skies and largely flat desert terrain.

The limits of "smart" weaponry became clear when the United States and its
allies intervened in the Bosnian war and in Kosovo, Tegnelia says. The tree-
covered Balkan terrain and sometimes difficult weather made it harder to
spot enemy troop movements.

Hence the recent trend toward "smarter" radar able to see through fog, rain
and trees. Scientists at Sandia Labs are developing very small, portable
radar systems that can see objects otherwise veiled by weather or terrain
features.

-- Improved cruise missiles. During the Gulf War, cruise missiles were
confused by the relatively flat terrain of the desert, which lacked features
easily recognizable by the missile's on-board radar and computers.

So now, cruise missiles navigate using the same system trusted by many
hikers and campers: the GPS (Global Positioning System) satellite network.

"GPS is much more accurate," says Hansen. "In the case of the Gulf War, some
of these missiles had to cross very large, featureless terrain where there
were no landmarks for the radar to latch onto."

-- Robots. "Drone" aircraft are just the beginning of the roboticization of
warfare, which may eventually replace many troops with machines, according
to some military visionaries. Eventually, some say, robots could all but
eliminate human casualties in warfare.

Although Tegnelia works for one of the nation's preeminent military labs,
and welcomes roboticization as a way to lessen U.S. casualties, he isn't
sure that the ultimate dream -- "risk-free" wars -- would be a total
blessing.

Is the United States, he asks, prepared to risk the global revulsion that
might result, should this nation be capable of exerting its military might
anywhere with impunity -- and whether or not the use of force is justified?

"If you can go to war without risk, is that a morally good position to be
in?" he asks. "The concept of risk-free warfare is kind of a frightening
thing. "



WEAPONS OF WAR

Some weapons that played a key role during the Gulf War.

Patriot
Land-based anti-aircraft weapon used against surface-to-surface guided
missiles, especially Scuds.

Scud
NATO's name for Soviet-made SS-1, surface-to-surface ballistic missile able
to carry warheads with varying accuracy to targets up to 560 miles away.

Tomahawk
$1 million cruise missile launched from ships, submarines or B-52 bombers.
They can be guided to targets 800 miles away by onboard computer.

Apache
U.S. Army's super-advanced AH-64 attack helicopter, designed to fight at
close range night or day.

Abrams
M1A1 Tank Main U.S. battle tank that gained reputation as the world's best
heavy tank. . Stealth F-117 Nighthawk, the world's first operational
"stealth" attack plane, skimmed undetected through Iraq's radar and air
defenses..

Black Hawk
Successor to Vietnam-era UH-1 Huey as the Army's main workhorse helicopter.

Warthog
U.S. Air Force's A-10 is nicknamed for its ungainly appearance. Designed for
close support of ground troops, it carries guns, missiles and smart bombs.

B-52 Stratofortress
History's most durable bomber, this eight-engined B-52, with its 40-foot
shark- fin tail and drooping wings, was upgraded to use missiles.

Bradley
Speedy, tracked troop carrier with powerful 25-mm "Bushmaster" chain gun.


http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,248-69202,00.html

*  BOMBS THAT TURN OUR LEADERS INTO BUTCHERS
by Simon Jenkins
The Times, 17th January

Still the war continues, killing and maiming hundreds. Every other day,
someone treads on a bomb, plays with it or hits it with a hoe or a fishing
line. Instantly the years roll back and blood and guts are everywhere. There
are far too many bombs ever to be cleared. When they are discovered and made
safe, their relics are built into fences, roofs and table legs, or act as
baths, water troughs and even keyrings. The rest form a landscape of fear
from which the enemy will never be driven, a killing field that will never
see peace.

With the tenth anniversary of the Gulf War bombing campaign, and the second
anniversary of the Yugoslav one looming, I last week visited the greatest
bomb-site in history. It is the forgotten Plain of Jars, surely the worldıs
most unobtrusive battlefield. For nine years, from 1964 to 1973, the tiny
nation of Laos was bombed more ferociously than anywhere before or since.
The bombing failed. Laos was not ³bombed back to the Stone Age², as promised
by US generals. It was merely bombed into communism. Communist it remains to
this day.

The beautiful plain, in reality a long valley flanked by high karst
mountains, is still a morass of craters, each containing unknown horrors.
Its settlements were more blasted than the Somme, more flattened than
Dresden. The 500-year-old provincial capital of Xiang Khouang saw its
temples reduced to dustclouds by B52s, described afterwards as ³looking like
Hiroshima². Nobody knows how many people died. The only memorial I saw was
to the 320 villagers of Tham Piu, forced from their homes into a cave, where
a direct hit from a T28 rocket incinerated them. When the regimes of
South-East Asia are told to hand over their ³war criminals², they ask in
sincere naivety: ³Will Americans be there too?² I am not much given to
battlefield tourism. I have never been a soldier, and find the silent
detritus of war impossible to relate to historyıs grand logic. We are told
that central Laos has always been contested land, and that Hmong tribesmen
used as mercenaries by the Americans were always foes of the Vietnamese. If
half their menfolk died and two thirds became refugees to keep Laos ³safe
from communism², such are the cruelties of history. Laos was proof only that
the weak get hurt when the strong go to war.

The Laos war was kept secret for six years, as the CIA and its special air
force units supported local troops against the communist Pathet Lao and
Vietcong. Though devoid of legal or moral justification, it was an efficient
war. Commanders freed of bureaucracy and political scrutiny fought well.
Strike aircraft were effective in close support of the Hmong ground troops.
Laos was probably the last war in which airmen took greater risks than
ground troops, notably the forward fire control Cessna pilots. Christopher
Robbinsıs account of their war, The Ravens, is one of the best battlefield
books I know.

Robbinsıs book is a textbook on what air superiority can achieve, and what
it cannot. Its villain is the US Air Force, whose incompetence in South-East
Asia was of Crimean dimensions. By the time Nixon and Kissinger sent the Air
Forceıs ³strategic² B52s to the Plain of Jars in 1970 ‹ against the pleading
of local commanders ‹ the Vietnam War was lost. But punitive bombing exacted
a terrible revenge on Laos, as on Cambodia to the south. Laos suffered a
monsoon of destruction, with a peak of 500 sorties a day. The B52s used
napalm, defoliants and weapons which, on any definition, were ³chemical².
They bombed the plainıs neolithic jars, like bombing Stonehenge. At night
they hosed anything that moved with cannon. Yet the enemy calmly went on
building roads and moving troops and supplies. The bombs were ineffective.

America is still ³in denial² over Laos, where its chief concern is to search
for the bodies of missing American pilots. It cares less for the Laotian
bodies still to come. There are estimated to be some nine million unexploded
bombs and bomblets (or ³bombies² the size of tennis balls) littering the
country. They constitute a gigantic, unmapped minefield. The BLU and CBU
canister weapons contained hundreds of delayed action bomblets, each with
timers and 250 ball bearings. They were and are wholly unreliable, a quarter
to a third not exploding as intended. Todayıs mutilated victims fill the
hospitals and beg in the streets. A quarter of the casualties are small
boys.

No remotely civilised state should use such weapons. Britain uses them. The
RAF dropped them on Iraq in 1991 and on Yugoslavia in 1999. I have no doubt
they are being dropped on Iraq this very day. They are no more accurate or
sophisticated than those used in Laos 30 years ago, more than a quarter
reportedly failing to explode in Yugoslavia. Indeed rules requiring pilots
to fly above missile range make them even more dangerous. No modern air
force would dare risk a Cessna for precision fire control, as in Laos.
Missed targets are not ³accidents². They are the calculable risk of using
specific weapons from specific heights on specific targets. A Cessna Raven
would have prevented the disastrous bombing of the Kosovan refugee column or
the Serbian commuter train.

Cluster bombs are disproportionately horrific weapons. Dud cluster bombs are
random landmines. The British Government supposedly signed the 1997 Landmine
Convention and its Mines Advisory Group is even active in the Plain of Jars.
The International Development Secretary, Clare Short, likes to be
photographed in ³Diana-style² mine-clearing garb. Yet Ms Short sat in the
Cabinet that approved the cluster bombing of Yugoslavia, including the
daylight massacre in Nis marketplace. I recall her on Any Questions? as a
vociferous champion of the bombing. The estimated 14,000 unexploded bombs
with which her Government ³seeded² the (mostly Kosovan) landscape are far
more dangerous than landmines. Minefields are usually mapped and may blow
off a leg. A bombie may lurk anywhere and its makers promise death over
1,000 square metres. How Ms Short finds bombies acceptable and mines not is
a mystery.

Laos is a land of grim lessons for the bombing lobby. It showed the worth of
close air support in the heat of battle. But this required pilots brave
enough to engage the enemy with precision at close quarters. The politics of
virtual war make this no longer an option. Pilots must fly high and safe.
Smart missiles may nowadays compensate for the ³lack of eyeball², but they
require static targets, and the RAF is too poor to afford many Tomahawks.
Three quarters of its Yugoslavia bombs were ³dumb² and their accuracy is now
accepted as poor to dreadful. The military case for Natoıs bombing strategy
has been reduced in most debates to: ³Well, we won in the end².

The contribution of bombing to the conflicts in Iraq and Yugoslavia has been
heralded as a new era of risk-free, airborne coercion. So said The Economist
last week. The historian John Keegan claimed in yesterdayıs Daily Telegraph
that ³air power, technology and international morality now march in step²,
making the global triumph of democracy unstoppable. This is surely mad.
Strategic bombing did not oust the Iraqis from Kuwait or the Serbs from
Kosovo. This needed an actual or threatened ground assault. So-called
strategic bombing of non-military targets in Serbia and Iraq did nothing to
topple their respective regimes. Slobodan Milosevic went only when voted
from power and deserted by his army. Saddam Hussein is still there. Close
air support has a role in any war. But the photogenic nature of strategic
bombing makes it no more effective today than it was in Europe in 1945 or
South-East Asia in 1970.

The bombing of Laos ranks among the most obscene acts of war. It was wanton
destruction, power without restraint divorced from the purpose of battle,
which is to take and hold territory. Laos, thank God, is recovering. But
each week the echoes of that power still explode across its landscape, as
they do across the plains of Iraq and Yugoslavia. Like medieval armies
salting fields and poisoning wells, modern air forces leave behind them
weapons which they know will sprout death for decades to come. I am told
that not a single Cabinet minister protested against their use.


http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=152943

*  CONDOLEEZA RICE COMMENTS IRAQ SANCTIONS, BALKANS
by Pamela Hess

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 (UPI) -- Condoleezza Rice, Bush's pick to be national
security adviser, says one of the new administration's top priorities will
be to "re-energize" the unraveling sanctions regime against Iraq.

"The sanctions regime needs to be reinforced and strengthened....I think
it's very clear we have a big job to do in trying to re-energize
(sanctions). We need to rededicate our efforts in making sure he doesn't
turn himself into a terrorist...or threaten his neighbors," said Rice at a
foreign policy forum Wednesday. "We're going to have to take it on because
no one wants to see Saddam Hussein escape his box."

Sanctions have been in place against Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War but Iraq's
neighbors and oil-hungry potential customers are increasingly violating
them; Iraq and Syria have struck a trade agreement and have reopened an oil
pipeline between them.

The problem in Iraq is just one of many Rice and Bush will be inheriting and
one of the few Rice made definitive policy statements on at a conference
sponsored by the United States Institute of Peace.

On the Balkans, Rice denied Bush ever contemplated a withdrawal from
peacekeeping commitments there and said he would do nothing to withdraw the
troops without consulting the allies.

"He believes it is important to review American deployments in various parts
of the world...but any review of any deployments would take place in the
context of alliance consultations," Rice said, adding he would not renege on
America's commitment to the process.

"That has not changed. That continues to be the policy today," Rice said.

Bush made a withdrawal of troops from the Balkans an issue in his campaign,
suggesting that U.S. troops are overstressed by frequent deployments and
that he would review worldwide deployments with an eye toward bringing at
least some of them home.

"I'm concerned that we're overdeployed around the world. You see, I think
the mission has somewhat become fuzzy. Should I be fortunate enough to earn
your confidence, the mission of the United States military will be to be
prepared and ready to fight and win war, and therefore prevent war from
happening in the first place. There may be some moments when we use our
troops as peacekeepers, but not often," Bush said in the Oct. 17, 2000
presidential debate.

Rice added to the picture by telling the New York Times in October that
extended peacekeeping degrades America's ability to carry out more important
military tasks.

"The United States is the only power that can handle a showdown in the Gulf,
mount the kind of force that is needed to protect Saudi Arabia and deter a
crisis in the Taiwan Straits. And extended peacekeeping detracts from our
readiness and these kinds of global missions," Rice told the newspaper.

Rice Wednesday sidestepped a question on whether the Bush administration
would pick up where President Clinton leaves off in the Middle East, or
whether it would offer its own peace proposal.

"There's one president of the United States until Jan. 20. I think
President-elect Bush believes until he is president of the Untied States he
is not going to make foreign policy," she said.

With regard to Russia, Rice said Bush "has made it clear he expects to have
a fruitful, professional relationship with Russia," Rice said. "I don't
think 'hard line' approach would accurately characterize that."

In April 2000, Bush's campaign Web site suggested Bush would toughen the
U.S. approach to Russia. It said he opposed further International Monetary
Fund loans Russia and would "redirect American assistance, investment and
loans to the Russian people, not to the bank accounts of corrupt officials."
Bush also said he would "withhold international financial assistance from
Russia because of the Russian government's attacks against civilians in
Chechnya."

Rice said under her leadership the National Security Council would recast
itself as a broker between the various government agencies that dabble in
foreign affairs in an attempt to develop a coherent U.S. foreign policy
adhered to by all agencies.

It would be a change from the current construct in which the NSC prepares
the government for "total war" -- a construct she said ignores the changing
world structure in which a variety of foreign policy tools present
themselves to the president.

"The challenge in 2001 is to unit the concerns of all agencies working
across our borders," Rice said. "These many agencies have to perform in
concern, they have to have a clearly written sheet of music so everyone
knows what tune to play."

"We at the NSC are going to try to work the seams," she said.

One of the main changes will be creating a new office -- a deputy to the
assistant to the president for international economic affairs -- that will
also report directly to Rice. "We will have a single seamless staff that
will be responsible for the whole range of issues. It could be one of the
most important innovations that we try to make."


http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,423528,00.html

*  DEADLY BLAST FROM THE PAST
by David Hambling
Guardian,  January 18, 2001

The MoD ran into a storm of criticism when it announced that it was
developing a thermobaric weapon for urban warfare. News coverage compared
the device to a tactical nuclear weapon and doubts were raised over its
legality. True, thermobaric weapons are different from normal explosives,
but are they necessarily worse?

Every year, hundreds of lives are lost in blasts which do not involve
explosive substances. Flour is normally pretty harmless, but if a cloud of
flour reaches a critical concentration in the air it forms an explosive
mixture. In fact, any flammable powder or gas can explode if mixed with air
in a certain ratio. All it takes is a spark for ignition, and flame
accelerates through the cloud to supersonic speeds, creating a lethal
shockwave. Many flour mills have been destroyed this way, and there have
been explosions associated with powdered soy beans, wheat bran and even
walnut shells.

Explosions in mines were always blamed on gas, until it was shown that coal
dust alone can create a blast. A demonstration beloved of physics teachers
shows that even custard powder is explosive under the right conditions.

The effect is referred to as a fuel-air or thermobaric ("heat pressure")
explosion, and the shockwave from it is unusual in two ways. The extremely
high-speed burning means that the force of the blast, known as the
overpressure, is greater than that produced by high explosives.

Because it comes from a wide area instead of a single point, the shockwave
lasts longer. And although it is measured in milliseconds, the longer
duration makes it much more damaging to buildings. It is the difference
between a brief shove which a wooden fence can spring back from, and a
sustained push which will break through it. The only other explosions which
produce a prolonged shockwave are nuclear.

Since a thermobaric explosion can use almost anything flammable as fuel, it
does not need to be based on a standard explosive. Many substances release
more energy than high explosives when they burn. A thermobaric bomb could be
five to 10 times as powerful as a standard one of the same weight, even
before the added effects of a fuel-air blast are taken into account.

Developing a fuel-air weapon involves major technical challenges. Ideally, a
warhead would release a perfectly uniform cloud of gas which would mix
perfectly with the air before being ignited. But the unpredictable effects
of the wind, terrain and climate meant that the early fuel-air bombs were
more useful for engineering tasks than as weapons. The most famous was the
fearsome BLU-82 "Big Blue 82". At more than seven tonnes, it is too large
for a bomber or attack aircraft, and has to be rolled out of the back of a
modified Hercules transport. In Vietnam it was used to create instant
helicopter landing pads out of the thickest jungle.

Another use was mine clearance. The pressure wave from a BLU-82 can detonate
mines over a wide area. One was tested against the minefields in Iraq in
1991 with limited success, though the blast was awesome. The hot air rose
rapidly, taking a column of smoke and dust with it, until it reached a layer
of cooler air in the atmosphere and flattened out to make a mushroom cloud.
The partial vacuum at ground level sucked in more air - hence the name
'vacuum bomb' sometimes given to these weapons.

An SAS patrol is reported to have mistaken the cloud for a nuclear attack,
and nearby Iraqis probably thought the same. The US Air Force capitalised on
the morale effect by showering the Iraqis with leaflets with a picture of
the BLU-82 and the message "You're next - flee or die".

According to one source, a BLU-82 was even used to mask a chemical weapons
strike. The high temperature and rising cloud would have dispersed the
chemical agent completely, while the blast destroyed any signs on the
ground.

A lthough the blast from a thermobaric weapon is very powerful, blast is not
a very effective way of killing people. Some 200 years ago, Henry Shrapnel,
an English artillery officer, invented a shell that scattered musket balls
when it burst. This made it far more lethal than those which relied on
gunpowder alone. The same principle has been used ever since, leading to
fragmentation grenades and the horribly effective nail-bomb. The stun
grenade, on the other hand, is designed with a cardboard casing so as not to
throw out any dangerous fragments and cause concussion only. Shrapnel is
indiscriminate; a grenade is lethal to a range of three metres or so, but
there is still a risk of injury 60 metres away. Fuel-air weapons which
produce little shrapnel are less likely to cause "collateral damage" in this
way.

The ultimate development of the fragmentation weapon is the cluster bomb. A
hundred small bombs give more deadly coverage than one big one, creating an
intermeshing pattern of deadly metal shards over a wide area. The problem is
that fuses are not entirely reliable, leaving several unexploded but
dangerous bomblets scattered about every time one is used. If a fuel-air
bomb does not detonate, the explosive cloud blows away and disperses on the
wind.

The weapon that the Ministry of Defence is developing would be carried and
fired by a single soldier. It is intended for use in an urban environment,
where soldiers are often faced with snipers holed up in buildings. The only
choices are to storm the building or use enough explosives to virtually
demolish it. A thermobaric weapon may be able to break through a brick wall.
It may not need to: the cloud from a fuel-air weapon will permeate open
windows and doors, and the blast inside a closed space is greatly magnified.
The only real defence is a hermetically sealed bunker.

The injuries caused by blast are as unpleasant as anything on the
battlefield. Most damage is caused when the shockwave passes from tissue to
fluid or air, resulting in collapsed lungs and multiple internal
haemorrhages. Anyone inside the cloud when it is detonated will probably be
killed instantly.

The drive to gain hard currency means that many of these weapons are already
on the open market. These include the 11kg disposable Shmel rocket, and a
new fuel-air warhead for the venerable RPG rocket launcher favoured by
guerrillas around the world. So although the British Army may never have a
thermobaric weapon, their opponents might be able to pick from an arsenal of
them.


http://www.wn.com/?action=display&article=5359685&template=worldnews/search.
txt&index=recent

*  ANALYSIS: KHALILZAD AND BUSH'S AFGHANISTAN POLICY
UPI, Thu 18 Jan 2001

While not attracting the level of attention as the Middle East peace
process, a national missile defense system or even the crumbling U.N.
sanctions regime against Iraq, the Bush administration will have to make
several key decisions quickly on Afghanistan.

With a group of militant clerics controlling 95 percent of a country that is
one of the world's leading exporters of Heroin and Islamic fundamentalism,
Afghanistan presents one of the thorniest foreign policy dilemmas for the
incoming team of advisers that will shape U.S. policy in Central Asia and
the Middle East for the next four years. To start, President-elect George W.
Bush will have to decide whether to pursue the Clinton administration's
policy of working indirectly through Moscow with the Northern Alliance, the
government officially recognized for Afghanistan at the United Nations and a
group likely to benefit from the one sided arms embargo against the Taliban
adopted by the U.N. last month at the urging of U.S. policy makers.

Bush will also have to decide whether the apprehension of Osama Bin Laden,
the man the State Department believes masterminded the 1998 bombings of two
U.S. embassies in Africa, will dominate policy towards Afghanistan the way
it has under Clinton. And if so, does engagement with the Taliban, which
have suggested in meetings with State Department officials that Bin Laden be
tried in a third Islamic country, represent the best chance for shutting
down the man's notorious terrorism network.

One man who will likely be at the center of the next administration's policy
is Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghani-American who served under President Reagan's
State Department and President Bush's Pentagon and influenced the last
American adventure in region when the CIA helped ship surface-to-air
missiles to the Mujahideen, the holy warriors who fought against the
Soviets. Khalilzad now finds himself in a position to influence the next
administration's policy for cleaning up the mess created by the Mujahideen's
struggle in the 1980s, as the man in charge of staffing the Pentagon for the
Bush-Cheney transition team.

The last person to hold that position was Anthony Lake, who went on to
become President Clinton's National Security Adviser. Khalilzad is rumored
to be a leading candidate for a top position in the Defense Department, a
place where his close friend and old boss Paul Wolfowitz is likely be the
deputy to Secretary of Defense-designate, Donald Rumsfeld. And Khalilzad has
not been quiet in his years out of government about the problem in
Afghanistan.

The trouble is, as an analyst for the Rand Corporation and before that the
chief consultant for Unocal, the oil company that sought to build a pipeline
through Afghanistan, maybe he has said too much. In an article in the Winter
2000 edition of the Washington Quarterly, published by the Center for
Strategic International Studies, Khalilzad argues in no uncertain terms for
supporting the Pashtun majority in Afghanistan to roll back the Taliban
government and working "discreetly" with Iran and Russia to destabilize the
government in Kabul.

"Facts on the ground, rather than U.N. resolutions and international
conferences, are what determine the behavior of the Taliban and other
factions in Afghanistan Preventing the Taliban from consolidating control
over all of the country is a necessary precondition toward moderating its
policies," he wrote in the Washington Quarterly. The Taliban (which means
"students" in Arabic) are so called because they emerged from religious
seminaries set up in the refugee camps in Pakistan to which many Afghans
fled as their country disintegrated during the 1980s and '90s. Much of the
rigid moral code the sect imposes on its people stems from Pashtun
traditions. .

Frederick Starr, the chairman of the Central Asia Caucus Institute at Johns
Hopkins University, said in an interview Thursday that supporting the
Pashtun would exacerbate problems in a country that has sizeable Uzbek,
Tajik and Hazara minorities that feel the Taliban favors the Pashtun
majority. "We should be struggling after this misstep in the U.N. to regain
our position as an arbitrator. Any attempt to manipulate the power
relationship in Afghanistan would be a mistake."

And Starr is not alone. Charles Santos, who worked with Khalilzad on a
Unocal advisory group in 1996 and 1997 is also critical of his pro-Pashtun
stance. "Afghanistan is a complex balance of different ethnic groups all of
which must be represented in any kind of effort of solving the problem, any
effort which over emphasizes a particular ethnic group over another such as
the Pashtuns is bound to perpetuate the conflict and create more problems."

Khalilzad did not always advocate weakening the Taliban government per se.
As recently as 1999, he supported a gradual kind of engagement with the
theocracy in Kabul. In a draft white paper presented to staff members of the
House International Relations Committee, Khalilzad recommended "U.S. policy
toward Afghanistan should follow two parallel and complementary tracks, one
of which extends a hand to the Taliban and the other of which prepares for a
much tougher policy should the Taliban reject U.S. overtures." In that
paper, Khalilzad recommends the United States recognize the Taliban regime
only if it cooperates on narcotics exports; agrees to reform its political
system; reduce human rights abuses and end any support for terrorism.

According to three sources in the meeting where Khalilzad presented this
paper, he was roundly rebuked by House staff for advocating what was
considered an unrealistic and soft approach towards the Taliban government
that was not interested in engagement. Indeed, only months later, Khalilzad
seemed to come around to this view. In the Washington Quarterly he wrote,
"There is little reason to expect to expect the Taliban to renounce
radicalism in exchange for ties to Washington. As have other Islamic
radicals in the past, the Taliban have shown little regard for Washington."
--


http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=153682

*  DIVERSE FAITH GROUPS AT PRAYER LUNCH
by Tobin Beck

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- People representing many conservative Christian
denominations but also a spectrum of religious and ethnic groups gathered
for an Inaugural prayer luncheon Friday, hearing speakers ranging from
Attorney General-designate John Ashcroft to the Revs. Robert Schuller, Jerry
Falwell and Sun Myung Moon call for people of faith to work together.

Ashcroft, grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee during confirmation
hearings this week, told the gathering of some 1,700 people that "the last
few weeks there have been some things said that weren't too encouraging."

He went on to tell a story of walking in downtown Washington after getting
off the Metro subway and hearing the strains of the hymn "Amazing Grace." He
said he saw a man sitting on a milk crate, wearing an old high school band
jacket, playing the hymn on a trumpet. Ashcroft said he was walking past
when the man put down the trumpet.

"The fellow said, 'I just want to thank you for what you stand for and I
wanted to wish you well," Ashcroft said. He said he started to walk away and
then heard the trumpet playing the hymn, "Love Lifted Me."

"I thought to myself, sometimes we get inspiration and values from places we
least expect," he said.

The Rev. Walter E. Fauntroy, former congressman and pastor of New Bethel
Baptist Church, was a master of ceremonies for the event at the Hyatt
Regency Hotel. Fauntroy, who worked with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
during the civil rights movement of the 1960s and was District of Columbia
coordinator for the 1963 March on Washington, quoted from King: "We must all
learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."

Falwell told the group the new administration could go a long way to
bringing God's blessings by bringing about a ban on partial birth abortions.
He also called for moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to
Jerusalem, and rebuked Senate Democrats for "their attempt at religious
profiling" of Ashcroft during the confirmation hearing.

Falwell also talked about the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who acknowledged fathering
a daughter outside his marriage. He said Jackson apologized for the hurt he
caused his loved ones, said he was supporting the child, and asked for
prayers. Falwell said it was a time for understanding.

"It's not a time to put our foot on the neck of anyone," he said.

Entertainer Pat Boone, who sang "In America," told the group that while the
United States includes people of many faiths, faith in God has made the
country strong.

"We are one nation under God," he said. He also said: "To those who are not
Christian, whatever your faith is, we love you, we cherish you, we respect
you." And he went on to add: "The Constitution did not ordain freedom from
religion, but open freedom of religion for all."

Schuller complimented participants on attending even though they might not
agree with each other on theology.

"This couldn't be a more mixed group ... and yet there is a spirit of
unity," he said.

Imam Hassan Qazwini, director of the Islamic Center of America, based in
Detroit, called on Allah to bring enlightenment in place of prejudices and
partisanship, and prayed that Allah would "bring smiles to the suffering
children around the world -- especially the children of Iraq and Palestine."

Qazwini also told the group that before the luncheon, people seeing him in
his Muslim clerical garb had assumed he was from Iran and wished him well
during his stay in the United States. He said he responded: "Actually, I'm
from Michigan," where Muslims comprise 4 percent of the population.

Stephen Goldsmith, senior adviser to President-elect George W. Bush for
Faith-Based Initiatives and former mayor of Indianapolis, told the group
about the desire for a government that is not hostile to faith-based
initiatives to improve people's lives. He said the administration would
"work across religious and ethnic lines ... to bring opportunities to those
who prosperity has left behind."

Moon, a North Korean native who founded the Unification Church, was
introduced by Washington Times Editor in Chief Wes Pruden, who praised Moon
for his fight against communism despite imprisonment and persecution, and
for founding the Washington Times as a secular newspaper.

"I am determined that this newspaper will always be faithful to the values
that bind God's children together," Pruden said. He said while the Cold War
against communism had been won, "we now are on a battlefield just as dear --
for families."

Moon called for prayers "that our new president lives up to the challenges
of this prestigious office and commands the respect of all Americans and
people the world over."

In a speech of about 15 minutes, Moon also spoke of the husband and wife
relationship as a cornerstone of families and God's plan for overcoming the
struggle between mind and body.

He said the various faiths emerged to cultivate the human spirit, which he
said "is why religions tell us to fast, to serve others, to be sacrificial."

Moon was presented an award by an ecumenical group of ministers for his work
on behalf of family values.

The luncheon was sponsored by the Washington Times Foundation. The
Washington Times is owned by News World Communications Inc., which also owns
United Press International.







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