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GENERAL INTEREST SUPPLEMENT, 1-7/12/01 (I got the month right this time) These are some items of general interest, picked up on the way, relating to the New World Order but not directly to Iraq. * Silent Peril Lies in Wait for Afghanistan's People [Unexploded cluster bombs] * Uphill Bid to Oust Lone Dissenter [Attempt by Audie Bock, former Green Party activist, to overthrow the only US Congress opponent of the war against Afghanistan, Barbara Lee. Shades of Joschka Fischer.] * The Mouth That Roars Is Testing U.S. Patience {Hugo Chavez. The argument is that the US cannot afford to tolerate anything in the world other than an unfailing and awed state of admiration.] * U.S. Presses Terror War in 7 Nations [Probably quite realistic assessment of the next moves in the jihad against Śterrorismą.] * Recycling the oil weapon [Argument that fear of an oil embargo shouldnąt inhibit the US drive to conquer the world, for its own safety of course] * Interpol lacks tools to fight terror, says head [Interpol marginalised because it includes countries Iraq for example which the US doesnąt like.] * For now, the military goes on hold [Includes a passing reference to a horror most of us probably hadnąt noticed: Śthe US freezing of funds linked to Somalia's leading financial house, al-Barakaat, is already hitting home. Remittances from Somalis working abroad sent via al-Barakaat are Somalia's largest single source of income. This US financial offensive is devastating enough.ą] http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la 000095595dec01.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dnation * SILENT PERIL LIES IN WAIT FOR AFGHANISTAN'S PEOPLE by Paul Watson and Lisa Getter Los Angeles Times, 1st December KALAKAN, Afghanistan -- More than two weeks after the last U.S. cluster bomb struck Taliban troops in this front-line village, lethal bomblets still litter the dirt paths and fields, lying in wait for farmers coming home. Some are hidden in shallow holes, under bits of rubble, or partially buried in the soil, like one bomblet that fell beside a narrow path with all but its parachute covered by dirt. At first glance, the parachute looks like just another piece of trash, the sort of thing a child might try to pick up or an adult could step on. That is what a returning villager did around 7 a.m. last Sunday. He was one of two men who had come from Kabul, about 12 miles to the south, to visit their ruined homes and fields. The bomblet exploded, killing him and wounding a companion. The U.S. has dropped about 600 cluster bombs in Afghanistan since the war began. Each bomb disperses 202 bomblets the size of soda cans. Judging from past military campaigns, at least 5% of the bomblets landed without exploding, leaving about 6,000 potential death traps on the ground. Scattered deaths and injuries among Afghan civilians have sparked renewed controversy over the cluster bombs, which strategists value as a devastating weapon against massed enemy troops, despite the toll they exact among noncombatants. "Clearly, cluster bombs have shown to be a greater hazard to civilians than virtually any other weapon that is legal," said William Arkin, a former Army intelligence analyst who has studied the bombs. Relief workers, physicians and former military officers, among others, say cluster bombs can be just as dangerous to civilians as land mines and should warrant the same international scrutiny. Land mines are banned by many countries, though not the United States. Unexploded cluster-bomb canisters often penetrate loose soil, get stuck in trees, or fall into holes, where people accidentaly set them off long after a war is over. Unlike land mines, they can't be sniffed out by dogs; the slightest contact with the animal's nose can set the bombs off. In Afghanistan, the bomblets are yellow, the same color as food packets dropped by warplanes, adding to the peril and controversy. U.S. fighter jets dropped their first cluster bombs Oct. 26 on reinforced front lines of Taliban troops at the strategic northern crossroad of Mazar-i-Sharif. The Pentagon says the bombs helped opposition fighters capture their first major city. "The place to best use them is in an area that would have minimal collateral damage impact and maximum numbers of forces that you would wish to kill," said Rear Adm. John D. Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The triangular parachutes are designed to inflate as the bomblets fall. They are supposed to help disperse the bomblets over a wide area and slow their descent so that they hit the ground at the proper angle to explode on impact. Experts say the bomblets often don't explode in sand, snow and mud. The high altitude from which the larger cluster bombs are dropped and wind conditions can increase the number of bomblets that land without detonating, said Peter Le Sueur, an expert on clearing mines and unexploded ordnance in Afghanistan. "From Laos to Lebanon, from Kuwait to Kosovo, hard experience teaches that unexploded cluster bomblets pose enduring risk to civilian populations," said Virgil Wiebe, a University of Maryland visiting law professor who has researched cluster bombs. In Laos, where the U.S. dropped tons of the bombs during the Vietnam War, there are fresh reports of cluster bomb casualties even now, three decades later. Most of the victims are children. What makes the bombs an effective military weapon--the bomblets can spread over an area as large as three football fields--also makes them hazardous to civilians. To enhance their accuracy, the Defense Department has retrofitted about 450 of the cluster bombs dropped in Afghanistan with wind-correction tail kits. The special device corrects the bomb's course at high altitudes. But witnesses on the ground say bomblets nevertheless have landed in civilian areas. On Tuesday, one apparent cluster bomb rained over a semi-nomadic settlement known as Zar Karez, east of the north-south road between Kandahar and Pakistan. Abdul Qadar, a 25-year-old shepherd, was eating a meal of buttermilk and bread when the bomb knocked him unconscious. His brother, Abdul Nader, 30, described the scene: "The United States bombs were raining over the village," he said. "The bomb divided into many, many bombs. They were spreading over a 400-meter area." The bomb left Qadar hospitalized with shrapnel wounds in his back and a severe wound in his pelvis that stained his rough cotton trousers with blood. United Nations officials said this week that their workers had cleared undetonated cluster bomblets from 54 homes and a mosque in Qala Shater, a village near the western city of Herat. A 12-year-old boy blew off part of his arm in Herat, reportedly after picking up an unexploded cluster bomblet. Humanitarian groups have said that whoever drops the bombs should be responsible for the cleanup. The U.S. has a different view. "Those responsible for the conflict should bear the burden of that," said Maj. Mike Halbig, a Defense Department spokesman. "We've been quite clear that the people responsible for what is happening over there are Al Qaeda and the Taliban." But Halbig said the U.S. would work with Afghanistan and other countries "to reach a solution to this issue." He noted that the U.S. has funded mine-removal efforts in Afghanistan since 1989. Meanwhile, United Nations workers and other groups cleaning up mines left over from the conflict with the Soviets in the 1980s are trying to deal with the new unexploded cluster bomblets. "The problem is these things will lay there dormant for years and years and years. After the good and bad guys leave, there are people that have to live, work and farm in these areas," said retired Army Lt. Col. Gary Wright, who studied the deadly aftermath of cluster bombs in the Gulf War, where some experts believe 2 million unexploded bomblets were left in Iraq and Kuwait. "It's a genuine mine field." Wrapping humanitarian food rations in the same color packets as the bomblets is a "tragic mistake," said Jean Ziegler of Switzerland, a United Nations food official. Although the Pentagon said it would change the color of the ration packages to avoid confusion with the bomblets, it hasn't done so yet. U.S. radio broadcasts urge Aghans to "please, please exercise caution when approaching unidentified yellow objects in areas that have been recently bombed." Unexploded bomblets also left a deadly legacy in Kosovo. In a meeting last year with the All-Party Parliamentary Landmine Eradication Group in London, NATO officials said they dropped 1,392 cluster bombs and that an 8% to 12% failure rate "is supported by information on the ground," according to notes of the presentation. The unexploded canisters had killed 47 people, including 24 children, in the year after the 78-day conflict ended. Another 101 people were injured, NATO reported. The International Committee of the Red Cross found that children under the age of 14 were five times more likely to be killed or maimed by cluster bombs in Kosovo than by land mines. Dr. Adam Kushner, 36, visited Kosovo in August 1999 to learn about the impact of land mines on civilians for a Boston-based group called Physicians for Human Rights. But he came away thinking that cluster bombs were even more of a hazard. He saw an 8-year-old girl who lost two of her fingers when she approached "a bright colored object in some bushes." He found a 23-year-old man who, while tending cows, hit a yellow object hanging in a tree with a stick. The ensuing blast sent the man to the hospital for three weeks. "They were probably the lucky people," Kushner said. In a January 2000 "after-action report" on Kosovo for Congress, the Pentagon praised cluster bombs as an effective weapon, but acknowledged a "risk of collateral damage." The report also said that there was a "need for early and aggressive unexploded-ordnance cleaning efforts" because of the danger to civilians. Washington did not follow that advice. It took months for the U.S. to supply the United Nations with data on where cluster bombs were dropped in Yugoslavia. During the delay, dozens fell victim to the unexploded bomblets. While hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians were living in refugee camps in neighboring Macedonia and Albania, mine clearing agencies gave classes on what to watch out for when they returned home. In Afghanistan, where communications are poor or non-existent, people have to rely on their own wits when confronted with weapons they haven't seen before, such as U.S. cluster bomblets. It is not clear how the man from Kabul set off the bomblet in Kalakan last Sunday. Khan Aqa, 39, a Northern Alliance soldier posted nearby on the main road, said the man stumbled on a rock and then stepped on the detonator at the top of the canister. Several villagers said they thought the man had picked up the bomblet and it exploded in his hand. A man in his late 30s named Abdul Samad came running to the road for help, covered in blood from his own shrapnel wounds, said Aqa. Aqa hurried on one leg and crutches to the other victim. Aqa stepped on a land mine 17 years ago while fighting former Soviet Union troops occupying Afghanistan. "When I reached the other victim, he was dying, gasping and losing his life," Aqa said through an interpreter. "He couldn't speak and died. We brought a bed and carried him from here." The bomblets bore black stencilled lettering--BLU 97 A/B--that identified them as American cluster bomblets. Each small canister packs three powerful weapons, said Tom Dibb, 33, the Central Asia desk officer for the Halo Trust, a British-based mine clearing agency. Every bomblet contains an inverted copper cone, with an explosive charge behind it. The blast turns the cone "into a jet of molten copper, which then punches straight through armor," as in the walls of a tank, Dibb said. The bomblets are made with "fragmentation jackets," which can penetrate lighter vehicles such as trucks. The third weapon is an incendiary charge, which creates a small fire when the bomblet explodes, Dibb added. None of half a dozen villagers interviewed in Kalakan Wednesday amid the field of unexploded cluster bomblets criticized the U.S. for dropping them. It was good that the U.S. bombed the area because Arab fighters were based in the village, they said. "They were right to drop the bombs and remove the Taliban," said Abdul Samad, 23, a cousin of the blast survivor, who shares the same name. Samad blamed his cousin's companion for not being more cautious. "If an innocent person thinks clearly, this bomb can't hurt him." Nader, the brother of the shepherd wounded in the bombing of Zar Karez, offered a contrasting view. "We do not understand why they did it. There are no Taliban here, only the nomadic people stay here and now we are gone," Nader said. Research from the Mennonite Central Committee, Landmine Action in London, the International Red Cross and Human Rights Watch has documented hundreds of civilian deaths around the world from cluster bombs. "It is clear that at the present time, the use of even the most sophisticated cluster bombs poses grave and unacceptable dangers to civilian populations," Human Rights Watch wrote in October. "There should be no further use until governments can establish that a solution is possible to the problems of bomblet dispersion and explosive duds -- be it a technical solution, new restrictions and requirements regarding use, or some combination of measures." So far in Afghanistan, the U.S. has been dropping CBU-87 cluster bombs, known to be inaccurate at high altitudes. The CBU-87 drops the kind of bomblets that littered the ground in Kalakan. The addition of the wind kits on some of the bomblets should help in targeting, but will not affect the failure rate, experts say. "It's ridiculous to argue that having a strap-on kit is going to make them substantially safer for non-combatants," said Rae McGrath, a cluster bomb expert who has worked with Landmine Action in London. "Let's put that to rest immediately." To affect the failure rate, the Air Force would have to install a battery within each bomblet to render it inoperable if it didn't explode on contact, according to Jane's, the weapons guide. Although such technology exists, it hasn't yet been used by the U.S. on all its cluster bombs. The same grassroots effort that helped ban land mines is now pushing for an intense international review of cluster bombs. Humanitarian groups hope the topic will be brought up in December at a review conference of the UN Convention on Inhumane Weapons in Geneva. Calls for self-destruct fuses on clusterbombs at past meetings have gone unheeded. "I see a situation with cluster bombs that is very similar to the early days of the land mine campaign," said McGrath, who urged the British House of Commons on Nov. 20 to conduct an "urgent and transparent debate" on cluster bombs. For now, the United Nations, which is coordinating the clearing of land mines and unexploded ordinance from Afghanistan, has asked the U.S. for a map showing where cluster bombs were dropped, mine clearance workers said privately. Dan Kelly, manager of the U.N.'s MineAction program, last month appealed for information from the U.S. about the type of bomblets used "so we can train our people and prevent further loss of human life," he said. The Kalakan cluster bomb field is one of three in southern Afghanistan that mine-clearing agencies know about so far. Halo Trust has heard of at least three more in northern Afghanistan and expects to find many more as its sappers spread across the country. A team of Halo Trust sappers started work in Kalakan Tuesday, but so far they have only marked the danger areas with daubs of yellow paint on rocks. Mine clearing crews began special training Wednesday to learn how to detect and get rid of cluster bomblets, Dibb said in Kabul. "Our teams have cleared literally hundreds of thousands of unexploded ordinance in Afghanistan, but these things pose a slightly different threat," Dibb said. "And we need a special detector to do a sub-surface search for them." Halo Trusts' sappers normally dispose of the bomblets by laying long fuses as close as possible and blowing them up from a safe distance. But Aqa, the veteran land mine victim, hasn't waited for the experts, or special equipment. He has already cleared some of the U.S. cluster bomblets by hand. "If you touch or move it from the sides, it won't explode," Aqa said, looking down at one of the yellow canisters. "I collected some from beside the road. If you say so, I will pick up one," he added. No one took him up on the offer. (Watson reported from Afghanistan. Getter reported from Washington. Staff writers Alissa Rubin in Afghanistan, John Hendren and Robert Patrick in Washington, William Orme in New York and Peter Pae in Los Angeles contributed to this report.) http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la 000095928dec02.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dcalifornia * UPHILL BID TO OUST LONE DISSENTER by Mark Z. Barabak Los Angeles Times, 2nd December OAKLAND -- For months, Rep. Barbara Lee has traveled under armed guard, a target of wrath ever since she cast the lone vote in Congress that opposed giving President Bush the authority to respond militarily to the Sept. 11 attacks. But here at home, in the liberal bastions of Oakland and Berkeley, it is Lee's opponent in the Democratic primary, former Assemblywoman Audie Bock, who is under siege. Democrats call her an opportunist. Old allies from her days in the Green Party call her a traitor. Polls give her little chance of unseating Lee in the March primary, even though most voters say they back the war in Afghanistan. Bock is unfazed. Two and a half years ago, she overcame similarly steep odds to become the highest elected Green Party leader in the land. Now, after a brief stint in the Legislature and a change in party registration, the 56-year-old Bock has returned to the role of protest candidate. Only this time she has wrapped herself in the flag, hoping to stir a backlash over Lee's dovish stance. It is an improbable undertaking for the dedicated leftist, who pilots a small, hybrid gas electric car with a bumper sticker opposing capital punishment and asking: "Would Jesus pull the switch?" And yet, tooling to a recent endorsement interview with the local Sierra Club chapter, Bock pronounced herself both pleased and comfortable with the support she has received from conservatives and others disgusted with Lee. "I'm comfortable with it, because for me it's so clear-cut," said Bock, who opposed U.S. involvement in Vietnam and wept at the start of the Persian Gulf War. "The major, major issue here is: The U.S. was attacked." Bock's challenge is the only one of its kind in the nation. After all, Lee was the sole lawmaker out of 535 to oppose President Bush's authority to wage war. "Around the country there is virtual bipartisan unanimity on the righteousness of the cause," said Marshall Wittmann, a political analyst at the Washington-based Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank. "The Democrats have pretty much made an unspoken pact [that] they're going to set the war aside and focus on domestic differences with Republicans." But attitudes are different here on the eastern side of San Francisco Bay, the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement and the scene of some of the most virulent antiwar protests of the Vietnam era. For years, the region was represented by Berkeley's Ronald V. Dellums, who was elected to Congress in 1970 as a peace candidate and, ironically, retired nearly 30 years later as the respected chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. His successor, Lee, is a former staffer who shares Dellums' support for Third World causes and skepticism toward the Pentagon. In 1998, she was one of just five House members to oppose the bombing of Iraq. The next year, she cast the one congressional vote against bombing Yugoslavia in the Kosovo conflict. "I've said over and over I'm not a pacifist," Lee said in an interview. Speaking of Sept. 11, she added, "I firmly believe that we need to bring the perpetrators of this horrific tragedy to justice." But in her view, the resolution that Congress passed on Sept. 14 was a blank check that gave Bush dangerously open-ended authority. Events since have done nothing to change her mind. Critics are appalled, calling Lee un-American, a traitor--and worse. Most of them, however, don't live around here. An October poll conducted by UC Berkeley and the Contra Costa Times showed that two thirds of those surveyed approved of Lee's job performance, even though more than half disagreed with her vote. Roughly four in 10 said they were more likely to support her reelection as a result of her stance; 18% were less likely. "People said, 'Look, we had some concerns at the time and Barbara Lee expressed those concerns,' " said Bruce Cain, director of Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies. In fact, support for the war stood at 54% in the survey, compared with 89% nationally. Bush's approval ratings were a middling 47%, in contrast to his record 90% approval in nationwide surveys. For many here, Lee has become a kind of folk hero, commended by the Berkeley City Council, celebrated at an Oakland rally and praised even by those who strongly disagreed with her vote. One of them is Jim Chanin, who has a daughter living about a mile and a half from the World Trade Center. "I respect her integrity to stand up to everybody in Congress the way she did because she believed in something," said Chanin, a longtime activist in the woodsy Oakland hills. "I think that's refreshing in a politician." Chanin saw the same virtues in Audie Bock when she first ran for the Assembly in 1999. Despite huge disadvantages in money and party registration, she squeaked by Oakland's Democratic ex-mayor to score one of the most stunning political upsets in California in years. Like many, though, Chanin soured on Bock when she quit the Green Party a few months later, switching her registration to independent. Bock hoped that the change would boost her reelection chances in November 2000; she lost anyway. On her last day in office, she changed her registration again, this time to the Democratic Party. Then on Sept. 11, Bock sat in front of her television set and watched as the second jetliner smashed into the trade center. A few days later, she heard news accounts of Lee's controversial House vote. She called the congresswoman's home to offer congratulations; Bock now says she misunderstood the resolution. Her support turned to outrage, she said, when she read the measure along with Lee's speech on the House floor. The congresswoman had cited a prayer service at the National Cathedral: "One of the clergy members said that as we act, we should not become the evil that we deplore," Lee said. "And at that moment, I knew what I had to do." Bock declared that comment "way out of line. . . . I don't think you talk about your government that way when your country is attacked." If she counted on a groundswell of support from equally indignant voters, however, it has yet to materialize. Bock brandishes a sheaf of supportive e-mails from around the country. But when she turned in her nominating petitions last week, there were just 79 signatures from the 9th District--a tiny fraction of the 3,000 she would have needed to avoid paying the $1,400 filing fee. For now, she conceded, her campaign is just "me, my cell phone and my running shoes." Bock is undaunted, though, having trod this path before. "I got feet," she said. "I am grass roots." http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la 000095729dec02.story?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dcomment%2Dopinions * THE MOUTH THAT ROARS IS TESTING U.S. PATIENCE by David Paulin Los Angeles Times, 2nd December AUSTIN, Texas -- Hugo Chavez is at it again. First, the charismatic and outspoken president of Venezuela caused a diplomatic rift with Washington when, during a national television address, he likened the accidental U.S. bombing of Afghan civilians to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, calling the airstrikes a "slaughter of innocents." In response, the U.S. called its ambassador, Donna J. Hrinak, home for consultation. But Chavez, a left-wing nationalist who has called for the need to understand terrorism's causes, wasn't chagrined. Instead, he simply left it to Vice President Adina Bastidas to spout the anti-American rhetoric. Speaking at a United Nations-sponsored forum in Caracas last month, Bastidas took a cue from Chavez's speech. "[There is] terrorism of the oppressed," she declared, "because there is also terrorism of the oppressors." "[Terrorism] is a perverse sub-product of WASP [White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant] domination," she added, explaining that such domination "becomes intolerable to the more radical and violent of the oppressed and leads them to desperate, destructive and murderous outbursts." While his vice president so distinguished herself, Chavez spent his time at the forum hobnobbing with former Algerian president and independence hero Ahmed Ben Bella, who has called the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan a "crime against an impoverished people." This, apparently, was before CNN broadcast scenes of Afghans cheering Northern Alliance troops as they entered Kabul, protected by U.S. air cover. Since Chavez was elected in late 1999 on an anti-establishment platform, he has repeatedly baited the United States. A self-proclaimed "revolutionary," Chavez regularly rails against "savage capitalism" and globalization. He has called for a "multipolar" world to counter U.S. economic and military hegemony, which he deeply resents. On a visit to Cuba to see his close friend Fidel Castro, he proclaimed that Venezuela would sail in the same "sea of happiness" as the communist island. In China, he declared himself a "Maoist." Chavez also has irritated Washington by making friendly visits to Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's Moammar Kadafi. Mindful of Venezuela's role as a top U.S. oil supplier, Washington has up to now worked to avoid a row with Chavez, noting that he was elected democratically in a country with a long history of corruption. Sept. 11 has altered the stakes. We now live in a world in which words do matter. Ultimately, Chavez's own words and bizarre conduct may be his undoing. In a poll conducted after Chavez made his remarks on the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan, some 67% of Venezuelans surveyed said they disagreed with his statements. Anti-Chavez demonstrations have increased in size and intensity recently, spurring rumors of an imminent coup. But Chavez seems oblivious to the effects of his actions. Despite pledging support for the U.S. war on terrorism, Chavez recently visited Paris, where he expressed concern about the well-being of Venezuelan-born terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, who is being held in a French jail. Chavez has a strange relationship with Ramirez Sanchez. In the past, he's exchanged friendly letters with the infamous terrorist, whom he apparently regards as a fellow "revolutionary." Ramirez Sanchez, who expressed "relief" at the Sept. 11 attacks, has admitted killing 83 people, three of whom died in a 1975 attack against the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' Vienna headquarters. Chavez, too, has blood on his hands. As an army lieutenant colonel in 1992, he led a bloody and disorganized coup attempt against a democratically elected government. More than 70 soldiers and civilians were killed during the failed coup, which spurred capital flight that further impoverished the South American nation. He has no apparent remorse for his actions. Nor has Chavez ever expressed public concern over Colombia's murderous Marxist narco guerrillas--and their frequent massacres of unarmed peasants. Instead, Chavez has expressed veiled sympathy for the guerrillas' vision of a Marxist utopia, which has alarmed his Colombian neighbors. It's hard to argue with Chavez's calls for wealthy nations to do more to help the Third World. But coming from Chavez, such statements are comical: Nearly two years ago, he turned back U.S. military engineers on their way to help Venezuelan victims of a mudslide disaster, which killed thousands and left tens of thousands more homeless. Venezuela's defense ministry had requested the engineers and their heavy equipment. But Chavez, during an impromptu press conference, announced that U.S. military personnel were not welcome on Venezuelan soil. Even today, many Venezuelans, especially those living in the mudslide area, despise Chavez for that bit of nationalistic bluster. So, what should the U.S. do about Chavez? First, we have to remember his macho, swaggering ego. He would like nothing better than to become a Third World martyr to U.S. imperialism. Thus, any action that isolates Chavez could easily backfire, doing for him what the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba did for Castro: allow him to cast himself as an oppressed hero who took on the mighty United States. Still, while we need to proceed cautiously, we can't condone Chavez-style equivocation on terrorism. The Bush administration might consider expanding its system that classifies nations as supporting terrorism. It could create something below its "watch list" to punish nations like Venezuela, which, even if not supporting terrorists directly, are flirting with them and with terrorist nations. The Bush administration also might explore the possibility of mild economic sanctions. One idea would be a limited moratorium on new investment in Venezuela by U.S. energy companies. There's little chance that Chavez would retaliate by reducing oil sales to the United States. With oil prices at their lowest in two years, Venezuela could not afford to cut off its No.1 customer. Such mild U.S. actions could encourage Chavez to mend his ways or encourage Venezuelans to vote him out of office. Whatever Washington does, it can't allow its policies to create another Castro in this hemisphere, especially not in Venezuela. Nor can it allow another Saudi Arabia--a country that has pretended to be our ally, while nurturing fanatical elements within its own society. (David Paulin is a journalist who was based in Venezuela during the years that Chavez rose to power.) http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la 000095957dec02.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dnation * U.S. PRESSES TERROR WAR IN 7 NATIONS by Josh Meyer Los Angeles Times, 2nd December WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has quietly begun dispatching diplomatic, military, intelligence and law enforcement agents to Asia and Africa to lay the groundwork for the next front in its war against terrorism, taking aim at Al Qaeda hubs in at least seven countries, officials said Saturday. This far broader campaign against Osama bin Laden's terror network was initiated in recent weeks with a flurry of discreet but high-level overtures from U.S. officials, including President Bush. The effort marks a significant shift in foreign policy, according to both the officials and outside counter-terrorism experts. Several administration officials specifically cited the Philippines, Somalia and Yemen as top priorities, but they also mentioned Malaysia, Indonesia and the former Soviet republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In recent years, the Al Qaeda network has made a concerted effort to expand its activities in those nations, which now pose a serious threat to U.S. interests, the officials said. "All the places where there is a significant Al Qaeda presence, there is an effort underway to deal with them," said one Bush administration official who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity. "We are going to ratchet up the amount of time, energy and capability that are being devoted to these areas." Asked if the administration had deployed an increased CIA and FBI presence in and around those countries, the official said: "Of course." The official said U.S. counter-terrorism authorities want to move swiftly to apprehend at least several hundred of the Al Qaeda operatives believed to be in those countries before their trail gets cold. Many of them are believed to be hiding in anticipation of crackdowns similar to ones in Europe that have resulted in the arrests of dozens of suspected Al Qaeda associates, the officials said. Al Qaeda operatives fleeing the war in Afghanistan and the European dragnet are also believed to be seeking sanctuary in those countries, the officials said. The initiative focuses on Al Qaeda and is unrelated to the debate over what to do about suspected state-sponsored terrorist activity in Iraq. It has taken on added urgency based on recent indications that Al Qaeda cells around the world might be plotting additional attacks. "The global moujahedeen network is now looking for payback," said one official. "And there are plenty of sympathizers and associates out there interested in doing something against us" in response to the Bush administration's aggressive counter-terrorism offensive. The disclosures provide an early glimpse of what the administration has in mind once the military campaign in Afghanistan winds down--how it intends to wage war on terrorism worldwide, as Bush has vowed to do since Sept. 11. Officials provided few details of the new initiative, except to say that it is underway and still a work in progress. "We're not going to go into a hostile environment and start bombing," said another official. "We're going in with the host government and [will] work together on diplomacy, law enforcement and intelligence. "It will be a cooperative effort," the official added. "Some of them didn't understand the need to go after Al Qaeda before 9/11. Now they understand it. Gone are the days when we had to convince other governments that Al Qaeda was a threat to us and to them." All seven countries cited by the administration officials are believed to have terrorist cells linked to Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, including some with ties to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But not all of them are expected to participate willingly. Bush administration officials said that the crackdown will be done in conjunction with the countries' governments whenever possible and that leaders of at least some nations have been receptive. In particular, Bush has met with the presidents of the Philippines and Yemen at the White House in recent weeks to discuss joint counter-terrorism offensives. Bush pledged tens of millions of dollars to aid the Philippines in its fight against terrorism and sent at least 22 U.S. military and counter-terrorism advisors there in November for three weeks. If the other nations cooperate, U.S. officials will provide intelligence, guidance, investigative and financial assistance, and, perhaps in some cases, military support, the officials said. If they do not cooperate, authorities are considering a range of options, from covert operations to, as a last resort, military force, the officials said. White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Saturday that he could not comment on or confirm details of the new initiative except to say, "We are really very focused right now on phase one--on Afghanistan and worrying about Al Qaeda cells wherever they might be." No information was available on the number of U.S. representatives dispatched to the countries or on which nations are cooperating. But U.S. officials have for years been deeply troubled by the growing presence of terrorists in African and Asian countries, particularly extremists with known connections to Al Qaeda. Yemen, for instance, was a hotbed of terrorist activity even before suspected Al Qaeda members blew up the U.S. destroyer Cole in that country nearly 14 months ago, killing 17 sailors. Somalia has long given sanctuary to cells believed to be key to the terrorist network, as have Malaysia and Indonesia. Bush recently singled out the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan as a particularly virulent subset of the Al Qaeda network. A number of U.S. officials wanted to intervene earlier in some of the countries involved in the new initiative, but others were loath to intercede and considered those countries' problems with terrorists to be a political issue that was best left for them to handle internally, according to officials in both the Clinton and Bush administrations. In addition, most, if not all, of these countries resisted U.S. efforts even to discuss terrorist cells as they flourished within their borders, or to share intelligence on the cells' potential connections to a wider terrorist network, the officials said. Some refused outright to cooperate, fearing political or violent retaliation. But that changed with the Sept. 11 attacks. "There was dissent here, in the Clinton administration: How much do we want to get involved in other people's problems, especially in some faraway places?" said one official. "Now there is a greater appreciation that these things need to be addressed, that no matter how far away they are, they can come up and bite you." The new phase of the war on terrorism will be particularly sensitive, said Juliette Kayyem, a terrorism expert at Harvard University and a former member of the National Commission on Terrorism. "We've long known that there are Al Qaeda members in those countries," Kayyem said. But many of the newly targeted countries are allies, "unlike Afghanistan, so we can't just go in there and disrupt Al Qaeda cells with bombs. We will have to be very, very dependent on these host countries. "It will not be done with military effort, but rather with diplomacy," Kayyem predicted. "It will be a carrot-and-stick approach." The Bush administration is placing a special priority on the Philippines, where the Abu Sayyaf, an extremely militant terrorist organization associated with Al Qaeda, has been bedeviling U.S. counter-terrorism authorities for years. As long ago as 1995, terrorists in the Philippines were involved in plots to assassinate Pope John Paul II and President Clinton, to bomb U.S. and Israeli embassies and to blow up 11 U.S. commercial airliners over the Pacific Ocean. More recently, Abu Sayyaf militants have been holding a U.S. couple hostage for six months. "In the Philippines, we certainly tried to do what we could" in recent years, said one U.S. official, but "the level of resources spent to deal with them . . . was inadequate." On Saturday, a spokeswoman for the Philippine Embassy in Washington confirmed that her country and the U.S. have agreed to work together to try to take down the Abu Sayyaf network and other terrorists. The United States and its allies recently gave Philippine authorities a detailed list of suspected terrorists, "especially with links to Bin Laden, for us to find out if some of those people are in the Philippines or might attempt to enter the Philippines," spokeswoman Patricia Paez said. She added that U.S. military, law enforcement and intelligence representatives are helping the Philippines with "communications, mobility and firepower capabilities, and in planning and strategizing the war against terrorism." http://chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/oped/chi 0112050186dec05.story?coll=chi%2Dnewsopinioncommentary%2Dhed * RECYCLING THE OIL WEAPON by Amity Shlaes Chicago Tribune (from Financial Times?), 5th December The U.S. is now mulling over a confrontation with Saddam Hussein. But there is a reluctance, particularly at the State Department, to anger the oil-producing nations of the Middle East. Behind this hesitation looms the specter of the 1970s, when the House of Saud deployed the "oil weapon," an embargo on exports to the U..S that led to lines at gas stations and enormous concern that America would one day be cut off altogether. Today, those expressing concern about President Bush's new challenge to Iraq note that the U.S. now imports a greater share of its oil than in the bad old days when the oil weapon was first brandished. They also argue that U.S. citizens will not support a war that jeopardizes their lifestyle in short, that citizens will not be willing to give up their gas guzzling sport-utility vehicles. These concerns are misplaced. The U.S. ought not to let its oil preoccupation stop it from chasing down Osama bin Laden's Saudi connections or widening the war to halt aggressor states where it sees necessary. Oil shocks, if they come, are not likely to last long and the U.S. will not be cut off. The bigger danger is that old-fashioned oil diplomacy will deter the U.S. and its allies from combating the threat posed by many Middle Eastern regimes: that they will be ready to deploy nuclear or biological weapons in a period shorter than the average lifetime of a sport-utility vehicle. That is the thinking at the Defense Department, where an internal memo on the fallacy of the oil weapon is being circulated this week. Authored by Ben Zycher, a senior economist at Rand Corp., a security think tank in Santa Monica, Calif., the memo provides a snappy revision of 1970s history with important implications for current policy. But to the history. Back in 1973, following the Yom Kippur War, the House of Saud declared an embargo on the U.S. and the Netherlands as punishment for their support of Israel. It also, and importantly, led the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in a production cut. The market responded and prices rose fourfold. OPEC said relief would come when Israel withdrew completely from areas it had claimed in the Six-Day War and when the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people were restored. But never, at any time, notes Zycher, did the U.S. in fact lose access to oil. Supplies were available on the global market albeit at a higher price at all times. It was the production cut, not the embargo per se, that caused the price rise. The long gas station lines that are etched into American memories were due, Zycher reminds us, to domestic policy: the decision by the Nixon administration in August 1971 to impose price controls on oil. The administration, for its part, rationalized its action by telling itself it was weaning Americans off their heavy dependence on Arab oil. In other words, the government was forcing consumers to share its own fears about oil dependence. But they were not necessarily realistic fears. This is so for simple economic reasons. Oil, like any other commodity, is fungible. In the same way that water in the bath flows around the duck, oil flows around embargoes. OPEC and anyone who chooses to join it in a production cut may succeed in lowering the water in that great bath that is the international oil market for a time and in raising prices. But any act of hostility directed at a specific country or region by another does not achieve the desired isolating effect. This, of course, is a lesson Iraq has taught the U.S., by circumventing the 1990s embargoes on the country. But the failure of embargoes also happened to have been studied, 20 years ago, by Douglas Feith, now undersecretary of defense for policy. Soon after the embargo, multinational companies that distributed Arab oil juggled supplies of non-Arab oil so that the shortfall was shared by all oil-importing nations. Specifically, pointed out Feith, during the October 1973 to March 1974 embargo period, crude oil supplies in the U.S. grew tightest in February 1974 and even they were only 5.1 percent lower then the daily average for the first three-quarters of the preceding year. What is more, the Netherlands, singled out by the Arabs, experienced less of a shortfall than France and Britain, the countries that led western Europe's pro-Arab political initiative. In addition, the Arab states of that period ended their reduction plan and embargo without winning their political demands. To be sure, OPEC countries could drive up oil prices enough to cause great pain to the world economy in the short term. But Zycher argues that they will not. Dictatorships, like any government, need revenue. Indeed, the politics of a government do not affect whether it sells oil or not. An example here is Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran, which enthusiastically resumed oil production and exporting after the revolution disrupted it. What matters is that dictatorships will use and are using their petrodollars to develop dirty weapons whose danger ranges far beyond the economic. The real threat, therefore, as the memo puts it, is that U.S. national security policy is seemingly being shaped in important ways by a perception that is incorrect. If the U.S., alone or with its allies, manages to set aside its preoccupation with a phantom oil weapon, it can evaluate whether it need uproot the regimes doing the frightening stockpiling. There is evidence that citizens will support such inquiries and action: Gallup and other polls show that backing for a wider war is even stronger than it was six weeks ago. Americans may be willing to trade their SUVs away for a while, if removal of a genuine threat, rather than a phantom one, is what they get in exchange. http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Artic le_Type1&c=Article&cid=1007587573419&call_page=TS_Ontario&call_pageid=968256 289824&call_pagepath=News/Ontario * INTERPOL LACKS TOOLS TO FIGHT TERROR, SAYS HEAD Toronto Star, 5th December LYON, France (AP) ‹ Interpol. People hear the name and think of something out of a James Bond movie. But few really know what Interpol does. Since Sept. 11, the international police agency has extended its hours around the clock, formed a task force, issued urgent "red'' notices for the arrest of Osama bin Laden and his top deputies, and ``blue" notices for information on the suicide hijackers. But critics say the agency is too big a club to likely play a vital role in the fight against terrorism. In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press at his Lyon headquarters, Ronald Noble, a former U.S. law enforcement official and the first American to head Interpol, said the agency is under-funded and under-utilized. He warned that the world could be missing an opportunity to thwart future terror attacks. "I can't say if we'd ever have been able to prevent Sept. 11,'' Noble said. "But I can say this: if we don't put more resources into sharing information on our most dangerous citizens, one day, a terrorist attack will happen that didn't have to.'' Noble says that as the only international police body, Interpol can be a crucial tool in tracking terrorists who know no borders. But that tool is being wasted, he says, because many nations lack the political will to share important information. Some in the United States and Europe respond that when it comes to terrorism, they don't want to share information with countries like Libya, Iraq and Iran, all of whom are Interpol members. Interpol has an annual budget of only about $25 (all figures U.S.) million, contributed on a sliding scale by its 179 member nations. Compare that to the annual budget of New York City's police department: about $3 billion. Of course, the world knows what the NYPD does: It sends police out into the streets to fight crime. What does Interpol actually do? "People come in here and say, 'gee, this isn't really what I expected,'" says Frank Spicka, head of Interpol's terrorism division, sitting in his tiny office and sipping a can of Perrier. "They're looking around for the Battlestar Galactica-type command centre," he says. "People think we're all trench-coated, clandestine secret agents who travel the world." Actually, Interpol's 350 employees pretty much stay put in their modern, glassy office building that peacefully overlooks the Rhone river. Spicka, who's on loan to Interpol from the U.S. Secret Service, calls Interpol's function "operational support." Interpol ‹ the name comes from the original telegraph address ‹ is essentially a clearinghouse for information on all types of international crime, from terrorism to money laundering to smuggling. It takes messages from offices throughout the world and passes them to the proper places. It enters information into its large database. And it puts out the red-and-blue wanted notices. "All our lives changed on Sept. 11," Spicka says. Interpol pledged to immediately beef up its anti-terrorism fight. It set up a 24-hour capacity for the first time in its 78-year history. Now, a police force can send in an urgent request for information about someone at 1 a.m., and get an answer. But those measures don't change the conviction of many that Interpol simply is too inclusive; the only major countries that don't belong are Afghanistan and North Korea. "The war on terrorism does need to be global ‹ Sept. 11 shows that," says Dan Goure, an analyst with the Lexington Institute, a Washington-based think tank, noting how the Sept. 11 suspects traveled freely across borders. But he adds that Interpol has "no role" because the United States doesn't, and shouldn't, share information with hostile countries. He says it's particularly a problem because Interpol involves police forces, including those of repressive regimes. "There's something inherently wrong with a police organization that includes nations where police control the people," said Goure, a former Defence Department security analyst. Larry Johnson, a former deputy chief of counter-terrorism at the State Department, says Interpol just isn't considered a tool to fight terrorism. "I've never been in a meeting where someone said, 'Let's see what Interpol has,'" he said. A former head of French intelligence during the 1980s, Pierre Lacoste, agrees, saying Interpol is most effective when dealing with ordinary crimes. "Once crimes become nationalistic or political, like terrorism, the cooperation pretty much falls apart," he said. In a room housing the Telecommunications Supervision department, a manager stands by a map with dots of light marking Interpol bureaus, explaining that 15,000 secure messages are processed daily. A message pops up, alerting police in other countries that a car has been stolen in Botswana. Interpol's bureaus across the world are set up by national police forces at their own cost. In some areas, an office will have no fax machine or Internet access. Improving the technology in these places is a major goal, Noble says. Noble, a New Yorker and former law professor, served in the Treasury and Justice departments and was a leading candidate to replace Louis Freeh as head of the FBI. He expresses frustration with wealthier countries' reluctance to share information with Interpol, noting that they can decide which countries the information should go to. And he notes that Washington and European nations can benefit greatly from information from countries like Libya ‹ which, he said, was the first country to request an Interpol "red" notice on bin Laden, years ago. "If Libya wants a man for criminal activity, and that man is headed for the United States," Noble asks, "don't we want to know this before the man gets into the country?'' http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,614811,00.html * FOR NOW, THE MILITARY GOES ON HOLD by Simon Tisdall in Washington The Guardian, 7th December The alarming prospect that, post-Afghanistan, George Bush will again resort to military means in prosecuting a wider "war on terrorism" against other countries is receding, at least for now. The bellicose, anti-Saddam drumbeat in Washington is loud and unmistakable. But alive to the immense, practical difficulties, and aware of European and Arab opposition, Bush and his inner circle have made no final decisions about retargeting Iraq - and officials do not expect them to do so any time soon. Elsewhere, they will proceed with the step-by step caution that has characterised their Afghan gameplan. This is what Bush means by a "long war". US policy remains heavily influenced by risk analysis. Donald Rumsfeld, the ineffably smug, highly popular US defence secretary who is effectively running Bush's war, loses no opportunity to remind Americans that while the Afghan campaign has been almost bodybag-free, it is not over yet. Politically, the post-September 11 priorities are unchanged. The White House remains fixated on "getting" Osama bin Laden, finishing off the Taliban leadership, and destroying what Bush calls al-Qaida's "sophisticated caves". Yet even once Afghanistan is subdued, the elimination of al-Qaida-linked groups in the up to 40 or so countries in which "cells" are said to exist is likely to be the ongoing, primary objective. Although force is not ruled out - Bush dangled the possibility again this week on television - the wider war will be pursued largely by non-military methods. Easier targets than Iraq will be tackled first; potential candidates include Somalia and Sudan, Indonesia and the Philippines, Bosnia and Uruguay - anywhere that the terrorist trail may lead. Richard Boucher, the state department spokesman, recently spelled out the US approach to a post-Afghanistan, extended counter-terrorism effort. "Some places, it's consultations and information-sharing. Some places it may end up being training. Some places it may be economic and other support... like border security," he said, referring to some of America's shady new allies in central Asia. The main emphasis, it is suggested, will be on muscular diplomacy, financial and trade incentives, arms deals, and military collaboration rather than direct US military intervention. Some of these approaches have already been road-tested. Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Salih, for example, recently received a rare White House audience. After last year's al-Qaida linked attack on the USS Cole in Aden harbour, FBI investigators complained about Yemeni obstruction. That is now a thing of the past after the US reportedly proffered some attractive incentives, including US special forces training for the Yemeni army. Likewise, the US is working up its capabilities in and around Somalia. US warships are on station and the navy is flying surveillance missions. Washington is also said to be looking at closer cooperation with Ethiopia, against the day when action against supposed al-Qaida supporters in Somalia may be deemed necessary. But military manoeuvres aside, the US freezing of funds linked to Somalia's leading financial house, al-Barakaat, is already hitting home. Remittances from Somalis working abroad sent via al-Barakaat are Somalia's largest single source of income. This US financial offensive is devastating enough. Other states are being nobbled by other means, sometimes by the use of proxies. The US has no diplomatic relations with Iran - but Britain does, and the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, has made two trips to Tehran since September 11. Washington does not expect the mullahs' support. But Britain and other EU countries have helped gain their acquiescence. The US is also busily reinforcing and reshaping existing relationships. Thus to Israel's dismay, the administration is proposing new arms sales to Egypt and has so far ducked non-financial, direct action against Hamas or Hizbullah for fear of alienating Cairo, Tehran, and the already deeply uncomfortable Saudis. It has agreed a big increase in military aid to the Philippines and may do something similar for Indonesia. In Pakistan, the US has succeeded, in effect, in buying (and reversing) a country's foreign policy in return for loans, debt relief, and cancelled bilateral sanctions. Given the CIA role in Afghanistan, meanwhile, US covert operations are expected to make a big, silent comeback. The emerging "Bush doctrine" - that terrorists will be pursued wherever they lurk, that governments that harbour terrorists will be deemed terrorists themselves, and that the possession of weapons of mass destruction may be sufficient to invite US attack - could in theory be made to apply to North Korea, Iran or Syria as much as Iraq. But when it comes to possible future US military action, only Baghdad is singled out. This process has less to do with the war on terrorism and more to do with old enmities and present-day geostrategy. Saddam symbolises a threatening defiance of America's will that the Bushmen, pre-September 11, detested - and that, post-September 11, they will no longer tolerate. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq For removal from list, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk CASI's website - www.casi.org.uk - includes an archive of all postings.