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News, 1-8/6/02 (3) PROSPECTS FOR WAR * Bush Warns Cadets of Unprecedented Threats [How is it that, after a speech like this, the world continues to treat the US as a respectable member of the family of nations? And that countries in difficulties, such as India and Pakistan, should accept the US as an international authority with a right to intervene diplomatically in their disputes? There is an answer to that question, constantly hammered home by the US and British establishments: Might is rightı.] * Terror war must target 60 nations, says Bush [This article adds the dimension that countries which tolerate the expression of anti-US sentiment also need to be sorted out. And it includes the following amusing observation, which could only surely be made in The Times: If the United States decides to make surprise strikes on other countries, it will mark a big change in strategy for the US military, which traditionally acts only in self-defence.ı] * Weighing an Attack on Iraq . . . [Fred Hiatt eloquently lays out the reasons why US citizens can never sleep easy in their beds at night so long as any traces of evil remain in the world.] * Pro-Arab policy is to give Iraqis a new regime [Charles Duelfer, who was pretending, while he was vice chairman of UNSCOM, to be some sort of politically impartial technical expert, suggests that the Arab world will be delighted to see the installation of a US puppet government in Iraq so long as it resembles as closely as possible the existing Iraqi government, sans Saddam, who, it is well known, is the source of all the sufferings and tension in the region.] * . . . We've Too Much at Stake to Risk It [A further indication that its becoming possible once again in the US to murmur a few words of dissent. Though it has a rather naive attitude towards the US role in the world: Think of America not as the playground bully but as the well-muscled mild-mannered good kid who finally hauls off and whacks the loudmouth pipsqueak who won't stop bugging him.ı Well-muscledı is one way of putting it. Bristling with weapons of mass destruction is another.] * Gephardt backs offensive against Iraq [Democratic Party leader complains that Bush isnıt tough enough.] * US hawks embrace 'hot pre-emption' [A strange argument from former secretary of State George Schulz which, if Iıve understood it aright, says the War against Terrorism is necessary to create strong states throughout the world. States have been weakened by globalisation and need to be strengthened. One example given is the Palestinians. The weakness, or absence, of a Palestinian state has allowed terrorism to flourish. The conclusion is, presumably, that the aim of Israeli policy in the West Bank is to create a strong Palestinian state (or is there something I havenıt understood??)] * Dems Look for Policy Position on Iraq * Hoon's talk of pre-emptive strikes could be catastrophic [The clear message is that the UK and US are now willing to use nuclear weapons where there is no threat of nuclear retaliation. The clear lesson to be drawn is that all states should arm themselves with nuclear weapons if they do not wish to be reduced to the status ofUS/UK satraps.] * The Bush doctrine makes nonsense of the UN charter [This article could almost be read as a defense of the policy it is attacking and provides enough information to show that the UN Charter has already - long - been reduced to nonsense.] * Cheney urges action on Iraq * Rumsfeld's terror warning for NATO [Mr Rumsfeld says: "Literally the only way to defend against individuals, or groups, or organisations, or countries that have weapons of mass destruction and are bent on using them against you, for example... then the only defence is to take the effort to find those global networks and to deal with them as the United States did in Afghanistan. Now is that defensive or is it offensive? I personally think of it as defensive." One wonders if this is the advice he is giving India and Pakistan at the present time ...] PROSPECTS FOR WAR http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters20020601_115.html * BUSH WARNS CADETS OF UNPRECEDENTED THREATS by Adam Entous ABC News, 1st June WEST POINT, N.Y. (Reuters) - President Bush told the nation's future military leaders the United States must be ready to launch a preemptive strike in the war on terrorism, warning of an unprecedented threat of chemical, biological or nuclear attack from "terrorists and tyrants." "The dangers have not passed ... because we know the terrorists have more money and more men and more plans," Bush told the first class to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point since the Sept. 11 attacks. Previewing the daunting challenges ahead, Bush said the cadets would be asked to hunt down terrorists hiding around the world, and prevent America's enemies from acquiring nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. "Our enemies have declared this very intention and have been caught seeking these terrible weapons," Bush told the graduates, who wore "dress gray" cutaway coats with gleaming brass buttons. Ceremonial swords dangled at their sides. Without mentioning Iraq by name, Bush declared: "We cannot put our faith in the words of tyrants who solemnly sign nonproliferation treaties and then systematically break them." "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge." Bush has denounced Iraq as part of an "axis of evil" threatening to spread weapons of mass destruction, suggesting it could be the next U.S. target in the war against terrorism. In the face of concerns among European allies that an attack against Baghdad would be rash and destabilizing, Bush said last week he had "no war plans on my desk." But in his address at West Point, Bush vowed to hold his ground. "In the world we have entered the only path to safety is the path of action and this nation will act," he said. He added that all Americans must be "ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives." Bush brushed aside critics who accuse him of acting unilaterally. "Some may worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite to speak the language of right and wrong. I disagree," he added. "By confronting evil and lawless regimes, we do not create a problem, we reveal a problem. And we will lead the world in opposing it." Bush said the Sept. 11 attacks and the anti-terror campaign that started in Afghanistan have rapidly redefined military strategy and tactics. "In defending the peace, we face a threat with no precedent," said Bush, whose administration has come under fire for its handling of intelligence about terrorist threats before Sept. 11. "Enemies in the past needed great armies and great industrial capabilities to endanger the American people and our nation," Bush said. By contrast, he added, "the attacks of Sept. 11 required a few hundred thousand dollars in the hands of a few dozen evil and diluted [sic! deluded- PB] men. All of the chaos and suffering they caused came at much less than the cost of a single tank." Underscoring these new uncertainties, Bush warned that "this war will take many turns we cannot predict." But he said "this government and the American people are on watch." Hailing West Point on its bicentennial, Bush praised this year's graduating class of 958 cadets for their willingness to serve and sacrifice for the nation. Comparing them to the soldiers that defeated Germany and Japan in the Second World War, Bush told the academy's 2002 graduates that "history has also issued its call to your generation." "We will defend the peace against threats from terrorists and tyrants. We will preserve the peace by building good relations among the great powers. And will we will extend the peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent." "Building this just peace is American's opportunity and America's duty. From this day forward, it is your challenge as well, and we will meet this challenge together," Bush said. At the end of the ceremony near the banks of the Hudson River, the newly minted second lieutenants tossed their hats high in the air to celebrate their graduation. Bush will deliver his second commencement address later this month at Ohio State University, where he will emphasize the "value of service to our nation, its communities, and the world," the White House said. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-315250,00.html * TERROR WAR MUST TARGET 60 NATIONS, SAYS BUSH by James Doran The Times, 3rd June THE United States must be prepared to take the War on Terror to up to 60 countries if weapons of mass destruction are to be kept out of terroristsı hands, President Bush said at the weekend. His impassioned speech to 1,000 graduates of West Point Military Academy in New York State on Saturday marks a watershed in the Administrationıs foreign policy. Mr Bush said that terrorism cells in countries that make up close to one third of the globe must be actively sought and dismantled. ³We must take that battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge,² he said, adding that Americans must be ³ready for pre-emptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives². He said: ³In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act.² The 52-minute speech also contained a series of thinly veiled attacks on countries already singled out as enemies of the US. Mr Bush did not mention any country by name, but he pointed repeatedly to non-democratic regimes that are said to sponsor terrorism. In what officials later hinted was a reference to President Saddam Husseinıs regime in Iraq, Mr Bush said that attempts to contain terrorist activity and anti-US sentiments within some countries would fail without direct action. ³(Containment) is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or can provide them to terrorist allies,² he said. The criticism of foreign countries appeared to go further than any other he has made since September 11. ³Some nations need military training to fight terror and we will provide it,² Mr Bush said. ³Other nations oppose terror but tolerate the hatred that leads to terror and that must change.² White House officials told The Washington Post that these comments were directed at Middle East allies such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan. If the United States decides to make surprise strikes on other countries, it will mark a big change in strategy for the US military, which traditionally acts only in self-defence. The speech was billed by the White House as the first instalment of a renewed ³overall security framework². The framework will be expanded in a national security strategy document expected in July. Mr Bush said that Americaıs foreign policy would have three strands. ³We will defend the peace against threats from terrorists and tyrants. We will preserve the peace by building good relations among the great powers. And will we will extend the peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent.² He said that the conflict the graduates would be required to fight would differ greatly from that fought by their forefathers in Japan and Europe. ³Enemies in the past needed great armies and great industrial capabilities to endanger the American people and our nation,² Mr Bush said. ³The attacks of September 11 required a few hundred thousand dollars in the hands of a few dozen evil and deluded men. All of the chaos and suffering they caused came at much less than the cost of a single tank.² http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49507-2002Jun2.html * WEIGHING AN ATTACK ON IRAQ . . . by Fred Hiatt Washington Post, 3rd June On a Sunday morning talk show, the defense secretary was blunt about the danger posed by Saddam Hussein and his possession of anthrax, a five-pound bag of which could destroy, he said, half the population of Washington. "Days may go by without posing a threat immediately, but weeks or months, and then he's able to reconstitute his capacity to develop large amounts of chemical and biological weapons," the Pentagon chief said. "We're well aware of the ticking of the clock." Donald Rumsfeld, speaking yesterday? Not quite. The warning came from President Clinton's defense secretary William Cohen in November 1997 -- some 236 weeks ago. It's been that long since U.N. weapons inspectors were able to do their job effectively and almost as long -- since December 1998 -- since they were in Iraq at all. Saddam Hussein has been free to seek nuclear weapons and add to his stock of chemical and biological arms. David Albright and Kevin O'Neill, nonproliferation experts, explained it this way in a paper last June: "The lack of inspections and monitoring in Iraq makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to detect, let alone assess, Iraqi efforts to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program and other WMD [weapons of mass destruction] programs. Given Saddam Hussein's long-standing commitment to obtain nuclear weapons, it is likely that Iraq continues this quest. . . . [R]esearch and development efforts for the nuclear weapons program, which may have been small and dispersed before the end of 1998, could have proceeded more openly and with little fear of discovery since then." Back in 1998 there seemed to be consensus about the danger of leaving Saddam Hussein unchecked in this way. National security adviser Sandy Berger noted that, unlike any other living dictator, Iraq's leader had used chemical weapons repeatedly. "And I have no doubt he will use them again if his capacity to rebuild his arsenal is left unchecked," Berger said. President Clinton agreed that the United States could not stand by while the Iraqi dictator flouted the international community. "If we fail to respond today, Saddam [Hussein], and all those who would follow in his footsteps, will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can act with impunity, even in the face of a clear message from the United Nations Security Council and clear evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program," Clinton said. Since then Saddam Hussein has acted with impunity; the United States has suffered an unsolved attack-by-anthrax; the president has eloquently explained why Iraq belongs on the axis of evil; and yet, the only change in Iraq is that it is selling more and more oil. The debate about Iraq has shriveled to the question of whether Mohamed Atta traveled to Prague. Why? The answer is that doing something about Saddam Hussein and his anthrax is difficult. It was difficult for President Clinton, which is why he stopped pushing and delivering rousing speeches after 1998, and it is difficult for President Bush today. It's unlikely that U.N. inspectors could uncover what Saddam Hussein has had 3 1/2 years to hide. In any case, Iraq refuses to let inspectors in. Economic sanctions have not succeeded in modifying his behavior. Which leaves force, with all its risks and uncertainties. It should not come as a surprise that the Joints Chiefs of Staff are reluctant. Institutionally, they are designed to worry about present dangers: first, that many people would die in a war, but also that allies would not cooperate or offer staging grounds; that Saddam Hussein would use his weapons of mass destruction when attacked; that he would prove as difficult to locate as Mullah Omar; that Iraq would fracture, or find itself ruled by someone just as odious; that U.S. forces would be stretched and vulnerable in other parts of the world. It is the president's unenviable job to think further ahead -- to balance all those dangers against the even less quantifiable, but no less prodigious, risk of allowing a known war criminal and sponsor of terrorism to continue to accumulate these fearsome weapons. It's not a choice that can be made with certainty ahead of time, and even in retrospect you may not be sure. It's possible, that is, that Saddam Hussein already has attacked with anthrax, and will do so again, more lethally, and we will not know the source. As far back as 1997, the ever-playful Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein's deputy prime minister, told Time magazine that his government did not engage in terror attacks ("You know that") but that others did, and that as a result of U.S. attacks on Iraq, "more people would be in that mood." So it is a quandary. If Bush continues to do nothing, and Saddam Hussein dies quietly in his sleep, to be succeeded by a peace-loving and democratic government, the reluctant generals will be proven right. If he acts to unseat Saddam Hussein, we will never know whether the resulting casualties and disruptions prevented something worse. And if Saddam Hussein slips some germs or toxins out of Iraq in a diplomatic pouch to loosely allied terrorists who distribute them over Washington, the most ardent hawks, even those who survive, may never be sure enough to say I told you so. http://www.sunspot.net/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.iraq03jun03.story?coll=bal%2 Doped%2Dheadlines * PRO-ARAB POLICY IS TO GIVE IRAQIS A NEW REGIME by Charles Duelfer Baltimore Sun, 3rd June WASHINGTON - The explosion between Israel and the Palestinians has not changed the underlying logic for regime change in Baghdad. But it has greatly affected the regional political context, making it essential that a compelling positive case be made in the Arab world for such a pursuit. So far, a strong, coherent public message has not come out of Washington. Certainly one can be made. Washington can make the point that there are two possible futures for Iraq. One is a continuation of the present regime led by Saddam Hussein, with its growing threat to the region and repression of its own people. The growth of Iraq's weapons capabilities (eventually including nuclear), the leverage of growing oil production and the wasted potential of a vibrant population all point to an inevitable future problem. This is unacceptable over the long term - especially for the United States, whose military will ultimately be called upon. A second possible future for Iraq is a more positive one in which its leaders subscribe to international norms and its people can achieve their enormous potential. Iraqis are energetic, assign great prestige to education, engineering and the arts and, in my experience, would like nothing better than to be reconnected to the rest of the world, including the United States. The combination of the Iraqi people and their huge oil and agricultural resources should be the engine of development in the Middle East. The difference between these two possible futures is Mr. Hussein. Given the unique authoritarian nature of his regime, it is disingenuous to say that the Iraqi people on their own should change their leadership. Therefore, outside intervention is needed to create the conditions under which the Iraqi people can change their own government. They will never be able to achieve their potential under Mr. Hussein. Therefore, action against the regime is not an attack against Arabs, as Mr. Hussein would say, but for Arabs. In fact, leaving Mr. Hussein in power is an anti-Arab position. Creating the conditions to permit a change of government in Baghdad requires that the United States take the lead with an unquestionable commitment to bringing about that change. This will force Iraqis and leaders in the Middle East and Europe to evaluate what relationship they will have with the next Iraqi government. Once this mindset is established, it will become apparent that a new Iraqi government is in their interest and that it would be shortsighted to act to preserve the current regime, despite Mr. Hussein's attempts to buy support through oil contracts. To this end, the message must be that the United States seeks both the greatest and the least change in Iraq - the greatest being the removal of Mr. Hussein, the least being retention of established institutions such as the civil service, the various civilian ministries and even the regular army. These national institutions will be essential in a post-Hussein government. Success will depend entirely on making it clear that the United States is absolutely committed to following through on a regime change. This will mean preparing and being willing to deploy as many military forces as necessary. Only this level of commitment can provide the incentive for the necessary switch in mindset among Iraqis (and the rest of the region). Once Iraqis become convinced that Mr. Hussein's fall is inevitable, he will find himself very lonely in Baghdad. A special element in this strategy is Russia. Washington must convince Moscow that it will benefit by a new government. For example, only if there is a new government in Iraq will Russia be able to exercise its contracts to develop Iraqi oil fields and receive repayment of $8 billion of debt. The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians provides a political smokescreen for Mr. Hussein. Washington needs to reverse this by demonstrating that a new regime in Iraq is a pro-Arab policy. This diplomatic and political work needs to happen now, even if potential military options are delayed. Charles Duelfer, the deputy chairman of U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq from 1993 to 2000, is a visiting resident scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49510-2002Jun2.html * . . . WE'VE TOO MUCH AT STAKE TO RISK IT by William Raspberry Washington Post, 3rd June The prospect of a bloody war, with no prize worth the tens of thousands of American lives it would cost, can make you a little nervous. I'm getting a little nervous. It isn't that I doubt the ability of America's fighting forces to take out a third-rate power like Saddam Hussein's Iraq. My doubts concern the purpose for doing so. Saddam [Hussein] is being described as a ruthless and power-mad tyrant bent on achieving political control of the Arab world and economic control of the region's oil reserves. I don't question the description, but it does seem to me that most of the current saber rattling is coming from Washington, not Baghdad. At one level, the prospect for Bush may be extremely enticing. By launching an all-out attack on Saddam, he could neutralize that despot for all time, make the United States a major power in the Persian Gulf and show himself to be a man among men. I wrote those words a dozen years ago, back when the first President Bush was contemplating the invasion of Iraq. I repeat them now not to show that I was prescient -- I later apologized to George I, acknowledging that his strategy had been successful. But if it was so successful, why are we rattling sabers now? No, the reason I recall my earlier doubts is that they are so much a carbon copy of my present ones. The present President Bush seems, as his father seemed in 1990, not to be using the threat of military action to force a recalcitrant Saddam Hussein to do the right thing; he seems to be hoping that the tyrant doesn't do the right thing. He seems to want war, if only to finish the job his father didn't finish. Maybe it was a mistake not to wipe out the last scrap of Iraq's military power back then, not to mow down the surrendering Republican Guard like shooting fish in a barrel. But surely the failure to do so then cannot justify a unilateral attack now. Maybe that's why George II seems so hellbent on dreaming up new rationales for attack, the original one (the invasion of Kuwait) being no longer applicable and the latter one (noncooperation with weapons inspectors) having grown tired. As in 1990 I offer no defense of Saddam Hussein. What bothers me has more to do with us. Think of America not as the playground bully but as the well-muscled mild-mannered good kid who finally hauls off and whacks the loudmouth pipsqueak who won't stop bugging him. You can justify the whacking. But when the loudmouth cries "uncle," and the fight ends, the big kid can't go back on some transparent pretext to whack him again without running the risk of becoming the playground bully. Maybe it's just my imagination, but I seem to hear behind the recent buzz about invading Iraq (as opposed to our punitive airstrikes) the hope that we'll kill Saddam Hussein himself -- as "collateral damage," of course, assassination being against U.S. and international law. Those are mostly moral doubts. I have pragmatic ones as well. I can understand why America would like someone else to run Iraq -- just as Israel would like someone other than Yasser Arafat to run the Palestinian Authority. But for all the glib talk of "regime change," picking other people's leaders is tricky business. We may find it a lot easier to take down a leader we hate than to install one who is both willing to do our bidding and able to govern his own people. Why mention Israel in this context? It is the more-or-less official view that Saddam Hussein is Arafat's chief international sponsor, the implication being that the way to peace in the Middle East is to get rid of Saddam Hussein. But a major U.S. attack on Iraq now (unless Saddam Hussein is stupid enough to do something provocative) would destroy the coalition, including Arab states, that has made it possible to keep some pressure on Iraq and to move against terrorism. Far worse, it could begin to transform the current difficulties into a religious war -- Christians and Jews against Muslims. That has been a problem at least since September: How to move against America's radical Arab foes without radicalizing the entire Arab world -- including that part that resides within our borders. It would be no show of cowardice for America to review its international behavior to find ways to demonstrate that our fight is against a specific class of terrorists and sponsors of terrorism, not Arabs and Muslims in general. http://sunspot.net/news/nationworld/bal-gephardt-iraq04.story?coll=bal%2Dnat ionworld%2Dheadlines * GEPHARDT BACKS OFFENSIVE AGAINST IRAQ Baltimore Sun (The Associated Press), 4th June WASHINGTON -- House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt volunteered his support today if the administration resorts to force to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, adding, "I share President Bush's resolve to confront this menace head-on." As Gephardt spoke, Bush told reporters that "one option, of course, is the military option" when it comes to the Iraqi leader. The president added he has no plans to attack, but "nevertheless these nations that I have named need to take America seriously." "We should use diplomatic tools where we can, but military means where we must to eliminate the threat he poses to the region and our own security." Gephardt alternately praised, prodded and poked the administration in a speech that ranged over the diplomatic and military implications of the war on terrorism. "President Bush was right Saturday to say we are fighting a new war and will have to be ready to strike when necessary, not just deter," Gephardt said in the speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. "But on the home front, we are moving too slowly to develop a homeland defense plan that is tough enough for this new war." Gephardt said Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge should be made a member of the Cabinet and given authority over a security budget. Such suggestions would bring Ridge under formal congressional oversight, and Bush has thus far refused to go along with them. Gephardt commended Bush for helping develop a stronger relationship between NATO and Russia. But he coupled those words with a call for additional funding to safeguard the remaining nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union. While he said the administration "deserves credit" for the military victory in Afghanistan, Gephardt said it would be shortsighted "if we stop now and withhold support for expanding the international security presence beyond Kabul, as Chairman [Hamid] Karzai has urgently requested." On defense issues, he said he would support adding troops to the armed forces, proposed an overhaul of a logistics and supply system that he described as sluggish, and offered to support a bipartisan commission to build support for military modernization. On foreign policy, he urged the Bush administration to build on a tradition of worldwide engagement, not turn away from it. He said the United States should abandon the use of the term "foreign aid," with its Cold War implications, and use its money to try and foster economic development, democracy and universal education abroad. Gephardt voted against the use of force in the run-up to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, but in his prepared remarks, said he was ready to work with the administration "to build an effective policy to terminate the threat posed by" the Iraqi regime. "New foreign policy initiatives can help remove one of the legs of Saddam's survival by reducing the desperation of many in the Arab world who see him as a defiant ray of hope," he said. "At the same time, we should be prepared to remove the other leg with the use of force." Bush branded Iraq as a member of the "axis of evil" in a speech last winter, and administration officials have not discouraged speculation that the war on terrorism might involve an effort to oust Saddam. Gephardt also urged the Bush administration to demonstrate leadership in the effort to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. "We cannot expect that the parties to this conflict will resolve it without the active support of the United States," he said. "We must be steadfast in our support of Israel," he added. "There is no moral equivalence between suicide bombings and defending against them." http://atimes.com/front/DF05Aa01.html * US HAWKS EMBRACE 'HOT PRE-EMPTION' by Jim Lobe Asia Times, 5th June WASHINGTON (Inter Press Service) - For geo-strategists here, the hot new phrase in the US war on terrorism is "hot pre-emption". Coined in a speech by former secretary of state George Shultz last week, the phrase has already been featured prominently by several influential columnists, including two who strongly favor pre-emptive US military action against Iraq, as a further refinement of the so-called "Bush Doctrine". While President George W Bush has not yet used the precise phrase, he devoted most of his speech on Saturday to the graduating class of the US Military Academy at West Point, New York, to the idea that Washington will no longer rely on deterrence against terrorists but will strike them first, even if they are found, as in Afghanistan, across international borders. "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long," Bush said. "We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge. "The only path to safety is action," he declared. "And this nation will act." His speech, the most hawkish since his notorious "axis of evil" State of the Union address in late January, must have given Shultz, who served as then president Ronald Reagan's top diplomat, immense satisfaction, given his own battles with former defense secretary Caspar Weinberger over how to respond to terrorist attacks in the 1980s. After Shi'ite bombers blew up the US Embassy and marine barracks in Lebanon after Israel's 1982 invasion, Shultz called for "active prevention, pre-emption, and retaliation" against terrorists. Weinberger, who prevailed in the intra-administration debate, favored beating a hasty retreat and bombarding presumed enemy positions in the mountains around Beirut with Volkswagen-sized shells from the safety of the US battleship New Jersey, several miles offshore. That response, according to neo-conservative critics in particular, established a pattern, particularly pronounced in the subsequent administration of Bill Clinton, whereby Islamist militants across the Middle East and South Asia came to believe that Washington could be chased from the region if terrorist attacks exacted a high enough toll on its personnel there. Bush's West Point speech appeared to have been inspired by Shultz's address to the State Department's Foreign Service Institute, which has just been renamed in his honor. "This is war," Shultz told an audience of diplomats. "States must be accountable. We are calling on states to step up their internal responsibilities to end any terrorist presence, while saying that we also reserve, within the framework of our right to self-defense, the right to pre-empt terrorist threats within a state's borders. Not just hot pursuit; hot pre-emption." Shultz, currently a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California, has argued over the past several months that the war on terrorism should be used to revitalize the international system of nation-states created at the end of the Thirty Years' War with the Treaty of Westphalia, more than 300 years ago. In Shultz's view, the state is indispensable "as a means of ordering our international existence". But the state's authority - that is, its sovereignty over its territory and what takes place on it - has been badly battered over the last decades by globalization or, in Schultz's words, the ways "information, money, and migrants" have moved across its borders in ways that escape its control. At the same time, the state has ceded many of its traditional domestic responsibilities to non-governmental entities that have pressed it from below, while international organizations, according to Shultz, have begun to assume some of its other powers - in some cases, even peacekeeping and security - from above. In so doing, the state has surrendered its own accountability. As states have weakened, "terrorists have moved in on them", Shultz wrote in January. In response, many states, especially in the Arab Middle East, have tended to make deals with terrorist movements in order to protect themselves. Some supported terrorism directly as a matter of state policy. "If these deals are not reversed, the states that make them and ultimately the international system of states will not survive," he wrote in the Washington Post. "That is why the war on terrorism is of unsurpassed importance." To the extent that the state has permitted terrorists to operate on its territory, it has surrendered its sovereignty to other states which are threatened by those same forces, according to Shultz, and which can exercise "hot pre-emption". Columnists William Safire of the New York Times and Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post already have seized on Shultz's analysis as justifications both for the US military action against Afghanistan and Israel's recent raids against targets in the West Bank and Gaza. Both also noted that the logic of Shultz's formula would also apply to an Indian intervention in Pakistan, which has sponsored and sheltered groups that have committed terrorist actions in Kashmir. However, Hoagland has suggested that the possible escalation of such a conflict into a nuclear exchange reduces the attractiveness of that option. In his remarks, Shultz himself suggested that a strong Indian action might still be the best course. "Kashmir presents compelling issues, especially since nuclear weapons lurk in the background," he said. "The outline of a potential settlement is much easier to identify than is the process by which to get there. "As elsewhere, the starting point is to hit hard against terrorism as the method of influencing policy on any side of the problem," he concluded. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,54571,00.html * DEMS LOOK FOR POLICY POSITION ON IRAQ by Molly Henneberg Fox News, 6th June WASHINGTON Key Senate Democrats led by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle met Wednesday in one of several recent closed-door meetings to develop their position on Iraq and its president, Saddam Hussein. They emerged without an official statement, but earlier in the day Daschle offered a clue into their discussions: Universal support to oust Saddam from power exists within the Democratic caucus. "The question is when and how and under what circumstances," Daschle said. The move comes one day after potential Democratic presidential candidate and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt gave what was billed as a major foreign policy address in which he said that, if diplomacy fails, he would back the Bush administration if it chose to topple the Iraqi despot. The backing is a marked turnaround for Gephardt, who voted against the use of force prior to the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., who was a key player in the Wednesday powwow, said he agrees with Gephardt that it is time for a regime change, but asked, "Then what?" "I don't know a single informed person who suggests that you can take down Saddam and not be prepared to stay for two, four, five years to give the country a chance to be held together," he said. Sources told Fox News that Democratic members of Congress have recently contacted Iraqi opposition groups to develop a plan for democracy in Iraq after Saddam is gone. But military analysts say those who want a perfect post-Saddam plan are missing the point. "The number one priority is to really get rid of Saddam, a regime change, get a democratic government in there, and free the Iraqi people," said retired Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney, a Fox News contributor. That plan is currently what the United States is undertaking in Afghanistan. It ousted the Taliban government and has provided assistance to the country in trying to develop a democratic government. While the military regularly calls up reservists for regular rotation in Kuwait and more are scheduled to report this fall, Bush administration officials insist there are no plans on the president's desk to take any kind of military action against Saddam. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,727982,00.html * HOON'S TALK OF PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKES COULD BE CATASTROPHIC by Hugo Young The Guardian, 6th June Before Jack Straw went to the subcontinent to lecture India and Pakistan on the consequences of nuclear war, he irritably brushed aside a pertinent question. Asked by John Humphrys why they should pay attention to a country that had itself never renounced first use of nuclear weapons, he said everyone knew the prospect of Britain (and the US and France) using nuclear weapons was "so distant as not to be worth discussing". It sounded like a reassuring platitude. In fact it was about as misleading an answer as can be found in the entire record of Britain's conduct as a nuclear power. Normally, British ministers are reticent about their nuclear weapons. The standard formula is to say, if asked, that we don't rule anything out if anyone attacks us. All this has now changed. The first person who says nuclear use is worth discussing happens to be Straw's colleague, Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary. In March, Hoon said, in the context of Iraq: "I am absolutely confident, in the right conditions, we would be willing to use our nuclear weapons." Those who heard him say this, including some expert advisers, were startled. Such explicitness broke a norm that even Washington has usually observed. But they thought it was an accidental one-off occurring, as it did, at the end of a select committee session and without obvious premeditation. However, a few days later Hoon gave more particulars to Jonathan Dimbleby, insisting that the nuclear option would be taken pre-emptively, if we thought British forces were about to be attacked by Iraqi chemical or biological weapons. My colleague Richard Norton-Taylor reported and commented on this at the time, but there was little political fall-out. Then, to make sure we understood, Hoon said it for a third time, telling the full House of Commons: "A British government must be able to express their view that, ultimately and in conditions of extreme self-defence, nuclear weapons would have to be used." This triple whammy, insisting on Britain's right to use nukes, pre-emptively if necessary, against states of concern that aren't themselves nuclear powers, has made the quietest of impacts. Yet it has no precedent in the policy of any government, Labour or Conservative. It's not merely the words that are new. Some officials close to high policy making tried to pretend to me that Hoon was merely saying what any informed interpreter of British nuclear policy could have known all along. This is nonsense. Dr Stephen Pullinger, author of an instructive recent Isis paper on military options against Iraq, shows clearly how much has changed. In cold war days Britain, like Nato as a whole, opposed a policy of no-first-use because we feared superior Warsaw pact conventional forces might make the nuclear option imperative to save Europe. The scenario Hoon envisages is quite different. Instead of deploying nukes in a conflict initiated by the other side, we claim the right to start nuclear war before any attack is made; and we contemplate doing so, for the first time, against a state that is neither nuclear itself nor allied with a nuclear power. The best case for this language is that it's intended to be deterrent. Leaders unversed in the calculations that sustained nuclear inertia in the cold war need to be reminded in plainest detail of the terrible risks they might be running. That certainly seems to be true of Pakistan. But if further evidence were needed of how much has changed in the case of Iraq, it's supplied by what happened under the Major government, at which time Saddam Hussein was deterred from using chemical and biological (CB) weapons, which he had in plenty, by less apocalyptic means. John Major was asked about that at the start of the Gulf war. He said Britain had a range of weapons and resources to deal with CB attacks on her troops. "We [do] not envisage the use of nuclear weapons," he added. "We would not use them." It's still possible to argue that his successors are engaged in sabre-rattling against a reckless enemy, though Saddam didn't show that kind of recklessness in 1991. There's not much doubt, either, that Iraq is trying to become nuclear-equipped. Maybe intelligence sources think they're closer to getting there than the public can be allowed to know, and far sooner than outside experts have contemplated. In which case a break with the old nuclear grammar might start to be defensible. What's more obviously happening is a change in the rules of the game being written in Washington. Hoon's readiness to import first-strike thinking into his public discourse, which has shocked old nuclear hands, is consistent with many hours spent in the company of the visitor whom Tony Blair and he received in Downing Street yesterday, the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. The Pentagon's nuclear posture review, leaked in March, scatters nuclear threats around the globe, listing Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran and North Korea, as well as any Chinese threat to Taiwan, as potentially necessary first-strike targets. It also spells out a plan for the US to develop new nuclear weapons, allegedly low-yield, "smart", mini not mega, perhaps bunker-busting bombs eventually applicable against al-Qaida's caves and Saddam's labs alike. Britain has no such weaponry. Our usable nukes are almost entirely on top of Trident ICBMs. Is this what Hoon means we might use against Baghdad? What exactly would be our targets? How hard have we thought about Iraqi civilian casualties? Or about what we say when Saddam turns out to have survived our nuclear strike? These are questions of detail, which the defence secretary should surely answer. But more general issues arise from the strategic turmoil that's replacing the nuclear discipline of the cold war. First, what's supposed to happen to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the bulwark on which so much depends? A crucial element of the treaty was the 1978 pledge by the US, Britain and the Soviet Union never to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, except when they started a war in alliance with a nuclear state. In 1995, China and France joined in reiterating this. More than 180 non-nuclear states accepted the deal. If the US or Britain takes Iraq as a pretext to break the promise, what's to stop many countries rushing to acquire the only weaponry they think might keep them safe? Second, and more acutely, we're witnessing the banal-isation of nuclear weapons. Suddenly they seem to have lost their unique horror. Pakistan and India needed teaching about the truth, and may yet not have learned it even with a potential 12 million deaths held out for their inspection. The British case is much worse. The defence secretary's strutting defiance makes the nuclear option sound like merely a stepped-up version of a regular battlefield weapon. Every time he flourishes it, his insouciance renders it more normal, instead of the most terrible calamity that could be visited on the earth. Any use of it, by any power, at any time, would fit such a description. What is it about our times that allows a Labour minister - a Labour minister - to forget that? http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,728835,00.html * THE BUSH DOCTRINE MAKES NONSENSE OF THE UN CHARTER by Jonathan Steele The Guardian, 7th June The cluster of Israeli F-16s took off in desert sunshine on one of the most daring missions of modern times. Flying low through Jordanian, Saudi and Iraqi airspace they reached Baghdad little more than an hour later. The gleaming dome of Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak was easy to spot. The Israeli pilots released their bombs and within 80 seconds the plant was a pile of ruins. The world was outraged by Israel's raid on June 7 1981. "Armed attack in such circumstances cannot be justified. It represents a grave breach of international law," Margaret Thatcher thundered. Jeane Kirkpatrick, the US ambassador to the UN and as stern a lecturer as Britain's then prime minister, described it as "shocking" and compared it to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. American newspapers were as fulsome. "Israel's sneak attack... was an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression," said the New York Times. The Los Angeles Times called it "state-sponsored terrorism". The greatest anger erupted at the UN. Israel claimed Saddam Hussein was trying to develop nuclear weapons and it was acting in self-defence, which is legal under Article 51 of the UN charter. Other countries did not agree. They saw no evidence that Iraq's nuclear energy programme, then in its infancy and certified by the International Atomic Energy Agency as peaceful, could be described as military, aggressive or directed against a particular country. In any case, pre-emptive action by one country against another country which offers no imminent threat is illegal. The UN security council unanimously passed a resolution condemning the Israeli raid. The US usually vetoes UN attempts to censure Israel but this time Washington joined in. The Reagan administration even blocked deliveries of new F-16s to its close ally. There was an element of hypocrisy in the condemnation of Israel, at least in the US. Reagan sent the F-16s a few months later. But policymakers and ordinary people around the world clearly sensed that Israel's pre-emptive strike took us all to the top of a slippery slope. If pre-emption was accepted as legal, the fragile structure of international peace would be undermined. Any state could attack any other under the pretext that it detected a threat, however distant. Since then we have begun to slip down the slope. Along with pre-emption, retaliation is also forbidden by international law. States can reply to hostile actions by other states but they may not take reprisals or other punitive military steps unless the hostile action to which they are responding is manifestly part of a military campaign which is intended to continue. A one-off attack is not sufficient justification. So if, after the destruction of Osirak, Saddam Hussein had sent MiGs to bomb Israel's own nuclear reactor, that would also have been illegal. States have often tried to mingle retaliation and pre-emption and cover their real motives with the justification of self-defence. After a suspected (now proven) Libyan government agent planted a bomb in a Berlin disco which killed an American serviceman in 1986, Reagan ordered US aircraft to bomb Libya. He called his action "pre-emptive" on the grounds there was already a pattern of Libyan terrorist actions. In 1998 after bomb attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Bill Clinton fired cruise missiles on the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. He argued that it was making chemical and biological weapons for Osama bin Laden, who was assumed (now proven) to be behind the embassy bombings. Clinton said there was "compelling evidence" that the Bin Laden network was planning to mount further attacks against Americans, and he was thereafter entitled to act. But, apart from a few western governments which approved or kept quiet, most states condemned the Reagan and Clinton air strikes. They did not accept them as legitimate self-defence under the UN charter. After the September 11 attacks in New York and Wash ington last year we slipped further down the slope. The UN security council gave the US approval to take military action against the assumed perpetrators under Article 51. The council still did not accept a right of retaliation but it argued that the September 11 attacks were so massive that they could be perceived as a declaration of intent by the perpetrators to strike again. Washington was therefore entitled to strike back in self-defence. The argument is controversial, but unless it is challenged by a substantial number of states it will stand as a legitimate new interpretation of international law. Now we have the latest move downhill. In a speech last weekend in the midst of World Cup fever and the Kashmir crisis, President Bush launched his new concept of pre-emption. His speech can claim to be the most chilling statement of his presidency so far. In effect, he retroactively approved the Israeli strike on Osirak and said the US has the right to strike, pre-emptively, at any nation which it decides is developing weapons of mass destruction or supporting terrorism. It is carte blanche for a war on the world. Bush Sr once talked about the need for "the vision thing". His son's West Point speech is "the doctrine thing". US officials say it will be fleshed out in a national security strategy document this summer. In this column yesterday Hugo Young highlighted the British defence secretary's recent statement that Britain will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively. This was Nato policy during the cold war against a potential advance by conventionally armed Warsaw Pact troops. Nato would, if necessary, cross the nuclear threshold first. Now Geoff Hoon talks of using nuclear weapons against the threat of a chemical and biological attack, but he limited himself to the case where British troops are in a war zone and need protection from imminent danger. The Bush doctrine is more sweeping. Even without an imminent threat, US troops in the area or hostilities under way, he claims the right to launch military strikes. "Our security will require transforming the military you will lead," he told cadets at West Point. "The military must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world. All nations that decide for aggression and terror will pay a price." Many nations have exploited the "war on terrorism", either to gain favour with Washington or clamp down on dissent. The Bush doctrine goes further. The US president is hijacking the anti-terrorist agenda and crashing it into the most sacred skyscraper in New York: the headquarters of the UN. If his doctrine is not rapidly rejected by other states, preferably those which call themselves Washington's allies, Article 51 of the UN charter will have suffered a mortal blow. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_2030000/2030699.st m * CHENEY URGES ACTION ON IRAQ by Nick Childs BBC, 7th June United States Vice-President Dick Cheney has said that Iraq must never be allowed to threaten the US with weapons of mass destruction. In typically blunt language, Dick Cheney said in Washington that Iraq, under its leader Saddam Hussein, has gassed thousands of its citizens, and hates America and all it stands for. And with particular reference to Iraq, he called for a careful, deliberate, and decisive response to what he described as the gathering danger of links between regimes and terrorist groups seeking such weapons. Mr Cheney's speech was the latest in a series by top administration officials promoting what is emerging as a new doctrine of the Bush administration - that the US must be prepared to take pre-emptive action against new security threats. It was a theme crystallised at the weekend in a speech by President Bush himself at the West Point military academy. And it is a message that has been carried to America's Nato allies in Europe by the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. The key question is whether Mr Cheney's remarks are a sign that the administration is close to resolving its own internal debate over precisely when and how to confront Saddam Hussein, and whether that will involve a full-scale military assault. http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/06/07/rumsfeld.nato/index.html * RUMSFELD'S TERROR WARNING FOR NATO CNN, 7th June BRUSSELS, Belgium (CNN) -- NATO has moved to include its eastern nations in the debate on terrorism after a stark warning from U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the threat western alliance nations face. Speaking at a NATO summit in Brussels, Rumsfeld said the western military alliance must take the offensive against terrorists who will attempt attacks that could make September 11 look "modest by comparison." On Friday NATO defence ministers moved to seek greater cooperation with 27 mostly former East bloc nations who joined a second day of talks. "It is our task to ensure that the partnership continues to make its contribution to Euro-Atlantic security in a rapidly changing world," NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said at the meeting. Robertson said the 46-nation partnership was already "an essential pillar of the international coalition against terrorism" but stressed, "to enhance our security, we must continue to evolve." The countries attending ranged from Slovenia, Latvia and Romania, which have long worked closely with NATO and are expected to receive an invitation to join the alliance in November, to Central Asian states, including Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, assisting the U.S. war in Afghanistan. NATO is hoping to bring them into a wider campaign against terrorism, which the alliance ministers highlighted as the priority on Thursday after Rumsfeld delivered his warning about threat from extremist groups obtaining nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Rumsfeld told a news conference on Thursday it may be necessary for NATO to "calibrate the definition of defensive" to counter new threats from global terrorist organisations with weapons of mass destruction. "If terrorists can attack at any time and any place using any technique, and it is physically impossible to defend in every place, in every time against every technique, then one needs to calibrate the definition of defensive," Rumsfeld told reporters. "Literally the only way to defend against individuals, or groups, or organisations, or countries that have weapons of mass destruction and are bent on using them against you, for example... then the only defence is to take the effort to find those global networks and to deal with them as the United States did in Afghanistan. Now is that defensive or is it offensive? I personally think of it as defensive." Rumsfeld's remarks came in answer to a question about whether NATO might have to change its traditional stance as a defensive organisation. The United States, he said, had no interest "in doing anything in Afghanistan. The terrorists that had been trained there and that global network attacked the United States." He said intelligence reports make it clear that "there are a good number of people who are well trained, they are well-financed, located in 40 or 50 countries, and they are determined to attack the values and the interests, the peace and the way of life of the people of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation nations. "So I don't find this task notably different. It's different in the sense that we aren't dealing with armies, navies and air forces, but clearly every nation has the right of self-defence and this is the only conceivable way for us to protect ourselves from those kinds of threats." Asked if he had discussed Iraq with the NATO ministers, Rumsfeld said the subject came up in the context of a nation that was trying to gain weapons of mass destruction. Asked if there was any consensus about what to do about Iraq, Rumsfeld said that never came up. Rumsfeld will also visit several Gulf countries including Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, during his 10-day tour. He is due to visit South Asia next week following U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage who arrived in Pakistan on Wednesday. _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk