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[casi] (new) News, 1-8/6/02 (3)



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: ŒMight 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: ŒIf 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:
ŒThink 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 ŒWell-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.




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