Ehsan Ahrari: India offers Iran military hardware and training in exchange for the right to use Iranian bases if south Asia heats up. Ralph Cossa: On Korea's new president and its old problem with the North Jurgen Brauer: on the cost-effectiveness of beefed-up U.N. inspections versus a $200 billion war Melissa Howell: US troops fighting in the Philippines is an issue that is too hot to handle   ANTI-AMERICANISM IS BACK IN STYLE Boston University professors Margaret and Melvin DeFleur have updated their study of attitudes about America in different countries of the world. Click here to see the an interactive guide. Click here for the full report as a pdf file   THE GLOBAL BEAT'S INTERACTIVE REPORTS Why We Are Hated,Nuclear Bunker busters AND Post-Moscow Disarmament

New York University

David Isenberg's critique of Homeland Security and recommendations for improvements
[click on image to go to the executive summary]

THE SEARCH FOR A NUCLEAR WEAPON FOR LIMITED CONFLICTS
Mark Bromley and David Grahame report on the Pentagon's search for a nuclear "bunker buster"

THE FUTURE OF NUCLEAR ARMS CONTROL

Rose Gottmoeller:
an interactive assessment of nuclear disarmament after the Moscow Summit,

KHALID SHAIKH MOHAMMED REALLY IS A MAJOR CATCH
The Jim Lehrer News Hour interviews Daniel Benjamin, a former NSC counter terrorism expert and Zachary Abuza on the significance. Among other things, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was very likely a mentor to his nephew, Ramzi Youssef, who is now serving a life-sentence for his role in the early World Trade Center Bombing. An earlier plot exploding bombs simultaneously on several American airliners heading for Hong Kong. The most important information is likely to come from the sheikh’s cell phones and lap top computers. By tracing recent calls on the phones, intelligence agencies should be able to get a much clearer picture of Khalid Mohammed’s network.
(Jim Lehrer News Hour, March 3, 2003)
RAND terrorism expert, Bruce Hoffman, answers questions over the internet on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Al Qaeda
(Washingtonpost.com, March 3, 2003)
How he was tracked down—email provided the crucial clue.
(BBC, March 5, 2003)
WHERE IS THE SHEIKH NOW?
Conflicting signals from Pakistan’s ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) have raised questions about Khalid Sheikh Mohammad's current location, and who has custody. Rumors circulating through Karachi have Khalid being interrogated at a secret CIA detention center in Diego Garcia, while others hint that the authorities might be holding the wrong man.
(B. Raman in Asia Times, March 5, 2003)

SHUT UP, YOU MONKEY!
An emergency Arab summit in Doha breaks down after an eruption of name calling between the representatives from Iraq and Kuwait. The exchange emphasized the splits within the Arab world about dealing with Iraq. (Reuters, March 5, 2003)

ALL SHOCK AND AWE
General Richard Meyers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirms that the U.S. strategywill involve hitting Iraq with at least 3,000 missiles and smart bombs in less than 48 hours. The object is to traumatize the country to such an extent that it will surrender immediately. meyers says that casualties among Iraq's civilians are likely to be a byproduct of the attack. (New York Times, March 4, 2003)

WILL VICTORY IN IRAQ REALLY RECALL THE END OF WORLD WAR II?
Writing in the New Yorker, Philip Gourevitch finds some of the President Bush’s recent pronouncements a bit utopian. If the U.S. does unseat Saddam, the victory is likely to be incremental at best. (Philip Gourevitch, The New Yorker, March 4, 2003)

U.N. PREPARES SECRET PLAN FOR POST-SADDAM IRAQI ADMINISTRATION
A 60-page secret document obtained by the Times of London envisions a plan similar to the U.S. administration in Afghanistan. The idea would be to enable the U.S. to pull out as quickly as possible.

U.S. INTELLIGENCE ALLEGEDLY ORDERED TO SPY ON U.N. DIPLOMATS
Britain’s Observer publishes what it describes as a leaked, top secret targeting directive from the U.S. National Security Agency’s Frank Koza. The text, as relayed by the Observer, is fairly explicit: " As you've likely heard by now, the Agency is mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) members (minus US and GBR of course) for insights as to how to membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE: Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies/ negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances/ dependencies, etc - the whole gamut of information that could give US policy makers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US goals or to head off surprises. In RT, that means a QRC surge effort to revive/ create efforts against UNSC members Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters…"
To read the memo’s full text, click here…
(The Observer, March 2, 2003)
To read the observer's news story, click here

BUYING VOTES FOR A WAR
The U.S. needs nine votes to carry the U.N. Security Council. So far it has three. Bulgaria, Spain and Tony Blair are on board. If the U.S. decides to stick to the Security Council path, the others will have to be bought. In behind closed doors negotiations, Washington has unleashed a flood of promises of foreign aid, debt write-offs and outright cash grants as well as ominous threats in an effort to sway the doubters. Convincing previously ignored countries like Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan to see the light is going to cost U.S. taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.
William Hartung adds up the tab in The Nation, (February 27, 2003)

FRANCE AND RUSSIA WILL BLOCK A SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION FAVORING WAR
The French and Russians have not said outright that they will use their veto, but they are now making it increasingly clear that they will not allow a resolution supporting war to go through the Security Council. As France's foreign minister Dominique Villepin expresses it: "We will assume our responsibilities."
(AP, March 5, 2003)
The French Foreign Ministry Daily Press briefing from Paris (in English)...

THINK DEMOCRACY HAS A CHANCE IN POST-SADDAM IRAQ? DON’T COUNT ON IT
George Packer, writing in the New York Times Sunday Magazine notes that even the Washington policy establishment is divided between "realists" who expect business as usual in Post-Saddam Iraq, and the "policy revolutionaries" with utopian visions of reshaping the Middle East. The few Iraqis, including Kanan Makiya, who were trying to guide Washington a few weeks ago, now find themselves increasingly isolated.
(George Packer, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, March 3, 2003)

WHAT ABOUT A POSTWAR PLAN FOR IRAQ?
So far, the Bush Administration has drafted a blue print for a U.S. military but there is little sign of anything that would lead to political reconstruction. (By Marina Ottaway, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, March3, 2003)

SADDAM MOVES HIS TROOPS FOR THE ENDGAME
Recent Iraqi troop movements indicate that Saddam is willing to abandon large chunks of territory for a final fight in Baghdad where Iraq civilians are likely to provide a human shield and pressure from the Arab street could provide an unexpected factor.
(Michael Gordon, the New York Times, MARCH 4, 2003)

U.S. EXPECTED TO MAKE A DASH FOR BAGHDAD WHILE THE BRITISH HOLD IRAQ’S SOUTH
U.S. Marines and armor will make a bee-line for Baghdad, and will handle the street fighting exclusively. "The Americans have made it clear that Baghdad is their prize," says a senior British military source.
(By Daniel McGrory in Kuwait, and Michael Evans, Defence Editor, The Times of London, March 4, 2003)

THE CIA’S PROJECTION: SADDAM’S HUMAN SHIELDS
Saddam forced roughly 800 foreigners to act as human shields during desert storm, and he encouraged his own citizens to act as "voluntary" shields. This time around, Saddam is appealing to the international peace movement, and these days he is massing anti-aircraft missiles and other weapons near mosques and schools, aiming for the maximum collateral damage.
(CIA, January 2003)

WHAT IF SADDAM ATTACKS IRAQ'S OIL?
A senior defense official goes through the scenarios for Saddam’s use of a weapon of economic terror. Sabotage during Desert Storm, in which Saddam set fire to 700 wells and dumped 5 million barrels into the Persian Gulf, was not exactly insignificant. It caused 20 times the damage of the Exxon Valdez. Damage to Iraqi well heads from Saddam this time could double that.
(U.S. Defense Dept. briefing January 24, 2003)

IS THE U.S. REALLY AFTER THE OIL? SOME CRITICS THINK SO, AND THEY INCLUDE A NUMBER OF FORMER AMERICAN AMBASSADORS TO THE MIDDLE EAST?
Robert Dreyfuss describes thirty years of maneuvering in the region, and notes that for some oil is more important as a source of political power than as a fuel. The debate extends back to the time of Henry Kissinger.
(Robert Dreyfuss, Mother Jones, March/April 2003)

SURE SADDAM HAS WEAPONS, BUT THIS IS THE WRONG WAR
Writing in the New York Review of Books, Avishai Margalit argues that the real danger is not Saddam but the revolution being created by radical Islam. "Terror as propaganda-by-action counts on one thing: the overreaction of its victims," notes Margalit. "Out of anger and frustration the victims will respond by punishing bystanders, who will react by becoming more radical in their feelings and more susceptible to recruitment… the "right" war should respond to an Islamic world on the verge of a "revolutionary situation." This, rather than terror, is the main problem that the world faces today; terror is a nasty symptom…"
(Avishai Margalit, in The New York Review of Books, February 13, 2003)

THE LASHKAR I JHANGVI WANTS TO BECOME PAKISTAN’S BRANCH OF AL QAEDA
Not too long ago the LIJ spent most of its time trying to get revenge against rival terrorist bands. These days, the group has honed its talents at bomb making and kidnapping, and it has developed broader horizons. Pakistani authorities now think that the group is getting advanced chemical training from Al Qaeda operatives,
(Center for Defense Information, March 3, 2003)

WHY DID TURKEY SAY NO?
Turkey’s rejection has more to do with the realities of politics on the ground in the Middle East than it does with the amount of money that Washington is willing to fork over for the use of Turkish bases.
By Robert Cutler, in Asia Times, March 5, 2003

DOES THE REJECTION MATTER? YOU BET IT DOES
The U.S. wouldn't have delayed its deployment as long as it has if it hadn’t been counting heavily on using Turkey as a launch zone for northern Iraq. The fact that the U.S. is already signing orders to deploy reinforcements indicates that the war plan is much more advanced than many observers realize.
(Nick Childs, BBC, March 5, 2003)

INTERIM REPORT BY THE SENATE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE ON THE FBI’S FAILURES IN IMPLEMENTING THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE ACT
The bottom line: field agents are doing a great job; the same cannot be said for the FBI’s management structure or its mastery of technology. Many FBI agents said they’d rather quit than serve at the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC. Agents considered the management structure to be "hypocritical, lacking ethics," and "concerned with appearance over substance."
(Senators Arlen Specter and Patrick Leahy, Feb. 2003)
Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker on Intelligence surprises. The FBI and CIA aren’t the only ones to miss the signals. Look at Israel in 1973.

AN AMERICAN VILLAIN
The New Yorker’s Jane Meyer ponders the strange case of John Walker Lindh—American traitor, or a kid easily influenced by Spike Lee’s film Malcolm-X? And why is the Justice Department preventing him from speaking to the media? "There is an almost visceral hatred of John Walker Lindh. On the day that he was sentenced to serve twenty years for aiding the Taliban, one of the cable channels had a call-in show in which members of the public could express their views, and, as I recall, people were almost unanimous in condemning the court for being too soft on Lindh. His defense lawyers suggest that part of the reason he stirs such anger is that, unlike Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and, at the moment, Saddam Hussein, Lindh was the guy that U.S. officials were able to catch, so he became the known face of an otherwise elusive enemy...."
Jane Mayer in the New Yorker on-line, March 4, 2003

PRESIDENT BUSH PAINTS AN OPTIMISTIC PICTURE OF IRAQ UNDER AN AMERICAN STYLE DEMOCRACY, BUT THE HAWKS HAVE THE UPPER HAND
Foreign Policy in Focus’ Jim lobe points out that George Bush’s choice of the American heritage Institute to project his vision of a post-war Iraq shows who is influencing the administration these days. (Jim Lobe, Foreign Policy in Focus, March 3, 2003)

WINNING ENEMIES AND LOSING FRIENDS
On his recent trip to Israel, U.S. Under Secretary of State John Bolton surpassed previous performances by casually mentioning to Ariel Sharon and Benyamin Netanyahu that the U.S. plans to take care of Syria and Iran once it has finished Iraq. It was only the latest in a series of unusual performances for an amazing diplomat. Ian Williams recounts other recent Bolton coups, including the request last year to have the CIA vet Hans Blix before his selection to head UNMOVIC.
(Ian Williams in Foreign Policy in Focus, February 20, 2003)

SEQUEL TO THE PATRIOT ACT: WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY, AND HE IS…
David Cole writes in The nation: "…In early February, the Center for Public Integrity disclosed a leaked draft of the Bush Administration's next round in the war on terrorism--the Domestic Security Enhancement Act (DSEA). The draft legislation, stamped Confidential and dated January 9, 2003, appears to be in final form but has not yet been introduced in Congress. Presumably the Administration had determined that the timing would be more propitious for passage--meaning less propitious for reasoned debate--after we go to war with Iraq. But it is one thing to play politics with the timing of a farm bill; it is another matter to do so with a bill that would radically alter our rights and freedoms.
If the Patriot Act was so named to imply that those who question its sweeping new powers of surveillance, detention and prosecution are traitors, the DSEA takes that theme one giant step further. It provides that any citizen, even native-born, who supports even the lawful activities of an organization the executive branch deems "terrorist" is presumptively stripped of his or her citizenship. To date, the "war on terrorism" has largely been directed at noncitizens, especially Arabs and Muslims. But the DSEA would actually turn citizens associated with "terrorist" groups into aliens. ..They would then be subject to the deportation power, which the DSEA would expand to give the Attorney General the authority to deport any noncitizen whose presence he deems a threat to our "national defense, foreign policy or economic interests." One federal court of appeals has already ruled that this standard is not susceptible to judicial review. So this provision would give the Attorney General unreviewable authority to deport any noncitizen he chooses, with no need to prove that the person has engaged in any criminal or harmful conduct.
A US citizen stripped of his citizenship and ordered deported would presumably have nowhere to go. But another provision authorizes the Attorney General to deport persons "to any country or region regardless of whether the country or region has a government." And failing deportation to Somalia (or a similar place), the Justice Department has issued a regulation empowering it to detain indefinitely suspected terrorists who are ordered deported but cannot be removed because they are stateless or their country of origin refuses to take them back.
Other provisions are designed to further insulate the war on terrorism from public and judicial scrutiny. The bill would authorize secret arrests, a practice common in totalitarian regimes but never before authorized in the United States. It would terminate court orders barring illegal police spying entered before September 11, 2001, without regard to the need for judicial supervision. It would allow secret government wiretaps and searches without even a warrant from the supersecret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court when Congress has authorized the use of force. And it would give the government the same access to credit reports as private companies, without judicial supervision. Historically, we have imposed a higher threshold, and judicial oversight, on government access to such private information, because government has the motive and the wherewithal to abuse the information in ways private companies generally do not... "
To read the rest of David Cole’s article in THE NATION, click here…

To read the leaked copy of the internal Justice Department Memorandum, click here...

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