Dan Smith: Appointment in Samarra--W. Somerset Maughm and the War in Iraq Daryl Kimball: We know North Korea is developng nuclear weapons. Let's develop a realistic negotiating strategy Dan Kobayashi: We've tried preemptive attack, how about preemptive disengagement?

New York University

U.S. State Department's
Report on Patterns of Global Terrorism for 2002

The US State Department's Report on Patterns of Global Terrorism for 2001

L. PAUL (JERRY) BREMER III REPLACES JAY GARNER AS SENIOR U.S. CIVILIAN IN IRAQ
Jay Garner, who was supposed to be in charge of reconstruction operations in Iraq, has progressively found himself in deeper and deeper hot water. His new boss, Jerry Bremer, is just as much a hawk, but Bremer is expected to be more attuned to local Iraqi political sensitivities. As head of a Congressional panel looking into terrorism in June 2000, Bremer predicted that a terrorist attack against the U.S. could turn into another Pearl Harbor. That was more than a year before 9/11. Bremer will report to the Pentagon, but because of his long career as a diplomat, his appointment is seen as a victory for the State Department. The Washington Post outlines his background.
(Washington post, May 2, 2003)

Bremer was CEO and Chairman of Marsh Crisis Consulting
His company's mission--as explained by Bremer on Marsh's website--was to advise other companies on the most effective approach to crisis management.

FLASHBACK:Bremer's take on terrorism a year before 9/11
In a wide-ranging panel discussion on the Jim Lehrer Newshour on June 6, 2000, Bremer warned that the new trend in terrorism was to aim for highly selective attacks intended to achieve maximum casualties. In retrospect, it was a prescient assessment. (Jim Lehrer NewsHour, June 6, 2000)

GARNER OUT FOR KEEPS?
The Independent in London reports that retired general Jay Garner will very likely leave Iraq within a few weeks after the arrival of Jay Bremer. Garner is described as missed critical political cues in Iraq. (Independent, May 6, 2003)

A ROCKY START
Iraqi politics may have been too much for Garner. In a recent summit of 300 Iraqis, Garner managed to exclude nearly anyone who actually had a following in Iraq. In the meantime, U.S. soldiers are finding themselves ill equipped to deal with civil disturbances.
(Jonathan Steele, the Guardian, May 6, 2003)

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM AT ITS LOWEST LEVEL SINCE 1969
The U.S. State Department's report, Annual Patterns of Global Terrorism, notes that there were only 199 international terrorist attacks last year, a decrease of 44% from 2001. The figures can be misleading, though. One reason for the drop was a decrease in oil pipeline bombings in Colombia (41 attacks in 2002 compared to 178 in 2001). Some 3,000 Al Qaeda suspects have been arrested in 100 countries, and has frozen $134 million in suspected Al Qaeda bank accounts. U.S. antiterrorism coordinator Cofer Black briefs on the reports contents. . (Cofer Black, U.S. State Dept. April 30, 2003)
Link to the full report online

ROADMAP TO WHERE?
In its current form, the Roadmap for the Middle East doesn't constitute a credible strategy. The Israelis will never accept the "Right of Return" for hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians who would effectively overwhelm any hope for a democratic government that would accept Jewish supremacy. The demand that the Palestinian Authority puts a stop to armed struggle before Israel makes any concessions at all is equally unrealistic. The lack of an enforcement mechanism is equally problematic.
Despite these drawbacks, the roadmap could serve as a catalyst for Israel and the Palestinians to internalize the contours and requirements of a sustainable peace. The trick is to see the plan as a political document not a blue print to be taken literally. The International Crisis Group analyzes the plan and is implications.
(ICG, May 6, 2003)

SHARON SAYS HE WILL DISCUSS ISRAEL'S RESERVATIONS TO THE PLAN WHEN HE VISITS WASHINGTON
Sharon says he is trying to coordinate a meeting with Abu Mazen, and is convinced that the Palestinian Authority's prime minister realizes that terrorism won't defeat Israel. Sharon wants the Palestinians to renounce their claims to the "right of return."
(Ha'aretz, May 6, 2003)

THE HALLIBURTON SAGA CONTINUES
The contract awarded to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root to put out oil fires during the Iraq War may be more extensive than was first realized. In an ongoing correspondence with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, California Congressman Henry Waxman, the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform, notes that the contract also authorizes KBR to make Iraq’s wells operational and to distribute the oil they produce. The contract, which was awarded without competitive bidding, has a ceiling of $7 billion. The Army says it will replace it soon with one that is open to competitive bidding. Even then, Halliburton will have an edge since it already has the LOGCAP contract for the Army’s contingency planning. KBR had originally tried to sign a contract with Saddam to refurbish the wells in 1998, when Dick Cheney was still CEO, but that deal fell through because of Congressional sanctions against dealing with Saddam’s government.
For a complete index to Waxman’s letters to and from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, click here.

WAR CAN BE MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL
Corporatewatch.org, which has been following Dick Cheney’s relations with Halliburton with some interest, notes that Halliburton recently boasted in an investor conference call that its subsidiary, Kellogg Brown and Root, had experienced a 30% leap in year-to-year revenues. Those revenues now stand at $1.6 billion. When Cheney was Secretary of Defense under the first Bush administration, he awarded Halliburton a $3.9 million contract to ponder how private corporations could help the U.S. Army. When Cheney became Halliburton’s CEO, the company leaped from 73rd place to 18th place on the Pentagon’s list of preferred contractors. As a result, it took in roughly $3.8 billion in contracts and taxpayer-insured loans. In 2000, the GAO criticized Halliburton for not making enough effort to limit costs on the $2.2 billion that it had received for logistical and engineering support in the Balkans, but the criticism did not stop the administration from awarding KBR a contract to handle its contingency planning for operations like Iraq. It was that insider status which gained Halliburton the edge it needed to wrest the Iraq contract away from competitors, such as the 6 international oil fire fighting companies who extinguished the Kuwaiti oil fires after Desert Storm. (Corporatewatch.org, April 4, 2003)

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION?
The administration continues the search for the weapons of mass destruction that were the main justification for attacking Iraq, but so far the smoking gun remains elusive. On the Jim Lehrer NewsHour, Ray Suarez interviews former weapons inspector David Albright and Terence Taylor, the lead inspector for chemical and biological teams in the 1990s, on the likelihood that anything will turn up, and also on whether the U.S. should allow U.N. inspectors who have the most experience in the area to join in the search. (Jim Lehrer NewsHour, May 5, 2003)

SELECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: INFORMING THE WHITE HOUSE WITH THE "NOBLE LIE"
When it didn't like the world picture provided by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Bush administration turned to a group of amateur intelligence buffs, the Office of Special Plans, nicknamed the "Cabal". They took their information from a variety of untested sources including Iraqi opposition groups. Although much of the information about weapons of mass destruction, biological threats and terrorist links to Al Qaeda turned out to be largely inaccurate, the group was successful in providing the neoconservatives around Bush with the ammunition they needed to enable the Pentagon to dominate U.S. foreign policy and declare war, effectively confining the State Department, CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency and their worldwide intelligence networks to the sidelines. The underlying basis for the successful coup was the late University of Chicago philosopher Leo Strauss' notion from Plato of the "Noble lie", state deception in service of a higher national need. Seymour Hersh details how it all went down in this week's New Yorker.
(Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, May 5, 2003)

THE INTERCONNECTEDNESS OF LEO STRAUSS
In their hunt for intellectual legitimacy, neoconservatives have turned to a late Chicago University professor who loved the classics and achieved fame largely through the influence his ideas on conservative thinkers from Allan Bloom and Francis Fukayama, to William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. Some question whether the disciples really understood the message in its proper context. James Atlas outlines the Strauss phenomenon in the New York Times News of the Week in Review. (James Atlas, New York Times, May 4, 2003)

THE PENTAGON GETS READY TO FLOAT ITS OWN DEFINITIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
Having assigned prisoners captured in Afghanistan and Iraq to a netherworld outside the norms of the U.S. legal system and impervious to international law, the Pentagon is now forming its guidelines for "military commissions" which will rule ex post facto on actions that the administration considers, in retrospect, to have been criminal. Not exactly kangaroo courts, the military commissions will allow civilian attorneys, provided the Afghans prisoners incarcerated at Guantanamo for the last several months can afford to fork over the cash required, and if the attorneys manage to obtain a secret security clearance. If they can't afford that, the Secretary of Defense has made provisions to choose U.S. military officers to act in the prisoners' defense. The proceedings are likely to be carried out in secret. There is no provision for U.S. judicial oversight since the Pentagon maintains that the U.S. base at Guantanamo is sovereign Cuban territory, and therefore not under the jurisdiction of American courts. The Pentagon provides a background briefing on the details, as well as the formal guidelines. (The Pentagon provides a background briefing on the courts with links to the memoranda setting out the guidelines for procedures).
(U.S. Department of Defense, May 6, 2003)

THE UNTHINKABLE IS BACK ON THE RADAR SCREEN
The Cold War may be over, but nuclear weapons are beginning to make a comeback, this time without the traditional mechanisms for keeping them under control. Washington's readiness to trounce Iraq and its hesitations to take on North Korea have also sent a clear message. In this week's New York Times Magazine, Bill Keller explores changing attitudes and a new readiness in the third world to flaunt the bomb.
(Bill Keller, new York Times Magazine, May 5, 2003)

WIRELESS IN LAOS
After a power surge fried the Remote IT Village project's computer, the locals turned to muscle power--a generator powered by a purple 10-speed bicycle. It may look primitive, but the network now links 5 villages on an irregular basis using "Laonux" a language the villagers can relate to. (Michelle Delio, Wired, May 6, 2003)
The Jhai Foundation's IT Remote Village Project

INDONESIA PREPARES TO RESUME WAR IN NORTHERN SUMATRA
With violence still erupting in rebellious Aceh, and the rebels reluctant to undergo yet another round of talks in Geneva, Jakarta is preparing thousands of troops for a military-driven final solution.
(Reuters AlertNet, May 6, 2003)

THE EYE OF WEST AFRICA'S REGIONAL STORM
Liberia's civil war has spilled over into Cote d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Guinea. At the core of the problem is Liberia's troublesome president Charles Taylor. The International Crisis Group details the connections and recommends more international attention to bring the civil war to a close.
(ICG, April 30, 2003)

GLOBALIZATION NO LONGER EQUIVALENT TO AMERICANIZATION
Communication is a two-way street, or a multi-directional highway these days. Take the latest smash cinema hit, City of God, or in its original Brazilian title, Ciudade de Deus. The film, distributed by Miramax, has not only earned millions where it was made in Brazil, it has also sparked a substantial debate in the U.S. on third world poverty.
(Philip Legrain, Chronicle for Higher Education, May 9, 2003)

SADDAM'S SON, QUSAY, MAKES OFF WITH $1 BILLION
In the hours before the U.S. bombing began, Saddam's son withdrew $1 billion from Iraq's Central Bank. In $100 bills, the loot probably weighed 11 tons, and required three tractor trailer trucks to move. Questions are being raised about the long term motives: set up a government in exile, finance international terrorists, or secure early retirement.
(Dexter Filkins, New York Times, May 6, 2003

THE LEGACY OF TOMOYUKI YAMASHITA
The Fifth Amendment of the Constitution states that no person shall be "deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law..." U.S. Attorney John Ashcroft insists that the wording does not apply non-American citizens engaged in hostile actions against the United States, or for that matter to anyone asking for asylum or entering the U.S. illegally. In fact, two cases argued before the U.S. Supreme Court established a precedent for denying due legal process to enemy combatant's. In 1946, a Japanese commanding general, Tomoyuki Yamashita, captured in the Philippines was tried by the kind of military court envisioned by Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush administration. Yamashita was accused of being responsible for the deaths of more than 20,000 Filipino civilians. His defense attorneys claimed that much of the evidence directed against him was based on hearsay and was inadmissible, even in a military court. He was not accused of a war crime and in fact, it was not clear what crime he had actually committed.
In the heat of the moment, the Supreme Court ruled against Yamashita, and he was hanged.
One Supreme Court Justice, Frank Murphy delivered a dissenting opinion: "... The Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process of law applies to 'any person' who is accused of a crime by the Federal Government or any of its agencies," Murphy argued. "No exception is made as to those who are accused of war crimes or as to those who possess the status of an enemy belligerent. Indeed, such an exception would be contrary to the whole philosophy of human rights which makes the Constitution the great living document that it is. The immutable rights of the individual, including those secured by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, belong not alone to the members of those nations that excel on the battlefield or that subscribe to the democratic ideology. They belong to every person in the world, victor or vanquished, whatever may be his race, color or beliefs. They rise above any status of belligerency or outlawry. They survive any popular passion or frenzy of the moment. No court or legislature or executive, not even the mightiest [327 U.S. 1, 27]   army in the world, can ever destroy them. Such is the universal and indestructible nature of the rights which the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment recognizes and protects when life or liberty is threatened by virtue of the authority of the United States.
The existence of these rights, unfortunately, is not always respected. They are often trampled under by those who are motivated by hatred, aggression or fear. But in this nation individual rights are recognized and protected, at least in regard to governmental action. They cannot be ignored by any branch of the Government, even the military, except under the most extreme and urgent circumstances..."
Murphy's arguments were overruled. Most Americans cared little about Yamashita's rights or his fate, yet the precedent set by circumventing the strict application of the Constitution in order to exact revenge against Yamashita is now part of the legal argument for the denial of due process for the hundreds of prisoners being held at Guantanamo and if the Attorney General has his way, it may also give the government authorization to deny due process to asylum seekers and illegal aliens. Precedents have a way of generating unexpected consequences. For a full analysis of the Yamashita case on findlaw, click here. (Justice Murphy's dissenting opinion is located after the main arguments)

For a more detailed biography of General Findlaw, and an explanation of the Yamashita Standard (This holds commanding officers legally responsible for the actions of their subordinates), click here.

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