Norman Solomon: The City of Doom-- as the pressure builds, Baghdad feels the heat Phillip C. Bleek: The best protection against nuclear terrorism is a US funded global program to control fissile material Butch Anthony: When it comes to the Middle East, the administration doesn't quite get it. THE GLOBAL BEAT'S INTERACTIVE REPORTS Nuclear Bunker busters AND Post-Moscow Disarmament

New York University

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,

The Journalists' Essential Field Guide to Afghanistan
by Edward Girardet

click here

REPORTING ETHNICITY AND
OTHER DIVERSITY
ISSUES
by The European
Center for War,
Peace &
The News Media
click here

HITCHENS: LET’S NOT FORGET THAT SADDAM REALLY IS A MONSTER
Christopher Hitchens--the consummate champagne socialist, professional maverick and ideological contrarian--announces his last column for The Nation magazine. Pleading irreconcilable differences, Hitchens’ beef is that the Nation seems more upset with the Bush administration’s stampeding over civil rights than with the awfulness of Saddam’s regime. Hitchens notes that many of Saddam’s key aides have had members of their own families tortured, murdered or imprisoned by Baghdad’s madman, often on a whim, or a simple need to demonstrate who is in control. The disparities have pushed the prolific maverick to the center-right.
By Christopher Hitchens in The Nation, September 30, 2002
The Nation’s Open Letter to Congress

IRAQ: THE RUSSIAN VIEWPOINT
The US deserves credit for seeking coalition support on Iraq, but if the real US goal is to get rid of Saddam, Washington should say so, and not hide behind the pretext of controlling weapons of mass destruction.
By Vladimir Frolov, deputy staff director of the State Duma foreign affairs committee in the Moscow Times, September 30, 2002

THE ARAB VIEW: AN EDITORIAL IN THE TIMES OF YEMEN
"...Everyone knows that the US economy is dependent on the oil basins in the Arabian Peninsula and that a war at this time against an Islamic country would probably trigger massive outrage and anger among the public in those countries. It may be a repeat of the demonstrations that took place following the Jenin massacre and which faded away days later. But who guarantees that it would be in such a fashion? Who guarantees that hell would not break loose causing destruction or threats to US interests in the region?"

NEW FOCUS ON US AID TO IRAQ'S BIOWEAPONS PROGRAM
The fact that the US provided Iraq with samples of some of the world's most lethal biological agents is beginning to attract attention (see Senate testimony by Senator Robert Byrd, "Back When Saddam Was Our Man," in this week's right hand column). Samples of anthrax and botulism were dispatched to Baghdad from the Centers for Disease Control and other US agencies at a time when Washington considered Saddam to be a useful ally.
By Matt Kelly, the Associated Press, October 1, 2002

WAR WITH IRAQ SHIFTS MEDIA FOCUS JUST IN TIME
Reporters were starting to question Dick Cheney’s role as boss at Haliburton (whose subsidiary, incidentally, signed a deal with Saddam to help rebuild pipelines). They were also looking into insider trading charges against George W. Bush who managed to sell his shares in Harken Energy just before the stock bombed. Then the sudden urge to attack Iraq began to grab the headlines. Sound like a real life version of Wag The Dog? The editors of the American Prospect warn that the cost to the United States and the American public may turn out to be far greater than many Washington pols realize.
By Paul Starr, Robert Kuttner and Harold Meyerson in the American Prospect, September 25, 2002

ANALYZING THE ADMINISTRATION’S NEW NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY
The Bush plan broadens the concept of preemptive attacks from the old approach of responding to an immediate threat and enlarges it to include longer range threats that may still be in the early stages of development. At the root of the shift is a desire on the part of the administration to deal actively with global problems rather than merely tolerating them. The danger is that the decision to go to war depends on the subjective judgment of the president and his advisors.
The Center for Defense Information, September 30, 2002

THE VULNERABILITY OF SPACE-BASED MISSILE DEFENSE Upwards of 100,000 pieces of man-made debris now orbit around us in outer space. Each bit is traveling at 27,000 kilometers an hour--ten times faster than a rifle bullet. Explode a missile in space and the debris increases dramatically. The result of ricocheting pieces of metal could be a chain reaction in which each piece breaks other pieces into smaller bits until the earth is surrounded by a lethal halo. The result could spell the end to mankind’s love affair with outerspace.
By Joel Primack in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

SHARON’S FAILURE TO JUDGE THE CLIMATE IN WASHINGTON TURNS THE SEIGE AGAINST ARAFAT INTO A POLITICAL DEFEAT
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s error was to misjudge the Bush administration’s commitment to winning Arab support for a war against Iraq. That mistake may exact a heavy price on Sharon’s political future.
By Karin Laub, Associated Press, September 30, 2002

SHARON'S SETBACK MAY CREATE NEW OPPORTUNITIES
Some Israelis now speculate that Sharon’s failure could lend support to a faction among the Palestinians that is determined to turn away from violence.
By Bradley Burston in Ha’aretz, September 30, 2002

LEBANON’S PRIME MINISTER CALLS ON ARABS TO STOP BLAMING ISRAEL AND MAKE THEIR PRESENCE FELT IN WASHINGTON
Rafiqiq Hariri argues that Israel has nothing to do with why Arabs speak with such a weak voice. What the region needs is a unified strategy, and it needs to learn how Washington really works.

HOW DEEP IS CHINA CRISIS IN GOVERNANCE?
China has stalled the selection of its new leaders until November and there are rumors that Jiang Zemin may try to stay on. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace provides a wide ranging series of articles and a Real Audio recording of a seminar with Minxin Pei exploring what is really going on.
By CEIPO, September 30, 2002

IS MYANMAR’S POLITICAL FUTURE A PRISONER OF ITS MILITARY BUDGET?
Myanmar (Burma) has been improving its army since 1988, with the result that it has become a far more potent force in suppressing civil opposition. The price tag has’t been cheap. The army now accounts for 45% of the national budget. Common sense indicates that the country’s ruling military junta will not surrender power to democrats easily.
By the International Crisis Group, September 27, 2002

PICTURE ME AN ENEMY
A documentary by Vis a vis productions, tells the story of two women caught in the turmoil of former Yugoslavia, one a Serbo-Croat and the other a Bosnian Muslim.

Although fated to be natural enemies, both find that life is more complex and somehow manage to escape the usual stereotypes with humor and warmth. The film previews in Philadelphia on Thursday. Check the website, http://www.visavisproductions.com/index.html for details.

Osama Bin Laden may have the most to gain from a U.S. invasion of Iraq, observes TomPaine.Com in an ironic diatribe satirically mimicking Osama's twisted reasoning.
"...Go ahead. Send me a new generation of recruits, Your bombs will fuel their hatred of America and their desire for revenge. Americans won’t be safe anywhere. Please, attack Iraq. Distract yourself from fighting Al Qaeda. Divide the international community. Go ahead. Destabilize the region. Maybe Pakistan will fall -- we want its nuclear weapons. Give Saddam a reason to strike first. He might draw Israel into a fight. Perfect! So please -- invade Iraq. Make my day...."--TomPaine.com

BACK WHEN SADDAM WAS OUR MAN
The scene is December 1983, and the American envoy dispatched on orders from Ronald Reagan to curry favor with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is none other than Donald Rumsfeld. The administration knows that Saddam is a psychopath and that he is using chemical weapons, but Washington has more pressing concerns. Saddam is about to be crushed by Iran, and the Reagan administration feels compelled to save him by providing US intelligence, spy satellite information and surveillance equipment for Iraq’s secret police. Strategic advice is provided by the best minds the Pentagon has to offer. Excerpts of the account of this period in American history were read into the Congressional Record on September 20, 2002, by Senator Robert Byrd (Democrat-West Virginia). The article that caught Byrd’s attention was published in Newsweek by Christopher Dickey and Evan Thomas, but the Congressional Record also records Rumsfeld’s reactions and adds substantial information.. Rumsfeld tells the Senate committee members that he remembers talking with Saddam at Reagan’s behest, but has trouble with the details. “It would be a shame,” he says,”to leave this hearing with the impression that the US aided Saddam in developing chemical and biological weapons.” Following Rumsfeld’s remarks, Byrd enters into the record several shipping manifests listing the potential biological warfare samples sent to Iraq from the U.S. at the top of the list of pathogens:anthrax and botulism. [Click here]

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FLASHBACK: DID SADDAM REALLY TRY TO KILL GEORGE W. BUSH’S FATHER
Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker, suggests that the record is far from clear despite the fact that the US fired 23 cruise missiles with thousands of pounds of explosives on Baghdad in retaliation for the alleged assassination attempt. As often happens in real life situations, three of the tomahawk missiles missed their target--a headquarters for Iraqi intelligence, and hit nearby civilian homes instead. Eight civilians, including one of Iraq’s most gifted artists were killed. The exercise gained public relations points and created an aura of toughness for Bill Clinton, who was then President, but the impact on Saddam and his regime was minimal, and the cost to the US in prestige and credibility went considerably higher than the $23 million price tag on the missiles. In the end, it was never really certain that Iraq had hatched the plot, instead, the US seemed to have been drawn into an act of war because of domestic political considerations. In this article, which first appeared in 1993, Hersh charts the progression of events which led to the bombing of Baghdad.
By Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, September 30, 2002
[click here]

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