Weapons of mass destruction — going nuclear in Iraq
By Ramzi Kysia

BAGHDAD — Dr Alim Abdul-Hamid's office at Al Mustanseriya Medical College in Baghdad is decorated in bright, cheerful colours, but what he has to say is anything but cheerful. Formerly Dean of Basra Medical College, Abdul-Hamid has had plenty of first-hand experience with Iraq's unprecedented plague of cancers and birth defects.
“We have seen cases of breast cancer among women in their 20s. In their 20s!,” says Abdul-Hamid. “This is really tragic, because, you know, in America, probably when you come across a case of breast cancer in a woman in her late 30s, you would consider that this is a young age for cancer, while we see cases of breast cancer in the 20s. There are increased incidences of colon cancer, thyroid cancer, in addition to, of course, leukaemias and lymphomas.”

What's the source of this epidemic? According to Abdul-Hamid the problem is depleted uranium. Depleted uranium, or “DU”, is an extremely dense, heavy metal, and a waste product of atomic bomb production. It has a half-life of over 4 billion years. It contains trace amounts of plutonium and is 60 per cent as radioactive as naturally occurring uranium. The US military uses it as ballast in their missiles, and they use it to coat shells and pellets. Because of its density, it is armour piercing — so it is used as an anti-tank weapon. DU is also aerosolising. When a shell coated with DU hits, it burns, releasing uranium oxide dust. This dust then rises in the air, is carried by the winds, and contaminates the entire surrounding environment.

The Pentagon admits to dropping 320 tonnes of DU in Iraq. The environmental organisation Greenpeace puts the estimate at over 800 tonnes. Hospitals throughout Iraq have reported as much as a 10-fold increase in overall cancer rates and birth defects over the last 11 years.

Abdul-Hamid points to an epidemiological study he headed in Basra, demonstrating the connection between DU and cancer in Iraq. The study looked at five factors: biological plausibility, strength of association, incidence rate, increased incidences of cancer among younger children, and the dose-response relationship. According to Abdul-Hamid, all these factors point to a strong, casual link between DU exposure and cancer in Iraq.

To test the biological plausibility of their hypothesis, the team of scientists studied the types of cancer being reported, most notably leukaemias, and explored their relationship to DU. The results strongly indicate a radioactive, rather than chemical, contaminant. Explains Abdul-Hamid: “Leukaemia is known to be related to radiation. We don't have evidence that leukaemia is related to chemicals.”

Additionally, if the source of the epidemic were chemical, there would have been a sharp spike in cancer rates following the Gulf war, followed by rapid decreases as the source of the contamination disappeared. In contrast, with radiation the strength of association increases as time passes. The fact that cancer rates are still increasing at an exponential rate in Iraq strongly implies a radioactive source.

This increase is enormous. According to the study, malignancies and leukaemias among children under the age of 15 have more than tripled since 1990. Whereas in 1990 young children accounted for only 13 per cent of cancer cases, today over 56 per cent of all cancer in Iraq occurs among children under the age of 5. Abdul-Hamid explains that it isn't just direct exposure of the children to the radiation still present in the environment; it's also the cumulative exposure of their parents over time. This cumulative exposure does permanent damage to parental genes, damage which is then passed on to their children.

Finally, pointing to a map of Basra, Abdul-Hamid highlights the dose-response relationship between DU and cancers. “If we look at the map of Basra, southern Iraq, and monitor the incidences in different districts over time, we can come out with a very important conclusion. And that is that areas which have got the higher level of background radiation have higher levels of cancers.” These factors overwhelmingly point to DU as the source of Iraq's current cancer plague.

Iraqi doctors aren't the only ones complaining about DU. US veterans are upset as well. DU may be a leading cause of the unprecedented levels of illnesses effecting Gulf war veterans. “The Pentagon claims that there are no significant health effects from exposure to depleted uranium, but their own research and documents show that this is not true,” says Charles Sheehan-Miles, a Gulf war veteran and former president of the National Gulf War Resource Centre. Almost 25 per cent of US soldiers who fought in the Gulf war are currently receiving disability benefits from the US Veteran's Administration. This is twice the rate of disabilities as among Vietnam veterans.

Unfortunately, DU remains an integral part of the American military arsenal. According to Sheehan-Miles, “Depleted uranium, like landmines and cluster bombs, is a weapon with effects far beyond the battlefield, with innocents and children as the frequent victims. I resent this. As a former American soldier, I was trained to protect the innocent, not to kill them.”

As the United States gears up for a new “Desert Storm” against Iraq, using weapons like DU, that is a lesson that more American soldiers, and the politicians who command them, should be reminded of.

The writer is a Muslim-American peace activist, and serves on the board of directors for the Education for Peace in Iraq Centre (www.saveageneration.org). He is currently in Iraq as part of a Voices in the Wilderness (www.vitw.org) peace delegation trying to end the war . He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.

Hampshire College Condemns War in All-Community Vote
Believed to be the First School in the Nation to Do So

AMHERST, MA - December 6 - The students, faculty, and staff of Hampshire College have voted to condemn the "War on Terrorism" and propose alternative solutions. The vote, which was won by a margin of 693-121 (with 11 abstaining or ambiguous votes), is believed to the first such decision by a college community in the United States. (A majority of the students, faculty, and staff participated in the vote.)

"Our community has spoken," said Michael Sherrard, an organizer with Hampshire Students for a Peaceful Response, which sponsored the vote and authored the anti-war resolution. "We refuse to fall into silent support for an unjust war that kills innocents overseas, and threatens our safety and civil liberties at home."

However, organizers were quick to defend the right to free expression of those who disagreed with the vote.

"As a diverse community of strong individuals, there are some at Hampshire who do not support our views. Even if they are in the minority, their opinions, and rights to free expression, must be respected. We wish that politicians and the media would extend the same respect to those of us who oppose this unjust war, or who happen to bear the same skin tone as Osama bin Laden," said Donald Jackson, also a member of Students for a Peaceful Response.

Hampshire has a precedent for trend-setting political statements. In the early 70s, students voted for the impeachment of President Nixon. The college was also the first to decide to divest from apartheid South Africa. With this vote, organizers hope to make a similarly strong public statement, and build a movement which can similarly change the course of U.S. foreign policy.

Students for a Peaceful Response is a multi-campus coalition in Western Massachusetts formed in the wake of September 11, and active in the growing nation-wide student movement against the war. It is organized around six points of unity: mourning for the victims of the September 11 tragedies; a call for the peaceful pursuit of justice, rather than war and militarism; condemnation of religious, racial, and ethnic scapegoating and bigotry; opposition to the curtailment of civil liberties; desire to provoke discussion of the root causes of terrorism; and recognition of global justice as the condition for a true and lasting peace.

Full text of the statement approved by the community:

The tragic day of September 11, and the days following, have been a time of profound suffering for people everywhere: firefighters in New York, secretaries in Washington D.C., and farmers in Afghanistan. One indiscriminate act of violence has been followed by another, a pattern seriously endangering the prospects for a just and peaceful world. In such a time of loss, we must ask ourselves - is there a path out of this escalating cycle of violence? Yes, we can respond to the tragedy of September 11 as a crime against humanity, carried out by individuals, not as an act of warfare for which a nation must be held responsible. This path would proceed within a framework of genuine international cooperation and be designed to bring to justice those guilty of the crime - without destroying the lives of innocent millions. It would employ the proven tools of transparent and conclusive investigations, diplomatic and police efforts, and fair courts of law to achieve its goal. At home, we can meet the immediate need for effective security through common-sense solutions that apply fairly to everyone, while preserving our hard-won civil liberties.

Instead, the Bush administration has embarked upon a very different path - with disastrous consequences:

- The death toll of innocent Afghan civilians killed by inevitably imprecise bombing is mounting.

- The U.S. military campaign has made it impossible for international relief organizations to deliver the food aid necessary to prevent the starvation of millions of Afghan civilians in the winter now beginning. The token and scattered aid efforts of the United States have been roundly criticized as insufficient, or even counterproductive, by such organizations. A massive humanitarian crisis remains.

- While the Northern Alliance has forced the Taliban from power (certainly a welcome development), they too possess a disturbing record of human-rights violations, especially against women and political dissidents.

- The current suffering in Afghanistan will only deepen the conditions of loss and desperation which foster international terrorism. Even the CIA has stated that strikes against Afghanistan are "100% certain" to lead to terrorist reprisals.

- The recent "U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T." Act infringes upon everyone's First and Fourth Amendment freedoms. Rights to privacy, speech, and association remain as critical as ever and are, if anything, more so in times of trial.

- The proposed "economic stimulus" package provides billions of dollars in corporate giveaways and tax breaks, but almost nothing for laid-off workers and poor communities most at risk.

- Both at home and abroad, the "War on Terrorism" is symptomatic of the racism of American society, in its disregard for the lives of people of color overseas, encouragement of racial, ethnic, and religious scapegoating and violence, and practice of law enforcement "profiling."

-New legislative and law enforcement initiatives threaten specifically the rights of non-citizens, through indefinite detentions without indictment, military tribunals, arbitrary deportation, and unfair targeting of international students.

For all of these reasons, and many more, we, the students, faculty, and staff of Hampshire College, have no choice but to condemn the current "War on Terrorism," and demand that it not be expanded to Iraq or any other countries. We call for the resumption of effective independent humanitarian aid in Afghanistan, and the immediate halt to the U.S. military action that prevents it. We call for a U.N.-led effort to establish in Afghanistan a democratic and multi-ethnic government, respectful of the rights of women. Furthermore, we demand that the Hampshire administration join us in resisting any arbitrary and unfair law-enforcement invasion of our own community, especially efforts targeting international students and campus activists.

Finally, military action will never put an end to international terrorism, which often stems from forces that have previously received the support of the American government. In its place, we must, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., "rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter - but beautiful - struggle for a new world," a world where hunger, war, and economic injustice, the root causes of terrorism, are eliminated. This way alone leads to safety, security, and lasting peace. Thus, we commit the full resources and energies of our community to this endeavor, and challenge our colleagues at schools around the country, and all over the world, to do the same.

Thousands Ready For Assault On Bin Laden's Hideout
Tue Dec 04 2001 21:54:01
DAILY MAIL

THOUSANDS of Afghan tribal fighters accompanied by the SAS and U.S. special forces moved in on a network of mountain caves used by Osama Bin Laden last night.

Anti-Taliban officials said the U.S. had asked them to repair the runway at Jalalabad airport - which the Americans bombed earlier in the war on terror -- so fixed-wing aircraft could begin landing there tomorrow.

The operation against Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terror network - believed to be responsible for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon - is entering a new phase.

Forces are preparing to enter the White Mountains in Tora Bora, 30 miles south of the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, for the first time. Intelligence sources and tribal leaders believe Bin Laden and 1,000 foreign fighters, mainly Arabs and Pakistanis, are hiding in a fortified complex of caves.

Ironically, Tora Bora was built in the 1980s with U.S. funding as a headquarters for guerrillas fighting the Soviet occupation.

Guided by satellite, the SAS and U.S. troops are expected to call in airstrikes as soon as any Taliban or Al Qaeda fighters, who have had weeks to prepare defensive positions, are seen.

'The end game is beginning in Tora Bora for Al Qaeda,' said a military official in Kabul. 'We have the eyes and the local tribal people are the ears.'

Senior provincial official Mohammed Zaman said attempts to negotiate a surrender had failed and force was the only option.

He added his fighters would first cut off the hideouts' sources of water.

'Without water, life is very difficult,' he said. 'Then we will attack.'

U.S. warplanes have been bombarding the White Mountains for the past three nights while U.S. marines have been moved to Jalalabad by helicopter.

In Jalalabad, military official Hazrat Ali said U.S. air strikes had killed 12 members of Al Qaeda in or around Tora Bora over the past two days, although he could not confirm reports that Bin Laden's top lieutenant, the Egyptian Ayman Zawahri, was among those killed or injured.

Backed up by a resolution from the Eastern Shura, the council which has taken over the Jalalabad area, Ali said he had 2,000 men ready to enter the White Mountains to drive out the Al Qaeda fighters.

'It is the last and strongest Al Qaeda base left in our country,' he said. 'We are ready,' adding his forces would move today.

Anti-Taliban leaders say they are more than 70 per cent sure Bin Laden is in the mountains.

Unconfirmed reports said 115 civilians had been killed in eastern Nangarhar pro-vince, where Tora Bora is located, over the past five days, mainly from air strikes.

U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld claimed last night the Taliban was using the civilian population in its southern stronghold of Kandahar as human shields.

Afghanistan's western-approved government is to include a token woman, it emerged yesterday.

A female tribal representative will take a seat alongside 28 men if the UN-brokered peace plan for the country goes ahead.

She will have a nominally senior post as one of five vice presidents of the new ruling cabinet.

Although southern Pashtun leader Hamid Karzai is favourite to become overall leader, haggling is continuing during talks in Bonn over who gets which posts.

Aid for a UN-backed government is likely to reach GBP 8billion over the next ten years.

In an interview with Time magazine, Tony Blair reiterated that British troops will not be used as a long-term occupation force in Afghanistan

Although the U.S. believes it is closing in on Al Qaeda, the CIA says intercepted messages show Al Qaeda is planning a major attack on an unknown American target in the run-up to Christmas.

d.williams@dailymail.co.uk

December 1, 2001

Ashcroft Seeking to Free F.B.I. to Spy on Groups
By DAVID JOHNSTON and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

ASHINGTON, Nov. 30 — Attorney General John Ashcroft is considering a plan to relax restrictions on the F.B.I.'s spying on religious and political organizations in the United States, senior government officials said today.

The proposal would loosen one of the most fundamental restrictions on the conduct of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and would be another step by the Bush administration to modify civil-liberties protections as a means of defending the country against terrorists, the senior officials said.

The attorney general's surveillance guidelines were imposed on the F.B.I. in the 1970's after the death of J. Edgar Hoover and the disclosures that the F.B.I. had run a widespread domestic surveillance program, called Cointelpro, to monitor antiwar militants, the Ku Klux Klan, the Black Panthers and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., among others, while Mr. Hoover was director.

Since then, the guidelines have defined the F.B.I.'s operational conduct in investigations of domestic and overseas groups that operate in the United States.

Some officials who oppose the change said the rules had largely kept the F.B.I. out of politically motivated investigations, protecting the bureau from embarrassment and lawsuits. But others, including senior Justice Department officials, said the rules were outmoded and geared to obsolete investigative methods and had at times hobbled F.B.I. counterterrorism efforts.

Mr. Ashcroft and the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, favor the change, the officials said. Most of the opposition comes from career officials at the F.B.I. and the Justice Department.

A Justice Department spokeswoman said today that no final decision had been reached on the revised guidelines.

"As part of the attorney general's reorganization," said Susan Dryden, the spokeswoman, "we are conducting a comprehensive review of all guidelines, policies and procedures. All of these are still under review."

An F.B.I. spokesman said the bureau's approach to terrorism was also under review.

"Director Mueller's view is that everything should be on the table for review," the spokesman, John Collingwood, said. "He is more than willing to embrace change when doing so makes us a more effective component. A healthy review process doesn't come at the expense of the historic protections inherent in our system."

The attorney general is free to revise the guidelines, but Justice Department officials said it was unclear how heavily they would be revised. There are two sets of guidelines, for domestic and foreign groups, and most of the discussion has centered on the largely classified rules for investigations of foreign groups.

The relaxation of the guidelines would follow administration measures to establish military tribunals to try foreigners accused of terrorism; to seek out and question 5,000 immigrants, most of them Muslims, who have entered the United States since January 2000; and to arrest more than 1,200 people, nearly all of whom are unconnected to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, and hold hundreds of them in jail.

Today, Mr. Ashcroft defended his initiatives in an impassioned speech to United States attorneys.

"Our efforts have been deliberate, they've been coordinated, they've been carefully crafted to not only protect America but to respect the Constitution and the rights enshrined therein," Mr. Ashcroft said.

"Still," he added, "there have been a few voices who have criticized. Some have sought to condemn us with faulty facts or without facts at all. Others have simply rushed to judgment, almost eagerly assuming the worst of their government before they've had a chance to understand it at its best."

Under the current surveillance guidelines, the F.B.I. cannot send undercover agents to investigate groups that gather at places like mosques or churches unless investigators first find probable cause, or evidence leading them to believe that someone in the group may have broken the law. Full investigations of this sort cannot take place without the attorney general's consent.

Since Sept. 11, investigators have said, Islamic militants have sometimes met at mosques — apparently knowing that the religious institutions are usually off limits to F.B.I. surveillance squads. Some officials are now saying they need broader authority to conduct surveillance of potential terrorists, no matter where they are.

Senior career F.B.I. officials complained that they had not been consulted about the proposed change — a criticism they have expressed about other Bush administration counterterrorism measures. When the Justice Department decided to use military tribunals to try accused terrorists, and to interview thousands of Muslim men in the United States, the officials said they were not consulted.

Justice Department officials noted that Mr. Mueller had endorsed the administration's proposals, adding that the complaints were largely from older F.B.I. officials who were resistant to change and unwilling to take the aggressive steps needed to root out terror in the United States. Other officials said the Justice Department had consulted with F.B.I. lawyers and some operational managers about the change.

But in a series of recent interviews, several senior career officials at the F.B.I. said it would be a serious mistake to weaken the guidelines, and they were upset that the department had not clearly described the proposed changes.

"People are furious right now — very, very angry," one of them said. "They just assume they know everything. When you don't consult with anybody, it sends the message that you assume you know everything. And they don't know everything."

Still, some complaints seem to stem from the F.B.I.'s shifting status under Mr. Ashcroft. Weakened by a series of problems that predated the Sept. 11 attacks, the F.B.I. has been forced to follow orders from the Justice Department — a change that many law enforcement experts thought was long overdue. In the past, the bureau leadership had far more independence and authority to make its own decisions.

Several senior officials are leaving the F.B.I., including Thomas J. Pickard, the deputy director. He was the senior official in charge of the investigation of the attacks and was among top F.B.I. officials who were opposed to another decision of the Bush administration, the public announcements of Oct. 12 and Oct. 29 that placed the country on the highest state of alert in response to vague but credible threats of a possible second terrorist attack. Mr. Pickard is said to have been opposed to publicizing threats that were too vague to provide any precautionary advice.

Many F.B.I. officials regard the administration's plan to establish military tribunals as an extreme step that diminishes the F.B.I.'s role because it creates a separate prosecutorial system run by the military.

"The only thing I have seen about the tribunals is what I have seen in the newspapers," a senior official complained.

Another official said many senior law enforcement officials shared his concern about the tribunals. "I believe in the rule of law, and I believe if we have a case to make against someone, we should make it in a federal courtroom in the United States," he said.

Several senior F.B.I. officials said the tribunal system should be reserved for senior Al Qaeda members apprehended by the military in Afghanistan or other foreign countries.

Few were involved in deliberations that led to the directive Mr. Ashcroft issued this month to interview immigrant men living legally in the United States. F.B.I. officials have complained that the interview plan was begun before its ramifications were fully understood.

"None of this was thought through, a senior official said. "They just announced it, and left it to others to figure out how to do it."

The arrests and detentions of more than 1,200 people since Sept. 11 have also aroused concerns at the F.B.I. Officials noted that the investigations had found no conspirators in the United States who aided the hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks and only a handful of people who were considered Al Qaeda members.

"This came out of the White House, and Ashcroft's office," a senior official said. "There are tons of things coming out of there these days where there is absolutely no consultation with the bureau."

Some at the F.B.I. have been openly skeptical about claims that some of the 1,200 people arrested were Al Qaeda members and that the strategy of making widespread arrests had disrupted or thwarted planned attacks.

"It's just not the case," an official said. "We have 10 or 12 people we think are Al Qaeda people, and that's it. And for some of them, it's based only on conjecture and suspicion."