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Wonder why they don't have a contract yet:
http://www.terranovanurseries.com/pages/historyTN.html
A horticultural history of Dan Heims Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc. United States of America
Address:
4309 SW Cullen Blvd. Portland, Oregon USA 97221
Phone:
0101- 503-977-7808 MWF
800-215-9450 ext. 314 UH
Fax:
0101-503-244-2745
Email: dan@terranovanurseries.com
Website: www.terranovanurseries.com
CURRICULUM VITAE/ DAN HEIMS
Brief Bio:
Dan Heims has spent the last 28 years deeply involved in horticulture. He is currently the president of Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc., a company noted for its new introductions to horticulture.
Dan’s articles and photography have appeared in a number of magazines. He has taught horticulture courses, wholesaled exotic plants, and run his own “design and build” landscape business. He has hosted a weekly gardening show on radio (KKSN) and has appeared on U.S. and British television.
Dan’s garden has been featured in Sunset Magazine, Organic Gardening, and Better Homes and Gardens. His perennial breeding programs have produced many international gold and silver medal winners. His job description dictates that he must “travel the world and seek the newest perennials”. He has spoken around the United States, in Japan, England , New Zealand, Costa Rica, Germany, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Tasmania, Australia, and Canada.
Dan is currently working on a book of horticultural humor and one on Heuchera with Graham Ware of British Columbia.
Education: B.S. University of Oregon (Communications, Botany)
Radio/ TV Appearances:
KKSN Garden Notes, Dan’s weekly garden show, Oregon
KBOO Gardening Open Line, radio garden consultant, Oregon
KPTV (12) Gardening for Fun (2 appearances) Oregon
WKMZ TV New Perennials Tennessee
WKMZ TV Shade Plants Tennessee
WSPR TV The Morning Show Illinois
KOIN (6) Dig It! Oregon
KOIN (6) New Plants from TC Oregon
KOIN (6) Informational spots for Hart’s Nursery Oregon
ABC- Tasmania (63) What’s up with Terra Nova
HGTV (Cable) New Plants for the Garden (Toronto)
HGTV (2003) Terra Nova Introductions
KPTV (12) In the Garden with Mike Darcy (Begonias) Oregon
KPTV (12) In the Garden with Mike Darcy (Plant Nerds) Oregon
BBC Chelsea contributions from Terra Nova
BBC Plant Breeding at Terra Nova
KTOK AM 1040 The Garden Festival
KGW TV-8 Podophyllum and Master Gardeners promo
CABC AM740 Toronto The Art Drysdale Show
WHPA The Jane Pepper Gardening Hour
HGTV Gardening by the Yard: Heuchera
WPPT 1380 AM Jane Nugent on Terra Nova Plants
Sveriges Television On Heuchera w/ Peter Gaunitz
Grün Rüm (The Green Room) Swedish Television (Heuchera)
Lectures / Presentations/ Speaker at:
Alaska Rock Garden Society/ Homer Garden Club
Alaska Master Gardeners Convention
American Nurseryman Convention/ Portland
Arkansas Flower and Garden Show
Australian Institute of Horticulture Melbourne
Australian Institute of Horticulture Tasmania
California Horticultural Society / Academy of Sciences
Cheekwood Botanic Garden
Chicago Botanic Garden
Cleveland Botanical Garden
Cranbrook Botanical Garden
Farwest Nursery Show x2
Frelinghuysen Arboretum - NJ
Hardy Plant Society of Oregon
Hardy Plant Society of Dortmund, Germany
Hart’s Garden Center
Home and Gardening Show
Hood River Master Gardeners
Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons
Horticulture Magazine- Spring Border Series (4 cities)
Innovaplant/ Costa Rica
Innovaplant/Kientzler Gensingen, Germany
International Plant Propagators / Arundel, England
IPPS Regional Meeting – Troutdale, OR
ISU (International Stauden-Union) Hodenhagen, Germany
ISU (International Stauden-Union) Denmark
ISU (International Stauden-Union) Lisse, Holland
Japanese Nurseryman Meeting / Kawaguchi, Japan 97
Japanese Nurseryman Meeting / Gotenba, Japan 00
Landscape Ontario
Lilyhemmer regional Daylily Conference
Massachusetts Horticultural Society (in Kyoto)
Michigan Landscape and Nursery Association
Mid-Am Horticultural Trade Show –Chicago
Mid-Am Hardy Plant Society
Metropolitan Garden Club
Michigan Landscape and Nursery Association
New England Grows!
New York Botanic Garden
North American Rock Garden Society – Willamette Chapter
Northwest Hosta and Shade Garden Society
Northwest Perennial Alliance
Oklahoma Garden Festival
Olbrich Botanical Gardens
Oregon Association of Nurserymen (Greenhouse Chapter)X2
Oregon Association of Nurserymen (Retail Chapter) Oregon Museum of Science and Industry
Pack Trials (Euro American)
Perenne (Lauffen, GERMANY)
Perennial Plant Association (New Plants and Heuchera)
Poppybox Gardens
Portland Garden Club
Portland Home and Garden Show
Puget Sound Grower’s Association
Rainforest Gardens Symposium/ Vancouver, British Columbia
Shady Oaks Hosta Society –Nebraska
Southern Plant Conference (SNA)
Swarthmore- Scott Arboretum (Shared Speaker)
Swedish Horticultural Society – Gøthenborg, Sweden
Tennessee Nurseryman’s Society
Toronto Botanical Garden
Toronto Civic Garden Centre
University of Oregon
Winterthur
Yard, Garden, and Patio Show x2
Breeding programs: Pulmonaria, Tiarella, Heuchera, Echinacea, Coreopsis, Campanula, Digitalis, Tricyrtis, x Heucherella, Hosta, Scabiosa, Penstemon, Sedum, Thalictrum, Polemonium, Verbascum.
Plant collecting / research trips:
Argentina
Arkansas
Australia
Belgium
British Columbia (Coastal and Inland)
Chile
Costa Rica
Denmark
England
Germany
Holland
Ireland
Israel
Japan
Mexico
New Zealand
Ontario, Canada
Sweden
Switzerland
Tasmania
Wales
US States:
Alaska
Arkansas
California N/S
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Illinois
Indiana
Kentucky
Maine
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Nebraska
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
North Carolina
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
Tennessee
Washington
Washington, D.C.
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Published photography/feature articles in:
American Nurseryman x3
Better Homes & Gardens
Canadian Gardening
Country Living Gardener
Dirk Vander Werff’s PLANTS
Epic Gardener
Fine Gardening
Garden Gate
Garden Showcase
Gardens West
GM Pro
Greenhouse Grower
Horticulture Magazine
Martha Stewart Living (Dan Hinkley as writer)
New and Rare Plants (UK rare plant magazine)
NM Pro
OAN Digger
Organic Gardening
Pacific Horticulture
Southern Living
Sunset Magazine
The Oregonian x6
Current Lectures:
New Perennials from Around the World: A whirlwind tour of eight countries (Japan, Germany, Israel, US, Holland, England, Ireland & New Zealand), the shakers and movers in each country, and the plants they love. Focus will be primarily on hardy perennials but exceptional “temperennials” will also be shown. Tips on how to get plants into the US legally. (Our most popular presentation.)
Meet the Begonias: An entirely new program covering the varieties and uses of this fascinating family. Rare species will be shown and discussed; from 2” tall yellow blooming terrarium plants from Africa to 7’ tall giants from Brazil. Care, culture, and propagation will be revealed. Uses in the garden and home will also be explained.
Heuchera, Tiarella and their Allies: A brief history of this group of plants is followed by slides of native populations and the breeding programs that have transformed this quiet woodland group to some of the most sought-after perennials today.
"Shade Gardening with New Perennials": Methods of dealing with different types of shade are discussed as well as solving the problems of root and light competition. Gorgeous plant combinations are shown with an overview of new perennials and old favorites.
"Flash and Splash- building the Color Story": One of the most comprehensive slide presentations of variegated and colored-leaved plants in the world including surprises from New Zealand, Japan, and Europe. Topics include: how variegated plants are discovered, chimera vs. virus, and classification of variegation. Use of the color in design is shown, featuring color echoes, repetition, contrast, and harmony.
"To market, to market- to launch a new plant": The process of selection, “sport fishing", trials and the intricacies of market, patenting, and trade marking. Our current trials of perennials are featured as are many of our introductions, several patented.
"Asian Fascination": a program covering the pitfalls of traveling in Japan, how to collect plants and bring them home (legally!), and an overview of the Japanese nursery and collectors. Slides will be presented of incredible Japanese plants in cultivation and in the wild.
“Plant Marketing Around the World”: Dan has visited 21 countries taking a keen interest in how plants are promoted, presented and sold. See the best of the best and the worst of the worst in our field will be seen. Dan will also discuss his unique perspective on marketing and how his attendees can better “put themselves and their products forward”.
“Creating a Catalog”: Terra Nova produces one of the finest color catalogues in the US. (Boy are we modest! ) Learn how to “pull out” of the humdrum, text-only format and spice up what represents YOU and your nursery. We will touch on computers, software, digital cameras, film cameras, and how they all come together. Real examples of catalogues from “Napkin Sketch” to the final negative will be shared by all. Bring an example of a catalogue that “stands out” for group discussion. Seminar format 1.5 hrs. Limited group size.
"Four Fabulous Genera": A brief history of Pulmonaria, Tiarella, Heuchera, and x Heucherella is followed by slides of native populations and the breeding programs that have transformed these quiet woodlanders into some of the most sought-after perennials today.
Proposed Programs: 1- 2 hours
Air, Room and meals, transfers from airport + Lecture fee of $1200.00 (local appearances are less)
Address: 4309 SW Cullen Blvd. Portland, Oregon USA 97221
Ph: 503-977-7808 MWF 800-215-9450 ext. 314 UH
Fax: 503-244-2745
Email: dan@terranovanurseries.com
Website: www.terranovanurseries.com
CV 2004-1974
2004
Mid-Am Trade Show
Keynote speaker at Michigan Landscape and Nurserymen Show
Attended the IPM trade show at Messe in Essen, Germany to establish new trade contacts.
Traveled through France, Germany, Luxemburg, Belgium and England in search of the early perennials.
Spoke to the Hardy Plant Society of Dortmund, Germany and to the group “Perenne” in Lauffen, Germany- the home of the nursery of Countess Von Zeppelin.
Awarded AGM by the Royal Horticultural Society for Echinacea ‘Ruby Giant’
Will speak at the Portland Home and Garden Show, Northwest Horticultural Society, University of Idaho, Pennsylvania Allied Nursery Trades Show, PPA in NYC, Southern Nurseryman’s Association in Atlanta.
2003
Costa Rica Trip w/Ken visiting Florexpo, Tropica, and of course the rainforest
Speaker at the Southern Plant Conference, visiting many SE Nurseries
Dan botanizes the Columbia Gorge with Christopher Lloyd and Fergus Garrett - with “gorge-master” Maurice Horn.
Tricyrtis Article by Dan printed in Pacific Horticulture
Winner of 2 Awards in France for two Terra Nova Plants
TV Shoot and tours with Peter Gaunitz, commentator for Sveriges Television (Swedish TV)
Full page in The English Garden on TN Plants by Noel Kingsbury
UK Magazine article on Corydalis by Dan in Dirk Vander Werff’s PLANTS
HGTV Gardening by the Yard: Heuchera shot at Terra Nova w/ Dan
Dan is quoted in the Wall St. Journal, The New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune on new plants.
Photography and article on Corydalis (including cover) for American Nurseryman
Numerous articles on TN plants have appeared in magazines this year including Garden Design.
TV shoots by 3 Portland TV Stations at the Nursery (6 shows)
Presented at the Oklahoma Garden Festival and Yard Garden and Patio Show in Oregon.
Spoke on KTOK 1000 from the Festival Floor
Presented new plants to the OAN Retail Chapter.
Met with grower/collectors in PA, NJ, and NY
WHPA The Jane Pepper Gardening Hour interview w/Dan
Met w/ ABC’s garden person, Rebecca Cole at her studio in NYC
OAN Retail Chapter Feb 13th
Hardy Plant Society of Oregon March 9
Mid-Atlantic Hardy Plant Society @ Swarthmore April 8th
Frelinghuysen Arboretum NJ April 10th- Keynote speaker
The Civic Garden Centre – Toronto April 23rd
CABC AM740 Toronto, The Art Drysdale Show interview w/Dan
OAN Greenhouse Grower’s Chapter April 29th At the Oregon Garden
Coming Up:
Perennial Plant Association- Jul 29th
Yew Dell Speaking Engagement (KY) September 5th
2002
Collecting and presentations in Southern California, meetings with local breeders, cut flower growers, and nurseries. Spoke at Yard, Garden and Patio Show in Portland, Oregon in February. Spoke at Home and Garden Show. Spoke at “Plant Nerd Night” sponsored by KXL-950, We are settled into our “dream” stock house, 90’x140’. Laying out of several acres of trial beds and display gardens. Booked for talks in Alaska, Seattle, California, and Switzerland at the University of applied sciences in Wädenswil, Switzerland, at an international conference on urban horticulture (2nd to 6th of September 02, www.urbanhorticulture.ch "The Reinvention of 2 Genera – Heuchera and Pulmonaria". Trip to Floriade and ISU congress with visits to nurseries in Belgium. Met with numerous nurseries in Holland. Presentation of 3 new plants at PPA and ISU in Holland.. Multiple TV appearances on Local TV and BBC (with a tie-in to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show). Terra Nova has been awarded 9 Awards of Garden Merit for their Heuchera by the RHS. This is the highest Award the Society bestows upon a plant after several years of trial. Plants were judged against 201 Heuchera and x Heucherella varieties. Reginald Cory Memorial Cup presented to Dan Heims by the Royal Horticultural society for advancements in the genus Heuchera. Articles and pictures published in “The Epic Gardener”. PPA –presented new plants. New plants featured in The Digger and Landscape Trades Magazine. Our staff won first prize at the Ohio Short Course for our innovative booth. Dan joined Massachusetts Horticultural Society as a horticultural consultant in November for a 2 week tour of the Gardens of Kyoto.
Our Painted fern selections win prizes at Ellersbie, the “Chelsea Show” of New Zealand.
2001
Jan 25 “Shade Gardening with New Perennials” “New Plants from Around the World”- Mid Am tradeshow
Awarded the Theodore Klein Plant Award in Kentucky. Tiarella article written by Dan was published in April Fine Gardening Magazine. Article published in the book “Variegated Plants in Color” Vol. 2 on Variegated Heuchera.
Trade and speaking trip to Germany and Holland. Speaking on “Plant sourcing and Marketing” and “Colorful Companions” in Tasmania and New South Wales, Australia. Civic Garden Centre in Toronto, Ontario. HGTV appearance at the Royal Botanic Gardens with Kathy Renwahl. Radio interview on HGTV. Local appearance at Poppybox Gardens. Plants featured in Landscape Trades Magazine. Speaking at the International Daylily convention in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania in October. Just purchased 2 new pieces of property for development, quadrupling our space. Nursery expansion continues. PPA presentation. Ohio Short Course. Garden Writers of America trade show. Winner of a Gold Medal at Keukenhof 2001 in Holland. Winner of a Gold Certificate at Coursonne in France for Heuchera ‘Can Can’. Winner of ‘Best of Show’ with Heuchera ‘Amber Waves’ at the UK’s largest nursery show- Four Oaks. Winner of 9 Awards of Garden Merit at the Royal Botanical Garden at Wisley. Winner of “Best New Product” at the Scotgrow show in Scotland. Presented at the Southern Plant Conference ( a SNA sponsored biennial event). Spoke at Lilyhemmer regional Daylily conference.
Completed a horticultural/Agricultural tour of Chile and Argentina including a jaunt into the Andes to botanize with Patricio Ramirez at Volcan Chillan. Other time was spent visiting nurseries, farms, food processing plants, and wineries.
2000
Jan 28 “4 Great Genera” New England Grows Boston, Massachusetts
Feb 26 “Colorful Companions” Horticulture Magazine Lecture Cranbrook Gardens Auxiliary Troy, Michigan
Feb 29 “Colorful Companions” Horticulture Magazine Lecture Olbrich Botanical Gardens Madison, Wisconsin
March 2 “Colorful Companions” Horticulture Magazine Lecture Cleveland Botanical Garden Cleveland, Ohio
March 4 “Colorful Companions” Horticulture Magazine Lecture Winterthur Museum Winterthur, Delaware
May 16 “Variegated American Plants” Gotenba, Japan
August 5 "New Plant Introductions" Perennial Plant Association Toronto, Ontario, Canada
August 13-18 International Stauden Union Copenhagen, Denmark
August 19 "4 Fabulous Genera" Gøthenborg, Sweden
October 10-13 Lecture and class (Four Fabulous Genera) at Chicago Botanic Garden
October 15 New England Greenhouse Growers Presentation on ‘New Vegetative Perennials’- Boston
November – Chicago Botanic Garden “Shade Gardening” and taught “Heuchera, Tiarella, and Pulmonaria”
Collecting trip to Japan completed. Photography and plant collection (Fukushima, Kowaguchi, Nagoya, Maibara, Kobe) Visits with many small specialty nurseries.
Martha Stewart Article on Heuchera featured our nursery and plants.
Hosted several groups of Japanese nurserymen and the Proven Winners North America and European affiliates.
Start of tetraploidy projects with Dr. Harini Koripala at the helm.
Photoshoots by Martha Stewart and Floragraphics.
Collecting and research trip to deep south w/Chuck Pavlich. Visits to trials in Ga. (Alan Armitage) and numerous nurseries.
TV appearances in Illinois, Tennessee, and Oregon. Special slideshow presentation in Mjukebjerg, Denmark at the ISU.
Visited a number of fascinating nurseries in Denmark, one does tissue culture on water plants! Spoke in Sweden and was a guest of Director Henrik Zetterlund for a behind the scenes tour of Gøthenborg (pronounced ‘yo-te-bor-ie’)- one of the top 10 European botanical gardens. Finished article on Foamflowers for Fine Gardening Magazine. Special Tricyrtis article written and published in Plants Magazine. Tiarella ‘Iron Butterfly’ featured at Hardy’s Gold Medal winning booth at RHS Chelsea show. Tiarella ‘IB’ won a medal at Plantarium in Holland and was featured in the RHS publication ,‘The Garden’
2 other medals won with Terra Nova Plants at Plantarium. Hosted Japanese nurserymen at the nursery in conjunction with the Farwest Show. Thierry Delabroye submitted our Tiarella ‘Ninja’ at Courson - France’s largest Horticultural Exposition – to win a coveted Silver Medal.Speaking engagements completed in Alaska (Alaska Rock Garden Society and Homer Garden Club), Arkansas
Flower and Garden Show, Shady Oaks Hosta Society- Nebraska, New York Botanic Garden (2 courses taught), Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons, N. American Rock Garden Society- Willamette Chapter, NW Hosta and Shade Garden Society.
2 articles w/photography published in American Nurseryman magazine. Article printed in Fine Gardening on Tissue Culture. Greenhouse expansion and stock bed expansion completed. ’99 breeding program begun. Trip to UK completed see RHS-Chelsea and do a collection run to Devon. RHS Wisley undergoing trials for 200 Heuchera, many of which were contributed by Terra Nova.
1998
Spoke, as a primary speaker at Landscape Ontario, Canada's largest commercial trade show in January 1998 on 'New Perennials from Around the World'. Plants featured in GM Pro, NM Pro, Garden Gate, Greenhouse Grower, Greenhouse Product News, OAN Digger and other trade magazines. Tiarella article written to be published in New and Rare Plants, a rare plant magazine in England. Spoke to the Puget Sound Flower Grower's Association on "New Perennials". Photography and support published in Country Living Gardener. Beginning of polyploidy research at Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc. Our Ph.D., Bruce Stermer will be leading the research with my direction on varieties. Preliminary research begun on additional genera for hybridization programs. Have been approved for several photoshoots for my home garden by Better Homes and Gardens Magazine. Had a record turnout for Pulmonaria Trials at the end of February. PPA open house at the nursery. Sylvia Cooperman (for a book on Pulmonaria) photographs and records our trials. We have signed one plant with Blooms of Bressingham and a number with Van Bloem. Our website: (www.terranovanurseries.com) has been given its own domain and is being updated with improved format, pictures, and wholesale areas. Produced a new catalog, unique in the industry, each with its own CDROM containing our website and slide shows of our nursery and our research programs. Trials in Tennessee in 1997 at the University of Tennessee list our Heuchera as "Highly desirable for the Southeastern Landscape". Positive results also reported from Alan Armitage's trials at the University of Georgia. 13 patents have been written and submitted at this point. Spoke on 3 new introductions at the PPA convention in Boston and did extended trips to Maine and New Hampshire. Presented an informal talk and slide-show in Hodenhagen, Germany for the International Stauden Union (like a PPA for the EU) Spent 2 weeks in Germany collecting plants and visiting nurseries behind the old 'iron curtain'. Brought back 125 plants from Germany, many new to the US. Terra Nova Nurseries has completed greenhouse expansion, and has built a cooler facility in September '98. This will double our capacity. Spoke to the Northwest Hosta and Shade Gardening Society on "Japanese Shade Plants" in their membership opener. My garden is featured in a frontispiece for the Time-Life Book "Pick the Right Plant" (1998), with another shot inside. Research and collecting trip to Southern California at misc. botanical gardens completed in March. Commissioned to speak on ‘New Perennials’ at the Far West Nursery Show in August. Winner of 2 Silver awards at Plantarium '98. 2 Articles published in the Farwest Nursery Show Magazine. Produced a new and expanded color catalog with a CD-ROM, a first for a nursery our size. Two Gold medals and 4 Silvers won at VKC Nieuw, a large Dutch tradeshow. Showed at the American Society of Landscape Architect's meeting in Portland in October. Articles written for American Nurseryman. My Heuchera Picture is the cover shot for American Nurseryman on Oct. 1. Nursery/botanizing/Speaking trip to Costa Rica completed in Early December. Hawaiian trip completed late December.
1997
Horticultural trips to California, Michigan, Israel, Japan, UK, and Holland completed. Spoke to the Portland Garden Club on variegated plants. Collecting trip to Japan completed in May. Spoke to a group of Japanese nurserymen in Chiba on "Variegated plants from around the world". Invited to speak to the IPPS in Sussex speaking on New Varieties and to tour Four Oaks in September. My garden is featured on the cover of Organic Gardening. Articles and photographs appear in newspapers and magazines. Website launched in February: (www.terranovanurseries.com) Conducting massive trials on Pulmonaria (1100 different) and Tiarella (3000 different) Began a program of Thalictrum hybridizing. Completed our 2nd expansion in Canby, Oregon, essentially doubling our lab’s size and adding 9000 additional square footage in the greenhouses. (3000-sq. ft. completed in March) Continued modernization of offices and computer networks. Farwest Show appearance. Presented three new varieties to the Perennial Plant Association forum on New Perennials in Raleigh, NC. Spoke to the International Plant Propagators in Arundel, West Sussex, UK on launching new varieties. Did research on the new book while in England. Met with Alan Bloom in Bressingham to discuss Heuchera history. Article and Photography published in New and Rare Plants, a rare plant magazine in England. Helped man the Just Must perennials booth at the Four Oaks Nursery Show near Manchester, England. Trip to Holland for search for new plant introductions and meet with nursery professionals. Rec'd 2 Gold and 3 Silver medals from VKC Nieuw Plant exposition in Holland. Plants to Wisley in UK for Heuchera trials 1998.
1996
Second lab construction complete, additional greenhouse built. Spoke to PPA in Denver for national show. Participated in the National Convention of the American Hosta Society. At the Hosta convention my Hosta (Jade Cascade) wins the Pauline Banyai Award (Best New Seedling) the David Van Fleet Award (Best green Seedling) and Best of Section. Sunset magazine runs 'Garden Masters' series featuring my garden and techniques. Traveled to New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania collecting, presenting, and acquiring photos and information for an upcoming book. Breeding program continues with breakthroughs in Pulmonaria, Tiarella, and Heuchera, especially in flowering types. 5 additional medals from Keukenhof show in Holland. Several more presented at VKC Nieuw show in Holland. Spoke to the American Association of Nurserymen at their convention on new introductions. Sold landscape construction company after 18 years. Have made marketing bonds with Oosterwijk JR in Holland and Just Must Perennials in England.
1995
Produced our new 20-page color catalog and we have released a CD-ROM of photographs of our plants. Garden photographed by Sunset Magazine and by Alan Mandell, international hort photographer. Several Heuchera featured in SUNSET magazine. Fine gardening article written and completed to run in November (5 page spread on Heuchera). Featured speaker at California Horticultural society at the Academy of Sciences. Trip to Holland, Germany, Ireland and England (Hampton Court Show) in June. PPA presentation in Minneapolis. Far West Show exhibition. IPPS regional meeting (Introduction of New Plants) Botanical and horticultural collecting trip to New Zealand completed at year's end, spoke to 'InPlants' group in New Zealand. Presented with multiple gold medals and 'Best New Perennial of 1995 at Plantarium '95 in Holland and at shows in Belgium. Breeding work continues with improved flower and foliage forms and for the first time, the combination of the two. Photo shoots for Fine Gardening and Sunset for a feature article on Garden Masters. We have sold our 20,000th plant in New Zealand and are exploring the international market further (inroads to Germany, Holland, and England have been made). Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc. bought Macksburg Greenhouses adding 12000 sq. feet of production to our line. Have begun 2nd lab construction in Canby and have begun planting fields with trial plants and stock.
1994
Have been promoting in earnest, the plants of others through Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc. We will have paid out nearly $5000 in royalties by the end of the shipping season. Collecting trip to North Carolina and West Virginia for plant collecting. Lecture to horticultural group in Vancouver, BC, Canada. PPA presentation of new perennials. Approached by Timber Press to do a book on Heuchera and their allies. Ken Druse shoots garden for "The Collector's Garden". Invested in STAGE IV in Mt. Vernon, Washington State, and a nursery venture by B&B plantsman Monte Gorman. Erected greenhouse and tunnels in Washington.
1993
Tissue culture lab has been built in Tigard. Production continues. 2nd Educational /collecting trip to England. Meeting with Beth Chatto, Graham Stuart Thomas and Brian Matthew at respective gardens. Went to Chelsea and helped with garden construction and labeling. Manned the Goldbrook Plants booth. Displayed our product with B&B Labs at the SNA nursery convention in Atlanta, Georgia. Farwest Nursery Show presentation. Attended and spoke to PPA on several new introductions in Beautiful British Columbia.
1992
Entered a partnership with Ken Brown in addition to running Terra Green Landscape. Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc. We purchased a “used' tissue culture lab and we were in the process of upgrading equipment, purchasing chemicals, built a lab building and have erected a modest 10'x30' greenhouse on my property to house stock plants and allow controlled breeding. I am currently working with B & B Laboratories on mass-production of my new plants and am marketing my new introductions through a video to be shown at the FARWEST Nursery show and a slide to show are shown at the PPA convention in Cleveland.
1991
Began Terra-Nova Nursery cooperating with Paul Iwasaki of Riverview Greenhouses (for greenhouse use) in an effort to bring new and unusual plants from Japan, England, and our own back yard, to the wholesale market. Began an intensive breeding effort in several relatively minor genera. My first 'discovery' in 1988 was a variegated coral-bells, Heuchera sanguinea 'Snowstorm' of which over 1,000,000 plants have already been sold in England, France and Holland. Traveled to England on a collecting mission in May. Covered 1400 miles of English soil and attended Chelsea Flower Show.
1981 to date
Has been active in the Begonia Society, Bromeliad Society, Hardy Plant Society, Landscape Professionals chapter of the OAN, Rock Garden Society, and started the Northwest Hosta Society (Now the NW Hosta and Shade Gardening Society). Served as president of the Landscape Professionals and designed and built the Yard, Garden and Patio Show-front yard and back yard displays for several years. Formed "Anything But Green" a variegated plant group in 1994. Member of RHS, HPS, PPA, ISU, IPPS.
1978-1981
Started Terra Green Landscape as the 'plant boom' dwindled. Produced and narrated 'Garden Notes' on KKSN radio. Became a licensed Landscape Contractor. Terra Green Landscape activities in the past 18 years have included design, maintenance, construction and irrigation.
1977
Taught several plant courses at OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry). Went on 2 collecting/botanical missions to Hawaii. 2nd TV feature on Exotic Plants Unlimited. (KPTV)
1976
Began Exotic Plants Unlimited- selling wholesale and retail exotic plants with greenhouses in Portland and eventually Beaverton. Television appearance on KPTV (12).
1975
University of Oregon- Taught advanced interior plants- Commissioned by Dr. Wallace M. Ruff to receive and propagate seeds and cuttings from unexplored mountains of Papua New Guinea. Graduated in communications with a minor in landscape and botany. TV direction and production experience in Eugene-National Educational Television.
1974
University of Oregon - Placed in charge of university landscape architecture greenhouse (2nd year) Taught an accredited course on Organic Gardening.
AWARDS
2002 - Reginald Cory Memorial Cup presented to Dan Heims by the Royal Horticultural society for advancements in the genus Heuchera
2002 - 9 Awards of Garden Merit presented by the Royal Horticultural Society for:
'Burgundy Frost', 'Can Can' , 'Chocolate Veil' , 'Fireworks' , x H. 'Kimono' , 'Magic Wand' , 'Purple Petticoats', 'Sashay', and 'Smokey Rose'
2001 - Gold Medal at Keukenhof 2001 in Holland. (Heuchera Display)
2001 - Gold Certificate at Coursonne in France for Heuchera ‘Can Can’.
2001 - Best of Show (GOLD) Four Oaks Trade Show Heuchera ‘Amber Waves’
2001 - Best New Product Scotgrow Show in Scotland Heuchera ‘Amber Waves’ 2000 - 1 Gold award at Plantarium '00 Heuchera 'Ebony and Ivory' PP
2000 - 1 Silver award at Plantarium '00 Tiarella 'Iron Butterfly' PP
2000 - 2 Bronze awards at Plantarium '00 for Tiarella 'Mint Chocolate ' EBR and Tiarella 'Ninja' EBR
2000 - Theodore Klein Plant Award in Kentucky Heuchera ‘Pewter Veil’
1999 - 1 Silver award (Medaille d'argent) at Courson (the greatest French horticulture show) '99 (only 3 plant awards given) for Tiarella 'Ninja' PP
1998 - 2 Silver awards at Plantarium '98
Two Gold medals and 4 Silvers won at VKC Nieuw, a large Dutch show
1997 - 2 Gold and 3 Silver medals from VKC Nieuw Plant exposition in Holland, Hosta 'Jade Cascade' 1996 - American Hosta Society International Convention, The Pauline Banyai Award, Best Unregistered Seedling, David Van Fleet Award, Best Green-leaved Hosta, International Convention, Best of Section 7, International Convention, Best of Class, International Convention First Prize for Heuchera 'Chocolate Ruffles'
1996 - VKC NIEUW, Belgium Silver Medal, 8.5, Heuchera 'Purple Petticoats'
1996 - VKC NIEUW, Belgium Gold Medal, 9.25, Heuchera 'Plum Pudding'
1996 - VKC NIEUW, Belgium Gold Medal, 9.15, Heuchera 'Stormy Seas'
1996 - VKC NIEUW, Belgium Gold Medal, 9.05, Ligularia tussilaginea 'Aureomaculata' TN Clone
1996 - VKC NIEUW, Belgium Gold Medal, 9.1, Heuchera 'Regal Robe'
1996, VKC NIEUW, Belgium Gold Medal, 9.1, Heuchera Display, Best of Show Gold Medal
1996 - International Exposition Keukenhof, Holland Tiarella 'Tiger Stripe' (Oliver)
1996 -VKC NIEUW, Belgium Silver Medal 8.8, Heuchera 'Cascade Dawn'
1996 - VKC NIEUW, Belgium Silver Medal 8.5, Heuchera 'Stormy Seas'
1996 - VKC NIEUW, Belgium Silver Medal 8.0Heuchera 'Strawberry Swirl'
1996 - VKC NIEUW, Belgium Bronze Medal 7.4, Heuchera 'Ruby Veil'
1996 - VKC NIEUW, Belgium Bronze Medal 7.5, Heuchera 'Can Can', Heuchera 'Stormy Seas', Heuchera 'Chocolate Ruffles'
1995 - Plantarium '95, Boskoop, Holland Best New Perennial Introduction Gold Medal
But that is a letter of intent over two months old...what gives? Where's the contract? Where's the revenue?
My understanding is that there is no patent so the white paper and a patent pending would be first stage of due diligence I would think.
I'd still like to read it if it is public information...
Try doing a patent pending search at the USPO:
http://www.uspto.gov/
Truth or dare
By George Perkovich
In early January, my Carnegie Endowment colleagues and I released a report detailing systemic flaws in U.S. intelligence and decision-making regarding weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq. Guesses were allowed to masquerade as facts, actual facts were few and far between, and when the CIA correctly doubted that Saddam Hussein would transfer WMD to terrorists such as al Qaeda, the administration and most of Congress ignored it.
Since the report hit the World Wide Web, we have been swarmed by reporters, talk-radio hosts and political junkies asking one question: "Did U.S. officials lie about WMD?"
Truth be told, I would sleep much better if lying explained how we got the WMD and terrorist threat so wrong in Iraq. Unfortunately, the situation is much worse.
The accountability machine will grind forward to determine whether anyone lied, but we should not delay acting upon the undeniable fact that Washington and London experienced systemic failures in theirdecision-making processes. The world's leading intelligence services failed to detect and comprehend the nature and scale of the threat in Iraq. Parliamentary bodies failed to rigorously scrutinize their executives' cases for abandoning inspections after four months and going to war. The U.S. media, with important exceptions, gave too much credulity to popular wisdom. Think tanks dropped their responsibility to question assumptions and explore contrary "what ifs. "
Instead of obsessing on "who lied," we would be better off figuring out how to fix the system. Iraq is not the last time the United States and the international community will have to decide whether to use force to remove a threat whose exact dimensions and imminence are uncertain.
First, we must find out how and why intelligence agencies were so ignorant of the realities of Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapon capabilities. Some individuals and agencies did better than others, and some assessments were better than the vital October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. What accounts for the differences? Why were the more accurate analyses downplayed and the worst accepted? What can be done to improve collection and evaluation of intelligence?
This examination must be conducted on a nonpartisan, independent basis. The CIA will conduct its own inquiry, which is laudable but insufficient. Congress will investigate, but cannot be expected to escape partisan spin.
Second, we must dissect the national security establishment's assumptions about theWMDandterrorist threats we face. Sloppy assumptions led to narrow policy debates.
Not all WMD are equal. Nuclear weapons are incomparably more threatening to innocent life and international orderthanchemical weapons. Biological weapons could some day destroy life on a massive scale, but turning theoretical potency into effective wide-scale dispersion is extremely difficult. The conflation of diverse threats into a single buzz-term "WMD" clouds our assessment of threats, and therefore our decisions about what risks to run to counter them and what the costs would be.
Similarly, there was and is no basis for assuming that "axis of evil" states cannot be deterred from transferring WMD to terrorists. Congress and think tanks should inquire whether and how our understandably passionate contempt of dictators and terrorists distorts our assessments of the actual threats they pose. Do greater threats emanate from commercial proliferators in "friendly" Pakistan and unsecured nuclear facilities in former Soviet states?
Third, the policy of pre-emptive (preventive) war needs a user's manual. Military attack on another state in the absence of an imminent threat is widely considered to be aggression. Imminence is a useful standard for pre-emptive or anticipatory self-defense precisely because an imminent threat is one that can be seen. Bush administration officials purposely never said that Iraq posed an "imminent" threat, although they used rhetoric to convey that immediate military action was necessary.Byattackingaless-than imminent WMD threat, and being wrong about it, the United States has exacerbated international mistrust and wariness of military options to remove threats.
As Henry Kissinger has suggested, the United States should seek to regain trust in its leadership for future enforcement cases by inviting international negotiation to develop guidelines for the use of force against less-than imminent threats.Intheabsence of a cocked and loaded gun, can intelligence ever be certain enough to warrant military attack? What standards of threat assessment should be established? What timely means can be devised to gain international authorization of military action?
It is much simpler and more entertaining to play the who-lied game, but the world's greatest power should demand more from itself. The initiatives suggested here can help fix a system — not a political party — that failed. No self-respecting government should shirk responsibility for learning from its mistakes, even if it feels that the outcome of its actions is ultimately right.
George Perkovich is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and co-author with Jessica Mathews and Joseph Cirincione of "WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications."
Clearer Than the Truth
Duplicity in foreign affairs has sometimes served the national interest. But the case of Iraq is different
by Benjamin Schwarz
.....
The Bush Administration "systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs and ballistic missile programs," concluded a January report issued by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace—a nonpartisan research institution, albeit one far more closely aligned with the Democratic Party than with the Republican. Not all fair-minded observers would go quite that far. But in the most generous interpretation possible, it is clear that the President and his team massaged the truth—even if we allow for significant intelligence failures generally, as well as for the great uncertainty in the months preceding the war regarding the status of Iraq's biological-weapons program specifically. That is, the Administration consistently selected evidence and suppositions that supported the policies it advocated, and just as consistently ignored or dismissed evidence and arguments to the contrary. Defenders of the Administration should, but won't, acknowledge that even before the war few of the best-informed experts at home or abroad saw the Iraqi threat from unconventional weapons in nearly as dire terms as did Bush and his advisers, and that virtually no responsible experts saw the ties between Iraq and Islamist terrorism that the Administration discerned.
Does this mean that the Administration didn't go to war in defense of what it believed were—and perhaps are—the vital security interests of the United States? No; it merely suggests that the reasons given publicly for war were not the only—or even the most important—ones. That Saddam's WMD programs posed an immediate danger now seems highly doubtful. But whether an inspections regime, "smart sanctions," and the vigilance of the international community (and of successor American administrations) could have guaranteed that Iraq wouldn't acquire those capabilities in the future is another issue entirely, and one that undoubtedly haunted Bush and his advisers. And that matter is quite separate from whatever strategic and political advantages—desirable or essential—the Administration believed a not hostile Iraq would give the United States.
So, regardless of the obfuscations that accompanied the case for war, the wisdom or folly of the Bush Administration's decision to invade Iraq can still be argued. This decision rested on the assumption (shared by the Administration's Democratic critics) that a "rogue state" like Saddam's Iraq cannot be deterred from using weapons of mass destruction, and that therefore, as President Clinton declared in 1998, the United States "simply cannot allow" Iraq to acquire such weapons.
But instead of debating that complex proposition, which has guided U.S. national-security policy across administrations, Democratic critics profess shock that the Bush Administration exaggerated and distorted the truth in justifying war. Although John Kerry and Wesley Clark charge that the President and his officials "misled" Congress and the public, these men should know that virtually all administrations—including those most revered by Democrats—have, to quote General Clark's criticism of the Bush Administration, "hyped" and "stretched" the truth when pushing the country to pursue national-security policies that they deemed crucial. FDR, though he claimed to embrace the neutrality that a great majority of Americans favored, in fact surreptitiously sought—long before Pearl Harbor—to maneuver the United States into war. And the Truman Administration followed Senator Arthur Vandenberg's advice to Dean Acheson (the Clinton Administration's favorite Secretary of State) to "scare hell out of the American people" by, in Acheson's words, painting a picture "clearer than the truth" regarding the Soviet menace in order to win public support for enormous defense increases and for the new and sweeping global role it perceived to be in America's interest.
The Clinton Administration's hyping and stretching of the truth in pushing for and justifying war in Kosovo—the first war the U.S.-led NATO ever waged, and one fought against a country that, however repellent, posed no threat to any member of the alliance, least of all the United States—is more recent and therefore somewhat more relevant. The Clinton Administration made war on Yugoslavia for complex reasons, including its conviction that such action was necessary to bolster America's leadership position in post-Cold War Europe (a position the Administration held to be an essential U.S. interest). However, before, during, and after the conflict, it justified the war by averring that its intention, to quote President Clinton, was to stop "deliberate, systematic efforts at ... genocide." Although Yugoslavia's counterinsurgency campaign in Kosovo was indisputably brutal, the Administration clearly exaggerated, and its rationalizations for war were clearly selective. It is largely agreed that before U.S. intervention about 1,800 civilians, mostly Kosovar Albanians but also Serbs, were killed in fighting and in Yugoslavia's ferocious efforts to uproot the Kosovo Liberation Army—efforts that included murder, but efforts that the KLA itself deliberately provoked. During the war the Administration based its claims that Yugoslavia was engaged in genocide on what it knew to be a highly dubious evidentiary foundation—unconfirmed reports passed on to NATO by the KLA, an obviously biased party and one that the State Department had called a terrorist organization. In the only in-depth investigation of the issue by a U.S. newspaper, the late Daniel Pearl and Robert Block, of The Wall Street Journal, concluded that the Yugoslavian campaign in Kosovo, to quote the headline of their piece, was "cruel, bitter, savage," but, contrary to the Clinton Administration's claims, "genocide it wasn't."
f course, there's every reason to assume that the Clinton Administration evaded, distorted, and exaggerated for the most honorable reasons—that is, in pursuit of what it saw as America's vital foreign-policy interests. And, of course, there's every reason to assume the same of the Bush Administration. Why have American Presidents so commonly misrepresented and stretched the truth in matters of national security? The answer lies largely in this country's enviable geopolitical position and military strength. Given that America is separated by vast oceans both from its potential adversaries and from areas of potential geopolitical instability, national threats have nearly always been more a matter of supposition, and of future consequences, than of present reality. In 1966, while discussing how losing South Vietnam might diminish American credibility and threaten the country's security, one of Robert McNamara's closest aides, Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton, allowed that "it takes some sophistication to see how Vietnam automatically involves our [vital interests]." The assumption that the public won't understand—or won't buy—the often esoteric logic behind American national-security policy has long made it tempting for both Democratic and Republican administrations to make their arguments "clearer than the truth." In the case of the current Administration, it was far easier to warn of an immediate threat than it was to defend the complicated and debatable proposition that now was the best time to forestall a potential threat.
If there's nothing original, historically speaking, in the Bush Administration's distortions and exaggerations, are those actions nevertheless particularly insidious? The answer is yes—and largely because of factors that this Administration has perceptively grasped and forthrightly articulated. The President has made a persuasive case that the September 11 attacks represent a threat to the United States that is of unprecedented immediacy and magnitude. For the first time in its history the country confronts enemies that seek not geopolitical advantage but our national annihilation—and they must be destroyed, because they cannot be deterred. The Administration has correctly asserted that the war against al-Qaeda and its ilk cannot be won on the defensive, and—partisan and simplified objections to "pre-emptive war" aside—the United States must act to thwart latent threats before they develop fully. Furthermore, this war can be waged and won only by using the most sensitive intelligence, which perforce means that much of the contest will be covert; and even when military action is overt, the full dimensions of and reasons for that action must often remain unrevealed. Therefore, the public must place enormous trust in its government.
In justifying war against Iraq, the Administration suggested ties between a mortal adversary (al-Qaeda) and what was at worst a worrisome future adversary (Saddam)—ties whose existence nearly every knowledgeable observer has called into question. Furthermore, the Administration conflated the dangers posed by terrorists with those posed by tyrants, and said that the same sort of pre-emptive measures must be applied to both. This is a dubious argument, and one that must be rigorously examined rather than continually asserted. (It is ludicrous to suggest, as President Bush has, that a Saddam-ruled Iraq armed with chemical weapons—weapons that it possessed in 1991, but was deterred from using against the U.S. in the Persian Gulf War—poses the same kind of threat and requires the same kind of response as, say, an al-Qaeda-ruled and nuclear-armed Pakistan.)
Here's the rub: Congress and the public will most likely have to grant to this and future administrations vast and unprecedented latitude to take pre-emptive paramilitary and military measures—measures that may even appear to be in violation of international law. The public may well have to accept a large degree of ignorance regarding such actions and the reasons behind them. This Administration has not misled or distorted more than have most previous ones. But it is operating in a new world, and it has squandered the trust that we are called upon to give it.
Intelligence on Iraq
And we found these Weapons of Mass Destruction in Saddams back pocket when we pulled him out of the hole
http://www.ceip.org/files/projects/npp/resources/iraqintell/home.htm
The administration of President George W. Bush "systematically misrepresented" the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD), three non-proliferation experts from a prominent Washington think tank charged last week.
In a 107-page report, Jessica Mathews, Joseph Cirincione and George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) called for the creation of an independent commission to fully investigate what the U.S. intelligence community knew, or believed it knew, about Iraq's WMD programme from 1991 to 2003, and whether its analyses were tainted by foreign intelligence agencies or political pressure.
"It is very likely that intelligence officials were pressured by senior administration officials to conform their threat assessments to pre-existing policies," Cirincione told reporters.
The three Carnegie analysts also found "no solid evidence" of a cooperative relationship between the government of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda nor any evidence to support the claim that Iraq would have transferred WMD to Al Qaeda under any circumstances.
"The notion that any government would give its principal security assets to people it could not control in order to achieve its own political aims is highly dubious," they wrote.
In addition, the report, "WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications," concluded that the UN inspection process, which was aborted when the UN withdrew its inspectors on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last March, "appears to have been much more successful than recognized before the war."
The report, the most comprehensive public analysis so far of the administration's WMD claims and what has been found in Iraq, will certainly heat up the simmering controversy over whether Bush and his top aides may have deliberately misled Congress and the public into going to war.
Where Are The Watchdogs?
While that controversy has cooled since last month's capture of Hussein and a palpable rise in the military's confidence that it can subdue the insurgency against the occupation, the two Congressional intelligence committees are only now resuming their own investigations of U.S. pre-war intelligence on WMD that were interrupted by the long Christmas recess.
The report also comes amid new indications that the administration itself has decided that its pre-war claims about Iraq's WMD were wrong. The New York Times reported Thursday that a 400-member military team has been quietly withdrawn from the 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group (ISG) that has spent months scouring Iraq at a cost of nearly one billion dollars for any evidence of such weapons.
That report followed another in mid-December that the head of the ISG, David Kay, had told his superiors at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that he planned to leave as early as the end of January. Kay, a former UN inspector who had long charged Hussein with holding vast supplies of WMD, submitted an interim report last October that no weapons had been found.
"I think it's pretty clear by now that they don't expect to find anything at all," said one administration official.
The Carnegie report also comes on the heels of the publication Wednesday of an extraordinarily lengthy article by The Washington Post that concluded that Iraq's WMD programmes were effectively abandoned after the 1991 Gulf War. The article, which confirmed that Iraq was developing new missile technology, was based on interviews with Iraq's top weapons scientists and mostly unnamed U.S. and British investigators who went to Iraq after the war.
The new report is likely to be taken as the most serious blow yet to the administration's credibility. Carnegie is the publisher of Foreign Policy journal, and, while its general political orientation is slightly left of center, it has long been studiously non-partisan and also houses right-wing figures, such as neo-conservative writer, Robert Kagan. Mathews, Carnegie's president, traveled to Iraq last September as part of a bipartisan group of highly-respected national-security analysts invited by the Pentagon to assess the situation there.
The report, which is based on declassified documents about Iraq from UN weapons inspectors and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reaches a similar conclusion regarding both WMD and the missiles, but is much broader in scope.
It concedes that Iraq's WMD programmes could have resumed and might have posed a long-term threat that could not be ignored. But, the authors wrote, "they did not pose an immediate threat to the United States, to the region, or to global security."
Undermining White House Credibility
Despite Vice President Dick Cheney's insistence early last year that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons programme, the Carnegie report concludes there was "no convincing evidence" that it had done so and that this should have been known to U.S. intelligence.
Similarly, with respect to Baghdad's chemical weapons, U.S. intelligence should have known that all facilities for producing them had been effectively destroyed and that existing stockpiles had lost their potency already by 1991, while uncertainties regarding its biological weapons programme were greater. Dual-use equipment and facilities, however, made it theoretically possible for some limited production of both chemical and biological weapons to occur.
As of the beginning of 2002, according to the report, the intelligence community appears to have overestimated the chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, but had a generally accurate picture of both the nuclear and missile programmes.
But in 2002 the intelligence community appears to have made a "dramatic shift" in its analyses. The fact that this change coincided with the creation of the Office of Special Plans (OSP) in the Pentagon—a still-mysterious group of intelligence analysts and consultants who were hired by prominent hawks to assess the community's reporting—"suggests that the intelligence community began to be unduly influenced by policymakers' views some time in 2002," the report states.
Pattern Of Misrepresentation
Beyond the failures of the intelligence community, however, "administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq's WMD and ballistic missile programmes" in several ways, according to the report, including by treating the three different kinds of WMD as a single threat when in fact they represent very different threats; insisting without evidence that Hussein would give whatever WMD he had to terrorists; and routinely dropping "caveats, probabilities and expressions of uncertainty present in intelligence assessments from (their) public statements."
In addition, the administration misrepresented findings by UN inspectors "in ways that turned threats from minor to dire."
The report goes on to rebut a number of other claims by the administration, noting, for example, that the notion that Hussein was not deterrable does not stand up to the historical record, given his past responses to international pressure.
The strategic implications of the failure of U.S. intelligence to provide accurate information in the Iraq case, when there was no imminent threat, should call into question the administration's new national security doctrine of pre-emptive military action, according to the authors. As applied in Iraq, the "doctrine is actually a loose standard for preventive war under the cloak of legitimate pre-emption," they wrote, and should be rescinded.
Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org), and a correspondent with Inter Press Service, where this article first appeared. He can be reached at: jlobe@starpower.net
Other Recent Articles by Jim Lobe
* Future Uncertain as Saddam Unearthed
* A Sunday in Samarra
* Experts Returning from Iraq Criticize US Tactics
* US Keeps its Iraqi Bases Covered
* US War Tactics Slammed by Rights Groups
* Patriot Act Expansion Moves Through Congress
* New Leak Smells of Neocon Desperation
* Murder of UN Worker Spotlights Resurgence of Taliban
* Washington's New Sound and Fury Hide Fear and Worry
* Brave Face Belies Administration's Panic
* One Meal a Day for Most Palestinians
* Relaxed US Rules Fuelled Toxic ''Ghost Ships''
* Rumsfeld Takes More Friendly Fire
* Hawks Fleeing the Coop
* "What's Gonna Happen With Feith?”
* Postwar Casualties Rise Amid Disarray in US Plans
* Bush Stance on Syria Hit Shows Neocons Still Hold Sway
* We Report, You Get it Wrong
* Cheney's Mask is Slipping
* US Dominates Arms Sales to Third World
* Sharp Increase in US Military Aid to Latin America
* Is the Neocon Agenda for Pax Americana Losing Steam?
U.S. President George W. Bush celebrated a second victory in Iraq here Sunday with confirmation that occupation forces had captured fugitive former president Saddam Hussein on Saturday evening at a farmhouse outside Tikrit.
But even the normally cocky U.S. commander-in-chief, who addressed the nation by television from the White House, stressed that the former Iraqi dictator's arrest will not mean a quick end to the occupation's armed resistance.
"The capture of Saddam Hussein does not mean the end of violence in Iraq," Bush declared solemnly at the conclusion of a short statement that described Saddam's detention as "crucial to the rise of a free Iraq."
Bush's resignation to more resistance reflected much of the reaction to the day's news, as lawmakers and analysts described the capture as a potentially major breakthrough that would not necessarily, however, prove decisive.
Indeed, some specialists warned even before Sunday's announcement that Saddam's death or detention would prove largely irrelevant to the difficult problems faced by US and coalition forces in Iraq, both because loyalty to Hussein – or even to his Ba'ath Party – had ceased to be a catalyst for the insurgency long before and because the complex internal political situation in Iraq has begun to fuel more tension and violence in any event.
Some even suggested that Saddam's capture might actually create new problems for the occupation by empowering sectors in the country's Shi'a community to test the occupation and back up their demands for direct elections to a new Iraqi government with more militant tactics.
"Now that it is perfectly clear that (Hussein) is finished," noted Iraq specialist Juan Cole, who teaches history at the University of Michigan, "the Shiites may be emboldened."
"Those (Shiites) who dislike US policies or who are opposed to the idea of occupation no longer need be apprehensive that the US will suddenly leave and allow Saddam to come back to power."
"They may therefore now gradually throw off their political timidity, and come out more forcefully into the streets when they disagree," Cole wrote on his website Sunday.
Saddam, of course, had been target number one for US invasion forces, who actually tried to kill him in two "decapitation" air strikes in the course of the war. US commanders expressed great confidence that they were closing in on the former president after his two sons, Uday and Qsay, were killed in a four-hour shootout at a house where they were hiding in Mosul.
But over the days and weeks that followed, the trail apparently went cold, although US military officials told reporters consistently they believed Saddam had gone to ground somewhere around Tikrit.
In the end, that proved to be correct; tipped off by Iraqi informants, US commanders said they found him in what they described as a 2 x 2.5 m. "spider hole" built under a farmhouse outside the city where Saddam grew up.
The bearded fugitive reportedly offered no resistance to US troops, and Iraqi political leaders who were taken to the scene Sunday described his attitude as defiant. Videotape taken by his US captors showed him being examined by medics, possibly for head lice.
Commanders said they did not broadcast his capture until they could determine positively through DNA testing that it was indeed the former dictator.
Although military commanders have long insisted that resistance to the occupation was being carried out primarily by "Saddam loyalists," they had never ascribed to him any actual leadership role, apart from his status as a symbol, particularly for Ba'athists.
That appeared to be borne out by the circumstances of his capture. Not only was Saddam bedraggled, he also lacked any apparent means of electronic or satellite communication, such as a telephone, with his supporters.
That was noted by some observers, who said it proved the resistance was clearly operating independently of Saddam. "Given the location and circumstances of his capture, it makes clear that Saddam was not managing the insurgency, and that he had very little control or influence," said Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Democratic leader on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
"That is significant and disturbing because it means the insurgents are not fighting for Saddam; they're fighting against the United States," he added.
Other argued that, regardless of Saddam's relevance to resistance operations, his capture was bound to have a demoralizing effect on the insurgents, particularly members of the Ba'ath.
Michael O'Hanlon, a military specialist at the Brookings Institution, told National Public Radio (NPR) the psychological impact of the capture was a "devastating blow to (Saddam's) supporters."
That impact could be more significant on anti-Saddam sectors in Iraq, according to observers, although they failed to agree on whether it would, on balance, favor the occupation.
"I think Saddam's capture will give Iraqis the courage and the psychological boost not to tolerate any more (Saddam loyalists or criminals) within their own society," Judith Kipper, a Middle East specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), told IPS.
At the same time she also stressed that it will not "solve the problem of the insurgency, of the political chaos or of the reconstruction."
Retired Gen. William Nash, also of CFR, told NPR the capture could lead many Iraqis in the so-called Sunni Triangle to cooperate more with occupation authorities. With the achievement of such a key objective, "everybody (will) want to get on the bandwagon," he said.
That might be overly optimistic, according to others – including Cole, who wrote Sunday that Saddam "was probably already irrelevant."
"The Sunni Arab resisters to US occupation in the country's heartland had long since jettisoned Saddam and the Ba'ath as symbols," he stressed.
"They are fighting for local reasons. Some are Sunni fundamentalists, who despised the Ba'ath. Others are Arab nationalists who weep at the idea of their country being occupied. Some had relatives killed or humiliated by US troops and are pursuing a clan vendetta. Some fear a Shiite and Kurdish-dominated Iraq will reduce them to second-class citizens."
Both this thesis, as well as the administration's continued insistence that the insurgency consists mainly of Saddam and Ba'ath loyalists, criminals, and foreign "jihadis," will be tested in the coming weeks and months.
Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org), and a correspondent with Inter Press Service, where this article first appeared. He can be reached at: jlobe@starpower.net
Other Recent Articles by Jim Lobe
* A Sunday in Samarra
* Experts Returning from Iraq Criticize US Tactics
* US Keeps its Iraqi Bases Covered
* US War Tactics Slammed by Rights Groups
* Patriot Act Expansion Moves Through Congress
* New Leak Smells of Neocon Desperation
* Murder of UN Worker Spotlights Resurgence of Taliban
* Washington's New Sound and Fury Hide Fear and Worry
* Brave Face Belies Administration's Panic
* One Meal a Day for Most Palestinians
* Relaxed US Rules Fuelled Toxic ''Ghost Ships''
* Rumsfeld Takes More Friendly Fire
* Hawks Fleeing the Coop
* "What's Gonna Happen With Feith?”
* Postwar Casualties Rise Amid Disarray in US Plans
* Bush Stance on Syria Hit Shows Neocons Still Hold Sway
* We Report, You Get it Wrong
* Cheney's Mask is Slipping
* US Dominates Arms Sales to Third World
* Sharp Increase in US Military Aid to Latin America
* Is the Neocon Agenda for Pax Americana Losing Steam?
The skillful tactician may be likened to the
shuai-jan. Now the shuai-jan is a snake that is found
in the ChUng mountains. Strike at its head, and you
will be attacked by its tail; strike at its tail, and you
will be attacked by its head; strike at its middle,
and you will be attacked by head and tail both.
http://www.chinapage.com/sunzi-e.html#13
While electricity generation now exceeds pre-invasion levels, markets are plentiful, and virtually all school-aged children are back at their desks, the war for Iraqi "hearts and minds" remains very much up in the air, say independent analysts who have recently returned from that country.
"This could go either way," Kenneth Pollack, a former Middle East analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), told an audience gathered at the Brookings Institution here Tuesday.
"There's a great deal of good going on Iraq, but there's also a great deal of bad."
Like many experts, Pollack, who supported last spring's invasion, is growing increasingly concerned that U.S. military tactics in trying to defeat resistance to the occupation might in fact be creating new enemies among the population.
Serious political mistakes have also undermined the prospects for eventual US success, according to these analysts.
Charles Duelfer, another Middle East specialist who served as a deputy chief inspector of the United Nations disarmament team in Iraq, said the early dissolution of the Ba'ath Party and of the Iraqi army and security services were potentially fatal mistakes that have permanently alienated a key part of the population and, in their eyes, transformed them into enemies.
Duelfer, who supported the aim of ousting former president Saddam Hussein, told the same group at Brookings that the military's increasingly aggressive strategy in the so-called "Sunni Triangle" of central Iraq was only compounding the problem.
"These raids are highly embarrassing and insulting for a lot of Iraqis," said Duelfer, currently based at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. "The echo from this has created a feeling (among Iraqis) that ... the US doesn't know what it's doing."
After taking steadily rising casualties over the summer and into the fall, the US military has tried to "take the war to the enemy" in a much more aggressive fashion since early November.
New tactics have included bombing and strafing by combat helicopters and even fixed-wing aircraft, more frequent raids on homes and hideouts of suspected resistance fighters, and more arrests.
While the number of daily attacks on US units – which had doubled by late October to more than 30 since the summer – fell sharply last month, November was still the deadliest month to date for US soldiers in Iraq. Seventy-nine were killed, including 39 in the crashes of four military helicopters.
But while some Pentagon officials hailed the drop in the number of Iraqi attacks as signaling a potential turning point in the war, others pointed to a rise in attacks on Iraqi targets, mainly police, municipal officials and others who have been working with US forces.
Also, November saw a record number of non-U.S. occupation officials, including some 16 Italian carabinieri and eight Spanish intelligence agents, killed.
There was also a geographical expansion of armed resistance to the occupation, a development that clearly concerns both independent analysts and military planners alike.
While US military officers have claimed that more than 90 percent of the military resistance was taking place within the Sunni Triangle, Lawrence Korb, a senior defense official in the Reagan administration, said after returning from a trip to Iraq earlier this month that the actual figures showed the central region accounted for only 60 percent of the attacks on US and coalition forces.
"Even when we were in safe areas and were driving to see a Shiite cleric (in the south)," Korb told the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), "(the military authorities) made us wear flak jackets, and they had Humvees and armored personnel carriers escorting us with guns pointed at the population. This is the so-called safe Shiite area," he said.
Experts note a serious "disconnect" between the US military and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) under L. Paul Bremer.
Retired Rear Admiral David Oliver, who just returned from six months working with the CPA in Baghdad, told reporters last week that the two have "opposing goals." On the one hand, Army Gen. Ricardo Sanchez's forces are focused on the "tactical and immediate" goals of keeping order and hunting down suspected Ba'ath loyalists, while Bremer is trying to win the confidence of the Iraqi people.
"The military's goal has nothing to do with the (coalition's) success," Oliver told Defense News. "In my opinion, it is a mistake that ... Gen. Sanchez does not work directly for Bremer."
The CFR's Korb made a similar point, asserting that the "dual chain of command" – Bremer reports to the Pentagon and the White House, while Sanchez reports to the Central Command – was creating tension between Bremer and the military over issues such as how much force can be used in populated areas.
"The more force you use, the higher the risk that you will alienate the population. The less force you use, the more you put your troops in danger," said Korb.
"The military guys are mainly concerned about their troops and their military mission, (but) Bremer obviously has a different agenda."
Pollack said one of his greatest complaints was precisely the military's "obsession with force protection," a worry he said was shared by British occupation officials as well.
While heavily armed US transports speed through towns and villages from mission to mission, the local population continues to suffer extremely high rates of crime.
"What I heard from Iraqis is that they are terrified of going out on the streets at night," said Pollack, suggesting that the military should return to patrolling the streets, preferably with new Iraqi police and soldiers.
But Bremer and the CPA, ensconced behind kilometers of razor wire and other defenses, are also too isolated from the population, according to virtually all of the analysts who have returned recently.
"People feel there's no way to interact with the CPA," Duelfer said. "I'm not sure that it knows what's going on," he added, beyond what is reported to it by members of the Iraqi Governing Council, most of who have very little if any political support.
"The CPA in Baghdad remains over-isolated from the military, is an over-centralized bureaucracy, is slow to respond or non-responsive to coalition forces and workers in the field, and relies far too much on contractors, plans too much in theory, and is not realistically evaluating developments in the field," according to Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), in an influential report concluded after a visit to Iraq earlier this month.
The answer, according to Pollard, is "lots more people" – including civil affairs specialists, translators and interpreters and infantry who can patrol the streets.
But that may be politically impossible for the Bush administration, which has already committed itself to drawing down at least 30,000 soldiers from the present levels of almost 140,000 by next summer, when the presidential election campaign will be in full swing.
"We have to start looking fast to our friends overseas," according to Pollack, echoing similar suggestions from Cordesman and Korb.
Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service. He can be reached at: jlobe@starpower.net
Other Recent Articles by Jim Lobe
* US Keeps its Iraqi Bases Covered
* US War Tactics Slammed by Rights Groups
* Patriot Act Expansion Moves Through Congress
* New Leak Smells of Neocon Desperation
* Murder of UN Worker Spotlights Resurgence of Taliban
* Washington's New Sound and Fury Hide Fear and Worry
* Brave Face Belies Administration's Panic
* One Meal a Day for Most Palestinians
* Relaxed US Rules Fuelled Toxic ''Ghost Ships''
* Rumsfeld Takes More Friendly Fire
* Hawks Fleeing the Coop
* "What's Gonna Happen With Feith?”
* Postwar Casualties Rise Amid Disarray in US Plans
* Bush Stance on Syria Hit Shows Neocons Still Hold Sway
* We Report, You Get it Wrong
* Cheney's Mask is Slipping
* US Dominates Arms Sales to Third World
* Sharp Increase in US Military Aid to Latin America
* Is the Neocon Agenda for Pax Americana Losing Steam?
Hostile armies may face each other for years,
striving for the victory which is decided in a single day.
This being so, to remain in ignorance of the enemy's
condition simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred
ounces of silver in honors and emoluments, is the height
of inhumanity. One who acts thus is no leader of men, no present help to his sovereign, no master of victory. Thus, what enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge. Bush claims no foreknowledge and releasing the speach would further condemn the administrations stance and prove its incompetence in dealing with the terrorist threat before 911.
On Thursday there will be very heavy lightning and thunder in the District of Criminals as Rice testifies for two hours.
Raising a host of a hundred thousand
men and marching them great distances entails heavy loss
on the people and a drain on the resources of the State.
The daily expenditure will amount to a thousand ounces
of silver. There will be commotion at home and abroad,
and men will drop down exhausted on the highways.
As many as seven hundred thousand families will be impeded
in their labor.
http://www.chinapage.com/sunzi-e.html#13
The end and aim of spying in all its five varieties
is knowledge of the enemy; and this knowledge can only
be derived, in the first instance, from the converted spy.
Hence it is essential that the converted spy be treated
with the utmost liberality.
You blew it at Gitmo Bush...now what? Look at you now! You are a farce...you should have listened but you were too arrogant...your closest friends are now becoming your worst nightmare....
The general who is skilled in defense hides in the
most secret recesses of the earth; he who is skilled in
attack flashes forth from the topmost heights of heaven.
Thus on the one hand we have ability to protect ourselves;
on the other, a victory that is complete.
Bush, you cannot hide from your mistakes... fess up and tell the truth...you messed up Dude...go back to your ranch with your phony hat and boots and live in the dirt and shame that you have wrought upon this world...
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will
succumb in every battle.
Bush may think he knows himself but he does not know the enemy...this he has already admitted publicly by stating He was "not aware of the threat of Al Queda before 911".... and based on that alone the US should never have invaded Iraq for he did not even know his enemy there as evidenced by the lack of WMD to date...
Blaming faulty intelligence is no excuse for not knowing your enemy prior to engaging in battle...the public knows this.
In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.
Flunk again Bush...Mission Accomplished? Not....your foot is in the desert quicksand and you don't know how to get it out, but if you call off your dogs and work with the wise, perhaps you will be able to extricate yourself, but for now, your house is on fire and you lit the match....and you insist in pouring more gasoline on it while the public protests have really yet to begin...they won't complain till gas hits $3.00 per gallon...then the mobs will character assasinate you with their votes as is their right....just as you have tried to character assisinate anyone who disagrees with you...you are the largest coward in American history and so is your father and your grandfather...
RIP!
the proximity of an army causes prices to go up; and high prices cause the people's substance to be drained away.
Must be true...gas prices higher than ever...bread and milk prices higher than ever....real estate prices higher than ever...what good are low interest rates when the cost of everything is skyrocketing because of war?
It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted
with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand
the profitable way of carrying it on.
Flunk again Bush...
Time to go back to War School...
2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory
is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and
their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town,
you will exhaust your strength.
3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources
of the State will not be equal to the strain.
4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped,
your strength exhausted and your treasure spent,
other chieftains will spring up to take advantage
of your extremity. Then no man, however wise,
will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.
A billion Muslim's knew this...Bush didn't obviously.
The Islamic people have been fighting wars for 50 centuries longer than the United States.
1. Sun Tzu said: In the operations of war,
where there are in the field a thousand swift chariots,
as many heavy chariots, and a hundred thousand
mail-clad soldiers, with provisions enough to carry them
a thousand li, the expenditure at home and at the front,
including entertainment of guests, small items such as
glue and paint, and sums spent on chariots and armor,
will reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day.
Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000 men.
War was much cheaper 5,000 years ago. Try $1 billion a day for 135,000 troops in Iraq which doesn't include life insurance claims for dead bodies and medical costs for those permanently injured for the rest of their lives...
6. Therefore the skillful leader subdues the enemy's
troops without any fighting; he captures their cities
without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom
without lengthy operations in the field.
Looks like Bush flunked this one too...
26. Now the general who wins a battle makes many
calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought.
The general who loses a battle makes but few
calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations
lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat:
how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention
to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.
Bush has failed this test as Commander in Chief...
22. If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to
irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.
Bush doesn't have a humble bone in his body...must be all that cocaine he snorted when he went AWOL...
19. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable;
when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we
are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away;
when far away, we must make him believe we are near.
Looks like the other side has this down pat...
18. All warfare is based on deception.
The whole world has been deceived no doubt!
(1) Which of the two sovereigns is imbued
with the Moral law? (Neither
(2) Which of the two generals has most ability?Neither
(3) With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven
and Earth?Neither
(4) On which side is discipline most rigorously enforced?Neither
(5) Which army is stronger?Neither
(6) On which side are officers and men more highly trained?Neither
(7) In which army is there the greater constancy
both in reward and punishment?Neither
14. By means of these seven considerations I can
forecast victory or defeat.Neither
Now that the Bush administration has decided to sharply accelerate the transfer of full sovereignty to an Iraqi government, why does it not invite the United Nations to help with the transition? At this point, an invitation appears logical. At a minimum, it would give the occupation greater international legitimacy and encourage other countries to contribute both troops and more reconstruction assistance, easing Washington's burden.
Moreover, the world body has much more recent experience than the US in governing traumatized societies around the world. It would also go far to heal the wounds opened so painfully between Washington and its western European allies as the administration of President George W Bush rushed headlong to war earlier this year, at times showing its general contempt for "Old Europe".
The move would clearly boost Bush's re-election chances. Two-thirds or more of US voters, according to a string of polls dating back a full year, have consistently supported giving the UN control over post-war Iraq. After all, the costs of the occupation in US blood and treasure represent by far the greatest threat to Bush's chances next November.
So why then, the reluctance to ask the world body for help? Several answers suggest themselves, not least of which is pride. Even though the administration has made a series of U-turns in its management of the occupation, it steadfastly refuses to acknowledge that previous policies might have been mistaken. Policy changes of 180 degrees are instead described as "mid-course corrections". Bush hawks also no doubt fear that giving the UN responsibility for administering Iraq would create a highly undesirable precedent for future US military action.
Then there is the conviction that the world body is fundamentally incompetent, although it would be very difficult to top the policy zigzags and confusion generated by the excruciatingly isolated Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), as pointed out by Italy's former representative to the CPA, who resigned abruptly in exasperation earlier this month.
Of course, all those contracts to big US companies amounting to many billions of dollars might also play a role. A UN administration could embarrass Bush by confirming the relationship between contracts and political contributions or even force some of the deals to be cancelled.
But while most or all these arguments might be contributing to the administration's obstinacy, perhaps the most powerful one is the least discussed. Is it possible that the most compelling reason for the administration to retain control of the transition is its determination to build permanent military bases in Iraq, bases that it knows would under no circumstances be approved by veto-wielding potential strategic rivals on the UN Security Council, namely China, Russia and, according to some neo-conservatives, France.
In other words, by retaining exclusive control over the transition, does the administration believe that its chances of negotiating a permanent military presence in Iraq with a successor government are much greater than if the Security Council were given a say in the process?
Since the New York Times reported in April that the administration was planning to establish and maintain as many as four military bases in Iraq for an extended period of time, much has been written about radical redeployments of US forces in Europe and Asia. The changes, it has been said, would enhance the forces' ability to strike quickly, lethally and, if necessary, preemptively along an "arc of instability" that not coincidentally covers both key oil-producing areas from the Gulf of Guinea across the Persian Gulf and into Central Asia and critical points that could be used to contain Russia and China from the Caucasus across to East Asia and the western Pacific.
According to these plans, which are now being discussed formally with affected allies, much of the US military based in Germany and the rest of Western Europe during the Cold War is to be shifted to central Europe and the Balkans, closer to the oil-producing-and-transiting Caucasus and Middle East.
Since September 11, 2001, Washington has also established bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan that it used in attacking Afghanistan, bases that it shows no sign of leaving. Similarly, forces in Japan and South Korea might be partly redeployed, while Washington has made clear its interest in re-acquiring access to bases in the Philippines and Australia. Last week's visit by a US warship to Vietnam - the first since 1975 - also suggested a renewed interest in that country, which borders both China and the potentially oil-rich South China Sea.
As for the Middle East and the Gulf countries themselves, major shifts - most notably the abandonment of a major air force base in Saudi Arabia and the redeployment of US warplanes to Qatar - have also been under way. But Qatar and even Kuwait, which has acted as a de facto military base for Washington since 1990, could not substitute for the kind of strategic depth and flexibility offered by the four bases identified by the Times as those to which the administration wants permanent access.
They are: Baghdad international airport; Talil Air base near Nasariyah; a base in the western desert near Syria; and Bashur air field in the Kurdish region near the convergence of the borders of Turkey, Iran and Iraq and only 500 kilometers, as F-16s fly, from Baku, the capital of oil-rich Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea.
Pentagon Chief Donald Rumsfeld denied that Washington had plans to build those bases when the Times article was published. But since then, he and his chief aides have been remarkably coy about how long US forces intend to remain in Iraq. And on his recent emergency trip to Washington, where it was decided to accelerate the transition timetable, CPA chief L Paul Bremer suggested that whoever takes power in Iraq will undoubtedly want to sign a "SOFA" - a Status of Forces Agreement that governs the relationship between the US military and host countries.
Despite Rumsfeld's denial, Tom Donnelly, a military specialist at the American Enterprise Institute with close links to Pentagon planners, published an article in the neo-conservative Weekly Standard that took Rumsfeld to task for not "fess[ing] up" that bases in Iraq were entirely consistent with changes in Washington's global military posture. Iraqi airfields in particular, he wrote, "are ideally located for deployments throughout the region ... There's plenty of space, not only for installations but for training," he said, adding confidently, "And they are enough removed from Mesopotamia that they would not be 'imperial' irritants to the majority of Iraqis."
In September, according to Jessica Tuchman Matthews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who participated in a delegation of foreign policy specialists the Pentagon took to Kuwait and Iraq after the war, the administration's future basing plans were a major mystery. "We were told [by senior military briefers] in Kuwait that we needed $2 billion to improve housing for US troops for, quote, 'enduring' bases in Iraq, but I did not get to ask what 'enduring' meant," she said.
In January 2003, she added, "a senior [administration] official" had told her that "we're going to move our forces out of Saudi Arabia into Iraq", an account echoed by other sources at the same time. "The conquest of Iraq will not be a minor event in history," noted George Friedman, chairman of the Stratfor.com private intelligence agency in February. "It will represent the introduction of a new imperial power to the Middle East and a redefinition of regional geo-politics based on that power."
Building bases in Iraq is consistent with the neo-conservatives' long-held argument for invading Iraq in order to both "remake the face" of the Middle East and to transform and enhance Washington's global military posture to ensure its domination of key strategic resources. In the words of a 2000 study by the Project for the New American Century, such a move would "project sufficient power to enforce Pax Americana". Global peace and stability "demand American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations", asserted the report, whose charter members include Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and half a dozen other top national security officials in the Bush administration.
Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service. He can be reached at: jlobe@starpower.net
Other Recent Articles by Jim Lobe
* US War Tactics Slammed by Rights Groups
* Patriot Act Expansion Moves Through Congress
* New Leak Smells of Neocon Desperation
* Murder of UN Worker Spotlights Resurgence of Taliban
* Washington's New Sound and Fury Hide Fear and Worry
* Brave Face Belies Administration's Panic
* One Meal a Day for Most Palestinians
* Relaxed US Rules Fuelled Toxic ''Ghost Ships''
* Rumsfeld Takes More Friendly Fire
* Hawks Fleeing the Coop
* "What's Gonna Happen With Feith?”
* Postwar Casualties Rise Amid Disarray in US Plans
* Bush Stance on Syria Hit Shows Neocons Still Hold Sway
* We Report, You Get it Wrong
* Cheney's Mask is Slipping
* US Dominates Arms Sales to Third World
* Sharp Increase in US Military Aid to Latin America
* Is the Neocon Agenda for Pax Americana Losing Steam?
War Crimes by US Military on the Rise
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/deaths_in_custody112103.pdf
House demolitions by US troops in Iraq
Amnesty International is seeking clarification from United States Secretary of Defence Donald H. Rumsfeld over the reported demolition of several Iraqi homes by US soldiers in Iraq.
"The US government should clarify whether it has officially permitted house demolitions as a form of collective punishment or deterrence," said Amnesty International in a letter sent to the US government on Thursday. "If such proved to be the case, it would constitute a clear violation of international humanitarian law."
Amnesty International received reports that on 10 November US soldiers arrived at the farmhouse of the Najim family near the town of al-Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad. The soldiers ordered all the people living the farmhouse to leave within 30 minutes. Later that day, two F-16 warplanes reportedly bombed and destroyed the farmhouse.
This was apparently carried out in retaliation for an attack a few days earlier by Iraqi armed groups against a US convoy which resulted in the killing of a US army officer. A day after the attack, US soldiers arrested six men outside the Najim house reportedly after weapons had been found inside a truck parked in front of the house. More weapons and ammunition were said to have been found when the house was searched. Some, or possibly all, of those who had been arrested are thought to be residents of the house.
"It seems that the destruction of the Najim family house was carried out as collective punishment and not for 'absolute military necessity'," said Amnesty International.
If the above is an accurate statement of the intent of the action, the US military authorities would be in breach of Articles 33 and 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Article 33 of the fourth Geneva Convention states: "Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited". Article 53 states: "Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations".
Amnesty International has also learned that at least 15 houses have been destroyed by US forces since 16 November during military operations in Tikrit. Reports suggest that in one case, a family in the village of al-Haweda was given five minutes to evacuate their house before it was razed to the ground by tanks and helicopter fire. The family was then allowed to salvage a few items from the rubble.
In another case, two men, four children and two babies were said to have been left in freezing night temperatures in the back of a truck before their house was destroyed.
Major Lou Zeisman, a US military official from the 82nd Airborne Division, is reported to have said: "...If you shoot at an American or Coalition force member, you are going to be killed or you are going to be captured, and if we trace somebody back to a specific safe house, we are going to destroy that facility...we didn't destroy a house just because we were angry that someone was killed, we did it because the people there were linked to the attack and we are not going to tolerate it anymore...".
Amnesty International is urging the US Secretary of Defence to immediately rescind any policy of unlawful destruction of property and collective punishment and make clear to all US forces that such actions are prohibited.
"We would also call for families whose houses have been destroyed in the manner described above to be fully compensated," said Amnesty International.
Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that "extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly" is a grave breach of the Convention.
The United Nations Committee Against Torture (CAT) which monitors adherence to the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, to which the United States of America is a state party, considers "house demolition, in certain instances, amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" a breach of Article 16.
Public Document
****************************************
For more information please call Amnesty International's press office in London, UK, on +44 20 7413 5566
Amnesty International, 1 Easton St., London WC1X 0DW. web: http://www.amnesty.org
For latest human rights news view http://news.amnesty.org
Wow, Walter Cronkite? I thought he was dead?
International human rights groups are raising new questions about US counterinsurgency tactics in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
In a letter sent to Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld late last week, London-based Amnesty International asked whether the US military has adopted a policy of demolishing houses of the families of suspected insurgents in Iraq.
At the same time, New York-based Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (LCHR) dispatched a letter to the US Commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, regarding the status of military investigations announced over the past 11 months into the deaths of three suspected Taliban members while they were in US custody.
Both inquiries come amid indications that the US forces in both countries are stepping up counterinsurgency operations, particularly in the so-called Sunni Triangle of central Iraq and the predominantly Pashtun areas of eastern and southern Afghanistan, where some 10,000 US troops are trying to repel Taliban forces returning from Pakistan two years after being ousted from power in a brief US-led military campaign.
Five US troops were killed and seven more wounded when a helicopter crashed just outside Bagram Air Base near Kabul Sunday, although the causes of the crash have not yet been determined. At least two more were badly injured when their humvee hit a land mind close to the border with Pakistan.
Ten US soldiers have been killed in combat in Afghanistan so far this year, a fraction of the 300 killed in combat in Iraq since the US-led invasion there in late March. But Washington is increasingly concerned about the Taliban's growing presence in an increasing number of provinces, particularly amid preparations for elections next year.
Similarly, in Iraq, the spread of violent resistance to the US occupation from the Sunni Triangle northwards to Mosul, where two US soldiers were killed Sunday, as well as its increased intensity and sophistication, was apparently behind the decision by the Pentagon earlier this month to pursue a counterinsurgency war more aggressively than in the past.
In the past two weeks, US forces have used a number of new tactics, including the bombing by warplanes and attack helicopters of suspected guerrilla hideouts and supply depots. The tactics appear designed primarily to intimidate resistance fighters, in part by taking the war to them, rather than adopting a more defensive posture.
It is in that context that Amnesty is asking that the Pentagon respond to reports that its forces have demolished a number of Iraqi homes in recent weeks.
The US government should clarify whether it has officially permitted house demolitions as a form of collective punishment or deterrence, the group said in its letter. If such proved to be the case, it would constitute a clear violation of international humanitarian law.
Amnesty said it has received reports that on November 10 US soldiers arrived at the farmhouse of the Najim family near the town of al-Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, and ordered all the residents to leave. Later that day, two F-16 warplanes reportedly bombed and destroyed the house.
As reported by witnesses and the media, the operation was apparently carried out in retaliation for an attack a few days earlier by armed Iraqi groups against a US convoy that resulted in the death of an officer.
The next day, US soldiers arrested six men outside the Najim house after weapons were found inside a truck parked there. More weapons and ammunition were reported to have been found when the house was searched.
"It seems that the destruction of the Najim family house was carried out as collective punishment and not for absolute military necessity," said Amnesty, quoting a provision in the Fourth Geneva Convention that defines the only basis upon which an occupying power is permitted to destroy property.
Amnesty said it had learned that at least 15 houses have been destroyed by US forces since November 16 in or near Tikrit alone. In one case, in the village of al-Haweda, a family was given five minutes to evacuate their house before it was razed to the ground by tanks and helicopter fire.
In another case, according to Amnesty, two men, four children and two babies were said to have been left in freezing night temperatures in the back of a truck before their house was demolished.
A US military official with the 82nd Airborne Division, Maj. Lou Zeisman, was quoted in media reports as saying: If you shot at an American or Coalition force member, you are going to be killed or you are going to be captured, and if we trace somebody back to a specific safe house, we are going to destroy that facility. We didn't destroy a house just because we were angry that someone was killed; we did it because the people there were linked to the attack, and we are not going to tolerate it anymore
House demolition has evoked considerable controversy over the years due to its use by Israeli occupation forces against the homes of suspected Palestinian insurgents. Israeli officials are reported to have briefed US officers at length on the tactics they have used against the Palestinian resistance.
Iraqis themselves appear to be aware that the Pentagon may be applying the same tactics. The Americans want to follow the Israeli plan, one elderly resident in a village near Tikrit told the Washington Post. It doesn't work there. Why will it work here?
Indeed, some analysts have warned that the more-aggressive US counterinsurgency tactics of the past several weeks risked provoking greater resistance as well. Dr. Wamid Nadmi, a professor of political science at Baghdad University, told Knight-Ridder this weekend, that while the escalation may catch more insurgents, the other side is this will increase the people's rage against the Americans, especially those people whose homes are being destroyed or family members are being killed.
Amnesty called on Rumsfeld to immediately rescind any policy of unlawful destruction of property and collective punishment, and to offer compensation to all families whose houses have been destroyed due to suspicion of a family member's ties to the insurgency.
For its part, LCHR noted the deaths in custody at Bagram Airbase last December of two Afghan adults known as Mullah Habibullah and Dilawar, who were reported to have suffered blunt force injuries and whose deaths were classified as homicides.
In March 2003, Lt. Gen. Daniel McNeill ordered a criminal investigation. A similar investigation was announced regarding the death at a US holding facility near Asadabad of another Afghan, known as Walli, last June. The BBC quoted sources suggesting that Walli had been tortured during interrogation.
On June 26, President George W. Bush said the US would not tolerate torture or cruel and unusual punishment of detainees, and the Pentagon's General Counsel stated at the time that anyone found to have broken the law in relation to the deaths of the three men would be prosecuted.
Despite worldwide concern, to our knowledge no further information has been made public about the status of the investigations into these three cases, LCHR wrote in its letter asking Gen. Vines to respond to a series of questions regarding the investigations and their progress.
The investigations were announced amid press reports that US captives were often softened up by US soldiers before interrogation on detainees deemed uncooperative.
LCHRs letter also comes amid growing controversy over disciplinary action taken by the Army against Lt. Col. Allen West, who has admitted to firing his pistol over the shoulder of a detainee during interrogation to elicit information about planned ambushes against US soldiers. The Army has reportedly threatened West with criminal prosecution.
Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service. He can be reached at: jlobe@starpower.net
Other Recent Articles by Jim Lobe
* Patriot Act Expansion Moves Through Congress
* New Leak Smells of Neocon Desperation
* Murder of UN Worker Spotlights Resurgence of Taliban
* Washington's New Sound and Fury Hide Fear and Worry
* Brave Face Belies Administration's Panic
* One Meal a Day for Most Palestinians
* Relaxed US Rules Fuelled Toxic ''Ghost Ships''
* Rumsfeld Takes More Friendly Fire
* Hawks Fleeing the Coop: Does the Departure of a Recent Pentagon Hawk Foreshadow a Policy Shift?
* "What's Gonna Happen With Feith?”
* Postwar Casualties Rise Amid Disarray in US Plans
* Bush Stance on Syria Hit Shows Neocons Still Hold Sway
* We Report, You Get it Wrong
* Cheney's Mask is Slipping
* US Dominates Arms Sales to Third World
* Sharp Increase in US Military Aid to Latin America
* Is the Neocon Agenda for Pax Americana Losing Steam?
We Report, You Get it Wrong
by Jim Lobe
Dissident Voice
October 4, 2003
The more commercial television news you watch, the more wrong you are likely to be about key elements of the Iraq War and its aftermath, according to a major new study released in Washington on Thursday.
And the more you watch the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News channel, in particular, the more likely it is that your perceptions about the war are wrong, adds the report by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).
Based on several nationwide surveys it conducted with California-based Knowledge Networks since June, as well as the results of other polls, PIPA found that 48 percent of the public believe US troops found evidence of close pre-war links between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist group; 22 percent thought troops found weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq; and 25 percent believed that world public opinion favored Washington's going to war with Iraq. All three are misperceptions.
The report, Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War, also found that the more misperceptions held by the respondent, the more likely it was that s/he both supported the war and depended on commercial television for news about it.
The study is likely to stoke a growing public and professional debate over why mainstream news media - especially the broadcast media - were not more skeptical about the Bush administration's pre-war claims, particularly regarding Saddam Hussein's WMD stockpiles and ties with al-Qaeda.
"This is a dangerously revealing study," said Marvin Kalb, a former television correspondent and a senior fellow of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
While Kalb said he had some reservations about the specificity of the questions directed at the respondents, he noted that, "People who have had a strong belief that there is an unholy alliance between politics and the press now have more evidence." Fox, in particular, has been accused of pursuing a chauvinistic agenda in its news coverage despite its motto, "We report, you decide".
Overall, according to PIPA, 60 percent of the people surveyed held at least one of the three misperceptions through September. Thirty percent of respondents had none of those misperceptions.
Surprisingly, the percentage of people holding the misperceptions rose slightly over the last three months. In July, for example, polls found that 45 percent of the public believed US forces had found "clear evidence in Iraq that Hussein was working closely with al-Qaeda". In September, 49 percent believed that.
Likewise, those who believed troops had found WMD in Iraq jumped from 21 percent in July to 24 percent in September. One in five respondents said they believed that Iraq had actually used chemical or biological weapons during the war.
In determining what factors could create the misperceptions, PIPA considered a number of variables in the data.
It found a high correlation between respondents with the most misperceptions and their support for the decision to go to war. Only 23 percent of those who held none of the three misperceptions supported the war, while 53 percent who held one misperception did so. Of those who believe that both WMDs and evidence of al-Qaeda ties have been found in Iraq and that world opinion backed the United States, a whopping 86 percent said they supported war.
More specifically, among those who believed that Washington had found clear evidence of close ties between Hussein and al-Qaeda, two-thirds held the view that going to war was the best thing to do. Only 29 percent felt that way among those who did not believe that such evidence had been found.
Another factor that correlated closely with misperceptions about the war was party affiliation, with Republicans substantially "more likely" to hold misperceptions than Democrats. But support for Bush himself as expressed by whether or not the respondent said s/he intended to vote for him in 2004 appeared to be an even more critical factor.
The average frequency of misperceptions among respondents who planned to vote for Bush was 45 percent, while among those who plan to vote for a hypothetical Democrat candidate, the frequency averaged only 17 percent.
Asked "Has the US found clear evidence Saddam Hussein was working closely with al-Qaeda"? 68 percent of Bush supporters replied affirmatively. By contrast, two of every three Democrat-backers said no.
But news sources also accounted for major differences in misperceptions, according to PIPA, which asked more than 3,300 respondents since May where they "tended to get most of [their] news''. Eighty percent identified broadcast media, while 19 percent cited print media.
Among those who said broadcast media, 30 percent said two or more networks; 18 percent, Fox News; 16 percent, CNN; 24 percent, the three big networks - NBC (14 percent), ABC (11 percent), CBS (9 percent); and three percent, the two public networks, National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
For each of the three misperceptions, the study found enormous differences between the viewers of Fox, who held the most misperceptions, and NPR/PBS, who held the fewest by far.
Eighty percent of Fox viewers were found to hold at least one misperception, compared to 23 percent of NPR/PBS consumers. All the other media fell in between.
CBS ranked right behind Fox with a 71 percent score, while CNN and NBC tied as the best-performing commercial broadcast audience at 55 percent. Forty-seven percent of print media readers held at least one misperception.
As to the number of misconceptions held by their audiences, Fox far outscored all of its rivals. A whopping 45 percent of its viewers believed all three misperceptions, while the other commercial networks scored between 12 percent and 16 percent. Only nine percent of readers believed all three, while only four percent of the NPR/PBS audience did.
PIPA found that political affiliation and news source also compound one another. Thus, 78 percent of Bush supporters who watch Fox News said they thought the United States had found evidence of a direct link to al-Qaeda, while 50 percent of Bush supporters who rely on NPR/PBS thought so.
Conversely, 48 percent of Fox viewers who said they would support a Democrat believed that such evidence had been found. But none of the Democrat-backers who relied on NPR/PBS believed it.
The study also debunked the notion that misperceptions were due mainly to the lack of exposure to news.
Among Bush supporters, those who said they follow the news "very closely,” were found more likely to hold misperceptions. Those Bush supporters, on the other hand, who say they follow the news "somewhat closely" or "not closely at all" held fewer misperceptions.
Conversely, those Democratic supporters who said they did not follow the news very closely were found to be twice as likely to hold misperceptions as those who said they did, according to PIPA.
Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service. He can be reached at: jlobe@starpower.net
Congress is poised to approve new legislation that amounts to the first substantive expansion of the controversial USA Patriot Act since it was approved just after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
Acting at the Bush administration's behest, a joint House-Senate conference committee has approved a provision in the 2004 Intelligence Authorization bill that will permit the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to demand records from a number of businesses – without the approval of a judge or grand jury – if it deems them relevant to a counter-terrorism investigation.
The measure would extend the FBI's power to seize records from banks and credit unions to securities dealers, currency exchanges, travel agencies, car dealers, post offices, casinos, pawnbrokers and any other business that, according to the government, has a "high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax or regulatory matters." Such seizures could be carried out with the approval of the judicial branch of government.
Until now only banks, credit unions, and similar financial institutions were obliged to turn over such records on the FBI's demand.
Shortly after the conference agreement was reached, the House of Representatives approved the underlying authorization bill by a margin of 263 to 163. The measure is expected to pass the Senate shortly.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said it was "disappointed" with the House's approval, but also expressed satisfaction that a number of lawmakers on both left and right decided to oppose the bill because they oppose the records provision, whose inclusion in the bill was discovered by staff aides only last week.
Particularly notable in Thursday's House vote was the defection by several conservative Republicans from the administration's fold.
"This PATRIOT Act expansion was the only controversial part of this legislation, and it prompted more than a third of the House, including 15 conservative Republicans, to change what is normally a cakewalk vote into something truly contested," said Timothy Edgar, ACLU Legislative Counsel.
"One need look no further than this vote to get an effective gauge of the PATRIOT Act's lack of popularity on Capitol Hill and among the American people," he said.
The USA PATRIOT Act – which gives unprecedented powers to the FBI and the federal government as a whole and was rammed through Congress at the administration's behest just six weeks after the 9/11 attacks – has evoked great controversy.
An unusual coalition of liberal, left, and right-wing groups is convinced that the law's expansion of the government's surveillance and investigatory powers threatens individual freedoms and privacy rights.
More than 200 local governments, including some of the country's largest cities, have approved resolutions upholding the full enjoyment of the rights guaranteed in the Constitution and urging a narrowing of the USA PATRIOT Act, while the Senate Judiciary Committee has been holding a series of critical hearings over the past month about the Act's impact.
Members of the Judiciary Committee, including Republican Larry Craig of Idaho and five Democratic senators, sent a letter to the conference committee earlier this week urging it strip the new provision from the intelligence bill so that it could be taken up by their Committee in public hearings. The provision has never been publicly debated.
"I'm concerned about this," Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, who tried unsuccessfully to limit the life of the new provision, told the New York Times. "The idea of expanding the powers of government gives everyone pause except the Republican leadership."
The government wants these powers in order to more effectively prosecute the "war on terrorism," although critics warn that, once given these powers, the FBI may use them in cases that are not relevant to terrorism in order to gather evidence against other targets of investigation.
Indeed, recent Senate hearings have covered incidents in which information about individuals was obtained by the FBI through the use of its counter-terrorism powers even though the investigations were directed against what the ACLU called "garden-variety criminals."
The provision not only permits the FBI to seize records from more kinds of businesses; it also forbids businesses from informing their clients about the seizures.
In that respect, it is comparable to a particularly controversial section of the PATRIOT Act permitting the FBI to seek an order for library records for an "investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities" and imposing a gag order on librarians, who are prohibited from telling anyone that the FBI demanded the records. Librarians and civil-liberties groups have sued the government to have that section declared unconstitutional.
"The more checks and balances against government abuse are eroded, the greater that abuse," said the ACLU's Edgar. "We're going to regret these initiatives down the road."
Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service. He can be reached at: jlobe@starpower.net
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Turkish Hordes Join Iranian Forces in Rousting United States Troops from Iraq: Death Toll Rises to 200,000....
Watch for the headlines...
This week's blockbuster leak of a secret memorandum from a senior Pentagon official to the Senate Intelligence Committee has spurred speculation that neo-conservative hawks in the Bush administration are on the defensive and growing more desperate.
Both the committee and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have asked the Justice Department to launch an investigation of the leak, which took the form of an article published Monday by the influential neo-conservative journal, The Weekly Standard.
Committee Chairman Pat Roberts characterized the leak as "egregious," noting that it might have compromised "highly classified information" on intelligence sources and methods of collecting information, as well as ongoing investigations. He also said he did not believe the leak came from his committee or its staff.
The Pentagon issued an unusual press statement declaring that the leak was "deplorable and may be illegal."
The article, "Case Closed," is a summary of a lengthy memo sent to the committee Oct. 27 by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith.
He had been asked by the senators to provide support for his assertion in a closed hearing last July that US intelligence agencies had established a long-standing operational link between the al-Qaeda terrorist group and Baghdad.
That, and similar assertions by senior Bush officials before the war, have long been considered questionable, more so after the war when the administration – as with its prewar contentions about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) – failed to come up with evidence to back its case.
Investigative reporters and Iraq war critics have accused Feith's office of having manipulated or "cherry-picked" the intelligence on Iraq's purported ties to al-Qaeda and WMD programs before the war to persuade Bush and the public that Saddam posed a serious threat to the United States.
The leaked memo consists mainly of 50 excerpts culled from raw intelligence reports by four US intelligence agencies about alleged al-Qaeda-Iraqi contacts from 1990 to 2003.
Some of the reports include brief analysis, but most cite accounts by unnamed sources, such as "a contact with good access," "a well placed source," "a former senior Iraqi intelligence officer," a "regular and reliable source," "sensitive CIA reporting," and "a foreign government service."
Although the article's author, Weekly Standard correspondent Stephen Hayes, concludes that much of the evidence is "detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources," the only example of real corroboration is with respect to several reports regarding contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraqi agents in Afghanistan in 1999.
Most of the excerpts deal instead with alleged meetings or less direct contacts in which sources claim that al-Qaeda agents are requesting certain kinds of assistance, such as a safe haven, training or, in one case, WMD.
While supporters of the war in Iraq, such as the New York Times' William Safire, have jumped on the Hayes' article as proof of what the administration had alleged, retired intelligence officers have criticized it, both because of the security breach of the leak itself and because its contents are anything but "conclusive" of an operational relationship.
W. Patrick Lang, former head of the Middle East section of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Washington Post the article amounted to a "listing of a mass of unconfirmed reports, many of which themselves indicate that the two groups continued to try to establish some sort of relationship."
At the same time, he added, it raises the question: "If they had such a productive relationship, why did they have to keep trying?"
Other retired officers stressed that, to the extent that virtually all of the excerpts consist of raw intelligence unvetted by professional analysts, the article appeared to prove precisely what critics had been saying: Feith's office simply picked those items in raw intelligence that tended to confirm their preexisting views that a relationship must have existed, without subjecting the evidence to the kind of rigorous analysis that intelligence agencies would apply.
"This is made to dazzle the eyes of the not terribly educated," Greg Thielmann, a veteran of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) who retired in 2002, told IPS.
"It begs the question, 'Is this the best they can do'? If you're going to expose this stuff, you'd better have something more than this," he said, adding, "My inclination is to interpret this as probably a very good example of cherry-picking and the selective use of intelligence that was so obvious in the lead-up to the war."
Melvin Goodman, a former top CIA analyst, said the leak is a sign of desperation. "To me, they had to leak something like this, because the neo-conservatives (in the administration) have nothing to stand on."
"They're trying to get the idea out there that, 'Hey, there was a case for war', and they have 'useful idiots' like Safire who say they're right."
The notion that the leak was "friendly" or "authorized" by hawks in the Pentagon or their allies in Vice President Dick Cheney's office – as opposed to an unauthorized leak designed to embarrass the author – is widely accepted here.
The Standard, particularly Hayes and executive editor William Kristol, have acted as a mouthpiece for administration hawks like Feith, his immediate boss, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and their friends in Cheney's office, particularly his powerful chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, since even before the administration's "war on terror," declared after the attacks on New York and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
But at the same time it raises serious questions about the judgment of those responsible for the leak. Not only does the intelligence contained in the article fall embarrassingly short of "closing the case" on Iraq-al-Qaeda links, the leak itself of such highly classified material might fuel the impression that the neo-conservatives, if they were indeed the source, are willing to sacrifice the country's secrets to retain power.
"It shows a cavalier and almost contemptuous regard for the national security rationale for keeping information classified," according to Thielmann. "The objective of silencing the critics is so overwhelming that you have to throw national security secrets to the wind."
Both he and Goodman noted striking similarities between this latest case and the leak last July of the identity of retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA officer.
Wilson had just embarrassed the administration by disclosing his trip on behalf of the CIA to Niger to check out a report that Iraq had bought uranium "yellowcake." He charged that Bush's assertion about the yellowcake in his 2003 State of the Union address was false and that the White House knew it or should have known it at the time.
The evident purpose of the leak to columnist Robert Novak was to discredit Wilson by suggesting that his mission to Niger was suggested by his wife.
In fact, the leak provoked enormous anger in the intelligence community as a major security breach that effectively ended Plame's career as a covert officer, and potentially endangered her life and those of people who had worked with her abroad.
The FBI is currently running a criminal investigation on the matter.
"It's obvious that if you cared about the real national security interests of this country, you wouldn't reveal an asset," said Goodman. "That shows this is a venal and desperate group who are not considering the real national-security interests of this country."
Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service. He can be reached at: jlobe@starpower.net
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* Murder of UN Worker Spotlights Resurgence of Taliban
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* Relaxed US Rules Fuelled Toxic ''Ghost Ships''
* Rumsfeld Takes More Friendly Fire
* Hawks Fleeing the Coop: Does the Departure of a Recent Pentagon Hawk Foreshadow a Policy Shift?
* "What's Gonna Happen With Feith?”
* Postwar Casualties Rise Amid Disarray in US Plans
* Bush Stance on Syria Hit Shows Neocons Still Hold Sway
* We Report, You Get it Wrong
* Cheney's Mask is Slipping
* US Dominates Arms Sales to Third World
* Sharp Increase in US Military Aid to Latin America
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The killing of a French UN relief worker Sunday in the Afghan provincial city of Ghazni underscores both the deteriorating security situation in much of the country two years after the ouster of the Taliban regime, and the degree to which the United Nations and aid workers in general have become targets in the ongoing "war on terrorism" between US-led western forces and Islamic radicals.
Monday the UN's refugee agency announced it would suspend operations along the Afghan-Pakistani border, where it processes returning refugees, as well as its Ghazni office. Ghazni is located about 70 miles south of Kabul, along the highway to Kandahar.
Bettina Goislard was gunned down while riding in a clearly marked UN High Commissioner for Refugees car in the center of Ghazni city when two men on a motorcycle opened fire on the vehicle, killing her and injuring her driver. The two attackers were arrested, and Afghan authorities identified them as supporters of the Taliban, which is believed to have reestablished a presence in much of the southeastern part of the country, close to the border with Pakistan.
In a statement, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemned the attack, which he called a "cold-blooded killing" and "outrageous and contemptible."
Sunday's attack came less than a week after a bombing in front of UN offices in Kandahar. Two people were injured in the Kandahar blast, which took place as a delegation from the UN Security Council was in Afghanistan to assess conditions there.
Goislard was the first UN staff member to be killed since the August bombing of the UN's headquarters in Baghdad.
Annan's statement Sunday stressed that the latest incident "underscores the urgent need for the international community to provide stronger security in areas outside the capital, Kabul."
Security remains a major and growing challenge to stabilizing and reconstructing the war-torn country. In addition to the threat by the resurgent Taliban in mainly Pashtun areas in the south and along the border with Pakistan, much of the countryside is ruled by tribal leaders and warlords whose loyalty to the central government headed by President Hamid Karzai is variable at best.
The UN Security Council recently approved a new resolution authorizing the deployment of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) beyond Kabul, to which it had been confined since just after the Taliban's ouster by US-backed forces. But NATO, which is leading ISAF at the moment, has failed to persuade member countries to add to the 5,500-strong force.
Norway and Germany have volunteered to begin sending troops to specific trouble spots outside of Kabul, but the Karzai government will continue to rely mainly on the 11,000 US-led combat troops currently deployed in Afghanistan as the main offensive force against Taliban concentrations.
Still, as even US military commanders have begun to acknowledge, the Taliban and its allies have made gains in recent months. Last week, the head of the US Central Command, Gen. John Abizaid, described daily combat operations in Afghanistan as "every bit as much and every bit as difficult as those that go on in Iraq." Eleven US servicemen have been killed by hostile fire since August, almost one third of the 35 killed since the US first began military operations there in October, 2001. On Friday, a US Special Forces soldier was killed when his vehicle was hit by a bomb, while a Romanian soldier who was part of the US-led force died of wounds received the week before.
"The situation is much more serious than a year ago," Vikram Parekh, a Kabul-based expert with the International Crisis Group (ICG), told the Washington Post this weekend. "The cross-border infiltration is better financed, armed and equipped. The Taliban's military leadership has been reconstituted, and in several provinces there is a more or less permanent presence of anti-government forces."
A major target of the Taliban strategy, at least since last summer, has been international aid workers, both expatriates and native Afghans who are apparently seen by the insurgent movement as key allies of the US and other western nations that are trying to rebuild the country.
In recent months a number of humanitarian relief groups have withdrawn their workers from provinces where the Taliban have carried out attacks against them or where security has broken down due to fighting between different factions. A recent survey of ten major aid groups estimated that security concerns have resulted in the cancellation or delay of aid projects that would have benefited more than 600,000 Afghans.
The survey also found that more and more Afghan communities are afraid to accept help, and some are even returning reconstruction assistance for fear that any relationship to the government or aid agencies may result in reprisals against them by the Taliban, warlords, or drug traffickers who are believed to have become increasingly powerful due to record opium crops harvested over the past year.
When the Security Council delegation visited Kabul ten days ago, a group of 28 international aid agencies, including Oxfam, Save the Children, CARE, and ActionAid, submitted a letter calling on the international community to "redouble" its efforts to extend security around the country, and particularly to protect those sectors that are most vulnerable to abuse – women, children, returning refugees, and displaced people.
The letter was delivered just one day after a bomb attack just outside the Kabul office of Save the Children, the first direct attack on the international aid community in the capital, according to the Afghan NGO Security Office (ANSO).
Since last March, more than a dozen aid workers, mostly Afghan employees, have been killed. In most cases, resurgent Taliban forces or their allies have been blamed. As a result, the relief groups have lobbied hard for months for ISAF to move into the countryside and secure key areas.
"What Afghanistan needs is something which might be more appropriately named ISAF Security Support Teams (ISSTs)," according to Paul Barker, CARE's country director for Afghanistan. Assuming that ISAF will not be enlarged, "these teams would be deployed to the more insecure areas of the country, (and) their core responsibility would be to promote Afghan capacity to establish and ensure improved security." This would be done by training and conducting joint operations with the Afghan National Police Force and the Afghan National Army, which are being trained and equipped by US and other western forces.
Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service. He can be reached at: jlobe@starpower.net
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* Relaxed US Rules Fuelled Toxic ''Ghost Ships''
* Rumsfeld Takes More Friendly Fire
* Hawks Fleeing the Coop: Does the Departure of a Recent Pentagon Hawk Foreshadow a Policy Shift?
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* Postwar Casualties Rise Amid Disarray in US Plans
* Bush Stance on Syria Hit Shows Neocons Still Hold Sway
* We Report, You Get it Wrong
* Cheney's Mask is Slipping
* US Dominates Arms Sales to Third World
* Sharp Increase in US Military Aid to Latin America
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While the US' new military aggressiveness against alleged enemy targets in Iraq provided good video to lead TV news broadcasts this week, its effectiveness, as well as the latest political strategy to win Iraqi "hearts and minds," remain very much in question.
While the military put on a display of firepower in Baghdad and in the notorious "Sunni Triangle" – no doubt to "shock and awe" an increasingly effective and sophisticated resistance – all that sound and fury failed to drown out the growing impression the administration is at a loss as to how to reverse negative trends on the ground.
Those trends were detailed in a partially leaked Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report that Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) chief L. Paul Bremer carried with him from Baghdad for intensive talks at the White House Tuesday and Wednesday.
The document warned that the resistance was growing in strength and that rising numbers of Iraqis believe the occupation might be defeated.
The fact that Bremer returned under these circumstances suggested to at least one prominent neo-conservative analyst, Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer and Mideast specialist at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), that the administration "knows its program in Iraq is failing," a remarkable assertion given Gerecht's strong support for the administration both before and after last spring's US-led war.
But the meetings' outcome, Bush's decision to sharply accelerate the process of "Iraqification," represents a serious gamble for the administration.
The word itself – reminiscent of the Nixon administration's ill-fated "Vietnamisation" strategy of the early 1970s – is politically problematic in that it suggests Bush is seeking a way to withdraw "with honor" but without necessarily achieving his more high-minded goals, such as ensuring the viability of a new Iraqi state, let alone creating a democratic one that would act as a model for the Arab world.
"If the policy is to more rapidly Iraqify the situation – as in Vietnamisation during the Vietnam War – then that is another version of cutting and running," Senator Joseph Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the Washington Post Friday.
The military side of Iraqification means the greatly accelerated recruitment and training of tens of thousands of Iraqi men into the army, police and other security forces.
That process will enable Washington to gradually withdraw its own forces from the approximately 135,000 there today to around 100,000 by next spring and as few as half that number by the November 2004 U.S. presidential elections.
But the draw down will be accompanied by a more-aggressive, U.S. counterinsurgency campaign, based on better intelligence provided by indigenous Iraqi forces. The opening stages of that effort were on display this week, although, as noted by the New York Times Friday, it was not clear whether this week's fireworks were particularly effective.
On the political side, the Bush administration has now given up on a seven-stage process originally promoted by Bremer that would have begun with the drafting of a new constitution by early next year and the installation of an elected government next summer or early fall at the latest.
That scenario was frustrated by both the deteriorating security situation and protracted delays by the US-selected Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), largely dominated by Kurdish leaders and former exiles, in addressing key issues like how the constitution-drafting committee will be selected.
The administration has now agreed to put off the constitution until after the creation by next spring of a provisional government. That body will presumably assume formal sovereignty, be given greater executive powers (subject to Bremer's veto) than the IGC now enjoys, and organize the drafting of a constitution.
"They are clamoring for it; they are, we believe, ready for it," US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said after the latest round of meetings this week.
Both the military and political sides of this "Iraqization" strategy are designed to work in tandem to defeat the resistance by, on the one hand, mounting a more effective counterinsurgency, and on the other, by persuading Iraqis that Washington has no interest in running their country.
But the strategy carries huge risks.
On the military side, the main worry is over the speed with which recruitment is taking place.
In just the last two weeks, the number of men under arms has doubled to about 118,000. Under these circumstances, as the Washington Post noted Friday, training is virtually nonexistent, while screening of recruits for Ba'athist sympathies has necessarily also been reduced.
"How will we know whether the Iraqi recruits can be trusted not to carry out sabotage?" asked another prominent neo-conservative, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, in a major attack on Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, called "Exit Strategy or Victory Strategy?"
Moreover, the CIA itself warned that more aggressive US military operations could very easily undermine the war for "hearts and minds," as the United States has learned in many previous wars, not least Vietnam.
But similar and even greater risks attend the political process, where the central issue is how a provisional government will be appointed.
The IGC reportedly favors the creation of an interim assembly, which will include its members along with others appointed by the IGC and the CPA and/or selected in local elections or by tribal or religious chiefs around the country.
But this process poses serious political problems beginning with the fact that recent polling shows that the current membership of the IGC, particularly the exiles who have been closest to Washington, lacks any grassroots support.
"If they form the core of any new governing authority, we're going to have a credibility problem from the get-go," one Congressional aide told IPS.
Moreover, such a selection process would effectively defy an edict issued last summer by the Grand Ayatollah Sistani, who is believed to have the greatest influence of any leader in Iraq's majority Shi'a community, which so far has generally cooperated with the occupation.
He has demanded that those who will draft the constitution must be democratically elected.
Because of Sistani's stature and influence, Gerecht writes, the IGC's constitutional plans, if implemented, could be disastrous. "If only a small number of Shiites become violently hostile to coalition forces, the United States' presence in the country will quickly become untenable."
At this point, the administration does not have good answers to any of the questions raised by the growing number of critics, even those who until now were solidly in the Bush camp.
Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service. He can be reached at: jlobe@starpower.net
Other Recent Articles by Jim Lobe
* Brave Face Belies Administration's Panic
* One Meal a Day for Most Palestinians
* Relaxed US Rules Fuelled Toxic ''Ghost Ships''
* Rumsfeld Takes More Friendly Fire
* Hawks Fleeing the Coop: Does the Departure of a Recent Pentagon Hawk Foreshadow a Policy Shift?
* "What's Gonna Happen With Feith?”
* Postwar Casualties Rise Amid Disarray in US Plans
* Bush Stance on Syria Hit Shows Neocons Still Hold Sway
* We Report, You Get it Wrong
* Cheney's Mask is Slipping
* US Dominates Arms Sales to Third World
* Sharp Increase in US Military Aid to Latin America
* Is the Neocon Agenda for Pax Americana Losing Steam?
Brave Face Belies Administration's Panic Over Iraq
by Jim Lobe
Dissident Voice
November 13, 2003
While maintaining a brave face on the accelerating stream of bad news coming out of Baghdad, the administration of President George W. Bush appears increasingly at a loss, not to say panicked, about what to do.
This week's abrupt and unscheduled return here by L. Paul Bremer, Washington's proconsul in Baghdad, for top-level White House consultations, as well as the partial leak of a pessimistic Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report on public attitudes in Iraq, pushed the administration off balance.
The news that at least 15 Italian paramilitary and army troops, as well as 10 others, were killed in a suicide attack on the carabinieri headquarters in the hitherto relatively peaceful southern city of Nasariyeh on Wednesday seemed only to underline the sense here that resistance to the US-led occupation in Iraq is both growing and beyond control.
"It is a tough situation," Bremer, who heads the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), told reporters after emerging from the White House on Wednesday morning.
"I have said repeatedly in my discussions, both private and public, for six months that I am completely confident and optimistic about the outcome in Iraq, but we will face some difficult days, like today when we had the attack on the Italian soldiers in the south."
Asked about the CIA report that found growing popular disillusionment with the US occupation, Bremer was unusually uncertain. "I think the situation with the Iraqi public is, frankly, not easy to quantify."
The CIA report, whose existence was disclosed by the Philadelphia Inquirer, concluded that growing numbers of Iraqis believe that the occupation can be defeated and are supporting the insurgents.
The report, written by the CIA's station chief in Baghdad, was formally presented to top officials Monday, but word of its conclusions was also selectively leaked to various reporters, apparently, said the newspaper, to "make sure the assessment reaches Bush."
The Inquirer's source indicated frustration with Iraq hawks, including Vice President Dick Cheney and the Pentagon's civilian leadership, whose optimistic assessments of the situation had crowded out more somber analyses in White House discussions.
According to the newspaper, the report argued that public skepticism of US intentions in Iraq remained very high – an assessment corroborated by recent Gallup polls in Baghdad – and that the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), which was hand-picked by the CPA, has virtually no popular support.
It also warned that friction between occupation authorities and the Shia Muslim community, both in Baghdad and in the southern part of the country, was growing and could lead to open hostilities, a contingency that has been Washington's worst nightmare since last March's invasion.
Shiites account for at least 60 percent of Iraq's total population, more than twice as much as the Sunnis in central Iraq, the area that US officials have described as the main focus of Ba'ath Party "terrorists" who presumably remain loyal to ousted President Saddam Hussein.
The CIA report was obviously written before Wednesday's suicide attack on the carabinieri in predominantly Shiite Nasariyeh as well as an incident Sunday in which a US soldier shot and killed the US-appointed mayor of the overwhelmingly Shiite district of Baghdad, Sadr City, after a scuffle whose circumstances are being investigated by occupation authorities.
Administration officials have publicly described Bremer's two-day dash to Washington as routine, but circumstances belied that explanation.
In coming here, Bremer was forced to cancel a long-planned meeting in Baghdad with visiting Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller. Despite public opposition, Miller's government has supplied more troops to the occupation than any other country, except the United States and Britain, and last week lost an officer to hostile fire in Iraq.
"Standing up Miller of all people is not conducive to getting other countries to send troops," noted one Congressional aide.
Bremer met both Tuesday and Wednesday morning with top national-security officials, including Bush and Cheney. The main points on the agenda included both how to respond to the increased frequency and lethality of the attacks and whether and how to accelerate a political transition to an Iraqi government.
On the military front, the average daily number of attacks on occupation forces now exceeds 30 – more than twice as many as three months ago – with more than 40 US soldiers killed in just the past two weeks, according to the US commander in the field, Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.
In a lengthy meeting with reporters in Baghdad on Tuesday, Sanchez insisted the attacks were mainly the work of Ba'ath loyalists and foreign Islamist fighters but also admitted that Washington still lacks good intelligence on both groups.
Sanchez also suggested for the first time that resistance forces are now operating at least at the regional level and possibly with some national coordination with respect to tactics and targets. Until now, the occupation has depicted the opposition as small groups acting only at the local level.
It appears that the US military has decided to respond to the increased level of resistance with much more aggressive, "shock-and-awe" tactics, a decision that was previewed last weekend with the unprecedented bombing by US warplanes of suspected guerrilla arms caches and hideouts near Tikrit.
The military announced that some two dozen explosions heard in Baghdad on Wednesday night were US forces carrying out attacks on a suspected guerrilla site.
The decision to prosecute a more aggressive counterinsurgency campaign carries serious risks, a point stressed in the CIA report.
As Milt Bearden, who oversaw US support for the Afghan resistance in the 1980s, wrote in the New York Times this weekend: "For every mujahadeen killed or hauled off by Soviet troops in Afghanistan, a revenge group of perhaps half a dozen members of his family took up arms. Sadly, this same rule probably applies in Iraq."
The political front looks equally risky. While the administration wants to accelerate the process to put an "Iraqi face" on the government, Bremer appears to have lost confidence in the 24 members of the IGC, including Pentagon favorite Ahmed Chalabi.
The IGC, which has until Dec. 15 to submit to the United Nations Security Council a plan to draft a new constitution, has so far failed to tackle the issue seriously, and the administration is worried that any delay will derail its own timetable, including plans to have an elected government in place before the November, 2004 US presidential elections.
As a result, the White House is considering abandoning its previous plans and moving instead to create a provisional government similar to the one installed by coalition forces in Afghanistan after the Taliban's ouster, which could oversee the drafting of a constitution. One problem is that it has no obvious candidate to head such a government, as it did in Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.
Or the administration could go along with the position of the Shia authorities in Najaf, who have called for elections to a constitutional convention. But that too could create new problems or further alienate the Sunni population due to the fact that Shiites would almost certainly dominate such a process.
Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service. He can be reached at: jlobe@starpower.net