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AS THE WORLD SQUIRMS
Saturday 3.29.03
Political
Commentary
Owen Whitman
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QUOTES OF THE DAY
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“There is nothing more difficult to plan,
more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than a creation of
a new order of things.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
The Prince – 1513
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“A military attack on Iraq is obviously
criminal; completely inconsistent with urgent needs of the peoples of the
United Nations; unjustifiable on any legal or moral ground; irrational in
light of the unknown facts, out of proportion to other existing threat of
war and violence; and a dangerous adventure risking conflict throughout the
region and far beyond for years to come.”
Ramsey Clark
former US attorney General
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My Dead Mother is
Liberated and so am I!
A wounded Iraqi girl is treated by U.S. marines in
central Iraq (news
- web
sites) March 29, 2003. Confused front line crossfire ripped apart an
Iraqi family on Saturday after local soldiers appeared to force civilians
towards U.S. marines positions. The four-year old girl, blood streaming
from an eye wound, was screaming for her dead mother, while her father,
shot in a leg, begged to be freed from the plastic wrist cuffs slapped on
him by U.S. marines, so he could hug his other terrified daughter.
REUTERS/Damir Sagolj
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”My Little Brother is
Dead but at least he’s liberated.”
An Iraqi boy sits near the body of his brother
lying in a casket prior to his funeral after the US-led bombing. Photo: AFP
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No Let Up In Anti-War Protests
Another wave of anti-war protests are being
held in many parts of the world this weekend.
Saturday - 3.29.03
BBC
STORY
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 South Korean anti-war protesters scuffle with riot police at a
protest in Seoul March 29, 2003. About 2,000 protesters demanded the South
Korean government not to get involved in the U.S.-led war on Iraq (news
- web
sites). REUTERS/Lee Jae-Won
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Thousands of Malaysian demonstrators hold banners
and shout anti-U.S and Britain slogans as they marched through the streets
in downtown Kuala Lumpur to protest against the U.S.-led war on Iraq (news
- web
sites), Saturday, March. 29, 2003. (AP Photo/Teh Eng Koon)
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 Around 7,000 demonstraters walk trough the city of Rostock,
northern Germany, to protest against the war on Iraq (news
- web
sites) on Saturday, March 29, 2003. Banner reads 'No to war' (AP Photo/
Thomas Haentzschel)
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Chilean Greenpeace activists dress up as U.S.
President George W. Bush (news
- web
sites) (R) and the mascot of U.S. firm ESSO during an anti-war protest
at a gas station in Santiago, March 28, 2003. A small group of peace
activists called for a boycott of U.S. companies and demanded a stop to the
war. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
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Thousands of
Bangladeshis march during an anti-war protest in Dhaka, March 28, 2003.
Some 50,000 Muslims participated in the protest on Friday against the
U.S.-led war on Iraq (news
- web
sites). REUTERS/Rafiqur Rahman
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 A protester waves an Iraqi flag as others carry a banner
reading 'We need schools not bombs' during an anti-war demonstration to the
U.S. Consulate in the northern port city of Thessaloniki, Greece, on
Saturday, March 29, 2003. About 4,000 demonstrators rallied outside the
consulate protesting the U.S.-led war against Iraq (news
- web
sites). (AP Photo/Giorgos Nissiotis)
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TERRORISM
WASHINGTON
MISSILE STRIKES TEEMING BAGHDAD MARKET – AT LEAST 55 CIVILIANS KILLED, SCORES
WOUNDED
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The Al Shualla carnage came at the end of
a day in which an increasingly frustrated US seemed to abandon its
undertaking not to damage Iraq's civilian infrastructure. Waves of strikes,
including the first confirmed use of 4700-pound bunker-buster bombs [WMDs], destroyed
much of Baghdad's telephone system after direct hits on at least three
telephone exchanges.
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 Two children lay dead in the morgue of Al Nur hospital,
following a bomb that landed in a busy market in the Al Shula'a district of
West Baghdad Friday March 28, 2003, killing at least 50 people, according
to local hospital sources. The U.S. Central Command in Qatar said it was
looking into the reports. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
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 Members of the Amer family pray over the remains of their
family members in their home after a bomb landed in a busy market in the Al
Shula'a district of West Baghdad, Friday March 28 2003. Arabic language
television stations reported Friday that U.S. missiles killed more than 50
people in the market. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
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An Iraqi girl, who Iraqi officials say was wounded
in a US-led airstrike, lies in a Baghdad hospital following an explosion in
a Baghdad marketplace which left many dead, March 28, 2003. Warplanes and
cruise missiles struck Baghdad on Friday in some of the heaviest bombing of
the war, and an Iraqi doctor said that 55 were killed in a market place
blast. RETUERS/Goran Tomasevic
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 U.S. General Richard B. Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff briefs the press at the Pentagon (news
- web
sites), March 28, 2003. Iraqis said more than 50 people were killed on
Friday in an air raid on a popular Baghdad market after the United States
unleashed some of the heaviest air strikes of the war on the capital.
REUTERS/Mannie Garcia
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“…the suffering and the grief radiating from a
small crater in this poor Shiite neighbourhood in north-west Baghdad will
make it harder for ordinary Iraqis to see the US-led invasion force as an
army of liberation, rather than conquest.”
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STORY
Pentagon
Keeps Return of Iraqi War Dead from Media
Fri March 28, 2003 06:16 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon has no plans to allow media access to a
U.S. Air Force base receiving the bodies of American soldiers killed in Iraq,
a Defense Department spokeswoman said on Friday.
Story
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Uncensored Info on Iraq War from the Russian GRU
War in Iraq - a week of war
Previous
Reports Here
March 28, 2003, 1448hrs MSK (GMT +3), Moscow - According to the
latest intercepted radio communications, the command of the coalition
group of forces near Karabela requested at least 12 more hours to get
ready to storm the town. This delay is due to the much heavier losses
sustained by the coalition troops during the sand storms then was
originally believed. Just the US 3rd Mechanized Infantry Division
sustained more than 200 disabled combat vehicles of various types. The 101st Airborne Division reported some 70
helicopters as being disabled. Additionally, the recently delivered
reinforcements require rest and time to prepare for combat.
At the same time the US forces have resumed
attacks near An-Nasiriya and An-Najaf since 0630hrs and are continuously
increasing the intensity of these attacks. During the night and early
morning of March 28 the Iraqi positions in these areas were subjected to
eight aerial assaults by bombers and ground attack aircraft. However, so
far [the coalition] was unable to penetrate the Iraqi defenses.
Also during the early morning the British units
begun advancing along the Fao peninsula. Latest radio intercepts from
this area show that under a continuous artillery and aerial bombardment
the Iraqis have begun to gradually withdraw their forces toward Basra.
First firefights between troops of the US 82nd
Airborne Division and the Iraqi forces occurred in northern Iraq in the
area of Mosula. At the same time the arrival of up to 1,500 Kurdish
troops has been observed in this area. So far it is not clear to which of
the many Kurdish political movements these troops belong. Leaders of the
largest Kurdish workers party categorically denied participation of their
troops. They believe that these may be units of one of the local tribes
not controlled by the central authorities of the Kurdish autonomy and
"ready to fight with anyone" for money.
According
to verified information, during the past 48 hours of the Iraqi
counterattacks the coalition forces sustained the following losses: up to
30 killed, over 110 wounded and 20 missing in action; up to 30 combat
vehicles lost or disabled, including at least 8 tanks and 2
self-propelled artillery systems, 2 helicopters and 2 unmanned aerial
vehicles were lost in combat. Iraqi losses are around 300 killed, up to
800 wounded, 200 captured and up to 100 combat vehicles 25 of which were
tanks. Most of the [ Iraqi ] losses were sustained due to the artillery
fire and aerial bombardment that resumed by the evening of March 27.
First conclusions can be
drawn from the war
The first week of the war surprised a number of
military analysts and experts. The war in Iraq uncovered a range of
problems previously left without a serious discussion and disproved
several resilient myths.
The
first myth is
about the precision-guided weapons as the determining factor in modern
warfare, weapons that allow to achieve strategic superiority without
direct contact with the enemy. On the one hand we have the fact that
during the past 13 years the wars were won by the United States with
minimum losses and, in essence, primarily through the use of aviation. At the same time, however, the US military
command was stubborn in ignoring that the decisive factor in all these
wars was not the military defeat of the resisting armies but political
isolation coupled with strong diplomatic pressure on the enemy's
political leadership. It was the creation of international coalitions
against Iraq in 1991, against Yugoslavia in 1999 and against Afghanistan
in 2001 that ensured the military success.
The American command preferred not to notice
the obvious military failures during expeditions to Granada, Libya and Somalia,
discounting them as "local operations" not deserving much
attention.
Today we can see that in itself massed use of
strategic and tactical precision-guided weapons did not provide the US
with a strategic advantage. Despite the mass use of the most sophisticated
weapons the Americans have so far failed to disrupt Iraqi command and
control infrastructure, communication networks, top Iraqi military and
political leadership, Iraqi air defenses. At the same time the US
precision-guided weapons arsenal has been reduced by about 25%.
The only significant advantage of the
precision-guided weapons is the capability to avoid massive casualties
among the civilians in densely populated areas.
What we have is an obvious discrepancy between
the ability to locate and attack a target with precision-guided weapons
and the power of this weapon, which is not sufficient to reliably destroy
a protected target.
On the other hand, precision-guided munitions
demonstrated their superiority over conventional munitions on the battlefield.
The ability to attack targets at long ranges with the first shot is the
deciding factor in the American superiority in land battles.
The
second myth
disproved by this war is the myth propagated by the proponents of the
"hi-tech" war, who believe in the superiority of the most
modern weapons and inability of older-generation weapons to counteract
the latest systems. Today the technological gap between the Iraqi weapons
and those of the coalition has reached 25-30 years, which corresponds to
two "generations" in weapons design. The primary Iraqi weapons
correspond to the level of the early 1970s. Since that time the
Americans, on the other hand, have launched at least two major rearmament
efforts: the "75-83 program" and the "90-97 program".
Moreover, currently the US is in the middle of another major
modernization and rearmament program that will continue for the next five
years. Despite of this obvious gap,
Iraqi resistance has already been publicly qualified by the US as
"fierce and resilient". Analysts believe that the correlation
of losses is entirely acceptable to the Iraqis and they [ the analysts ]
do not see any strategic coalition advantage in this war. Once again this
proves that success in modern warfare is achieved not so much through technological
superiority but primarily through training, competent command and
resilience of the troops. Under such conditions even relatively old
weapons can inflict heavy losses on a technologically-superior enemy.
Two enormous mistakes made by the US command
during the planning stages of this war resulted in the obvious strategic
failure. The US has underestimated the enemy. Despite the unique ability
to conduct reconnaissance against the Iraqi military infrastructure
through a wide network of agents implanted with the international teams
of weapons inspectors, despite of unlimited air dominance the US military
command has failed to adequately evaluate combat readiness of the Iraqi
army and its technical capabilities; the US has failed to correctly asses
the social and political situation in Iraq and in the world in general.
These failures led to entirely inadequate military and political
decisions:
The coalition force was clearly insufficient
for a such a large-scale operation. The number of deployed troops was at
least 40% short of the required levels. This is the reason why today,
after nine days of war, the US is forced to resort to emergency
redeployment of more than 100,000 troops from the US territory and from
Europe. This, in essence, is the same number of troops already fighting
in Iraq.
The buildup and distribution of the coalition
forces have been conducted with gross neglect of all basic rules of
combat. All troops were massed in one small area, which led to five days
of non-stop fighting to widen this area. The initial attack begun without
any significant aerial or artillery preparation and almost immediately
this resulted in reduced rate of advance and heated positional battles.
Today we can see that the US advance is
characterized by disorganized and "impulsive" actions. The
troops are simply trying to find weak spots in the Iraqi defenses and
break through them until they hit the next ambush or the next line of
defense.
Not
a single goal set before the coalition forces was met on time.
During
the nine days of the war the coalition has failed:
- to divide Iraq in half along the An-Nasiriya
- Al-Ammara line,
- to surround and to destroy the Iraqi group of forces at Basra,
- to create an attack group between the Tigris and the Euphrates with a
front toward Baghdad,
- to disrupt Iraq's military and political control, to disorganize Iraq's
forces and to destroy the main Iraqi attack forces.
A whole range of problems that require their
own solutions was uncovered directly on the battlefield. Thus, combat in
Iraq raised serious concerns about the problem of coordination between
units from different services. Limited decision-making time and the
ability to detect and to engage an enemy at a great distance make
"friendly fire" one of the most serious problems of modern
warfare. For now the coalition has no adequate solution to this problem.
At one location or another every day of this war the coalition troops
were attacking friendly forces.
The second problem of the coalition is its
inability to hold on to the captured territory. For the first time since
the war in Vietnam the Americans have to deal with a partisan movement
and with attacks against their [the US] lines of communication. Currently
the coalition is rushing to form some sort of territorial defense units
for guarding its supply lines and for maintaining order in the occupied
territories.
A range of technical problems with equipment
has been revealed during the combat operations. Most operators of the M1A2 Abrams main battle
tank agree that the tank was inadequate for performing the set combat
tasks. The primary problem is the extremely low reliability of the tank's
engine and its transmission in desert conditions. Heat from the sun, hot
sand and the constantly present hot dust in the air nearly nullified the
advantages offered by the turret-mounted thermal sights. Visibility range
of these sights did not exceed 300 meters during movement in convoy and
reached up to 700-800 meters during stops. Only during cold nights did
the visibility range reach 1000-1,500 meters. Additionally, a large
number of thermal sights and other electronics simply broke down. The
tiny crystalline sand particles caused electrical power surges and
disabled electronic equipment.
This was
the reason for the decision by the coalition command to stop movement of
troops at night when a contact with the enemy was deemed likely.
The main
strong side of the coalition forces was the wide availability of modern
reconnaissance and communication systems that allowed to detect the enemy
at long ranges and to quickly suppress the enemy with well-coordinated
actions of different types of available forces.
In general
the US soldiers showed sufficiently high combat resilience. Even in the
extremely difficult weather conditions the troops maintained control
structure and adequately interpreted the situation. Combat spirit
remained high. The majority of troops remain confident in their
abilities, while maintaining belief in the superiority of their weapons
and maintaining reasonable confidence in the way the war is being fought.
It should be noted, however, that the way the
war is being fought did create a certain sense of disappointment in most
of the troops. Many are feeling that they've been lied to and are openly
talking about the stupidity of the high command and its gross
miscalculations. "Those star-covered Pentagon idiots promised us a
victory march and flowers on the armor. What we got instead were those
damned fanatics fighting for every dune and the sand squeaking in your
ass!" said one of the wounded recuperating at a hospital in
Rammstein. [ Reverse translation from Russian ]
Nevertheless, despite of the sand storms the
terrain favors the coalition actions by allowing it to employ their
entire arsenal of weapons at the greatest possible range, which makes it
difficult for the Iraqis to conduct combat operations outside of
populated areas.
Overestimating the abilities of its airborne
forces was a weak side of the coalition. Plans for a wide-scale use of
helicopters as an independent force did not materialize. All attempts by
the US command to organize aerial and ground operations through exclusive
use of airborne forces have failed. Because of these failures by the end
of the fourth day of the war all airborne units were distributed across the
coalition units and used by the attacking forces for reconnaissance, fire
support, and for containing the enemy. The main burden of combat was
carried by the "heavy" mechanized infantry and tank units.
Another
serious drawback in the coalition planning was the exceptionally weak
protection in the rear of the advancing forces. This resulted in constant
interruptions in fuel supply. Tank units sometimes spent up to 6 hours
standing still with empty fuel tanks, in essence, being targets for the
Iraqis. Throughout the war delivery of food, ammunition and fuel remains
a headache for the US commanders.
Among the US soldiers there has been a
wide-scale discontent with the quality of the new combat rations.
Servicemen are openly calling these rations "shitty." Many
soldier just take the biscuits and the sweets and discard the rest of the
ration. Commanders of the combat units are demanding from the coalition
command to immediately provide the troops with hot food and to review the
entire contents of the combat ration.
Among the strong sides of the Iraqi troops are
their excellent knowledge of the terrain, high quality of defensive
engineering work, their ability to conceal their main attack forces and
their resilience and determination in defense. The Iraqis have shown good
organization in their command and communication structures as well as
decisive and and well-planned strategy.
Among the drawbacks of the Iraqi forces is the
bureaucratic inflexibility of their command, when all decisions are being
made only at the highest levels. Their top commanders also tend to stick
to standard "template" maneuvers and there is insufficient
coordination among the different types of forces.
At the same time commanders of the [Iraqi]
special operations forces are making good use of the available troops and
weapons to conduct operations behind the front lines of the enemy. They
use concealment, show cunning and imagination.
The first strategic lessons
of the war
[Lessons of the
war in Iraq are discussed here with a focus on a possible similar war
between Russia and the US]
The
main of such lessons is the ever-increasing significance of troop
concealment as one of the primary methods of combat. Concealment and strict adherence to the requirements
for secrecy and security become strategic goals of the defending forces
in the view of the US reliance and that of its allies on precision-guided
weapons, electronic and optical reconnaissance as well as due to their
use of tactical weapons at the maximum possible range afforded by these
reconnaissance methods. Importance of concealment is being seen in Iraq
and was clearly demonstrated in Yugoslavia, where the Yugoslav Army
preserved nearly 98% of its assets despite the three months of bombing.
Within our [Russian/European] battle theater concealment methods will
offer us [the Russian army] an enormous advantage over the US.
The second lesson of this war is the strategic
role of the air defenses in modern warfare as the most important service
of the armed forces. Only the complete air dominance of the coalition allows
it to continue its advance toward Baghdad and to achieve the critical
advantage in any engagement. Even the short interruption in air support
caused by the sand storms put the US and British troops in a very
difficult situation.
Elimination of the air defenses as a separate
service branch of the [Russian] Armed Forces and its gradual dissipation
in the Air Force can be called nothing else but a "crime".
[This statement refers to the recent unification of the Russian Air Force
(VVS) and the Air Defense Force (PVO) and the secondary role of the air
defense force within this new structure.]
The
third lesson of the war is the growing importance of combat
reconnaissance and increased availability of anti-tank weapons capable of
engaging the enemy at maximum range. There is a requirement on the battlefield for a new
weapon system for small units that would allow for detection of the enemy
at maximum distance during day or night; for effective engagement of
modern tanks at a range of 800-1000 meters; for engagement of enemy
infantry at a range of 300-500 meters even with the modern personal
protection equipment possessed by the infantry.
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Proof Positive - Washington’s Political Class
Are Well… “Different”
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Clinton – 1990
Accidentally
demonstrates super powers - x-ray vision through binocular lens caps!
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Bush – 2002
Ditto, Bush!
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Daschle – 2003
The Borg! Heart on wrong side!
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THE FOG OF BATTLE
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REPORT SOURCE
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CLAIM
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REALITY
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British
House of Commons (Rumor)
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THE
DEFECTION OF TARIQ AZIZ
19
March
In
the House of Commons on 19 March, rumours began to circulate that the
Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister had fled to Bulgaria. If true, the
suggestion, put about by American officials, would have been a huge coup
for the Allies.
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Intelligence
sources were united in their disbelief. And they were soon vindicated by
the appearance the same day of Tariq Aziz on television in Baghdad,
quashing the latest rumour that he had been killed while trying to flee
the country.
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BBC (UK)
Donald Rumsfeld (Defense
Secretary, U.S.)
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BATTLE
FOR UMM QASR
20 March, 7.33pm
Rarely
can a military target have been captured as often as Umm Qasr. Nine days
ago, a Kuwaiti news agency set the ball rolling when it claimed that the
port had been overrun. From then it seemed to be captured day after day.
On
Friday, US Marines raised the Stars and Stripes – only for it to be
removed hastily for public relations reasons – and Donald Rumsfeld, the
US Defence Secretary, decreed the area "secure". An hour after
the BBC had announced that Umm Qasr and Basra had fallen in the early
days, an Iraqi opposition leader said: "It is quite untrue. There is
still heavy fighting in both places."
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On
Saturday, "pockets of resistance" remained, the British said.
The next day in the "taken" area US Marines encountered
snipers, then machine-gun fire and grenades. By Tuesday, and the arrival
of British Royal Marines, the port was declared, "open and
secure". Baghdad continues to deny having lost control of the
strategic port.
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Pentagon Sources (U.S.)
Admiral Sir Michael Boyce –
Chief, UK Defence Staff
Geoff Hoon – Secretary of
State for Defense (UK)
New York Times
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DISAPPEARING
IRAQI TROOPS
21
March, 3am
Intelligence
reports had predicted the capitulation of Iraq's 51st Division before war
had even started. With thousands of propaganda leaflets having been
dropped on to the troops and dark hints of American contacts with Iraqi
generals, large-scale desertions were a given. "In the southern
area, where there are six Iraqi divisions, 50 per cent of their officers
are planning to surrender once the campaign opens," one intelligence
officer claimed.
As
the war started, Pentagon sources said the Iraqi military was
"breaking from within". No surprise then, when Admiral Sir
Michael Boyce, chief of the UK defence staff, said last Saturday that the
51st Division, one of those defending Basra, had surrendered and
"that we have many thousands of prisoners of war". Geoff Hoon
did not take long to assert that the 51st had "stopped"
fighting. The commander and his deputy had given themselves up with 8,000
soldiers surrendering or deserting, said reports. The New York Times
reported that the division had "melted away".
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Within days,
elements of the 51st were miracously back at war. It soon
became clear that the man who surrendered was a junior officer
masquerading as his commander. Maj-Gen Wall confirmed that elements of
the 51st had returned to the city, taking up arms again. Predict-ions of
the scale of the desertions have proved wildly over-optimistic: yesterday
US officials said they had only 4,000 prisoners of war.
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Israel – Jerusalem Post
Fox Newschannel (Quoting
un-named Pentagon Officials)
ABC News
Reuters
AFP
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CHEMICAL
WEAPONS
24
March, 1.33am
On
the day of the first significant Allied combat casualties, the discovery
of a "chemical weapons complex" was a welcome propaganda coup
for US-led forces.
If
the reports were true, it would have been the first find by the invasion
force validating allegations that Iraq still had weapons of mass
destruction.
The
discovery came after a weekend of minor setbacks and tough fighting in
the early days of the war. Doubts arose almost as quickly as the reports
that appeared overnight on Sunday in the Jerusalem Post, which had a
reporter with the troops as they entered the complex, and the US news
channel Fox, quoting unnamed Pentagon officials. By then the other
networks had already got in on the act. ABC News cited one unidentified
official who said an Iraqi general captured at the site "was a
potential gold mine of evidence about the weapons Saddam Hussein said he
does not have".
Former
weapons inspectors said the discovery of the site near Najaf by the 1st
Brigade of the US 3rd Infantry division was probably insignificant.
US
defence officials soon began to row back, saying the factory "may
turn out to be a chemical weapons site, or it may be a site that was
producing something else". They remained non-committal. Two Iraqi
generals in custody were providing useful information, they said. Tests
were being carried out at the area, which remained a "site of
interest".
Asked
about the claims, General Tommy Franks, the coalition commander, told
reporters: "It would not surprise me if there were chemicals in the
plant and it would not surprise me if there weren't ... It's a bit early for
us to have any expectation ... we'll wait for the days ahead." And
we still are.
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Bogus, no one officially recants.
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Tony Blair – Prime
Minister, UK
Geoff Hoon – Secretary of
State for Defense (UK)
GMTV
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BASRA
UPRISING
25
March, first reports 5.15pm
The
desire of the Iraqi people to use the Allied invasion as an opportunity
to rise up against their hated dictator was seen as the key to a rapid
victory. Hence the excitement when reports began to come in on Tuesday
that Shias in Basra, Iraq's second city, were engaged in another attempt
to settle their scores with President Saddam. Tony Blair told the Commons
that there had been "some limited form of uprising". Geoff
Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, went further, saying the regime
had "lost control of southern Iraq".
Military
sources were more cautious at US Central Command in Qatar. Major-General
Peter Wall, a British officer, said the rebellion was in its
"infancy" and it was wrong to predict a "rapid
outcome". Tales of people on the streets came from
"intelligence sources", but they were leapt onby British
newspapers. Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based broadcaster that actually had a
correspondent in the city, said the streets were calm.
More
definitive was the verdict of an Iraqi Shia group based in Iran with
every reason to encourage insurgency. "Some disturbances took place
... but it was not widespread and it was not an intifada. The people
chanted slogans against Saddam Hussein."
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CLARIFICATION
Yesterday,
ColChris Vernon, a British military spokesman, said: "Basra is
clearly nowhere near yet in our hands and we have no way at the moment of
getting humanitarian aid into Basra." Funny then that the GMTV
reporter, Richard Gaisford who broke the story, was still insisting
yesterday that the military had sanctioned his report.
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Tony Blair
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IRAQ
MILITARY EXECUTING BRITISH PRISONERS
27
March
Blair used the
podium of a globally televised Camp David press conference with George
Bush to announce to the world that “Iraq has executed British prisoners.”
According to the PM, Iraqi gunmen killed sapper Luke Allsopp and Staff
Sergeant Simon Cullingworth during an ambush of their vehicle in southern
Iraq.
Mr Blair had said
that the television footage showed an "atrocity" that was
"beyond the comprehension of anyone with an ounce of humanity in
their souls".
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Within
hours of Blair’s remarks, Mr Allsopp's sister revealed that she had been
told by the colonel from his barracks that her brother had died
"instantly" in the ambush. Michael Pawsey, Sapper Allsopp's
stepfather, said that as far as the family was concerned he was killed in
action.
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The
Wall Street Journal, 27 March 2003
Perle's Conflict Issue Is Shared By Others on His
Defense Panel
By TOM
HAMBURGER and DENNIS K. BERMAN
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET
JOURNAL
WASHINGTON
-- Former Pentagon assistant secretary Richard Perle has been assailed for
possible conflicts between his business interests and chairmanship of a
Pentagon advisory board, but other panel members have potential conflicts,
too.
Mr. Perle
has been criticized in recent days following disclosure that he sought
defense-related consulting business while heading the Defense Policy Board,
which advises the defense secretary on a range of policy and strategic
issues. But business interests of at least nine of his colleagues also
overlap with their board service.
Former
Central Intelligence Agency chief James Woolsey is a senior executive at
consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., which
received $688 million in Pentagon contracts in 2002. He also is one of three
principals in a venture-capital firm that has been soliciting investment in
homeland-security-related firms. Mr. Woolsey insists none of the companies he
is affiliated with has ever been discussed at a board meeting, and that he
does no lobbying. He said he was unaware of Mr. Perle's personal financial interests
and wouldn't comment on them.
Another
panel member, retired Adm. David Jeremiah, sits on boards -- one of them
advisory -- of five corporations that received more than $10 billion in
Pentagon contracts in 2002, according to a forthcoming report from the Center
for Public Integrity, a Washington watchdog group. Retired Air Force Gen.
Ronald Fogleman sits on the board of five defense firms that received more
than a billion dollars in defense contracts in 2002. Adm. Jeremiah and Gen.
Fogleman didn't return calls requesting comment.
Panel
members must disclose their business interests, but those disclosures aren't
open for public examination. The potential for conflict in these arrangements
is sparking calls from lawmakers and watchdog groups for government inquiries
and greater disclosure of activities of the advisory board and its members.
Mr. Woolsey
and others on the board reject such complaints. "I cannot recall a
single contractor matter coming before the boards I sit on. In any case, you
don't have decision-making authority over contracts," the former CIA
director said.
Mr.
Woolsey's firm, Paladin
Capital Group, and that of Mr. Perle, Trireme Partners, both solicit
investment in homeland-security concerns.
Mr. Perle
also secured a $725,000 fee from Global Crossing Ltd., a telecommunications
firm now operating under bankruptcy-court protection, that is seeking
Pentagon permission to sell itself to investors in Asia. The Defense
Department has objected to the Global Crossing deal on national-security
grounds because the company would be owned by a Hong Kong-based concern with
ties to China, Hutchison Whampoa Ltd.
According
to documents prepared by Global Crossing to explain its sale plan to the
court, Mr. Perle's total fee is $725,000. Of that, $600,000 would be paid if
the company obtains approval from the Pentagon. The documents cite Mr.
Perle's defense-board chairmanship as a reason for hiring him to press its
case.
Mr. Perle
didn't return calls requesting comment, but a person close to the transaction
said Mr. Perle's primary role was to identify the deal's national-security
issues and create a plan to address them. "He had the security
credentials to get the investors comfortable" with the structure that
now makes Hutchison a passive investor in the reorganized Global Crossing,
this person said.
Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is busy and unable to comment on the matter, said a
spokesman, Maj. Ted Wadsworth.
Write to
Tom Hamburger at tom.hamburger@wsj.com
and Dennis K. Berman at dennis.berman@wsj.com
Updated
March 27, 2003 12:20 a.m.
  
And so it
goes…
Your Pal,
Owen
|
