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22. februar 2004
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Last city in northern Haiti falls to rebels
Meeting little or no opposition, rebels captured the government's last stronghold in northern Haiti, Cap-Haitien. They promise that what comes next is an attack on the capital Port-au-Prince and an ouster of the legally elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
There are no signs so far that a foreign military intervention is imminent. Last ditch efforts to reach a compromise settlement failed.
Aristide doesn't appear to have any loyal forces able to stem the tide. And if he does, there is good reason to fear a blood bath when the rebels attack the capital.
11:54:09 PM 
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More carnage from Palestinian terrorists
A suicide bomber has killed eight people and left 62 wounded on a bus in Jerusalem this morning. The targeted bus was known for carrying many high school students at that time.
Arafat's own sucide murder squad, the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades, took responsibility for the attack.
The attack coincided with hearings about the security barrier at the International Court of Justice at the Hague. The Israeli government says that if there was a barrier protecting Jerusalem, this would not have happened. It is interesting to note the murderer Mohammed Zaal came from a village to the south of Jerusalem; in the north the fence is already in place.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei condemned the attack. I'm not sure if I believe he means it. His boss certainly doesn't.
Ironically, the bombing also coincided with Israel's dismantling of a controversial part of the security barrier to reroute it, in a concession to Palestinian complaints that the barrier is too disruptive.
Israel rests its case, and again buries its dead.
9:36:10 PM
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Doctor linked to 1,500 patient deaths
 A German female medical doctor, Dr Mechthild Bach, is being linked to the deaths of 1,500 patients under her care over several decades. This may become the largest criminal investigation in postwar Germany, and it goes far beyond euthanasia of terminally ill patients.
As forensic teams descended on the Paracelsus Hospital, the highly respected Der Spiegel news magazine reported that Dr Bach could be linked to 251 deaths between January 2000 and July 2003, and as many as 1500 deaths since 1982.
Shortly before her arrest, Dr Bach went on national television to deny any wrongdoing. The primly dressed, soft-spoken 54-year-old said the allegations were hurtful and misguided.
When the allegations first were made public, a number of relatives to patients who had died in her care came forward and told stories about very unexpected deaths. There is also evidence that a lot of morphine have been prescribed in unusual circumstances.
7:58:06 PM
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Violent protests erupt in Iran
At least eight people have been killed in southern Iran in violent protests against the fraudulent election.
Four died in the town of Firouzabad in the southern Fars province, in protests on Saturday when the governor's office declared an unexpectedly high turnout in a tight race between a reformist and an Islamic conservative candidate.
"People were calling for the votes to be recounted to stop any possibility of vote-rigging," a local official, who declined to be named, told Reuters.
Another four were killed in the southwestern Khuzestan province when police clashed with a group of people protesting about election results in the town of Izeh, the ISNA students news agency reported, citing an unnamed local official.
The vote was stacked against the reformists from the start, the media was dominated by the hardliners, so it would not surprise me one bit of the vote was rigged, too.
We'll find out how much the hardliners can get away with.
6:45:31 PM
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Have cloak and dagger, will travel
The British do not doubt that there is a real war going on. The size of MI5, the British intelligence services, is set to grow by 50 per cent, making it as big as it was under World War II. MI5 plans to recruit another 1,000 officers.
MI5 has come under criticism for a number of intelligence failures in the war on terror, for example that it did not warn against the October 12, 2002, terror attack on Bali.
4:41:14 PM
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Clinton's White House agonised over lethal force in Bin Laden hunt
While President Clinton authorised missile strikes against Bin Laden training camps in Afghanistan that were actually close to killing the terrorist leader, between the years 1998 and 2000 the CIA's hunt was paralyzed by the White House's caution about authorising outright assassinations.
The CIA, on its side, was cautious about going outside its explicit permissions from the White House, after being beaten over a number of scandals in the 70s and 80s. And while the White House memos, signed by the president, did authorise lethal force, it was understood as only permitting the CIA to kill Bin Laden or other top terrorists in an honest attempt to capture them alive. And that would require that the apparatus to actually capture them, like detention centres and a plane to bring him out, was put in place first. Obviously a much larger and more cumbersome operation than an agent with a sniper rifle or a remote-controlled bomb.
The compromise wording, in a succession of bin Laden-focused memos, always expressed some ambiguity about how and when deadly force could be used in an operation designed to take bin Laden into custody. Typical language, recalled one official involved, instructed the CIA to "apprehend with lethal force as authorized."
At the CIA, officers and supervisors agonized over these abstract phrases. They worried that if an operation in Afghanistan went badly, they would be accused of having acted outside the memo's scope. Over time, recriminations grew between the CIA and the White House.
It was common in Clinton's cabinet and among his National Security Council aides to see the CIA as too cautious, paralyzed by fears of legal and political risks. At Langley, this criticism rankled. The CIA's senior managers believed officials at the White House wanted to have it both ways: They liked to blame the agency for its supposed lack of aggression, yet they sent over classified legal memos full of wiggle words.
According to the WaPo article, it was Janet Reno and the Justice Department that opposed a "license to kill" to the CIA with Clinton's signature.
Ironically, if Clinton had given such an order, causing a string of targeted assassinations against Bin Laden and his men, his opponents would no doubt be haunting him about it to this day. We would not, after all, have ever known about it if 9/11 had been averted through the use of lethal force.
I distinctly remember cries about "wag the dog" from certain republicans when Clinton authorised cruise missile strikes that actually was pretty close to kill Bin Laden (the reaction apparently made Clinton more adverse to military action). I guess this should serve as a warning to both sides to be careful about playing politics with national security.
It also means that in times of war, it is crucial to have a commander in chief who takes whatever action he deems necessary, and the critics be damned. Bush has those qualities, and then some. His challenger will have to demonstrate to the American people that he will have them, too.
PS: The British Sunday Express, of somewhat dubious credibility, has a world exclusive claiming that Bin Laden is currently surrounded by US and British special forces. Other newspapers are skeptical. So am I.
1:05:48 PM
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© Copyright 2004 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.03.2004; 14:42:24.
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This is my blogchalk:
Norway, Bergen, Norwegian, English, Jan, Male, 31-35.
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