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Sunday, March 23, 2003 |
The banned photos…
…if you really want to see them they are at the al-jazeera website. Be forewarned – they are gruesome. I can see why Rumsfeld et. al. don’t want you to see them.
Al-jazeera is the closest thing to a free press in the Arab world and - judging by the recent performance in this country - perhaps in the world today.
No self-censorship or censorship from the govt or ownership.
We may not always like what they show or how they show or describe it but they don’t trim their sails for anyone as far as I know.
The current rule of Qatar (where our military brass is headquartered and al-jazeera is located – so no, they are not taking orders from an “anti-American” government) was schooled in the west and believes in a free press, free society and democracy and has been pushing ahead with plans to democratize Qatar.
Al-jazeera is a key component of that plan. So it is pretty ironic when the editors of al-jazeera are lectured by the US govt or media about the need for “self-censorship.”
Thanks to the agonist and Russian warblog (no permalinks).
PS: BTW check out the Russian warblog for a different perspective on Bush’s “splendid little war” and what it has meant for US credibility in places outside the “heartland.”
11:53:01 PM 
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The Boy-Emperor in the Bubble
“He’s given up sweets…”
Can you believe this coverage?!? And this is what they WANT people to think… all in order to “insulate” Bush from “setbacks” (read: casualties).
“…and now drinks two glasses of milk before bed. We make sure to burp him…”
Gee, what a leader – how Churchillian!
“Also Ari has taken to cutting his meat for him and pre-chews his pretzels…”
Plus they want to capitalize on his “down-home image” – “despite his privileged upbringing and two Ivy League degrees.”
“Aw… can’t I watch TV… not just another movie.”
He’s not a loner, not a micro-manager and certainly not “tortured” by the awesome authority he wields…
“Make sure not to wake him – not even for news of American deaths”
Does Bush even have a thought unless it’s vetted by his PR staff?
“See, he’s working – think how much work it is to stage these photos!”
Bush's Posture: A Leader Apart
Distance From Details May Reflect Bid to Insulate President From Any Early Setbacks
By Mike Allen and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, March 22, 2003; Page A26
The White House portrayed President Bush this week as a wartime CEO at a dignified remove from the twists and turns of the attack on Iraq, with his staff insisting that he pays little attention to the televised bombing.
Administration officials report that Bush vetted the war plan before handing off its execution to the Pentagon. That is consistent with Bush's longtime image as a delegator more concerned about the big picture than about details.
But analysts say the decision inside the White House to accentuate that image in the opening days of the war also looked like an effort to insulate Bush from temporary setbacks while setting him up for credit if the invasion ends as the big success his aides say they expect.
The packaging was similar to the White House's approach during Afghanistan, when Bush emphasized his patience and made it clear that he was not worried, even when his aides began to doubt the strategy and wrangle privately.
For the second day in a row, White House officials invited journalists to photograph Bush at work, but he curtly waved off their questions about how the first strikes were going and told them to ask Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
"The president is not going to be a play-by-play commentator," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said. "The president has a long approach to this."
Bush's aides, contending he is setting an example for the country by hewing to his routines, said he was not wakened to be told of the first casualties in the war, reported by networks and news services at 10 p.m. Thursday. An official said Bush was told yesterday during the 6 a.m. phone call in which national security adviser Condoleezza Rice updates him on overnight developments.
A senior administration official said that while working on a war speech on the flight back from last weekend's summit in the Azores, Bush took a break to watch "Conspiracy Theory," the Mel Gibson movie.
Bush has told visitors he is sleeping well and exercising regularly. And the official said Bush has given up desserts to try to bring down his running time. "In these type of times, he becomes even more disciplined than usual," the official said.
The official said Bush's executive style was on display during the Situation Room meeting Wednesday that ended with Bush giving the order to execute Operation Iraqi Freedom. The official said Bush used a video link with eight commanders in the Persian Gulf region to ask each one, "Do you have everything you need to win? And are you comfortable and pleased with the strategy?"
Bush's longtime aides feel strongly that one of his biggest political assets is his image as a down-home Texas rancher, despite his privileged upbringing and two Ivy League degrees. Their description of Bush in briefings and interviews this week set him in sharp contrast to several predecessors -- Richard M. Nixon the loner, Jimmy Carter the micromanager and Lyndon B. Johnson, who was so emotionally tortured by the Vietnam War that he would visit the West Wing at midnight or telephone the Situation Room at 5 a.m.
Fred I. Greenstein, a presidential historian at Princeton University, said Bush's posture of distance from the war may be recalibrated in coming days. "It could make him seem out of touch," Greenstein said. "And it may not do him justice because every evidence is that his learning curve since 9/11 has been dramatic."
At his briefing yesterday, Fleischer was asked whether Bush had watched any of the footage of the missile attacks on Baghdad, which the military calls the "shock and awe" phase of a campaign designed to intimidate the enemy.
"Obviously, the president, having authorized the mission, was aware of the mission, knew when it would begin," Fleischer said. "The president of the United States did not need to watch TV to understand what the American people think about the decision to use force to disarm the Iraqi regime."
Reporters were so puzzled by Fleischer's answer that he was asked nine questions about the subject. Later, a Bush spokesman called to say Bush had very briefly watched the shock-and-awe coverage in his study with White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr.
As his father did on the first weekend of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Bush is spending the first weekend of the war at Camp David. White House officials stressed that the compound is equipped with the latest electronic communications, and said that Bush's senior advisers, including Rumsfeld, would travel there to attend a National Security Council meeting this morning. To underscore the point, White House officials plan to release a photo of the meeting.
In keeping with the White House determination to leave all substantive information on the progress of the war to Pentagon officials, either Rumsfeld or Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will appear on all five major Sunday television talk shows.
Although Bush remained largely out of view, senior members of the administration and department spokesmen sought to emphasize disarray in the Iraqi leadership and U.S. interest in the welfare of Iraqi civilians.
Rumsfeld, at the same time he denounced the leadership in Baghdad and called on Iraqi forces to surrender, emphasized that the U.S. war plan was designed to spare as many innocent civilians as possible. As viewers around the world watched live pictures of the bombardment, Rumsfeld insisted there was "no comparison" between what was happening in Iraq and the bombing campaigns that wiped out cities in Germany and Japan in World War II.
"The weapons that are being used today have a degree of precision that no one ever dreamt of in a prior contact," Rumsfeld said. Television images, he added, could show only slices of the war, "that particularized perspective that that reporter, or that commentator or that television camera happens to be able to see at that moment."
Fleischer made the same point. "The president's approach is to gather the information about what is happening in its totality," he said. "The president does not watch a lot of TV."
5:05:30 PM
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Columnist canceled after column on free speech
Didn’t he know? It’s only free if you own the medium.
I couldn’t resist the irony. The column is pretty good too. (Thanks to Buzzflash for the link.)
Brent Flynn
Practically Rational
--
Columnist's note: This was my last column to appear in the Star Community Newspaper cluster. It is ironic that after writing a forceful essay in support of the first amendment, my column was cancelled. I was told that because I had attended an anti-war rally, I had violated the newspaper's ethics policy that prohibits members of the editorial staff from participating in any political activity other than voting. I was also told that my objectivity as a reporter would be called into question. However, my opposition to an invasion of Iraq was well documented in previous columns before I revealed that I had participated in the protest. But instead of taking me off of my beat or terminating my employment as a staff reporter, my opinion column was cancelled-- the aspect of my job that was enhanced by my participation in the rally. In my opinion, a powerful liberal voice was unwelcome in the conservative Republican county served by my newspaper. The fact that the column was cancelled just days before the start of the US invasion of Iraq raises serious questions about the motives for the cancellation
So the Lenins of the world think the anti-war protestors are nothing more than unpatriotic, ill-informed stooges of brutal dictators everywhere.
Useful idiot is the term commonly used by right wing ideologues to describe the naïve peaceniks that are supposedly giving aid and comfort to Saddam Hussein by opposing the impending invasion of Iraq.
Instead of characterizing the marchers as ordinary, loyal Americans who decided to get off their duffs for once and speak out against what they see as an unprovoked invasion of a weak country, the marchers are made out to be blame-America-first communists under the organizational leadership of Iraqi spies.
Well, I have a different take on the subject.
I would say that people who hold up the First Amendment as an example of America's greatness but then disparage those who exercise that right to peaceably assemble are the real, useful idiots.
Those cynics cherish freedom and democracy as abstract principles but loathe those same ideals when they are put into practice in support of a cause with which they disagree. They see the mass demonstrations of democracy as a threat to the country, not as a show of its strength.
They are the useful idiots of John Ashcroft. The right to an attorney, habeas corpus (probable cause) and the presumption of innocence-- all cornerstones of our American democracy-- are under attack by an Attorney General who believes constitutionally guaranteed rights can be denied, depending on the crime.
Now, the mouthpieces of the far right are concocting hypothetical "ticking bomb" scenarios to scare Americans into believing that we need to take another look at torture as an interrogation method.
Ben Franklin's words of wisdom should be required reading for these fascists in red, white and blue clothing. He got it right when he said that, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
The neo-conservatives in charge of our government talk about sparking a democratic revolution in the Middle East, but by their arm-twisting and pay-offs to foreign governments they are circumventing the will of the people in those countries-- who are overwhelmingly against the war.
Democracy abroad is a grand concept to this group of useful idiots, except when it expresses itself in the form of a Turkish parliamentary vote prohibiting US troops from deploying there. They are even more infuriated when democratic principles manifest in the form of the German electorate voting an anti-war Chancellor into office or the French Prime Minister actually listening to his people.
These useful idiots wouldn't recognize true democracy if it marched past their front door on the way to the voting booth, but, oh, how they love the symbols of democracy. They even want to put you in jail for disrespecting the flag. What they don't understand is that by abridging your freedom of speech-- even the unpatriotic and offensive act of burning the flag in protest-- they are setting fire to the Bill of Rights. They apparently forgot that the flag is just a piece of cloth if it has no democratic ideals to represent.
If it sounds like I take these attacks personally, that's because I do. I went to my first anti-war protest last month (actually it was my first time at any kind of protest). When I was walking through the streets of downtown Dallas with thousands (and there were thousands) of fellow Dallasites, Texans, Americans, it was one of the proudest moments of my life. And no amount of brow-beating and comparisons to Lenin's unwitting dupes will change that.
No, the protesters aren't unpatriotic, un-American or useful idiots, but people who criticize them for practicing democracy in its purest form have a few things to learn about citizenship in a democratic republic. It is not merely your right to dissent when you disagree with your government's policies, IT IS YOUR CIVIC OBLIGATION.
Before the Bush hawks start exporting democracy to the Middle East through the use of military force, maybe we should make sure we've got it right in America.
Contact Brent Flynn at brent@brentflynn.com if you would like to receive future columns weekly via email.
4:18:28 PM
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And this is the easy part…
…just imagine what the difficult part – the occupation - will be like.
Well, it’s not like our officials didn’t warn us is it?
Actually they not only didn’t war us, they actively mislead us:
What did Dick Cheney say about the nature of the war last weekend?
MR. RUSSERT: If your analysis is not correct, and we’re not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. I’ve talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House. The president and I have met with them, various groups and individuals, people who have devoted their lives from the outside to trying to change things inside Iraq. And like Kanan Makiya who’s a professor at Brandeis, but an Iraqi, he’s written great books about the subject, knows the country intimately, and is a part of the democratic opposition and resistance. The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.
Now, if we get into a significant battle in Baghdad, I think it would be under circumstances in which the security forces around Saddam Hussein, the special Republican Guard, and the special security organization, several thousand strong, that in effect are the close-in defenders of the regime, they might, in fact, try to put up such a struggle. I think the regular army will not. My guess is even significant elements of the Republican Guard are likely as well to want to avoid conflict with the U.S. forces, and are likely to step aside.
Now, I can’t say with certainty that there will be no battle for Baghdad. We have to be prepared for that possibility. But, again, I don’t want to convey to the American people the idea that this is a cost-free operation. Nobody can say that. I do think there’s no doubt about the outcome. There’s no question about who is going to prevail if there is military action. And there’s no question but what it is going to be cheaper and less costly to do it now than it will be to wait a year or two years or three years until he’s developed even more deadly weapons, perhaps nuclear weapons. And the consequences then of having to deal with him would be far more costly than will be the circumstances today. Delay does not help.
Thanks Unca Dick. You just made people expect a quick war.
Contrast that with the grim (and all too predictable) reality:
Iraqis Use Guerrilla Tactics to Slow Advance
Sun March 23, 2003 04:39 PM ET
By Douglas Hamilton
DOHA (Reuters) - Washington's hopes that U.S.-led forces would be welcomed into Iraq as liberators bled into the sand on Sunday, the fourth day of war, as Iraqi troops fought back with determination and guerrilla tactics.
There was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction being used by Iraq in battle. Instead, Iraqi troops were fighting with machinegun-mounted Japanese pickup trucks against squadrons of the world's most formidable battle tank, the U.S. Abrams.
There were reports of between 10 and 15 U.S. troops killed in fighting to secure bridgeheads across the River Euphrates at Nassiriyah, with perhaps up to 50 more wounded.
U.S. General John Abizaid acknowledged it was the "toughest day of resistance" so far. He said Iraqi forces near Nassiriya inflicted several casualties in "the sharpest engagement of the war." There were 12 American troops missing, he added.
"Everybody was predicting they'd be welcomed as liberators but it's working out differently," said one senior Arab official in the Gulf. "The Americans had a hard day today."
Evoking Vietnam and Mogadishu, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf warned U.S. forces they were driving into "a quagmire from which they can never emerge, except dead."
Iraqi forces evidently switched from their disastrous static defense of the 1991 Gulf War to classic guerrilla tactics, using loyalist militias to bolster regular forces.
"There are a number of incidents occurring to the rear of the main combat forces," Abizaid said at the Central Command briefing, indicating guerrilla-style attacks. He said Iraqis had pretended to surrender, then ambushed U.S. forces.
<snip>
In Kuwait, former oil minister Ali al-Baghli said the time taken to capture Umm Qasr might undermine any faith ordinary Iraqis had that the Americans could topple Saddam Hussein.
"We are astonished that there is still resistance in Umm Qasr after all this time. It is a very small place.
"If it takes them this long to capture Umm Qasr, how long will it take to capture Tikrit or Baghdad?"
And now the politicos are tying the hands of the military to try and prevent any further deterioration of our already desperate diplomatic position.
That’s right… requests for strikes and have been denied because the civilian carnage would further enrage a world already disgusted by the sight of an unprovoked, unilateral land-grab against a third world nation… great!
Talk about a rock and a hard place. British troops and US Marines laying siege to Basra are bogged down in house to house fighting. Not only is such fighting by its very naturextremely difficult, but it is being further slowed by the desire to avoid civilian casualties.
This morning, the British tank crews battling for Basra asked for permission to move against the Iraqi tanks and artillery dug into residential areas, but the permission was denied. "They asked for authorization to take on the targets," said Bowen. "And they were told they could not take on the targets unless they had a clear line of sight."
"If they did what they did last time [in the Gulf War] and carpet bombed it, it wouldn't have taken this long," said Atkinson. "It's not the blitzkrieg everybody thought it would be. I think it's for public opinion and not wanting to kill any civilians."
It's great that we're tying to avoid civilian casualties, but I'm catching hints of Vietnam -- with poliical concerns hampering military tactics. In this case, the political demands are just, but it underscores the difficult situation in which our leadership has placed our troops.
What's also interesting about this Basra siege is the people doing the fighting. It's not the Republican Guard, its -- SURPRISE! -- the Iraqi 51st Division.
You know, the guys who surrendered on Friday.
The Iraqis holding out in Basra are members of the Iraqi army's 51st Division, not the elite Republican Guard who have been moved to defend Baghdad and were expected to put up the stiffest resistance the U.S.-led invasion. That regular soldiers have stood so long and fought has surprised some who were predicting that Basra could be taken on the first day of fighting, to provide the American-led coalition a quick victory and deliver an early psychological blow to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
There were also predictions of mass surrender. Today, some 40 Iraqi prisoners came past the checkpoint southwest of the bridge.
"It's their country, isn't it?" said Staff Sgt. Ian Trigg. "It's different than when we kicked them out of Kuwait."
So, has anything gone as promised by the Chickenhwaks?
What is important here - public relations or the lives of soldiers put at risk by politicians?
Need I ask?
3:38:19 PM
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Operation “Bad Orwellian Cliché”
This one is an entertaining must read that indicts the media as well as the regime in its reckless disregard for truth and the minimum requirements of democratic debate.
An Orwellian Pitch
The inner workings of the war-propaganda machine
by John R. McArthur
The first time that a President Bush sold a war against Saddam Hussein, the PR package came wrapped in the flesh and blood of babies torn from incubators. On the second go-round, you might say that the media kit lacks what salesmen call the "touchie-feelie" dimension — for this year's propaganda season has been sponsored mainly by the cold alloy of 81mm high-grade aluminum tubes.
Comparing the advertising techniques of 1990-91 and 2002-3, I can't point to anything as dramatic as the White House/Kuwaiti/Hill & Knowlton fabrication of the great baby-incubator atrocity, allegedly committed by Iraqi soldiers in Kuwaiti hospitals. But I can cite numerous fraudulent assertions — aluminum tubes, in particular — by a Bush PR team that scatters Enlightenment notions of reason and logic (to paraphrase Bush the First's baby-killing metaphor) like so much firewood across the U.S. Capitol's floor.
Government manipulation of public opinion is an old story, of course, but the two Presidents Bush seem especially gifted in the black arts of publicity and sloganeering. In 1990, Bush the First — with brilliant support from a Kuwaiti "witness" named Nayirah — harnessed the fake baby-killing atrocity to help drive a reluctant Senate and public into rescuing the Kuwaiti royal family (and, as Bush the First's U.S. trade representative, Carla Hills, told me, "to guarantee the right to import oil"). The "liberation" of a tiny emirate that had never known liberty remains one of the great propaganda coups of recent times, and its lessons were not lost on Bush the Second. But in seeking to "liberate" Iraq itself from Saddam Hussein, the younger Bush and his counselors have shown themselves every bit the equals of the father.
Twelve years ago the case for war was easier to make — Saddam had, in fact, invaded Kuwait. More recently, George W. Bush possessed no such advantage. Except for the far-fetched (now refuted) connection between 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and the Iraqi government, George W.'s team began its race for congressional war authorization from a standing start. But beginning on September 7, they accelerated quickly, launching their campaign with a near total fabrication that was nothing more than a calculated scare story.
It was then that the president and British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had issued a "new" report describing a revived nuclear-weapons project in Iraq, built on the foundations of the old. Inarticulate to a fault, Bush backtracked a bit from "new" and stated that "when inspectors first went into Iraq and were . . . finally denied access, a report came out of . . . the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need."
Effective propaganda relies on half-truths and the conflation of disparate "facts" (like Saddam's genuine human-rights violations), so the notion of new IAEA evidence at least sounded plausible. Saddam almost certainly harbored ambitions to build an A-bomb — it was this that caused Israel to bomb Iraq's first and only nuclear reactor in 1981 (a pre-emptive act of war that drew unanimous condemnation from the U.N. Security Council). The trouble was that no such "new" report existed. Nor had there ever been an IAEA report containing the "six months away" assertion — not in 1991 after the war; not in December 1998 when the U.S. weapons inspectors pulled out of Iraq; not in September 2001.
More than three weeks elapsed before The Washington Times (not the "liberal" media) took the trouble to straighten out the story, but by then the administration was well on its way to panicking the Congress into authorizing war. The day after the Bush-Blair confidence trick, the newspapers and talk shows were flooded (through the good offices of Michael Gordon and Judith Miller of The New York Times) with an administration leak about Iraq's attempt to buy special aluminum tubes, supposedly destined for its "six months away" nuclear program. Suddenly (along with the phantom IAEA report), aluminum tubes had brought the world to the brink of a nuclear Armageddon.
Not until December 8, when 60 Minutes broadcast an interview with former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright, did any expert point out publicly that the aluminum tubes were probably meant for conventional weapons. Not until January 9 did Mohammed El Baradei, head of the IAEA, essentially bury the aluminum tubes (and the Iraqi nuclear weapons program) by confirming Albright's supposition. But it was too late; Congress had long ago given Bush carte blanche to attack Iraq with its open-ended war resolution of October 11.
Propaganda success breeds contempt for the old-fashioned notion that politicians require the informed consent of the people before they go to war. The media bears much of the blame; it has been so painfully slow in refuting administration double talk that Karl Rove and Andrew Card can count on a fairly long interval between propaganda declaration and contradiction; or they can bet that the contradiction will be so muted as to be insignificant. Thus could the president brazenly include the discredited aluminum tubes in his State of the Union address.
Meanwhile, stories designed to frighten the public onto a war footing proliferate. Colin Powell tells the Security Council of a "poison factory" linked to al Qaeda in northern Iraq. Reporters visit a compound of crude structures and find nothing of the kind, so an unidentified State Department official responds by saying that "a 'poison factory' is a term of art."
Powell cites new "British intelligence" on Saddam's "spying" capabilities; British Channel 4 reveals that this new dossier is plagiarized from a journal article by a graduate student in California.
The administration raises its terrorist threat level to orange, causing widespread anxiety and duct-tape purchases (a handy placebo for a faltering economy); ABC News reports (at last, a rapid response) that the latest terror alert was largely based on "fabricated" information provided by a captured al Qaeda informant who subsequently failed a lie-detector test.
Powell announces a new threat from an Iraqi airborne "drone"; the drone, patched together with tape and powered by a small engine with a wooden propeller, turns out to have a maximum range of five miles.
The administration trumpets alleged attempts by Iraq to purchase uranium from Niger; the IAEA concludes that the incriminating documents were forged.
On March 7, Powell is back in the Security Council brandishing . . . aluminum tubes!: "There is new information . . . available to us . . . and the IAEA about a European country where Iraq was found shopping for these kinds of tubes . . . [tubes] more exact by a factor of 50 percent or more than those usually specified for rocket-motor casings." When I ask the State Department the name of the European country, I am informed that said country wishes to remain anonymous. (So did Nayirah al-Sabah.) When I inquire with the IAEA about the "new evidence," I am told that El Baradei's analysis, presented before Powell's declaration, is unchanged: "Extensive field investigation and document analysis have failed to uncover any evidence that Iraq intended to use these 81mm tubes for any project other than the reverse engineering of rockets."
The question is, why do they get away with it?
George Orwell blamed "slovenliness" in the language, like the phrase "weapons of mass destruction." Most people think it means nuclear weapons, sure to kill hundreds of thousands. With no A-bombs in sight in Iraq, Bush can still shout about nerve gas and poison gas — also "weapons of mass destruction" — and unsophisticated folks think he's still talking about A-bombs. Bad as they are, chemical and biological weapons are very unlikely to kill in the same quantities as nuclear weapons, but Bush gets a free ride on sloppy English.
PR practitioners say it's easy for politicians to have their way. Peter Teeley, Bush the First's press secretary when he was vice president, explained it this way: "You can say anything you want during a debate, and 80 million people hear it." If it happens to be untrue, "so what. Maybe 200 people read [the correction] or 2,000 or 20,000."
Hermann Goering was more specific: "Why, of course, the people don't want war," he told G.M. Gilbert at the Nuremberg war-crimes tribunal. "Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders . . . All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
John R. MacArthur is the publisher of Harper's magazine and author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War.
1:50:43 PM
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Former head of Big Dig to disburse post-war graft
At least he’s experienced. Andrew Natsios – GOP bag man from Massachusetts who helped provide political cover for the Mass GOP admin over the “excesses” of the “Big Dig,” which is billions over budget and riddled with corruption.
Now he’s taking his talents to the big stage for the Bushies and their cronies at Haliburton (which has previously worked with Saddam when Cheney was CEO) and Bechtel (another Big Dig “vet”) among others.
Your tax dollars at work – fattening GOP portfolios.
Who said the war was just about oil?
By DIANA B. HENRIQUES
This article was reported by Richard A. Oppel Jr., Diana B. Henriques and Elizabeth Becker, and was written by Ms. Henriques.
WAR began last week. Reconstruction starts this week.
That, at least, is how it looks to government contract officers, who in the coming days plan to give American companies the first contracts to rebuild Iraq, a task that experts say could eventually cost $25 billion to $100 billion. It would be the largest postwar rebuilding since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II.
That comparison is being made at every opportunity by Bush administration officials, who emphasize American generosity and farsightedness. But the government's decision to invite only American corporations to bid on these contracts has added to the profound international divisions that already surround the war.
The United States plans to retain control over the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, allowing the administration to decide how it will spend the money needed to repair the country. These contracts will be financed by the taxpayer, although senior administration officials have hinted broadly that Iraqi oil revenue will also be used to rebuild the country.
"We're going to use the assets of the people of Iraq, especially their oil assets, to benefit their people," said Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Friday.
At the top of the to-do list, according to confidential bidding documents, is rebuilding Iraq's only deep-water port, the harbor at Umm Qasr, where cargo is loaded on ships that travel down a waterway in southern Iraq to the Persian Gulf. Dredging work is expected to begin immediately after the port, which was seized by a British-led invasion force on Friday, is secure enough. The bid terms give contractors no more than eight weeks to prepare the port to handle the unloading of pallets and containers from large ships.
A separate bidding process is being conducted by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a unit of the Defense Department. That agency is seeking bids and résumés from companies that are skilled in dismantling and neutralizing chemical and nuclear weapons.
Other immediate priorities will be overseen by the United States Agency for International Development. These include rebuilding two international and three domestic airports, ensuring that potable water is available and reconstructing electric power plants, roads, railroads, schools, hospitals and irrigation systems.
Bids sought by the Army Corps of Engineers call for more "expedient" repairs throughout the region that would be controlled by the United States Central Command. These repairs include installing temporary doors, using plywood to cover broken windows and covering damaged roof areas with plastic sheeting.
For now, the Bush administration is seeking money under a supplemental appropriation expected to be submitted to Congress shortly, according to administration officials.
BUT it may face some heat from lawmakers upset that the administration is moving so swiftly to sign deals with private companies without consulting Congress first.
The companies that have been invited to bid on the work include some of the nation's largest and most politically connected construction businesses. Among them are Halliburton, where Vice President Dick Cheney served as chief executive from 1995 until mid-2000; the Bechtel Group, whose ranks have included several Republican cabinet alumni; and Fluor, which has ties to several former top government intelligence and Pentagon procurement officials.
Others bidding on reconstruction business are the Parsons Corporation, the Louis Berger Group and the Washington Group International, which absorbed Morrison-Knudsen in 1996.
Two other companies have submitted bids in the current round of contract awards, but contract officials declined to identify them. The final roster of seven bidders has already been narrowed to two or three, and contracts are expected to be awarded this week, according to administration officials.
While those contracts are sizable — potentially worth more than $1 billion — they are a pittance compared with the deals to follow, according to Andrew S. Natsios, the director of United States Agency for International Development, which is overseeing the largest contract put out for bids so far.
But Mr. Natsios disputed some of the outside estimates about the reconstruction costs. For example, a report jointly sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations predicts that it could take $25 billion simply to repair oil export installations and restore the Iraqi electric power system to its status before the first Persian Gulf war in 1991.
"The private contracting companies, all the consulting firms are going to tell us it's going to take $50 trillion to rebuild Iraq," Mr. Natsios said. "We'll make Iraq look like Park Avenue based on this amount of money. These are absurd estimates."
THE administration, clearly wary of a long occupation, says it hopes that a new Iraqi interim authority can be in place within a month of victory and that the authority's officials can make some decisions about the pace and financing of reconstruction.
But the administration is already poised to decide which companies will initially oversee and carry out the work. They have extensive experience — and some also have awkward political and financial baggage.
No company has firmer political connections than Kellogg Brown & Root, the engineering and construction arm of Halliburton. Besides its links to Mr. Cheney, the company has been a major military contractor since World War II. Most recently, it handled the high-speed construction of the Guantánamo prison compound for terror suspects .
But since last May, the company has also come under scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is investigating how the company has accounted for cost overruns on its construction and engineering work since 1998. And this spring, its shareholders will vote on a proposal, sponsored by two giant New York City pension funds, calling for a review of Halliburton's previous business ties to Iran.
Louis Berger, based in East Orange, N.J., could be a dark-horse contender in the Iraq reconstruction sweepstakes. Besides its work on an ambitious pipeline to carry oil from Tengiz, Kazakhstan, to a deep-water port on the Black Sea in Russia, the privately held firm has been an important government contractor in the Balkans for years. More recently, it won a contract to oversee extensive infrastructure development in postwar Afghanistan. The centerpiece of the $300 million contract was the rebuilding of a shattered 600-mile highway from Kabul to Herat.
Derish Wolff, the president and chief executive, declined to comment on the current reconstruction bidding process. But he noted that the company had been doing extensive "nation building" work in the Balkans.
"There is a difference between reconstruction and nation building, where you build institutions, and not just infrastructure," Mr. Wolff said. "You have to build, and you have to teach them to build."
BECHTEL is considered the largest contractor in the country, and one of the largest in the world. Its board includes a former secretary of state, George P. Shultz, and its ranks once included a former defense secretary, Caspar W. Weinberger.
Bechtel, privately held and based in San Francisco, helped build the Hoover Dam, oversaw work on the tunnel under the English Channel and worked on the cleanup of Chernobyl. But it is facing a political meltdown of its own in Massachusetts, where it is under severe criticism by the state's inspector general for more than $1 billion in cost overruns on the tunnel and highway construction project in Boston, the so-called big dig.
Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts has ordered an independent review of the project, which was managed for the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority by Bechtel and its joint venture partner, Parsons Brinckerhoff — which is not related to the Parsons Corporation that is bidding on the Iraqi work.
Jonathan Marshall, a spokesman for Bechtel, said the inspector general's recent report on the project "misrepresents the facts" and predicted that the company would be vindicated by the independent review.
The joint venture "has saved taxpayers more than $1 billion and cut years off the completion time," Mr. Marshall said. "We continue to stand by our record." Mr. Marshall would not comment on the recent bidding for Iraq reconstruction work.
Fluor, based in Aliso Viejo, Calif., is not currently working on any Agency for International Development projects, but it has extensive experience building petroleum facilities in difficult places. It is building an enormous plant on Sakhalin Island, off Russia's Pacific coast, for an international consortium that includes Exxon Mobil, and is developing oil and gas fields in Kazakhstan for a consortium whose largest member is ChevronTexaco.
Last April, Fluor hired Kenneth J. Oscar, who as acting assistant secretary of the Army oversaw the Pentagon's $35 billion-a-year procurement budget. Its board includes Bobby R. Inman, a retired admiral who was also former director of the National Security Agency and deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Fluor is currently in arbitration to untangle a dispute with Anaconda Nickel in Australia over Fluor's work on a $615 million nickel-cobalt processing plant in western Australia. Fluor has disputed the accusations of poor workmanship, but Anaconda has collected millions of dollars in compensation in the first phase of the arbitration.
A spokesman for Fluor, Jerry Holloway, confirmed that it had been invited to bid on the work in Iraq but said he could not comment on the scale or scope of the contracts.
PARSONS, an employee-owned company based in Pasadena, Calif., is one of Bechel's most formidable rivals in the construction market.
Parsons, too, would not comment on the current procurement process. But it has done extensive postwar reconstruction work in Bosnia and Kosovo and built the Saudi military city of Yanbu. It also helped build the subway system in metropolitan Washington. It does not have the prominent political connections that Bechtel and Fluor have, though the labor secretary , Elaine Chao, served on its board for about a year before joining the cabinet in January 2001.
In 1998, Parsons won a contract to take over the vehicle inspection program in New Jersey, a deal that has mired the company in a long dispute over delays and malfunctions. But last year, the state renewed the company's contract for another two years, though it cut the company's pay rate and established penalties for poor service.
After the Washington Group International, based in Bosie, Idaho, took over the ailing but venerable Morrison-Knudsen, it continued to acquire engineering operations from Westinghouse and Raytheon. The Raytheon purchases became a financial quagmire, and Washington filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2001. Last year, it emerged after an extensive restructuring.
It remains a major military contractor, however, and has done extensive work in the department's so-called demilitarization work, which involves the dismantling and safe disposal of old weapons. It dominates the business of neutralizing and disposing of chemical weapons within the United States, according to Jack Herrmann, a spokesman.
CONFIDENTIAL contract documents indicate that companies will be paid under an arrangement known as "cost plus fixed fee." Once the cost of a project is established, the contractor is entitled to recover those costs plus a fee that is a fixed percentage of those costs. That percentage is generally 8 to 10 percent, although the security precautions required under the Iraq contracts might justify a higher fee in some cases, construction industry analysts said.
The fast-track reconstruction bidding is already drawing fire in Congress. "We can't tell the taxpayers in this country, who are going to be asked to foot the bill for all of this, what the charge is going to be in the aftermath," Senator Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat who is on the Foreign Relations Committee, complained recently. "Apparently, I think the administration believes that they can get away with it, that the Congress will not do anything about it."
Administration officials said they moved swiftly because they needed to line up contractors with proven track records and high-level security clearances.
"The prime contractors are American, and there's a reason for that: In order to work in Iraq you have to have a security clearance, and the only companies that have security clearances are a certain number of American companies that have done this work before in war settings," Mr. Natsios said.
More than 50 percent of the money will actually be spent by subcontractors. Companies in any country, save those on the administration's terror list, can apply to be subcontractors, he added.
He also dismissed the lawmakers' criticism as uninformed. "I think some senators and congressmen, because they're under severe stress, have not maybe gone into the details of this, but their staffs have been briefed," Mr. Natsios said.
But those arrangements do not satisfy construction industry experts, who say that the administration is asking for trouble by not setting up an independent monitoring process from the beginning.
Thomas D. Thacher II runs a consulting firm that monitored the integrity of the cleanup process at ground zero in Manhattan for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and New York City. He questioned the wisdom of demanding such speed without also establishing ways to monitor the integrity of the rebuilding process.
"Anytime you have an emergency response driven by time, the opportunity for fraud, waste and abuse is huge," Mr. Thacher said. "And when the opportunity is that great, it will occur."
12:55:34 PM
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More Special Pleading?
Unfortunately – especially for the servicemen and women - this is how the plight of US PoWs will be received in the world.
Why?
Are we not the nation that denied any application of the Geneva convention to people captured in Afghanistan?
What was camp X-ray if not a huge, ongoing violation of the Geneva convention. What convention rights have been accorded prisoners in Guantanamo bay?
Add to that the illegal, unilateral and unprovoked nature of this war and add the overwhelming material, technical, financial and industrial superiority of our troops and munitions and it is hard to see much world sympathy for despite the correctness of the ICRC statement.
Who loses in this? The G.I.s and their families.
Who set them up to lose? The current regime with its disdain for international norms and conventions.
Might the Iraqis have filmed them regardless of what we had done – yes, but they wouldn’t have been able to rob the G.I.s of world sympathy. Only the Bushies were capable of doing that (just as they were the only ones who could shatter NATO).
This is not an example of “blame America first” – this is “blame the idiots first.”
PoW footage 'breaks convention'
The International Committee of the Red Cross says footage of captured American soldiers broadcast on Iraqi television violated the Geneva Convention.
In the video, broadcast on Sunday, four men and a woman were questioned and gave their names, military identification numbers and home towns.
It also showed pictures of at least four bodies, said to be dead American soldiers. Two of the bodies were shown to be lying on a road next to what appeared to be a water-carrying vehicle and a tow truck.
An ICRC spokeswoman said It was very clear that prisoners of war should not be subject to public exposure.
"Article 13 of the Third Geneva Convention says clearly that prisoners of war must at all times be protected... against insult and public curiosity," ICRC spokeswoman Nada Doumani told Reuters news agency.
The five prisoners were said to have been captured around the central city of Nasiriya. They are believed to be the first coalition prisoners taken by Iraq.
Two of them, including a 30-year-old woman, appeared to have been wounded. One of the men was lying on the floor on a rug.
Dazed and frightened
Iraq's Defence Minister, Sultan Hashim Ahmed, said Iraq would "not harm the captured prisoners of war".
"It will treat them in accordance with the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war."
He also said that the bodies of the US soldiers were lying abandoned on a battlefield near Nasiriya.
The prisoners, who identified themselves as being from the 507th maintenance company, were wearing military uniforms. They looked dazed and frightened.
They were asked to give their views on the war.
Asked why he had come to Iraq, one said he "was told to come here".
He said he had come to fix "broken stuff".
Asked why he was fighting Iraqis, he said: "They don't bother me, I don't bother them."
He said he did not "want to kill anybody".
When asked how many officers were in his unit, he replied: "I don't know sir."
Asked why he had come to Iraq, another said: "I follow orders."
He was then asked if Iraqis had greeted him with "music or with guns". He replied a number of times that he did not understand.
Senator John McCain, who had been held as a prisoner during the Vietnam War, described the soldiers as tough and courageous and said America was proud of them.
Senator McCain said they would have received excellent training to deal with such an event before sent into conflict and this would stand them in good stead.
He said soldiers in such circumstances would know that their country would not give up on them until they were free.
He said the first few hours would be the toughest, but they would know that the period of incarceration would not be indefinite.
10:58:26 AM
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Ugliness of War
You’re not likely to see the images described below on Fox or CNN.
Nor are you likely to here an explanation to the puzzled query of the US Colonel: “I don’t know why they don’t just surrender.”
That’s because the possible answers are unsettling: because they view the Colonel as an invader; because they don’t view themselves as fighting for “Saddam” but for their families, religion and nation. Given those stakes would the Colonel surrender?
Iraqi Bodies Litter Plain as U.S. Troops Advance
Sun March 23, 2003 11:52 AM ET
By Luke Baker
NEAR NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Burned-out vehicles and incinerated bodies littered a plain in central Iraq on Sunday after U.S. forces overwhelmed Iraqi militia fighters in a battle south of the holy city of Najaf.
U.S. armored infantry and tanks took control of the plain in the early hours of Sunday after a battle of more than seven hours against Iraqi forces who were armed with machineguns mounted on the back of Japanese pick-up trucks.
Najaf lies just 100 miles south of Baghdad.
On the main road running across the plain, burned-out Iraqi vehicles were still smoldering on Sunday afternoon, and charred ribs were the only recognizable part of three melted bodies in a destroyed car lying in the roadside dust.
"It wasn't even a fair fight. I don't know why they don't just surrender," said Colonel Mark Hildenbrand, commander of the 937th Engineer Group.
"When you're playing soccer at home, 3-2 is a fair score, but here it's more like 119-0," he said, adding that the Iraqi sport utility vehicles (SUVs) stood no chance against tanks.
"You can't put an SUV with a machine gun up against an M1 tank -- it's heinous for the SUV," Hildenbrand said.
U.S. FORCES ADVANCE TOWARD BAGHDAD
The fighting began late on Saturday as forces from the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division pushed on with their swift drive north toward Baghdad.
Iraqi bodies shot as they lay in sniper positions by the side of the road suggested the militiamen were hoping to ambush U.S. forces moving across the plain, a strategic area on the west bank of the Euphrates river.
Forward U.S. reconnaissance units took some initial fire from the militia before armored infantry, tanks, artillery and combined air support were called in.
"The tanks took out all the militia vehicles and then infantry cleared the area slowly and steadily on foot," said Lieutenant-Colonel Bernie Lindstrom of the 937th, who was in the area during the fighting.
"The booms and bangs began at about 9.00 p.m. (1800 GMT Saturday) and the area wasn't totally secured until about four or five o'clock this morning. It was hectic for a while."
Hildenbrand said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was trying to use the militia as a guerrilla-type force. But the militiamen appeared hopelessly ill-prepared to deal with the sheer firepower that the U.S. military can throw at them.
Dead soldiers shown to reporters were not wearing any standard uniform and had only open-toed sandals on their feet. Helmets lying near their bodies were made of plastic, not Kevlar.
The only common item appeared to be a black beret with an eagle and standard badge at the front.
A desert hideout Hildenbrand said had been used by a militiaman in recent days showed the hardship many ordinary Iraqi soldiers face.
The soldier had only a filthy blanket to protect him from the cold desert nights, and for food he had only a plastic bag full of raw meat. When he fled, he left behind a picture of his two children.
"I feel nothing but sorrow for these people," Hildenbrand said as he toured the hideout. "This war is against one man, it's not against the Iraqi people. I just wish they would surrender so we could get it over with."
10:36:19 AM
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Rooting and Ratings
That seems to be the mediots major concerns right now – to root for the war that they did so much to make a reality and to cash in on the resulting ratings.
The following represents a broader world perspective on the role played by the media not only in bringing images into the home but on how they do so: as a means for leading the cheers for war and displaying war not as a failure of policy but as a form of “reality entertainment.”
Live TV War Coverage Pulls in Viewers Worldwide
Sun March 23, 2003 11:13 AM ET
By Gill Tudor
LONDON (Reuters) - Round-the-clock live television images of the war in Iraq are mesmerizing viewers across the world, but not all are happy with what they see.
U.S. and British broadcasters such as CNN, Sky and the BBC are pumping out coverage of the U.S.-led invasion, and even media in countries not involved in the conflict have cranked up their programming to feed a surging public appetite for news.
Many viewers are gripped by what one London radio station has called "war porno" -- live television feeds of desert firefights or spectacular fireballs on the Baghdad skyline.
"The 24-hour multi-channel coverage of operations in Iraq is even more surreal than coverage of the Gulf War in 1991," columnist Darrel Bristow-Bovey wrote in South Africa's Sunday Independent newspaper.
"What's worse, with 10 years of reality TV conditioning...it becomes increasingly difficult not to treat the coverage as another species of entertainment, an unfolding saga with twists and turns and unexpected surprises." Bristow-Bovey said the coverage was like watching "Big Brother Iraq" -- a reference to the "Big Brother" reality show that lets viewers watch contestants confined to a house full of cameras.
Even people who are not usually news addicts have been tuning in for regular updates on a war that has caused deep rifts in the international community.
"Usually I seldom watch CNN or the BBC, mainly because my English is not good enough to understand," Tokyo businesswoman Atsuko Hiranshe said. "But when it comes to minute-to-minute developments in Iraq, my eyes are glued to the TV screen."
"MARINE'S EYE VIEW"
One of the most enduring television images of the 1991 Gulf War was of U.S. cruise missiles swooping down Baghdad streets.
This time networks are trumpeting their ability to broadcast live satellite images from their "embedded" reporting positions with the U.S. and British forces in Iraq.
Live on CNN, American Stefanie Lyle watched her soldier husband Clay charging through southern Iraq this week on a tank. "I've been taping it," she told the network. "I just can't believe that we're able to see this on TV. It's great."
CNN, Sky and the BBC were all dominated early on Sunday by live, "Marine's-eye-view" footage of fighting between U.S. and Iraqi soldiers around the southern town of Umm Qasr.
The Sky presenter enthused about the "dramatic" images. It was hard to make out much in the expanse of sandy wasteland, except for telegraph poles and a few distant buildings.
"As if he were covering a football match, the British reporter tells viewers back home about the battle this morning from Umm Qasr. No editing, just two hours of live coverage," one German journalist told his own viewers on the ARD network.
Television coverage has also been ramped up in Germany and France, whose governments are opposed to the Iraq war, but the tone there tends to be more downbeat.
One German correspondent warned viewers to beware of "disinformation" from Washington, and a German network ran shots of a U.S. tank stuck in the Iraqi sand.
Even in Britain, some criticize what they see as the overly bullish tone of some television reports. "Somehow the people reporting and presenting have too much enthusiasm for it," said British marketing manager Tom Greaves.
Many also doubt the pictures tell the whole story, and say television is presenting a sanitized view of war.
Coverage by some Arab stations, including Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, has been far more graphic, showing bloody images of Iraqis killed and injured in air raids.
Gadi Wolfsfeld, professor of political science and communications at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the upbeat tone of U.S. and British coverage might not last.
"Because of the lack of international consensus on this war, the role of the media may change very quickly and turn against the American government," he said.
"We're not seeing many dead and wounded. If the war goes badly (for the United States and Britain) we'll see a lot more."
Broadcasters spending millions of dollars on Iraq coverage may find the thirst for news drying up if war drags on.
U.S. network ABC's live, intensive Iraq coverage came second in the Thursday's viewing ratings to the top sitcom "Friends."
10:08:21 AM
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This Can’t Be Good
Of course, the fact that we are engaged in a unilateral, unprovoked war of aggression doesn’t really help our case when complaining about such activities (the same may also be said of our complaints of Turkey’s “illegal” intervention into northern Iraq/Kurdistan).
Nor is the Russian firm engaged in selling weapons of mass destruction [update: now who did sell those to Iraq... answer: we did]. These weapons – as extremely dangerous as they are to US/Brit forces in Iraq – merely level the playing field. That is why they are so dangerous, because so much of the US strategy depends upon technological advantages not typically available to the third world: night vision, relatively invulnerable tanks and overwhelming air superiority – the later two being absolutely essential in any blitzkrieg.
As upset and concerned as we should be about this, we have to realize that the Russians and the rest of the world probably view such concern as special pleading – “please don’t give them advantages that we take for granted.” And in any case the memories of the US arming the mujahedeen (like Bin Laden) fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan with anti-helicopter missiles are probably still raw in Russia. Nor has unilaterally dropping out of the anti-ballistic missile treaty and telling the Russians essentially to lump it help increase our influence. (BTW how can you just “drop out” if it is a treaty? I guess Native Americans have been on the short end of this stick before.)
Furthermore I would be surprised if other nations view anti-tank missiles, jamming gear or night vision goggles as anything but defensive in nature. And hence I would not expect a lot of sympathy for the US right now – despite the fact that these represent an extreme danger not only to any war plans on the chalkboard but – more importantly – to the lives of the servicemen currently placed at risk by such plans.
3 Russian Firms' Deals Anger U.S.
Iraq Purchased Jamming Gear, Missiles, Night-Vision Goggles
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 23, 2003; Page A19
The United States delivered a protest to the government of President Vladimir Putin yesterday for refusing to stop Russian arms dealers from providing illegal weapons and assistance to the Iraqi military.
Bush administration sources said one Russian company is helping the Iraqi military deploy electronic jamming equipment against U.S. planes and bombs, and two others have sold antitank missiles and thousands of night-vision goggles in violation of U.N. sanctions. The sources said Moscow has ignored entreaties from senior Bush administration officials concerned about the threat to U.S. forces.
During more than a year of intensifying discussions, the Russian officials initially denied the existence of the company that allegedly sold at least a half-dozen devices designed to confound global positioning system guidance gear used in aircraft and bombs, U.S. officials said. Later, the Russians assured the Americans that they were closely watching the company.
"The stuff's there, it's on the ground and they're trying to use it against us," said a well-placed U.S. official who requested anonymity. Of the Russians, the official said, "This is a disregard for human life. It sickens my stomach."
Administration officials have long been frustrated with Russia's failure to crack down on arms sales and technology transfers to countries the U.S. government considers state sponsors of terrorism, including Iran and Syria. The Russians offer a variety of explanations, from the argument that the goods are legal or benign to the assertion that the business is done by private firms over which the Kremlin has no control.
U.S. officials contend Russia should have been able to halt the dealings of the three companies. Unlike cases where evidence was scant or Russian inaction could be attributed to inefficiency, the Bush administration said it made certain this time that senior Russian officials in Moscow and diplomats in Washington were given detailed information.
The United States provided Russian authorities with names, addresses, telephone numbers and, in some cases, shipping dates and ports of exit, according to the U.S. official. Sensitive intelligence was declassified -- after extensive internal debate -- to inform the Russians of the specifics.
"This was Hansel and Gretel. We left bread crumbs on the street for the Russians to follow," said the official. "This was a road map. This was a neon flashing arrow."
The administration said it learned last month that an order of several thousand night vision goggles was due to be shipped by one of the Russian firms. Russian authorities were provided "enough information to stop the shipment before it went," the official said, but they replied variously by saying that only a few goggles had been given as gifts to Middle Eastern leaders or that it was the weekend and nothing could be done.
Night vision goggles have given U.S. forces a vast advantage in their ability to engage in combat at night, a superiority that would be diminished if Iraqi soldiers obtained similar equipment.
As Iraq stepped up its military procurement, the government of President Saddam Hussein increased its acquisition of antitank guided missiles produced by a firm called KBP Tula. U.S. authorities imposed sanctions on the company last year for allegedly selling antitank weapons to neighboring Syria, officials said.
Iraq purchased a "militarily significant quantity" of Kornet missiles from the company in the past two months, according to U.S. officials, who said they told Moscow that documents identifying Yemen as the purchaser of the missiles were wrong. They reported that the administration first asked Russian authorities to halt the missile sales last year.
The Bush administration reserved its highest-level efforts for halting the delivery of the jamming devices, which officials said sell for thousands of dollars apiece and can interfere with global positioning equipment important to aircraft navigation and ground forces. Guided bombs also use the technology, but are equipped with accurate backup guidance systems.
The threat was considered serious enough that very senior U.S. officials pressed the Russians to crack down on the Moscow-based manufacturer, Aviaconversiya. Appeals began at a low level in June 2002. For three months, according to the Americans, the Russians denied the company existed, despite its Internet site and extensive media coverage.
As time went on, successively higher-ranking Americans advised the Russians that the delivery of the devices "would be a violation of a number of U.N. sanctions that forbid the sale of any military equipment to Iraq," an official said. The same was true of the goggles and missiles, according to the Americans.
The jamming devices were initially imported to counter U.S. and British jets patrolling the "no-fly" zones of northern and southern Iraq, U.S. officials believe, citing intelligence sources, and were deployed last week when U.S. forces began their attack.
Complaints from U.S. officials escalated in recent weeks, and earlier this month Russian Ambassador Yuri Ushakov was summoned to the State Department to discuss the matter. Some of the administration's highest-ranking officials pressed the issue with their Russian counterparts.
"We know that they're turned on. We know that they're attempting to use them," the official said of the equipment. "My pilots are taking signals from these."
Administration officials became infuriated last week when they learned that Aviaconversiya personnel are now in Iraq "showing Iraqis how to use them and how to fix them," said the official. The Russians "sure as hell should have been able to stop these guys."
U.S. diplomats in Moscow protested to the Russian Foreign Ministry yesterday. The Russians, who had assured the Americans that Aviaconversiya was being closely monitored, were "clearly taken aback by the news," according to one government report.
The administration was reluctant to release information on its campaign to block the sale of the weapons and gear at a time when the White House was managing a complex agenda with the Russians -- including a bid to win approval of a nuclear weapons treaty, the effort to win Putin's help in pressuring North Korea and the failed attempt to obtain Russian support for the use of force in Iraq.
The discovery of the Aviaconversiya personnel, combined with what U.S. officials consider an imminent threat to American military forces, persuaded the administration to discuss the issue.
"The bottom line is the Russians knew about this last June," said an official. "They did nothing."
9:56:27 AM
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