news from australia

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/03/1046540137073.html

The United States Government has so far not responded to claims that their electronic spying organisation is bugging delegations at the United Nations Security Council... James Bamford, author of two books on the NSA... [said the order] looks as if it was sent to the British electronic spy agency, GCHQ, which works with the NSA, and was probably copied to its Australian counterpart, DSD. "Australia would have been a recipient of it, but the main focus would have been directed at the UK with their access to Africa." ...UN delegations from France and Germany had no comment. A British mission spokesperson referred the Herald to the US Government - neither the State Department nor White House had any comment.

--------------------------------------------------------------

from the US

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37250-2003Mar3?language=printer

"I assume every phone conversation I have either on the cell phone or at the office is listened to by several people," said a European diplomat who requested anonymity. Another Security Council diplomat, asked in a telephone interview if he believes his calls are monitored by American intelligence agencies, said, "Let's ask the guy who's listening to us."

--------------------------------------------------------------------

from the US

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39104-2003Mar4.html

Here's a story that's getting big play overseas, and almost none at home... A memo [was] allegedly sent by a National Security Agency official seeking surveillance information on the thoughts of U.N. Security Council delegates... 'It's a big story in Russia and it led the French news today,' said Martin Bright, the [London] Observer's home affairs editor. Bright, who helped write the story, was reached on his cellphone as he drove home from an interview with Canadian TV. Bright said that he had agreed to interviews with NBC, CNN, and Fox News Channel – and that all three had called and canceled.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

from new zealand. transcript of today's white house press briefing.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0303/S00041.htm

Q May I also ask you about a report in The Observer newspaper in London, of a memo purported to be from the NSA -- an email message from a man who actually works at the NSA they established -- in which he describes a surge in surveillance of U.N. Security Council members to see what these nations are thinking about an Iraq vote. What's your response?

MR. FLEISCHER: Terry, as a matter of long-standing policy, the administration never comments on anything involving any people involved in intelligence. For example, if somebody were to say to me, is Libya an object of American intelligence -- I would never answer that question yes or no. The administration does not answer questions of that nature. We don't answer who does or does not work in the intelligence community. Once you start that, you start getting into process of elimination and we do not do that about any question, about any report, as a blanket matter of policy.

Q But, then, if you're a Cameroonian diplomat or a French diplomat at the United Nations, because of what you just said, you're going to have to operate on the assumption that the United States is bugging you.

MR. FLEISCHER: No, it's a blanket matter of policy that we do not answer questions of that nature, whether it's true or not true, and I'm not indicating to you whether it is true or not true. It's a blanket matter of approach and policy that predates this administration.

...Q Ari, I have two questions for you. Following up on Terry's question about the article in The Observer, you say you never do comment on intelligence matters. But the article also specifies that six of the countries the U.S. is trying to get to vote in favor of the second resolution are being monitored. If they were to ask the U.S. government about that, would they also get an answer, we don't comment on intelligence matters?

MR. FLEISCHER: My answer is the same in all cases, and that's the long-standing answer and policy, as you're all very familiar with here.

...Q Ari, is there -- going back to the British newspaper, The Observer, is there really a need to spy on the non-permanent members of the Security Council, to wiretap their phones? Is it true what the newspaper is –

MR. FLEISCHER: I just go right back to my answer to Terry on that question. And, again, I hope you can appreciate, the reason that these questions never get answered -- and not to infer that that means a yes or a no, because it's impossible for you to make those judgments, because we are not -- I'm not indicating to you yes or no. But I gave an example at the beginning. If I said, yes, we are, you would know something about what we do with our intelligence. If I say, no, we're not, you start asking that question around the world to try to use the process of elimination to find out what the United States does, from an intelligence point of view. And that is not a position that I think the American people would want the government to go down the line and start to describe every specific item of intelligence. So I'm not saying yes and I'm not saying no, I'm stating the long-standing policy of the government on questions exactly like this, which do come up from time to time.

...Q Going back to the previous question, what is the U.S. policy about discussing intelligence information against other countries from the podium?

MR. FLEISCHER: The policy is the same about any country; we do not talk about intelligence.

Q I'm trying to square that with earlier in a briefing when you reminded us that Colin Powell spoke about wiretaps of Iraqi officials.

MR. FLEISCHER: Sure, and as you know, that was after a very lengthy declassification process involving the situation uniquely in Iraq.

Q Well, all we're asking you here to do is if you can, in effect, declassify -- (laughter.) What is the difference? You declassify stuff that helps make your case on Iraq. We're asking you if you're bugging our allies. It seems to be –

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, first of all, I'm not making any presumption that it is classified. I'm not saying whether there is or is not anything of the kind that you are asking.

Q Well, if there's not of a kind, that's why I don't understand why you can't say it's not of the kind.

MR. FLEISCHER: Because then you're playing process of elimination around the world, which is a process we do not –

Q Well, we've already eliminated one, Iraq. (Laughter.) How about a couple more, the two that are mentioned in this memo, that very clearly –

MR. FLEISCHER: This is something that those of you who have covered the White House for many years know exists -- pre-exists prior to this administration, and it is a standard response on any such questions about intelligence.

Q But you do know there have been times when officials have knocked down that intelligence, and you're certainly not doing that today.

[and now for a special bonus: ari's concluding remarks:] Q Ari... I think most reasonable people would conclude that the war is inevitable. Why shouldn't people then further conclude that the President has been less than candid about his decision to go to war?

MR. FLEISCHER: Because the President has not made any final decision... For anybody to suggest that it is somehow not in the ordinary for the President of the United States to say the standards of the United Nations must be met, then what you're suggesting is United Nations standards need not be met. And that's not a standard that the President holds. Thank you. [thanks for clarifying... --mrs. h]

----------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/mar2003/nzea-m03_prn.shtml

New Zealand police last week asked staff at the US embassy in Wellington to explain how a letter making a terror threat against the America’s Cup yacht race in Auckland was obtained by the CNN television network despite requirements that it be kept confidential... Police complained that the release of the letter compromised their investigation because few besides the author would have known the details. A US embassy spokeswoman told the Herald that the letter had been obtained by the American media “inadvertently” and the mission “regretted” the incident... Police counter-terrorism chief, Assistant Commissioner Jon White, said CNN had told his officers the letter’s text was taken from a website where it had been posted by the US State Department’s Overseas Security Advisory Council.

...Police maintained they had wanted to keep the letters out of the public domain for fear they might spark false admissions, or “copycat” letters. It appears, however, that the authorities quickly concluded that the letters were a hoax. But it suited their purposes to keep them under wraps... Experts concluded that, far from originating from a terrorist cell, they were probably from someone pretending to be a foreigner to disguise his or her identity, or to create a provocation against the Muslim community.

...Nevertheless, both the government and the media seized on the hoax to whip up an atmosphere of uncertainty and anxiety. Against this backdrop, Prime Minister Helen Clark announced last Friday that unprecedented security precautions would be put in place for the forthcoming visit of Australian Prime Minister John Howard... Clark has warned of stringent security measures to prevent... the threat of Howard being personally “assaulted”.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20030225/4894862s.htm

Of 414 stories on the Iraqi question that aired on NBC, ABC and CBS from Sept. 14 to Feb. 7, [news analyst Andrew] Tyndall says that the vast majority originated from the White House, Pentagon and State Department. Only 34 stories originated from elsewhere in the country, he says. Similarly, a check of major newspapers around the country from September to February found only 268 stories devoted to peace initiatives or to opposition to the war, a small fraction of the total number... He says his dateline analysis indicates where the networks' priorities have been on the Iraq story. ''This was a Washington-driven story. It has not been a heartland story. It has been an inside-the-Beltway story.''

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=WXXS3HMGUXJRICRBAEOCFFA?type=worldNews&storyID=2320077

An angry Washington hit out at North Korea for intercepting a U.S. spy plane at the weekend... Senior U.S. officials said Washington would formally protest about the incident, once the best way to do so had been found. North Korea and the United States have no diplomatic relations.

Four North Korean fighter jets intercepted a U.S. Air Force RC-135 reconnaissance plane in international airspace over the Sea of Japan on Sunday and came within 50 feet of the big American jet while shadowing it, the Pentagon said on Monday. The encounter -- a whisker away from disaster in the air in one of the world's most militarized regions -- followed repeated assertions by North Korea's state media that RC-135s had been flying sorties inside its airspace. Pyongyang said they showed the United States was preparing for war on the peninsula... "This is a demonstration and warning that the communist North rejects being a target of U.S. contingency plans," said Kim Sung-han, analyst at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security in Seoul.

-------------------------------------------

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-598805,00.html

TURKEY’S financial markets plunged yesterday and a belt-tightening budget was presented as Ankara began to count the cost of its rejection of US troop deployment, and with it up to $30 billion of aid... The budget plans include tax rises, which the Government had vowed not to introduce, a reduction in benefits and limits on hiring workers. But it is not clear how far the fairly conservative tax measures will impress the IMF, whose $16 billion loan rescue deal now takes on a new importance as the only safety-net for Turkey’s worst recession since 1945.

----------------------------------------------------------

http://www.southknoxbubba.net/skblog/archive_2003_02.php#982

Bush has a "tell". A "tell" is a gesture, expression, or affectation that gives away the fact that the speaker is lying. I'm told that it's very useful in poker as a way of knowing when the other guy is bluffing. When Bush lies, he twists his mouth around to the side and bites his lip.

Police interrogators have studied the art of lying for years. They note that moving ones hand near the face or covering the mouth while speaking is a "tell". The theory is that the person is unconsciously trying to cover the lie, or keep it from coming out, or capture it and push it back in... It seems to me this theory would also apply to biting your lip... Mispronouncing words is also a "tell"... This should not be confused with the famous "smirk", which he exhibits when he says something that even he knows is either incredibly stupid or arrogant.

Anyway, I am bringing this to your attention as a public service announcement. Pay close attention the next time Bush speaks and see if you can spot it, too. It might help you better interpret his remarks. I just wish the WhiteHouse.Gov archivers would insert "(bites lip)" in his speech transcripts, similar to how they insert "(applause)". It would help those of us who miss his TV broadcasts better understand what he's really saying. OK, then.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/03_03_02_corner-archive.asp#004390

My mom told me last night that the hottest song on the Baton Rouge country radio station they listen to is a war-themed ballad called, "Have You Forgotten?" Turns out that song is burning up the country airwaves everywhere. Sample lyric: "I hear people saying we don't need this war / I say there's some things worth fighting for / What about our freedom and this piece of ground / We didn't get to keep 'em by backing down."

This is great. Let Sheryl Crow, David Byrne, Russell Simmons and all musical members of the Appeaser-American community stew. Once again, country music gets it right, and provides the soundtrack for Red America.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-0303030108mar03,0,2491452.story?coll=chi-leisuretempo-hed

At country station KILT in Houston, the phone lines lit up the instant the song hit the air. "It's the most requested song I've ever seen in the history of KILT," says Jeff Garrison, the station's operations manager and program director. "We're playing it every two hours."

------------------------------------------------------------------

http://tedbarlow.blogspot.com/2003_03_02_tedbarlow_archive.html#90080222

It's probably only a matter of minutes before this song, "Have You Forgotten", lights up the blog world... "They say we don't realize the mess we're getting in/ Before you start your preaching let me ask you this my friend/ Have you forgotten how it felt that day?/ To see your homeland under fire/ And her people blown away/ Have you forgotten when those towers fell?/ We had neighbors still inside going thru a living hell/ And you say we shouldn't worry 'bout bin Laden/ Have you forgotten?"

So let me be the first to ask: Is this a goddamn joke?

Is there anyone out there still unclear about the fact that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are two different people? And that a war on Iraq isn't going to get bin Laden? Cause he's not there? And they're not allies?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0304/p01s03-woiq.html

Iraq's unique standing in this part of the world goes back thousands of years. The territory nestled between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers is known as the cradle of civilization. It was a Babylonian king in the third millennium BC who gave the world Hammurabi's Code, the roots of the West's legal system in which the punishment must fit the crime. Two millennia before that, the ancient Sumerians gave birth to the written word, using cuneiform script on clay tablets.

King Nebuchadnezzar built up Babylon and destroyed Jerusalem's Temple of Solomon in 586 BC. Alexander the Great's blue-eyed Macedonian armies swept across Iraq's dusty plains toward the Indian subcontinent in the 4th century AD. Islam later spread from Mecca across Iraq and toward Europe, only to be pushed back by Christian warriors during the Crusades in the 11th and 12th centuries. Saladin - icon of the Arab world, who was born in Saddam Hussein's own home area of Tikrit - forced the Crusaders from Jerusalem.

Mongol rule began with a brutal conquest in the 13th century, but gave way to the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, which ruled Iraq as three regions - the Kurdish areas, central Sunni areas, and the southern Shiite area. That empire in turn collapsed and left the British - after years of battle to ensure control of Iraq's oil and to help protect India - in control of ancient Mesopotamia.

...After World War I, Britain was given a League of Nations mandate to carve up Ottoman territory and bring all three disparate regions together... An anti-British revolt in 1920 was put down - at the cost of more than 2,000 British lives and much treasure. Trouble plagued the British even after they installed in 1932 a puppet monarch, King Faisal I - a polished Sunni Arab officer who was treated suspiciously by Kurds and Shiites alike. History records how the British shipped the king's chief opponent to British Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and how a "vote" yielded 96 percent support for the new monarch... Indeed, the history of the British struggle to maintain control is written in rock at Baghdad's North Gate Cemetery. A dry wind whirls among row after row of bleached gravestones... of thousands of British soldiers who died here in the name of the empire.

...Today, Iraqis remember how family members were interned in British camps or executed. Iraqis often derisively called the British "al Haimer," the "red-faced man." "If the Iraqis resisted and could not live with colonial rule - at a time when it was normal all over the world - how about today, when independence ... and self-determination [are] the important values of human life?" says Halim Barakat, a recently retired professor of Arab studies at Georgetown University in Washington. "The period of colonization in the minds of the Iraqis is over."

American occupation plans now call for a senior US military governor, and senior US officers to replace every minister and deputy minister in the Iraqi government for at least 18 months - a far more direct role than ranking British "advisers" employed in the colonial days. Will the Americans be welcomed? "There is not a chance," says an Iraqi professional, who spoke candidly, alone, and in English. "You can't expect a foreigner to come outside your house with a gun, and expect him to be welcomed - why do they think they can do it?

...Few Iraqis doubt that, if US and British forces invade their country, there will soon be another cemetery set aside for war graves in downtown Baghdad - for Americans.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/03/03/1046540131919.html

Britain and the United States have all but fired the first shots of the second Gulf War... Britain and the US insist publicly that the rules for enforcing the flight-exclusion zones over the north and south of Iraq have not changed - pilots open fire if only targeted. But defence officials admit privately that there has been an aggressive upping of the ante to weaken Iraqi defences ahead of a ground invasion. Analysts confirm there has been an intensification of what is known as "the undeclared war".

------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2816167.stm

Six Iraqis have been reported killed and 15 wounded in an overnight US-UK air strike that is being described as part of an aggressive shift in policy. The raid took place late on Sunday in the southern province of Basra, an Iraqi spokesman said. However, the UK Ministry of Defence said late on Monday there was no evidence anyone had been killed or injured in the attack. The US Defence Department says it has expanded the number of military targets which can be attacked by US and UK planes.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30813-2003Mar2?language=printer

More than 120 activists from 28 countries emerged from an all-day strategy session here this weekend with plans not just to protest a prospective U.S.-led war against Iraq but to prevent it from happening. They want to intensify political pressure on the Bush administration's closest allies -- the leaders of Britain, Italy and Spain -- and force them to withdraw their support... They intend to further disrupt war plans with acts of civil disobedience against U.S. military bases, supply depots and transports throughout Europe. Finally, if war breaks out, they say, they will demonstrate in towns and cities around the world on the evening of the first day, and hold a worldwide rally on the following Saturday that they hope will rival or surpass their efforts of Feb. 15.

...Campaigns to disrupt U.S. forces have also been launched. Besides the dozens of activists who have traveled to Baghdad to volunteer as "human shields" against a U.S. attack, nine Dutch antiwar activists were arrested Tuesday for chaining themselves to the gates of a U.S. military center outside Rotterdam. In Italy, hundreds of protesters occupied train stations and railway tracks for nearly a week to delay trains carrying U.S. military equipment from northern Italy to the Camp Darby military base near Pisa. Irish protesters broke through the perimeter fence at Shannon airport in January and damaged a U.S. Navy plane, causing other planes to divert their flights and refuel elsewhere. Trade union movements in Italy and France are pledging work disruptions and considering general strikes if war breaks out... "This was caused by social forces, and it's not something that organizations produced," said Andrew Burgin, a member of the coalition's British steering committee. "They're not in our control. You don't lead a movement like this, the movement leads you."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.balochistanpost.com/item.asp?ID=3382

If the person arrested from Rawalpindi the other day is Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, a presumed leader of Al-Qaeda and alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 incidents, then who were those who were killed or arrested by the same Pakistani police and over enthusiastic military loyalists to the United States, last year? This question is being asked by all those persons who track the news stories mostly leaked or sponsored by the senior police officers and military generals in Pakistan who anxiously wait for their share in the pie of millions of dollars that the US has earmarked for rooting out the Islamic movements in Muslim countries.

In September 2002, the police and intelligence officers had staged a big and bloody drama in Karachi to score huge points of loyalty to the US and FBI... Trained by the British colonialists, these police officers are masters in implicating anybody in any case and staging dramas of various intensities ranging from raids to police encounters on the streets... They could kill any passer-by and get alms from FBI by declaring him an Al-Qaeda terrorist. Unfortunately the poor investigation methods of the FBI and its poor intelligence gathering systems have provoked many police officials in many other countries to stage similar dramas. The recent arrests in Italy where the Police even claimed to have recovered the terrorism gear from 28 Pakistani labourers is another evidence of this trend. And the result is – more confusion – one step forward and two steps backward. Hard earned tax dollars of the US citizens are going down the drain in the pockets of their so-called Security agencies, officials, agents and corrupt police and military officers of the other nations. Had they been so effective, the 9/11 incident would have not occurred.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.balochistanpost.com/item.asp?ID=3389

In the theatre of the absurd into which America's hunt for al-Qa'ida so often descends, the "arrest" – the quotation marks are all too necessary – of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is nearer the Gilbert and Sullivan end of the repertory. First, Mr Mohammed was arrested in a joint raid by the CIA and Pakistani agents near Islamabad and spirited out of the country to an "undisclosed location". "The man who masterminded the September 11 attacks" was how the US billed this latest "victory" in the "war against terror" (again, quotation marks are obligatory). Then the Pakistanis announced that he hadn't been taken out of Pakistan at all. Then a Pakistani police official expressed his ignorance of any such arrest. And then, a Taliban "source" ...claimed that Mr Mohammed "is still with us and in our protection and we challenge the US to prove their claim".

...The last post known to be held by the former Kuwaiti with a Pakistani passport was media adviser to the marriage of Osama bin Laden's son in Kandahar in January of 2001. Then there was the slow revelation that the man... had been handed over to the Pakistani authorities (if indeed he had been handed over) by the ISI, the Pakistani Interservices Intelligence – for whom Mr Mohammed used to work. Like the man accused of arranging the murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, Mr Mohammed was an ISI asset; indeed, anyone who is "handed over" by the ISI these days is almost certainly a former (or present) employee of the Pakistani agency, whose control of Taliban operatives amazed even the Pakistani government during the years before 2001. Mr Pearl, it should be remembered, arranged his fatal assignation in Karachi on a mobile phone from an ISI office.

...The deep waters were also muddied by the White House's claim that four men executed in an attack by a missile-firing pilotless drone aircraft in Yemen last year were "among al-Qa'ida's top 20 leaders". Whether they were numbers 2 to 5 or 17 to 20, no one at the Pentagon or White House could say. So how can we trust the authorities' word that Mr Mohammed is a "mastermind"? Of course, it may all turn out to be true. We may be provided with the proof the Taliban demand. Or Mr Mohammed may be kept in Pakistani custody until another "mastermind" can be discovered. Or it may be that reports of the "arrest" of the likes of Mr Mohammed are very useful to General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's President, when he's just angered the Americans by criticising any US military attack on Iraq, or when Pakistan's new regional government in the North West Frontier province has just instituted Taliban-style laws in Peshawar.

All in all – as far as Mr Mohammed's arrest and deportation and then his non-deportation are concerned – when constabulary duty's to be done, a policeman's lot is not a happy one. Especially if he belongs to the ISI.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.paknews.com/editorials.php?id=1&date1=2003-03-04

There are shrill cries of success and sighs of relief surrounding a news report that is being hailed as the biggest catch so far: No.3 man, Sheikh Khalid Muhammad, of the dreaded Al Qaida is captured, alive! The biggest success in the global war against terrorism. This is certainly excellent news and both the Pakistani and the American authorities deserve congratulations.

Unfortunately, while the coalition is claiming success, there is a run for taking the credit. The American version of the news from likes of CNN, Foxnews, MSNBC hardly mentions the Pakistani role and makes it sound like Sheikh Khalid Muhammad was captured somewhere in Texas, not from Rawalpindi. The Pakistani version earlier claimed this to be a joint operation but now it is claimed to be 100% Pakistani operation.

The contradictions do not stop here. Americans claim that Sheikh Khalid Muhammad is in their custody and is now being interrogated for the second day. Whereas, the Pakistanis are saying that he has not been extradited to any country. Furthermre, it is being said that Sheikh Khalid will be extradited to Kuwait. Now why Kuwait one asks? Sheikh Khalid Muhammad is being referred to as a citizen of anywhere from Kuwait, Pakistan, Yemen, up to holding 20 passports of different countries. What is his real nationality?

...It is said that Khalid was the chief/key planner of 9/11 attacks? But wasn't that attributed to Osama Bin Laden? But wait! It was not too long ago that it was claimed that "key planner of the attacks on World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh" was arrested. So, who is the real man?

A more troubling problem is that it was reported by both American and Pakistani authorities back in September 2002 that Sheikh Khalid Muhammad was killed in a raid. The reason we remember him vividly was the way his death was dramatized. He was reported as writing words on a wall with his own blood as he was dying [see below]. It was reported a few days after the report of a raid that Khalid's wife and children were in custody and being interrogated.

...How can Sheikh Khalid Muhammad be in America, Pakistan and Kuwait at the same time? If he died in the gun battle on Sept 15, 2002 in Karachi, who has been raided and arrested on March 3, 2003?

---------------------------------------------------------------

from oct 30th, 2002 REPEAT 2002!

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/DJ30Df01.html

KARACHI - Ever since the frenzied shootout last month on September 11 in Karachi there have been doubts over whether Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed head of al-Qaeda's military committee, died in the police raid on his apartment. Certainly, another senior al-Qaeda figure, Ramzi Binalshibh, widely attributed as being the coordinator of the September 11 attacks on the United States a year earlier, was taken alive and handed over to the US. The latest information is that he is on a US warship somewhere in the Gulf.

Now it has emerged that Kuwaiti national Khalid Shaikh Mohammed did indeed perish in the raid, but his wife and child were taken from the apartment and handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in whose hands they remain.

...After the Taliban and al-Qaeda were routed in Afghanistan at the end of 2001, many fled to Pakistan to regroup and set up new cells. One of these, as described in Asia Times Online, From the al-Qaeda puzzle, a picture emerges, was in Karachi, with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as its head. Despite being tracked by informers within Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Khalid Shaikh Mohammed... always managed to remain one step ahead of [the cops]... Initially, the joint ISI-FBI plan was to take Shaikh Mohammed alive so that he could be grilled... However, as a plainclothed officer climbed the stairs toward the third-floor apartment, a hand grenade was thrown, and he retreated. Reinforcements then arrived, and for the next few hours a fierce gun battle blazed... Despite instructions to the contrary, a few Pakistan Rangers entered the flat, where they found Shaikh Mohammed and another man, allegedly with their hands up. The Rangers nevertheless opened fire on the pair.

Later, the Pakistani press carried pictures of a message scrawled in blood on the wall of the flat, proclaiming the Muslim refrain of Kalma, in Arabic: "There is no God except Allah, Mohammed is his messenger". An official who was present in the flat at the time of the shooting has told Asia Times Online that the message was written by Shaikh Mohammed with his own blood as his life drained from him. Subsequently, to their surprise, the raiders learned that Ramzi Binalshibh had been netted in the swoop. And nothing further was said of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

But now it emerges that an Arab woman and a child were taken to an ISI safe house, where they identified the Shaikh Mohammed's body as their husband and father. The body was kept in a private NGO mortuary for 20 days before being buried, under the surveillance of the FBI, in a graveyard in the central district of Karachi... News of the death of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was intentionally suppressed so that officials could play on the power of his name to follow up leads and contacts.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2814861.stm

Afghanistan retook its place as the world's leading producer of heroin last year, after US-led forces overthrew the Taliban which had banned cultivation of opium poppies. The finding was made in a key drug report, distributed in Kabul on Sunday by the US State Department, which supports almost identical findings by the United Nations last week... "The size of the opium harvest in 2002 makes Afghanistan the world's leading opium producer," the report said. The International Narcotics Control Strategy Report said the area of land used to cultivate opium poppies reached 30,750 hectares, compared with 1,685 hectares in 2001.

...The report said fighting illegal drug trafficking was key to the US war on terrorism.

-----------------------------------------------------------

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=383705

By Justin Huggler in Bureij refugee camp, Gaza Strip 04 March 2003

A pregnant woman crushed to death when Israeli soldiers dynamited the house next door; a few streets away a smear of the blood on the road where a boy aged 14 was shot dead by tank fire – this was the scene in the Gaza Strip yesterday, when the Israeli army was celebrating what it considered to be a big success. During a deep incursion into the Bureij refugee camp, the Israeli army detained Mohammed Taha, the first senior leader of the political wing of Hamas.

...In the half-ruined house where Ms Magadmeh was crushed to death, her son, Naseem, 12, told us the family was sheltering in one room. "Suddenly there was a big explosion and the wall fell on us," he said. "My mother was crying 'Help me, Shukri [her husband], help me.' "We were shouting for help from the neighbours but no one could come. My father tried to move pieces of wall." Israeli soldiers had dynamited a neighbouring house, which belonged to the family of a suicide bomber, Sami Abed al-Salam. He had killed himself when he tried to blow up a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip in December. The Israeli army routinely demolishes the homes of suicide bombers' families, a practice condemned as collective punishment by human rights groups.

The wall between the house that was blown up and Ms Magadmeh's collapsed on her. But that could have been avoided. "We did not go out because the Israeli soldiers ordered everyone to stay inside over a loudspeaker," said the dead woman's husband, who has a fractured neck.

...In the neighbouring Nusseirat refugee camp's Peace Street, where Tariq Akil, 14, was killed, his uncle, Usama Akil, told us he was fleeing because one of his relatives is a wanted militant. The entire family had abandoned their house and run, but the boy was the last to leave. As he ran up the street, a tank opened fire... The disturbing evidence was lying a few metres up the road: the twisted metal remains of a tank shell. Beside them great rents were blasted out of the asphalt road, and through a gaping hole in the wall you could see through into Rajab Abu Hamdi's living room. The Israeli army fired a tank shell into a civilian house... The deaths came a day after a boy aged nine was shot dead during the funeral of two militants killed in the south of the Gaza Strip. Palestinians said he was shot by Israeli soldiers after a group of children started throwing stones at a settlement. The Israeli army said the soldiers had come under fire.

----------------------------------------------------

http://www.sptimes.com/2003/03/02/State/Fort_Florida.shtml

The U.S. government needed M-16A1 No. 4814917 to kill the enemy in Vietnam. But by the summer of 1972, when workers at Colt's Manufacturing Co. fitted the parts and stamped the rifle with its serial number, the war was winding down... On the night of Dec. 16, 1999, No. 4814917 finally saw action. The place: a suburban office park north of Orlando. The target: a suicidal, cocaine-addled former minor-league baseball pitcher named Jay Scott Duff. The shooter: Seminole County sheriff's Sgt. Gene Fry. "It was a massacre of bullets," said Alice Ann-Marie Kenney, manager of the office park, who cowered with her 14-year-old godson as stray bullets from several deputies' guns pierced cars and businesses around them. Duff, 33, was killed. The battle rifle Fry fired that night is among more than 20,000 weapons that have cascaded out of military warehouses and into police arsenals nationwide as part of a little-known partnership between the federal and state governments.

Since 1990, the programs have led to the creation of dozens of police armies around the country outfitted with machine guns, sniper rifles, armored personnel carriers, helicopters and grenade launchers. But while those civilian agencies are increasingly equipped like the military, they operate with just a fraction of the rules the military follows to keep weapons from falling into the wrong hands and to ensure their safe, proper use.

A St. Petersburg Times examination of Florida's participation in the military surplus system found lapses at every level: An M-16 capable of firing 30 rounds a half-mile in the blink of an eye was stolen last fall from a Miami SWAT officer... In Jasper, a town with three traffic lights near the Georgia border, the Police Department has as many M-16s (seven) as officers... The rifles are stored in a gun rack in a sergeant's office. Some local agencies inflated crime rates to get military weapons. For example, the Panhandle town of Lynn Haven (pop. 12,451) reported a 900 percent rise in armed robberies, without telling regulators that the raw number of robberies rose from one to 10, then fell to one again just as quickly. The surplus bonanza has quietly turned the Orange County Sheriff's Office into Florida's biggest military police army -- with 216 former military assault rifles and 16 surplus grenade launchers. Nearby Marion County created an air force with 23 free military helicopters, two twin turboprop airplanes and other equipment -- originally valued at $41-million -- before its former sheriff came under scrutiny for trading surplus chopper parts.

...The spread of military equipment is not just spurring a local arms race. It is also producing a military police culture that critics say increases hazards to innocent civilians. The "militarization of Mayberry," Peter Kraska, a criminal justice professor at Eastern Kentucky University, calls it... Defense Department officials, while acknowledging some shortcomings, say the weapons disbursement program is necessary to help fight crime and terrorism. "This program provides equipment that many of these agencies would never be able to afford otherwise," said Fred Baillie, who oversees the program for the Pentagon's Defense Logistics Agency.

...While the equipment originally cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, police essentially get the stuff for free, paying only transportation costs and a state administrative fee. For example, an M-16 that cost federal taxpayers about $400 might go to a police department for less than $5.

...The Times could not trace the disposition of all the surplus items or determine how many Florida agencies have inaccurate or incomplete inventory records for their military arsenals. The reason: at least 24 police and sheriff's departments, including the Hernando Sheriff's Office and the Tampa Police Department, said homeland defense laws enacted in Florida in 2001 allow them to keep all or part of their records secret... After inquiries from the Times, the Monroe County Sheriff's Office vowed to buy gun safes for its military weapons. Others said they would review security systems. But the Miami Police Department plans no internal investigation of theft[s], said Sgt. Robert Baker, the SWAT team's trainer... To Baker, more alarming than the theft was the way 35 M-16s made their way to Miami. "I received them through cardboard boxes through the U.S. mail," he said. "I was stunned."

...About this report: Through a public records request, the Times obtained documents from the state Department of Management Services showing all requests and approvals of surplus military weapons transfers. Times reporters also reviewed forms showing the serial numbers of former military weapons registered with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The Times then made public records requests of all law enforcement agencies that participated in the program, asking for documents related to how they deployed the weapons, where they stored them and how they trained officers to use them. At first, most agencies were responsive. But after the Jacksonville Airport Police and Pensacola Police Department raised homeland defense objections, many agencies followed their lead.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30933-2003Mar2?language=printer

MANILA -- During a briefing last month at the Philippine presidential palace that lasted less than an hour, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and top aides were told by senior U.S. officials of a Pentagon plan to send U.S. Special Forces troops into the southern Philippines to attack the Abu Sayyaf, a militant Islamic rebel group... At the Feb. 4 briefing, the officials said, both sides believed they had an agreement. Not least important was language: The Filipinos knew that because of the risks soldiers would face, the United States had to call the undertaking an "operation." The Americans knew that because of political and constitutional constraints, the Filipinos had to cast it as "training" and an "exercise," the officials recalled. But last week, the plan was put on hold... Officials described a series of missed signals and apparent misunderstandings that led to an embarrassing public reversal. The Pentagon announced Friday that the plan was being frozen.

Some sources questioned whether Philippine officials had given unwarranted assurances to U.S. military planners... Others, including some U.S. officials, asserted that the Pentagon failed to grasp the political and cultural sensitivities in the Philippines, a former U.S. colony... U.S. officials believed the Philippine government supported the plan they were designing. Philippine officials believed that as long as the plan could be considered a training exercise, they would be on safe legal and political ground ... [But] a Pentagon spokesman in Washington [announced that]... the United States would send 350 Special Forces troops to the southern island of Jolo, an Abu Sayyaf stronghold. They would be joined by 2,700 support troops. "The intent," the spokesman said, "is for U.S. troops to actively participate" in the operation. He made clear that combat would be involved.

Reaction was swift and fierce. Lawmakers in Manila denounced the plan as an affront to Philippine sovereignty... Philippine government officials derided the Pentagon statements as unauthorized "leaks."

...The plan was modeled after last year's exercise on Basilan island, about 70 miles northeast of Jolo (pronounced Holo)... The mission, called Balikatan, or shoulder-to-shoulder, drew praise from residents not only because it vanquished the rebels but also because U.S. troops built roads and wells and delivered medicine. The Philippine government asked the U.S. officials last year if they could replicate the exercise on Jolo... The understanding, U.S. officials said, was that the mission would be similar to Balikatan, but would involve U.S. troops to advise at the platoon level of 20 to 30 soldiers. "It clearly was understood that this meant a higher degree of exposure to hostile fire" for U.S. troops, an American official said... "Maybe this was their perception that this was a combat operation, but for our part it was clear this remains assistance," said a Philippine government official who was at the briefing.

...Rumsfeld expressed optimism that there will be activity in the Philippines this year resembling the Balikatan mission. "I'm absolutely certain of that," he said, adding that such activity would not violate the Philippine constitution.