by Rupe | Nov 24, 2005 | Military-Political
Reuters
Thursday, November 24, 2005
NAIROBI, Nov. 23 — Increased naval military maneuvers and submarine sonars in the world’s oceans are threatening dolphins, whales and porpoises that depend on sound to survive, a United Nations report said Wednesday.
The report concluded that the use of powerful military sonar is harming the ability of 71 types of cetaceans — whales, dolphins and porpoises — to communicate, navigate and hunt.
The report, by the U.N. Environment Program and the Convention on Migratory Species, said species such as the beluga whale, Blainville’s beaked whale and the goosebeak whale are at risk.
Researchers found that a stranding of 12 goosebeak whales in the Ionian Sea in the 1990s coincided with NATO tests of an acoustic submarine-detection system.
Other goosebeaks were stranded off of the Bahamas in 2000, and experts link that to military tests.
Tests on the bodies of seven whales that died near Gran Canaria in 2002 found hemorrhages and inner-ear damage, which experts said was caused by high-intensity, low-frequency sonar used in the area.
In October, a coalition of environmental groups sued the U.S. Navy over sonar, saying the ear-splitting sounds violated environmental protection laws.
The Navy said it was studying the problem but said sonar is necessary for national defense.
Animal-protection groups have lobbied to restrict sonar, saying the sound blasts disorient the sound-dependent creatures and cause bleeding from the eyes and ears.
There are no laws governing noise pollution in the oceans, but western governments, considered largely responsible with their increased military presence in the seas, say they need more research before taking action.
Charles Galbraith, a senior wildlife adviser to the British government, said, “The issue is still in a relatively grey area in terms of scientific proof, and we need to do more research before the government can review its defense systems.”
by Rupe | Nov 24, 2005 | Military-Political
By DAVID S. CLOUD
Published: November 24, 2005
WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 – The Pentagon is planning to make modest troop reductions after next month’s elections in Iraq and, if security conditions improve, could begin reductions next summer that would drop the American force level below 100,000 by late next year, Defense Department officials said Wednesday.
Troop reductions of this magnitude have been discussed by military commanders in the past, and it is not clear to what extent the most recent statements by various officials reflect the pressure on the Bush administration from Congress and even some Iraqi leaders to begin laying out withdrawal options. Officials said that no decisions had been made and that tentative plans for troop cuts could be abandoned if the insurgency gained strength or Iraqi security forces did not progress as quickly as their American trainers hoped.
“There is planning that is looking at, if the conditions are such that there could be reduction of the U.S. presence, how we could do that,” said a Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman. “We are also looking at contingency planning where you need to increase troop strength in Iraq.”
In recent days, President Bush and his top advisers have all rejected calls to set a timetable for withdrawal, saying that to do so would embolden the insurgents. But they have talked, if only vaguely, about the possibility of reducing the numbers of troops. “I suspect that American forces are not going to be needed in the numbers that they are for that much longer,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview on CNN on Tuesday.
Mr. Whitman said that “the current thinking” is that the number of American troops, which is now over 150,000, would fall to around 138,000, where it was before a buildup to help provide security for the referendum on the constitution in October and the coming elections on Dec. 15 to choose a new government.
Officials have repeatedly emphasized that any decisions on troop reductions depend on whether security conditions worsen or whether Iraq’s new government demands quicker reductions. For at least the past year and a half officials have held out the prospect of troop reductions, but those reductions have not occurred.
A major decision point will be reached next spring, the officials said, after the new Iraqi government forms. Assuming security conditions allow it, the troop levels could drop by 20,000 to 30,000 more soldiers by then, the officials said.
A military officer in Iraq said Wednesday that the pace of the drawdown would be driven by how many Iraqi units were able to reach a readiness rating of level two, under the military’s scale of one to four. Level two means an Iraqi unit is capable of taking the lead on military operations but still needs American military support, as opposed to level one, in which an Iraqi unit can operate independently.
“The key is level two,” the officer said. At that level, an Iraqi unit “will be able to control a local battle space just fine” as long as it receives continued American help with logistics, intelligence and transportation, he added. An increasing number of level-two Iraqi units in coming months will make it possible for a significant number of American combat troops to withdraw, he said, declining to specify how many.
Of the roughly 120 Iraqi Army battalions that are trained and conducting operations, roughly 40 are at level two, Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who commanded the training effort in Iraq until earlier this year, said in a speech this month. The readiness of most police units, which some officials say are at least as important as the military in achieving stability, is still far below that of the Iraqi Army.
Senior Army officials remain concerned that pressure for withdrawals will drive officials in Washington to reduce the American troop levels before the Iraqis are ready to handle the primary role in fighting the insurgency. An Army official said that planners were discussing the option of keeping a brigade of 2,500 to 3,000 soldiers in Kuwait, so the unit could be rushed back to Iraq if security conditions worsened.
by Rupe | Nov 23, 2005 | Military-Political
The constitution, originally written by the United States after the defeat of Japan in 1945, would continue to reject war as an option. But the new draft would remove limitations on the country’s 240,000-member Self-Defense Forces, which have been defined as being strictly limited to defending Japan’s home islands.
The new military status would explicitly authorize Japanese participation in foreign peacekeeping efforts, although the country has sent small troop contingents on such missions, including about 600 soldiers now serving in a noncombat capacity with the United States in Iraq. The constitutional draft would broaden the government’s ability to send forces overseas; such an order now requires special legislation in parliament.
The revision also opens the door to a broader interpretation of the constitution, permitting what some call “collective self-defense” — or coming to the military aid of other countries. The most likely beneficiary would be Japan’s closest ally, the United States, which has urged Japan to adopt such measures. Changes in Japan’s constitutional status would have major significance in the region, particularly in the event of a conflict between China and the United States over Taiwan.
“In addition to activities needed for self-defense . . . the defense forces can take part in efforts to maintain international peace and security under international cooperation, as well as to keep fundamental public order in our country,” the draft says.
The revised constitution, released on the 50th anniversary of the LDP’s founding, faces major hurdles and may not be approved for at least a year. Parliamentary approval requires a two-thirds vote by both the lower and upper houses, and the debate is likely to be highly emotional. New Komeito, the LDP’s coalition partner since 1999, favors new clauses and refinements, rather than major changes, in Article 9 of the constitution, which deals with the military.
After parliamentary approval, the draft would also require majority approval in a national referendum.
The release of the draft by the LDP, which has governed the country for most of the post-World War II era, marked a significant turning point in the crusade to give Japan a higher international profile, commensurate with its status as the world’s second-largest economy.
“Today, a major step was taken toward the revision of the constitution,” Taku Yamasaki, an LDP lawmaker and adviser to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, told reporters.
The draft maintains language that defines the emperor of Japan, once revered as a divine being, as a symbol of the state. But the constitutional revision waters down the concept of separation of church and state, which would make it easier for sitting prime ministers to visit Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine honoring Japan’s military dead, including World War II criminals. Koizumi’s annual visits to Yasukuni have caused outrage in China and South Korea.
Officials in both those countries have expressed concern about the proposed constitutional language on the military, noting the rise to power of nationalist Japanese political leaders and a new sense of patriotism among the populace.
On Tuesday, the official New China News Agency described Japan’s revision as a document “designed to provide legal support for its ambition of playing a greater political role on the global stage and of boosting the defense force’s status.”
by Rupe | Nov 18, 2005 | Military-Political
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Iran began converting a new batch of uranium at a key nuclear facility yesterday, rejecting international pleas to suspend such work and dismissing a new offer — sponsored by Russia — that was designed to ease tensions over the country’s nuclear ambitions, U.S. and European officials said.
The work at the facility in the town of Isfahan does not bring Iran significantly closer to nuclear capability. But the decision to convert additional uranium — a key ingredient for fueling nuclear energy or weapons programs — was seen as a provocative move just days after Iranian officials reacted coolly to the Russian offer.
Coming at a sensitive time, the Iranian moves threatened to derail efforts to set up a meeting next week between European and Iranian officials that was meant to reinvigorate negotiations on hold since the summer, diplomats said. Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is leading an investigation of Iran’s nuclear program, also canceled a planned trip to Tehran, said officials in Vienna, where the agency is based.
R. Nicholas Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, was to travel to London today to meet with his European and Russian counterparts about next steps in an effort to increase diplomatic pressure on Tehran. The 35-member IAEA board meets in Vienna on Nov. 24 to discuss the status of Iran’s program. For more than two years, the Bush administration has been unable to persuade allies to send the Iranian nuclear case to the U.N. Security Council, where the country could face economic sanctions for failing to disclose a nuclear energy program built in secret over 18 years.
Iran has said the program was designed to produce nuclear energy, not bombs. But the scale of the program and its clandestine nature have fueled suspicions that Tehran is using it to conceal a weapons effort. The Bush administration and several key allies have said they want Iran to forgo plans to complete a uranium enrichment facility, the most sensitive aspect of the nuclear fuel cycle, because it would give Iran the capacity to produce bomb-grade uranium. The Iranians have said they will not give up that part of the program, which they are allowed to have as signatories to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
One of the key countries that has so far resisted sending Iran’s case to the Security Council is Russia, which has a close economic partnership with Tehran and helped build one of the country’s larger nuclear power reactors.
Igor Ivanov, a senior Kremlin adviser and the country’s former foreign minister, offered Iran a deal that would have allowed it to continue operating the Isfahan facility as long as Iran’s enrichment effort remained on hold. According to officials who have been briefed on the offer, the converted uranium from Isfahan would have been shipped to Russia for enrichment and then sent back to Iran to fuel the Russian-built reactor. Russia offered Iran a 35 percent financial stake in the Russian end of the enrichment process and suggested the deal remain in effect for several years while Iran continued to negotiate a broad-ranging deal with the West.
Iranian officials initially rejected the deal but then offered cool public statements saying they would consider the proposal. At the end of the Ivanov trip, the Iranians reportedly agreed to delay additional work at Isfahan until after the Vienna meeting and committed to a meeting next week with European and Russian officials.
But yesterday, the Iranians began converting more uranium at the Isfahan facility. Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the IAEA, said agency inspectors were at the facility at the time. The Bush administration is hoping the move may persuade Russia to vote with other IAEA board members to send Iran’s case to the United Nations.
David Albright, a nuclear expert and the president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said Iran’s move at Isfahan was “mostly symbolic” but the Iranians will “end up with a larger stock” of converted uranium that they can store away for the day when their own enrichment facility is completed. If that happens, Iran could wind up with enough bomb-grade uranium for as many as eight weapons, he said.
by Rupe | Nov 9, 2005 | Military-Political
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: November 8, 2005
WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 – In an apparent slip, a top American intelligence official has revealed at a public conference what has long been secret: the amount of money the United States spends on its spy agencies.
At an intelligence conference in San Antonio last week, Mary Margaret Graham, a 27-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency and now the deputy director of national intelligence for collection, said the annual intelligence budget was $44 billion.
The number was reported Monday in U.S. News and World Report, whose national security reporter, Kevin Whitelaw, was among the hundreds of people in attendance during Ms. Graham’s talk.
“I thought, ‘I can’t believe she said that,’ ” Mr. Whitelaw said on Monday. “The government has spent so much time and energy arguing that it needs to remain classified.”
The figure itself comes as no great shock; most news reports in the last couple of years have estimated the budget at $40 billion. But the fact that Ms. Graham would say it in public is a surprise, because the government has repeatedly gone to court to keep the current intelligence budget and even past budgets as far back as the 1940’s from being disclosed.
Carl Kropf, a spokesman for the office of the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, said Ms. Graham would not comment. Mr. Kropf declined to say whether the figure, which Ms. Graham gave last Monday at an annual conference on intelligence gathered from satellite and other photographs, was accurate, or whether her revelation was accidental.
Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, expressed amused satisfaction that the budget figure had slipped out.
“It is ironic,” Mr. Aftergood said. “We sued the C.I.A. four times for this kind of information and lost. You can’t get it through legal channels.”
Only for a few past years has the budget been disclosed. After Mr. Aftergood’s group first sued for the budget figure under the Freedom of Information Act in 1997, George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, decided to make public that year’s budget, $26.6 billion. The next year Mr. Tenet did the same, revealing that the 1998 fiscal year budget was $26.7 billion.
But in 1999, Mr. Tenet reversed that policy, and budgets since then have remained classified with the support of the courts. Last year, a federal judge refused to order the C.I.A. to release its budget totals for 1947 to 1970 – except for the 1963 budget, which Mr. Aftergood showed had already been revealed elsewhere.
In court and in response to inquiries, intelligence officials have argued that disclosing the total spying budget would create pressure to reveal more spending details, and that such revelations could aid the nation’s adversaries.
That argument has been rejected by many members of Congress and outside experts, who note that most of the Defense Department budget is published in exhaustive detail without evident harm.
The national commission on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, recommended that both the overall intelligence budget and spending by individual agencies be made public “in order to combat the secrecy and complexity” it found was harming national security.
“The taxpayers deserve to know what they’re spending for intelligence,” said Lee H. Hamilton, the former congressman who was vice chairman of the commission.
Even more important, Mr. Hamilton said, public discussion of the total budgets of intelligence agencies would encourage Congress to exercise “robust oversight.”
The debate over whether the intelligence budget should be secret dates to at least the 1970’s, said Loch K. Johnson, an intelligence historian who worked for the Church Committee investigation of the intelligence agencies by the Senate in the mid-1970’s. Mr. Johnson said the real reason for secrecy might have less to do with protecting intelligence sources and methods than with protecting the bureaucracy.
“Maybe there’s a fear that if the American people knew what was being spent on intelligence, they’d be even more upset at intelligence failures,” Mr. Johnson said.
by Rupe | Nov 8, 2005 | Military-Political
White House Counsel to Give ‘Refresher’ Course
By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 5, 2005; Page A02
President Bush has ordered White House staff to attend mandatory briefings beginning next week on ethical behavior and the handling of classified material after the indictment last week of a senior administration official in the CIA leak probe.
According to a memo sent to aides yesterday, Bush expects all White House staff to adhere to the “spirit as well as the letter” of all ethics laws and rules. As a result, “the White House counsel’s office will conduct a series of presentations next week that will provide refresher lectures on general ethics rules, including the rules of governing the protection of classified information,” according to the memo, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post by a senior White House aide.
The mandatory ethics primer is the first step Bush plans to take in coming weeks in response to the CIA leak probe that led to the indictment of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff, and which still threatens Karl Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff. Libby was indicted last week in connection with the two-year investigation. He resigned when the indictment was announced and on Thursday pleaded not guilty to charges of lying to federal investigators and a grand jury about his conversations with reporters.
A senior aide said Bush decided to mandate the ethics course during private meetings last weekend with Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and counsel Harriet Miers. Miers’s office will conduct the ethics briefings.
The meetings come as Bush faces increasing pressure from Democrats to revoke a security clearance for Rove as punishment for Rove’s role in unmasking to reporters a CIA operative whose husband was critical of the White House’s prewar assessment of Iraq’s weapons capabilities. The five-count indictment against Libby maintains that other government officials were aware of, if not involved in, leaking the identity of Valerie Plame to the media.
Bush’s domestic woes followed him to a meeting of Western Hemisphere leaders in Argentina yesterday, where he sidestepped questions on whether Rove will keep his job.
Speaking to reporters before the official opening of the two-day Summit of the Americas, Bush refused to discuss Rove’s future while the probe is ongoing.
“We’re going through a very serious investigation,” Bush said. “And I . . . have told you before that I’m not going to discuss the investigation until it’s completed.”
Bush also refused to address a question about whether he owes the American people an apology for his administration’s assertions that Rove and Libby were not involved in leaking Plame’s name, when it later became clear that they were.
Plame is the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat who became a vocal critic of the administration’s rationale for invading Iraq.
“It’s a serious investigation, and it’s an important investigation. But it’s not over yet,” Bush said. “I think it’s important for the American people to know that I understand my job is to set clear goals and deal with the problems we face.”
The case has apparently helped erode public confidence in Bush’s integrity. Among those responding to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, 40 percent said they viewed the president as honest and trustworthy — a drop of 13 percentage points in the past 18 months.
Half of those surveyed said they believed Rove did something wrong in the case, and about 6 in 10 said Rove should resign. But Bush attempted to wave away those findings yesterday.
“I understand that there is a preoccupation by polls by some,” the president said. “The way you earn credibility with the American people is to declare an agenda that everybody can understand, an agenda that relates to their lives, and get the job done.”
Some senior aides have privately discussed whether it is politically tenable for Rove to remain in the White House even if he is not charged. Others raised the possibility of Rove apologizing for his role, especially for telling White House spokesman Scott McClellan and Bush that he was not involved in the leak. McClellan relayed Rove’s denial to the public.
A senior Bush aide said the “mandatory sessions on classified material is a result of a directive by the president in light of the [CIA] investigation.”
Next week’s meeting is for West Wing aides with security clearance, which allows them to view and discuss sensitive or classified material. Information about Plame was classified. Rove is among those aides who must attend.
“There will be no exceptions,” the memo states.
Staff writer Michael A. Fletcher contributed to this report from Argentina.
My Thoughts: Pretty pointless at this juncture. Not sure if there was much credibility to be had in the first place. Now that it is out that they are not just a bunch of Bible toting idiots, but they are also endangering the lives of Americans, I think they, the President and his entire cabinet, should be indicted and thrown out of office..
