In this issue:

Republican Congressman Opposes War with Iraq

DLC Claims It Has Given the Real Leadership for War with Iraq

Gulf War Vets Call for Rumsfeld To Resign

Pfaff Compares U.S. National Security Strategy to Communist Manifesto

Gore Attempts To Revive Himself, 'New Economy'; Blasts Bush

Savage Budget Cuts Loom as Virginia Deficit Deepens

Lack of Federal Public Health Intervention Means Mosquito Epidemics Spreading

Bush Administration Bioterror Advisers Urge Mass Smallpox Vaccination

Jesse Jackson Campaigns for 'Lula' Da Silva in Brazil

From the Vol.1 No.31 issue of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published October 7, 2002

UNITED STATES NEWS DIGEST

Republican Congressman Opposes War with Iraq

Freshman Congressman Bob Simmons (R-Conn), who won two bronze stars during a 19-month tour as an Army officer in Vietnam, told Associated Press in a telephone interview Oct. 4 that "I'm painfully aware of the waste of war—waste of human life—and destruction of property."

Perhaps in an attempt to buy him off earlier this week, Vice President Dick Cheney held a $150,000 fundraiser for Simmons' re-election campaign. Cheney used the opportunity to peddle the Administration's spin that the U.S. must "take whatever steps necessary to defend our freedom and our country."

Afterward, however, Simmons said that he did not see a "clear and present danger," because he did not see that Iraq had both the intent and capability to attack the U.S. "It's my understanding ... that capability is not there at this point," Simmons said, adding that "It could be within a year or two, maybe five years."

DLC Claims It Has Given the Real Leadership for War with Iraq

A Democratic Leadership Council press release entitled "A Time for Resolve," dated Oct. 3 and appearing on the DLC website, proves to be a boastful claim that it is DLC members who are taking the lead in a war against Iraq: "Sen. Joe Lieberman (CT) and House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt (MO), took the lead in ensuring bipartisan support for an approach that will give the President the authority he needs to take the next steps toward Iraq, while reflecting the belief of the American people that we should seek the broadest possible international support."

The DLC argues against the proposal of Senate Armed Service Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich) "that would require specific UN approval before U.S. troops could be committed to military action." Instead, it argues for the United States and United Kingdom to act alone without UN backing, if necessary. In this regard, it mentions President Bill Clinton's speech to the British Labour Party conference, where he said that the United States and United Kingdom might have to act alone against Iraq without any additional UN mandate, as they did in Kosovo.

The entire Clinton speech is posted on the web, and the relevant section reads:

"The United Nations is not what I hope it will be in five, 10 or 20 years. There are still people who vote in the United Nations based on the sort of old-fashioned national self-interest views they held in the Cold War or even long before.... I take it everybody in this room supports what Prime Minister Blair and I did in Kosovo [Applause]. It was a clear and present emergency, you had a million people being driven from their homes, but in the end, even though we had all the Muslim world for it and most developing nations for it, all of NATO for it, we could not get a UN resolution because of the historic ties of the Serbs to the Russians. So we went anyway, and as soon as the conflict was over the Russians came in and did a very responsible job of participating with the United States in an international UN sanction peacekeeping environment. Why? Why did that happen? Because the UN is still becoming."

So, apart from being willing to bypass the UN entirely in the war against Iraq, DLCers give honorable mention and suggests consideration of "some of the arguments for refining the resolution being made by members of both parties," notably Senators Joe Biden (D-Del.) and Dick Lugar (R-Ind.). This draft resolution, which still gives the President war powers, is expected to be introduced into the House by House New Democrat Co-Chair Rep. Jim Davis (D-Fla).

Gulf War Vets Call for Rumsfeld To Resign

The American Gulf War Veterans Association (AGWVA) issued a press release on Oct. 2, that "called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld." Reference was made to the questioning of the Secretary by Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) on the transfer of biological warfare components during the U.S. "tilt toward Iraq."

AGWVA writes in the release that: "There is no disputing the evidence that the U.S. provided bacteria and viruses as evidenced by Senate Report 103-900, United States Dual-Use Exports to Iraq and Their Impact On the Health of the Persian Gulf War Veterans, dated May 25, 1994, chaired by Sen. Donald Riegle (D-MI) of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee." This report notes the transfer of Bacillus Antracis (anthrax) and Clostridium botulinum as pathogens shipped to Iraq in the 1980s.

Concludes the AGWVA: "If our Secretary of Defense is unaware of the sales of biological materials to a country with which we are about to go to war, or if he is in denial over the fact that these sales occurred, AGWVA believes he represents a clear and present danger to the lives of our military, our country, and the American people and should be considered a very serious threat to the national security [emphasis added]."

Pfaff Compares U.S. National Security Strategy to Communist Manifesto

Writing in the International Herald Tribune Oct. 3, on "A Radical Rethink of International Relations," William Pfaff took aim at the "new" National Security Strategy paper issued by the Bush Administration. His basic point is that the NSS repudiates the principles of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which have since established the foundations for international law. Excerpts follow:

The NSS "is an implicit American denunciation of the modern state order that has governed international relations since the Westphalian Settlement of 1648.... These principles of sovereignty and equality have been generally recognized ever since, if often in the breach. The consensus ... has been that without acknowledging national sovereignty as the foundation of law, the world risked anarchic power struggles...."

The NSS "is thus a radical document, whether Condoleezza Rice, reputedly its main author, understands this or not.

"There was another declaration of this kind, made 154 years ago: the Communist Manifesto. It denounced the existing international order of monarchies and 'bourgeois' republics in the name of a new and superior legitimacy, that of the proletariat....

"After the Russian Revolution, the new Soviet Union ... declared all other governments illegitimate....

"Karl Marx's 'scientific' interpretation of historical processes ... claimed that history is driven by the struggle of the classes, and that only workers' states were ultimately legitimate....

"Now the United States has stated that it will no longer respect the principle of absolute state sovereignty. It does not do so by substituting a new universalist and allegedly liberating principle, but to achieve American national security, to which it implicitly subordinates the security of every other nation.

"It says that if the U.S. government unilaterally determines that a state is a future threat to America, or that it harbors a group considered a potential threat, the United States will preemptively intervene in that state to eliminate that threat, if necessary by accomplishing 'regime change.' ....

"The United States has, during its two and a quarter centuries of existence, been one of the nations most active in building up the structure of international law that the Bush Administration now is engaged in knocking down.

"The Charter of the United Nations ... The 'threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state' is outlawed by the [UN] charter, and 'preemptive war' was specifically treated as a war crime at the Nuremberg trials...."

Gore Attempts To Revive Himself, 'New Economy'; Blasts Bush

With the mid-term Congressional elections just five weeks away, Al Gore on Oct. 2, speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington, launched a DLC rant against Bush's economic policy, calling on the President to meet with Congress to reassess what the U.S. can afford, amid current economic "reality"—without mentioning, of course, the global systemic breakdown. The funding priorities, Gore said, should be homeland security, a war on Iraq, and a short-term "stimulus"—extended unemployment benefits and aid for small businesses.

Praising the "success" of Clinton-era economic policies, Gore promoted genocide-causing "sustainable growth," as well as the moribund "New Economy," which he claimed "is still a potential source of dynamism."

Some unnamed members of Bush's economics team, he warned, should be replaced—because they don't inspire confidence in the markets.

Savage Budget Cuts Loom as Virginia Deficit Deepens

To cope with the state's widening budget gap (the deficit has grown in the past few months from a few hundred million dollars to $2 billion, and still growing), Virginia Governor Mark Warner is preparing cutbacks in public schools, state colleges (fewer classes, higher tuition), agricultural services (such as science aid and meat inspections), and employment at agencies such as the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Anxiety about the sudden force of expected cuts is said to be very high among state agencies and educators.

Lack of Federal Public Health Intervention Means Mosquito Epidemics Spreading

Five months after the West Nile virus epidemic began to spread, there is still no Federal public health policy other than "monitoring"—and no move to restore spraying with DDT, as Lyndon LaRouche has demanded of President Bush. The Northern Virginia and Maryland epicenters of the epidemic are examples of the result. In both areas, West Nile is still spreading rapidly among horses, birds, and other animals, and cases are multiplying among humans; the fourth and fifth human deaths in Northern Virginia have just occurred—an elderly woman and a 54-year-old woman.

In addition, mosquitoes have now been found to test positive for malaria in three locations in Virginia counties near the Maryland border, a "shocking event we have never seen before," according to the private pest-control company hired by Loudoun County to do the testing, as quoted in the Sept. 29 Washington Post. The testing company's officials estimated that anopheles mosquitoes carrying malaria had probably been present for some time, and more widely, but went undetected because the malaria test had never been done until two teenagers were diagnosed with malaria in Northern Virginia in August.

Yet there has been no discussion of general spraying of mosquito populations, with DDT or anything else, by officials of either Maryland or Virginia. Their strategy is apparently to wait for a hard frost to kill most adult mosquitoes; and then to track and test larval populations remaining in drains, etc., and selectively spray the larvae. That may give the epidemics a good month more to spread, and kill more people. The reason is not stated, but not hard to find: Virginia's and Maryland's ballooning, multi-billion-dollar budget shortfalls, and a gap which may reach $100 million in Loudoun County, where the greatest number of infections and deaths have occurred. Without Federal public health regulation and assistance, state and local officials are paralyzed.

Bush Administration Bioterror Advisers Urge Mass Smallpox Vaccination

The Bush Administration's top bioterrorism advisers are urging a program of voluntary mass smallpox vaccination be undertaken as soon as the vaccine becomes available. The program would start with health-care workers, expand to emergency services workers, and then to the general population by 2004. The problem, however, is that no one knows how great a risk there actually is of a bioterror attack using smallpox, and therefore, there is no way to balance that risk against the risk of the vaccine. Department of Health and Human Services studies suggest that, if 200 million people were vaccinated, 3,000 could suffer life-threatening complications with 200-400 deaths. Another 160,000 could suffer serious non-life-threatening side effects.

The difficulty arises from the fact that no one in the U.S. has been vaccinated since 1972, and the data are "antiquated," because the population has changed considerably since the last studies were done in the 1960s. Part of the problem is that as many as 50 million people can't be vaccinated, because their immune systems are already compromised as a result of conditions ranging from chemotherapy to AIDS infection.

Jesse Jackson Campaigns for 'Lula' Da Silva in Brazil

The ubiquitous Rev. Jesse Jackson has been campaigning for leftist Presidential candidate "Lula" da Silva in Brazil. His assignment was reported to be to line up Protestant votes for Lula, whose historic base is the Roman Catholic liberation theology movement. So, Jesse told a congregation at the First Baptist Church in the outskirts of Sao Paulo, that Lula has been "touched by God ... I was with Martin Luther King...and with Nelson Mandela ... and they were inspired by a special spirit. And the same special spirit ... is inspiring Lula." Since Lula was a union leader for years, Jackson went on about how "Christ was a cabinet-worker. If he lived today, he would be a leader of the cabinet-workers' union"! Following this, Jesse and radical Argentine labor leader Victor de Genero, an activist with Teddy Goldsmith's World Social Forum crew, joined Lula at a giant 200,000 person rally in Sao Paulo.

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