Op-Ed Columnist: The Trojan Horse:
"An aging population and rising medical costs will eventually require the nation to provide Medicare with more money or to cut benefits, or both. Meanwhile, there are demands for a new benefit: a gradual shift away from hospital treatment and toward the use of drugs has turned the program's failure to cover prescription drugs into a gaping hole."
A Congressional conference is now trying to agree on prescription drug legislation. But beware of politicians bearing gifts — the bill will contain measures that have nothing to do with prescription drugs, and a lot to do with hostility to Medicare as we know it. Indeed, it may turn out to be a Trojan horse that finally allows conservative ideologues, who have unsuccessfully laid siege to Medicare since the days of Barry Goldwater, to breach its political defenses.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/14/opinion/14KRUG.html
Friday, November 14, 2003
Justices Mull Twist in Law on Age Bias:
"When Congress made it illegal 36 years ago for employers to discriminate on the basis of age, it was clear that older workers were protected from discriminatory treatment that favored those who were younger. The question in a Supreme Court argument on Wednesday was whether the Age Discrimination in Employment Act also meant the reverse: if Congress in addition meant to prohibit policies that favor older workers over younger ones."
The plain language of the statute suggests one interpretation, while the context in which the law was enacted in 1967 suggests the opposite. An employer shall not discriminate against someone "because of such individual's age," the law reads, without specifying "older age" or "younger age." The law's protection begins at age 40 and has no upper limit.
"The real issue here is whether this court should add an additional element" and treat the law as if it read "because of their older age," Mark W. Biggerman, a lawyer for a group of younger workers at General Dynamics plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania, told the court. He urged the court to avoid a judicial rewriting of the statute. "Congress's goal here was to make age a neutral factor in employment," Mr. Biggerman said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/13/national/13SCOT.html
"When Congress made it illegal 36 years ago for employers to discriminate on the basis of age, it was clear that older workers were protected from discriminatory treatment that favored those who were younger. The question in a Supreme Court argument on Wednesday was whether the Age Discrimination in Employment Act also meant the reverse: if Congress in addition meant to prohibit policies that favor older workers over younger ones."
The plain language of the statute suggests one interpretation, while the context in which the law was enacted in 1967 suggests the opposite. An employer shall not discriminate against someone "because of such individual's age," the law reads, without specifying "older age" or "younger age." The law's protection begins at age 40 and has no upper limit.
"The real issue here is whether this court should add an additional element" and treat the law as if it read "because of their older age," Mark W. Biggerman, a lawyer for a group of younger workers at General Dynamics plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania, told the court. He urged the court to avoid a judicial rewriting of the statute. "Congress's goal here was to make age a neutral factor in employment," Mr. Biggerman said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/13/national/13SCOT.html
A Spam Law That Slams Small Business - TechUpdate - ZDNet:
"WRONG TARGET. The bill that has just been signed into law in California, and the legislator who sponsored it, makes no distinction between these practices or their outcome. Any unsolicited e-mail is considered spam, and the sender can be hauled into court and fined $1000 for each one sent. While that's a joke to offshore spammers who send millions of offensive e-mails a day with impunity, it's a very scary prospect for a small business, even when their campaigns include only a few thousand e-mails.
When I asked Sen. Murray, the bill's sponsor, about this lack of distinction, and how it might hurt small businesses trying to generate leads, his response was astonishing. 'The only legitimate presales process is to have a business relationship with the recipient or to have had them request information.' He is also quoted in a recent New York Times article as saying, 'If you go out and rent a list of e-mail addresses, by definition you are not a legitimate business.'
I guess startups -- which by definition have no previous business relationship with customers -- are less legitimate than, say, banks, that have thousands of previous business relationships. Tell that to all of the successful technology businesses in Silicon Valley that built themselves up by using targeted, effective marketing -- without resorting to the kinds of tactics that have offended the public. In the interest of stemming a very serious, and very public problem, our legislators are responding with ham-fisted laws that do nothing to solve the problem and hurt small businesses in the process. So what can we expect as a result?
RIGHTEOUS IGNORANCE. Small businesses will pull back from e-mail marketing, eliminating perhaps the one respectful, relevant e-mail out of every 1,000 pornographic or offensive e-mails you receive. Their marketing costs will go up dramatically, as they have to pursue more expensive and less responsive marketing channels. Large businesses will benefit, because their large customer base conveniently falls into a category that allows them to send unsolicited e-mails -- that of the existing business relationship. These large businesses will also benefit as their business partners pay them to send unsolicited e-mails to their customers on their behalf. Meanwhile, you'll still be getting more spam tomorrow than you're getting today.…"
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/Spam_Law_That_Slams_Small_Business.html
"WRONG TARGET. The bill that has just been signed into law in California, and the legislator who sponsored it, makes no distinction between these practices or their outcome. Any unsolicited e-mail is considered spam, and the sender can be hauled into court and fined $1000 for each one sent. While that's a joke to offshore spammers who send millions of offensive e-mails a day with impunity, it's a very scary prospect for a small business, even when their campaigns include only a few thousand e-mails.
When I asked Sen. Murray, the bill's sponsor, about this lack of distinction, and how it might hurt small businesses trying to generate leads, his response was astonishing. 'The only legitimate presales process is to have a business relationship with the recipient or to have had them request information.' He is also quoted in a recent New York Times article as saying, 'If you go out and rent a list of e-mail addresses, by definition you are not a legitimate business.'
I guess startups -- which by definition have no previous business relationship with customers -- are less legitimate than, say, banks, that have thousands of previous business relationships. Tell that to all of the successful technology businesses in Silicon Valley that built themselves up by using targeted, effective marketing -- without resorting to the kinds of tactics that have offended the public. In the interest of stemming a very serious, and very public problem, our legislators are responding with ham-fisted laws that do nothing to solve the problem and hurt small businesses in the process. So what can we expect as a result?
RIGHTEOUS IGNORANCE. Small businesses will pull back from e-mail marketing, eliminating perhaps the one respectful, relevant e-mail out of every 1,000 pornographic or offensive e-mails you receive. Their marketing costs will go up dramatically, as they have to pursue more expensive and less responsive marketing channels. Large businesses will benefit, because their large customer base conveniently falls into a category that allows them to send unsolicited e-mails -- that of the existing business relationship. These large businesses will also benefit as their business partners pay them to send unsolicited e-mails to their customers on their behalf. Meanwhile, you'll still be getting more spam tomorrow than you're getting today.…"
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/Spam_Law_That_Slams_Small_Business.html
Thursday, November 13, 2003
"Technology is in such a place right now where it really is at odds with Title 7," the employment-discrimination section of the Civil Rights Act, Dixon said. "I don't want to see that eroded at all."
Other prominent Internet watchdogs also participated in the investigation, including members of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
The report says that even people who don't hunt for jobs online should be aware that many resumes, no matter how they are submitted, are processed through vast databases.
For example, Eliyon Technologies Corp., a private company in Cambridge, Mass., has a file of 16 million executives that it sells to headhunters, employers and companies seeking leads for sales pitches. Eliyon's Web site says its customers include IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Time Warner Inc.
Eliyon's advanced software mines information about people from Web sites, press releases, Securities and Exchange Commission filings and other public sources. Dixon said she was surprised at the level of detail in an Eliyon search about her sister. Though the sister is not a public figure, the names of her children and husband were listed.
Dixon alleged that Eliyon has no clear method for people to correct or remove erroneous data. That makes it "an end-run around the Fair Credit Reporting Act," which requires that consumers be able to examine adverse information maintained about them in commercial files, she said.
Other prominent Internet watchdogs also participated in the investigation, including members of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
The report says that even people who don't hunt for jobs online should be aware that many resumes, no matter how they are submitted, are processed through vast databases.
For example, Eliyon Technologies Corp., a private company in Cambridge, Mass., has a file of 16 million executives that it sells to headhunters, employers and companies seeking leads for sales pitches. Eliyon's Web site says its customers include IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Time Warner Inc.
Eliyon's advanced software mines information about people from Web sites, press releases, Securities and Exchange Commission filings and other public sources. Dixon said she was surprised at the level of detail in an Eliyon search about her sister. Though the sister is not a public figure, the names of her children and husband were listed.
Dixon alleged that Eliyon has no clear method for people to correct or remove erroneous data. That makes it "an end-run around the Fair Credit Reporting Act," which requires that consumers be able to examine adverse information maintained about them in commercial files, she said.
F.B.I.'s Reach Into Records Is Set to Grow:
"A little-noticed measure approved by both the House and Senate would significantly expand the F.B.I.'s power to demand financial records, without a judge's approval, from car dealers, travel agents, pawnbrokers and many other businesses, officials said on Tuesday."
Traditional financial institutions like banks and credit unions are frequently subject to administrative subpoenas from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to produce financial records in terrorism and espionage investigations. Such subpoenas, which are known as national security letters, do not require the bureau to seek a judge's approval before issuing them.
The measure now awaiting final approval in Congress would significantly broaden the law to include securities dealers, currency exchanges, car dealers, travel agencies, post offices, casinos, pawnbrokers and any other institution doing cash transactions with "a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax or regulatory matters."
Officials said the measure, which is tucked away in the intelligence community's authorization bill for 2004, gives agents greater flexibility and speed in seeking to trace the financial assets of people suspected of terrorism and espionage. It mirrors a proposal that President Bush outlined in a speech two months ago to expand the use of administrative subpoenas in terrorism cases.
Critics said the measure would give the federal government greater power to pry into people's private lives.
"This dramatically expands the government's authority to get private business records," said Timothy H. Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "You buy a ring for your grandmother from a pawnbroker, and the record on that will now be considered a financial record that the government can get."
The provision is in the authorization bills passed by both houses of Congress. Some Democrats have begun to question whether the measure goes too far and have hinted that they may try to have it pulled when the bill comes before a House-Senate conference committee. Other officials predicted that the measure would probably survive any challenges in conference and be signed into law by President Bush, in part because the provisions already approved in the House and the Senate are identical.
The intelligence committees considered the proposal at the request of George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, officials said. Officials at the C.I.A. and the Justice Department declined to comment on Tuesday about the measure.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/12/politics/12RECO.html
"A little-noticed measure approved by both the House and Senate would significantly expand the F.B.I.'s power to demand financial records, without a judge's approval, from car dealers, travel agents, pawnbrokers and many other businesses, officials said on Tuesday."
Traditional financial institutions like banks and credit unions are frequently subject to administrative subpoenas from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to produce financial records in terrorism and espionage investigations. Such subpoenas, which are known as national security letters, do not require the bureau to seek a judge's approval before issuing them.
The measure now awaiting final approval in Congress would significantly broaden the law to include securities dealers, currency exchanges, car dealers, travel agencies, post offices, casinos, pawnbrokers and any other institution doing cash transactions with "a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax or regulatory matters."
Officials said the measure, which is tucked away in the intelligence community's authorization bill for 2004, gives agents greater flexibility and speed in seeking to trace the financial assets of people suspected of terrorism and espionage. It mirrors a proposal that President Bush outlined in a speech two months ago to expand the use of administrative subpoenas in terrorism cases.
Critics said the measure would give the federal government greater power to pry into people's private lives.
"This dramatically expands the government's authority to get private business records," said Timothy H. Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "You buy a ring for your grandmother from a pawnbroker, and the record on that will now be considered a financial record that the government can get."
The provision is in the authorization bills passed by both houses of Congress. Some Democrats have begun to question whether the measure goes too far and have hinted that they may try to have it pulled when the bill comes before a House-Senate conference committee. Other officials predicted that the measure would probably survive any challenges in conference and be signed into law by President Bush, in part because the provisions already approved in the House and the Senate are identical.
The intelligence committees considered the proposal at the request of George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, officials said. Officials at the C.I.A. and the Justice Department declined to comment on Tuesday about the measure.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/12/politics/12RECO.html
If indeed there is no jurisdiction — if a 1950 precedent, issued in a quite different but unmistakably related context, really means that the federal courts may not review the Guantánamo detentions — then it will be the Supreme Court and not the White House that says so…
News Analysis: Analysis: Guantánamo Case About Federal Turf:
"In its decision to accept the Guantánamo Bay prisoners' appeals despite the Bush administration's objections, the Supreme Court brushed past the 'judges keep out' fence the administration had tried to erect around its open-ended detention policy. "
No matter how the court eventually rules, that action alone may well come to define a singular moment in the relationship between the White House and the Supreme Court, two inherently powerful institutions that for the last several years have been in alpha mode, each intent on exercising its power to the maximum extent possible.
Though it may not have been clear that the court was ready to join the post-Sept. 11 debate, it now appears that the administration laid down a challenge the justices were unwilling to ignore. This was a moment long in coming: the imperial presidency meets the imperial judiciary.
There were less confrontational ways for the administration to defend its view that the Guantánamo policy does not violate any constitutional or statutory rights. It could have defended the policy on its merits, taking the position that the detainees are receiving all the due process to which they are entitled under the circumstances and summoning the deference that the Supreme Court and other courts have traditionally given to executive branch claims of military necessity.
Or it could have defended the position it took successfully before the lower courts — that the federal courts have no jurisdiction over the detention of foreigners held in military custody outside the country's borders — while conceding that this jurisdictional question was itself sufficiently important to merit the Supreme Court's attention. Parties to Supreme Court cases, who have won in the lower courts, do occasionally acquiesce to the court's review while continuing to defend their victory.
Instead, the administration drew an uncompromising line at the threshold of the entire debate, insisting in the brief filed by Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson that these were not cases that the Supreme Court should even hear. The implication was that there was nothing to discuss.…
There have been periodic efforts in Congress to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over questions — abortion, school busing for integration, prayer in the classroom — to which lawmakers think the courts are giving the wrong answers. Senator Wayne Allard, Republican of Colorado, recently introduced a bill to strip the lower federal courts of oversight on cases involving the Pledge of Allegiance, display of the Ten Commandments on public property and other touchy church-state questions.
Jurisdictional questions, in other words, lie not at the margins but at the core of the judicial function. The question the justices framed on Monday for their review of the Guantánamo cases — "Whether United States courts lack jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba" — may have appeared at first glance to reflect only a technical or preliminary slice of the larger debate.
But to the justices, that is the question from which all else flows. If indeed there is no jurisdiction — if a 1950 precedent, issued in a quite different but unmistakably related context, really means that the federal courts may not review the Guantánamo detentions — then it will be the Supreme Court and not the White House that says so.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/12/national/12SCOT.html?pagewanted=all&position=
News Analysis: Analysis: Guantánamo Case About Federal Turf:
"In its decision to accept the Guantánamo Bay prisoners' appeals despite the Bush administration's objections, the Supreme Court brushed past the 'judges keep out' fence the administration had tried to erect around its open-ended detention policy. "
No matter how the court eventually rules, that action alone may well come to define a singular moment in the relationship between the White House and the Supreme Court, two inherently powerful institutions that for the last several years have been in alpha mode, each intent on exercising its power to the maximum extent possible.
Though it may not have been clear that the court was ready to join the post-Sept. 11 debate, it now appears that the administration laid down a challenge the justices were unwilling to ignore. This was a moment long in coming: the imperial presidency meets the imperial judiciary.
There were less confrontational ways for the administration to defend its view that the Guantánamo policy does not violate any constitutional or statutory rights. It could have defended the policy on its merits, taking the position that the detainees are receiving all the due process to which they are entitled under the circumstances and summoning the deference that the Supreme Court and other courts have traditionally given to executive branch claims of military necessity.
Or it could have defended the position it took successfully before the lower courts — that the federal courts have no jurisdiction over the detention of foreigners held in military custody outside the country's borders — while conceding that this jurisdictional question was itself sufficiently important to merit the Supreme Court's attention. Parties to Supreme Court cases, who have won in the lower courts, do occasionally acquiesce to the court's review while continuing to defend their victory.
Instead, the administration drew an uncompromising line at the threshold of the entire debate, insisting in the brief filed by Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson that these were not cases that the Supreme Court should even hear. The implication was that there was nothing to discuss.…
There have been periodic efforts in Congress to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over questions — abortion, school busing for integration, prayer in the classroom — to which lawmakers think the courts are giving the wrong answers. Senator Wayne Allard, Republican of Colorado, recently introduced a bill to strip the lower federal courts of oversight on cases involving the Pledge of Allegiance, display of the Ten Commandments on public property and other touchy church-state questions.
Jurisdictional questions, in other words, lie not at the margins but at the core of the judicial function. The question the justices framed on Monday for their review of the Guantánamo cases — "Whether United States courts lack jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba" — may have appeared at first glance to reflect only a technical or preliminary slice of the larger debate.
But to the justices, that is the question from which all else flows. If indeed there is no jurisdiction — if a 1950 precedent, issued in a quite different but unmistakably related context, really means that the federal courts may not review the Guantánamo detentions — then it will be the Supreme Court and not the White House that says so.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/12/national/12SCOT.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Editorial Observer: Trying to Measure the Amount of Information That Humans Create: "Do you know what an exabyte is? I didn't until I started reading a new report, called 'How Much Information? 2003,' from the University of California at Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems. An exabyte turns out to be a billion gigabytes. Most new computers, by comparison, come with hard drives around 40 to 100 gigabytes in size.
The authors of the report estimate that in 2002 the human species stored about five exabytes of new information on paper, film, optical or magnetic media, a number that doubled in the past three years. Five exabytes, as it happens, is equivalent to all words ever spoken by humans since the dawn of time.
To gauge how much new information humans now produce in a given year, you have to imagine digitizing and storing all of it, including forms of information that aren't already digital and forms that aren't usually stored, including all e-mail messages, all the Web pages on the entire Internet and all telephone conversations. "
As the authors point out, "The striking finding here is that most of the total volume of new information flows is derived from the volume of voice telephone traffic, most of which is unique content." In 2002, that telephone traffic added up to about 17 exabytes, more than three times all the words ever spoken by humans until that point.
Staring at numbers and comparisons like this, which are more than merely boggling, is enough to make you wonder just what information is. Perhaps it seems obvious to say that information of the kind that can be stored and counted up is created and consumed entirely by humans. So let me say it another way. Our idea of information is meaningless to the rest of creation. The cocoon of data and language that humans live in goes undetected by the rest of earth's organisms. In all those exabytes of chatter there are words, of course, that refer to something beyond the narrow bounds of human experience. But vast quantities of what gets cataloged as information are purely self-referential, talk about the act of talking, so to speak. That is partly what makes us human.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/12/opinion/12WED4.html
The authors of the report estimate that in 2002 the human species stored about five exabytes of new information on paper, film, optical or magnetic media, a number that doubled in the past three years. Five exabytes, as it happens, is equivalent to all words ever spoken by humans since the dawn of time.
To gauge how much new information humans now produce in a given year, you have to imagine digitizing and storing all of it, including forms of information that aren't already digital and forms that aren't usually stored, including all e-mail messages, all the Web pages on the entire Internet and all telephone conversations. "
As the authors point out, "The striking finding here is that most of the total volume of new information flows is derived from the volume of voice telephone traffic, most of which is unique content." In 2002, that telephone traffic added up to about 17 exabytes, more than three times all the words ever spoken by humans until that point.
Staring at numbers and comparisons like this, which are more than merely boggling, is enough to make you wonder just what information is. Perhaps it seems obvious to say that information of the kind that can be stored and counted up is created and consumed entirely by humans. So let me say it another way. Our idea of information is meaningless to the rest of creation. The cocoon of data and language that humans live in goes undetected by the rest of earth's organisms. In all those exabytes of chatter there are words, of course, that refer to something beyond the narrow bounds of human experience. But vast quantities of what gets cataloged as information are purely self-referential, talk about the act of talking, so to speak. That is partly what makes us human.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/12/opinion/12WED4.html
Editorial Observer: Trying to Measure the Amount of Information That Humans Create: "Do you know what an exabyte is? I didn't until I started reading a new report, called 'How Much Information? 2003,' from the University of California at Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems. An exabyte turns out to be a billion gigabytes. Most new computers, by comparison, come with hard drives around 40 to 100 gigabytes in size.
The authors of the report estimate that in 2002 the human species stored about five exabytes of new information on paper, film, optical or magnetic media, a number that doubled in the past three years. Five exabytes, as it happens, is equivalent to all words ever spoken by humans since the dawn of time.
To gauge how much new information humans now produce in a given year, you have to imagine digitizing and storing all of it, including forms of information that aren't already digital and forms that aren't usually stored, including all e-mail messages, all the Web pages on the entire Internet and all telephone conversations. "
The authors of the report estimate that in 2002 the human species stored about five exabytes of new information on paper, film, optical or magnetic media, a number that doubled in the past three years. Five exabytes, as it happens, is equivalent to all words ever spoken by humans since the dawn of time.
To gauge how much new information humans now produce in a given year, you have to imagine digitizing and storing all of it, including forms of information that aren't already digital and forms that aren't usually stored, including all e-mail messages, all the Web pages on the entire Internet and all telephone conversations. "
U.N. Estimates Israeli Barrier Will Disrupt Lives of 600,000:
"The route for Israel's planned boundary barrier would put nearly 15 percent of West Bank land on the Israeli side and disrupt the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, according to a United Nations report released Tuesday.
The report is based on calculations made after Israel presented its first detailed map of the barrier last month. Israeli officials questioned the accuracy of the report, by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and said the government was still assessing how many Palestinians would be affected."
The barrier, which includes an electronic fence, concrete walls, trenches and other obstacles, is intended to block Palestinian attackers and is not a political border, Israel insists. It veers into the West Bank to protect Jewish settlements, Israel says.
But Palestinians say the path amounts to confiscation of land and sets a boundary as a matter of fact that would make it difficult to establish a viable Palestinian state.
The United Nations agency said the map released by Israel showed the barrier running more than 400 miles on a twisting route through the West Bank. It will totally surround 12 Palestinian communities, leaving residents able to leave only through gates controlled by Israeli security forces, the report said.
Only 11 percent of the barrier is to be built along the Green Line, the armistice line set at the end of the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war.
The fence will put 14.5 percent of West Bank land on the Israeli side, the report said, adding, "This land, some of the most fertile in the West Bank, is currently the home for more than 274,000 Palestinians."
The agency made a rough estimate that an additional 400,000 Palestinians would be adversely affected. In some instances, the barrier is going up between Palestinian villages and nearby farmland. In many small Palestinian communities, employees and students must cross the barrier to reach larger cities and towns where they work or study.
David Shearer, head of the United Nations agency in Jerusalem, said the report was not intended "to make any sort of political point."
"We simply wanted to highlight the severe problems these people would face," he said.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/12/international/middleeast/12MIDE.html
"The route for Israel's planned boundary barrier would put nearly 15 percent of West Bank land on the Israeli side and disrupt the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, according to a United Nations report released Tuesday.
The report is based on calculations made after Israel presented its first detailed map of the barrier last month. Israeli officials questioned the accuracy of the report, by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and said the government was still assessing how many Palestinians would be affected."
The barrier, which includes an electronic fence, concrete walls, trenches and other obstacles, is intended to block Palestinian attackers and is not a political border, Israel insists. It veers into the West Bank to protect Jewish settlements, Israel says.
But Palestinians say the path amounts to confiscation of land and sets a boundary as a matter of fact that would make it difficult to establish a viable Palestinian state.
The United Nations agency said the map released by Israel showed the barrier running more than 400 miles on a twisting route through the West Bank. It will totally surround 12 Palestinian communities, leaving residents able to leave only through gates controlled by Israeli security forces, the report said.
Only 11 percent of the barrier is to be built along the Green Line, the armistice line set at the end of the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war.
The fence will put 14.5 percent of West Bank land on the Israeli side, the report said, adding, "This land, some of the most fertile in the West Bank, is currently the home for more than 274,000 Palestinians."
The agency made a rough estimate that an additional 400,000 Palestinians would be adversely affected. In some instances, the barrier is going up between Palestinian villages and nearby farmland. In many small Palestinian communities, employees and students must cross the barrier to reach larger cities and towns where they work or study.
David Shearer, head of the United Nations agency in Jerusalem, said the report was not intended "to make any sort of political point."
"We simply wanted to highlight the severe problems these people would face," he said.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/12/international/middleeast/12MIDE.html
Car Bombing at Italian Base in Iraq Reportedly Kills Up to 26:
"A gasoline truck crashed through a fence around an Italian military police compound in Nasiriya, Iraq, today, followed by a car that blew up, leaving at least 17 Italians dead, including 2 civilians, a British military spokesman in Basra said today.
Twenty-one Italians were wounded and 12 Iraqis were missing or wounded, the spokesman said by telephone.
A witness to the blast said from a hospital that only one, not two, vehicles were involved. He said he was in sight of the compound gate at the time and believed that someone in the Russian-made truck opened fire at guards and then set off the blast.
Nine Iraqis were reported killed. "
In addition to the 2 civilians, Italian fatalities consisted of 11 military police officers and 4 soldiers, the Italian defense minister, Antonio Martino, said in Parliament in Rome. Mr. Martino put the number of Iraqi wounded at 25.
Tonight reporters were kept some 500 yards from the compound, but it was possible to see that the building had been largely destroyed. A great deal of rubble was visible as well as the remains of the attack vehicle.
When the Americans took Nasiriya after a tough battle on their drive north to Baghdad, the building, housing the Chamber of Commerce, was used by the Marine Corps as its headquarters.
Later the building, in a middle-class area, was handed over to the Italians and Romanians.
Under the Americans, who were welcome by the local people, security was extremely tight, with even traffic rules being enforced, residents said today.
The Italians were also welcomed and liked, for such acts as handing out candy to children, but they were widely criticized by the same people for being too relaxed in security, both for themselves at the compound and in the city itself.
Checkpoints erected by the marines were taken down, and approaches to the compound were opened, residents said.
Tonight Italian military police and Romanian forces in armored vehicles were trying to clear the area beyond security barriers for fear there would be other attacks.
Security was extremely jumpy. One Iraqi guard who fired off two shots, apparently by mistake, had his weapon taken away.
The force of the blast was felt up to 1,000 yards away, bringing down wrought-iron gates on houses and buckling other buildings. Wooden doors of other buildings were blown out, ceilings came down, and crockery was thrown around kitchens.
The overwhelming reaction of people in Nasiriya has been against the attack.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/12/international/middleeast/12CND-IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=
"A gasoline truck crashed through a fence around an Italian military police compound in Nasiriya, Iraq, today, followed by a car that blew up, leaving at least 17 Italians dead, including 2 civilians, a British military spokesman in Basra said today.
Twenty-one Italians were wounded and 12 Iraqis were missing or wounded, the spokesman said by telephone.
A witness to the blast said from a hospital that only one, not two, vehicles were involved. He said he was in sight of the compound gate at the time and believed that someone in the Russian-made truck opened fire at guards and then set off the blast.
Nine Iraqis were reported killed. "
In addition to the 2 civilians, Italian fatalities consisted of 11 military police officers and 4 soldiers, the Italian defense minister, Antonio Martino, said in Parliament in Rome. Mr. Martino put the number of Iraqi wounded at 25.
Tonight reporters were kept some 500 yards from the compound, but it was possible to see that the building had been largely destroyed. A great deal of rubble was visible as well as the remains of the attack vehicle.
When the Americans took Nasiriya after a tough battle on their drive north to Baghdad, the building, housing the Chamber of Commerce, was used by the Marine Corps as its headquarters.
Later the building, in a middle-class area, was handed over to the Italians and Romanians.
Under the Americans, who were welcome by the local people, security was extremely tight, with even traffic rules being enforced, residents said today.
The Italians were also welcomed and liked, for such acts as handing out candy to children, but they were widely criticized by the same people for being too relaxed in security, both for themselves at the compound and in the city itself.
Checkpoints erected by the marines were taken down, and approaches to the compound were opened, residents said.
Tonight Italian military police and Romanian forces in armored vehicles were trying to clear the area beyond security barriers for fear there would be other attacks.
Security was extremely jumpy. One Iraqi guard who fired off two shots, apparently by mistake, had his weapon taken away.
The force of the blast was felt up to 1,000 yards away, bringing down wrought-iron gates on houses and buckling other buildings. Wooden doors of other buildings were blown out, ceilings came down, and crockery was thrown around kitchens.
The overwhelming reaction of people in Nasiriya has been against the attack.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/12/international/middleeast/12CND-IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
A Toy Gun Can Shut Down Congress, The Vice President Hides on the Least Hint of a Threat, President Says, "We Won't be Intimidated"
Secret Service Hides Cheney as Plane Enters Restricted Area:
"The Secret Service hustled Vice President Dick Cheney into a secure site on Monday morning after a small plane flew into restricted airspace around Washington, government officials said."
The plane was intercepted by two Air Force F-16 fighters, whose pilots determined that it was not a threat and escorted it out of the area.
President Bush was on his way to a fund-raiser in Little Rock, Ark., at the time, and Laura Bush was in Maine.
Mr. Cheney returned to work in the White House after a short time, said a Secret Service spokesman, Tom Mazur.
Mr. Mazur said Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, was also taken to the undisclosed secure spot while the Air Force sought to determine whether the small plane presented any danger.
Officials said the plane, a single-engine Mooney M20, entered the restricted zone, within 17.5 miles of the Washington Monument, about 11:15 a.m. Mr. Mazur said the pilot of the small plane cooperated with the instructions of the fighter pilots and was allowed to go on his way.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/11/national/11PLAN.html
Sunday, November 09, 2003
Pfc. Jessica Lynch Isn't Rambo Anymore:
"…Few authors deserve book sales and attention more than this brave young woman from Palestine, W.Va., who joined the Army to see the world after failing to land a job at Wal-Mart. But now, as in every other step of her time in the spotlight, the way her story plays out may tell us more about a country at war than it does about our hero."
Take, for instance, tonight's surprising "Saving Jessica Lynch," as written by John Fasano and drawn in part from the account of Mohammed Odeh Al-Rehaief, the Iraqi lawyer who has written his own book about how he risked his life to lead American forces to Private Lynch. The movie begins with the inevitable disclaimer that "some characters, scenes and events in whole or in part have been created for dramatic purposes." Even so, given the facts as we know them to date, it is startling in its relative accuracy — more than earlier reportage by The Washington Post (which attributed its initial Rambo version to "U.S. officials") and The New York Times (whose reporter Jayson Blair fictionalized some of the paper's Lynch coverage).
The Lynch of this film has not been pumped up with steroids. She's a supply clerk gravely injured in a Humvee collision, not G.I. Jessica spraying bullets in a shootout. (She has only a sprinkling of lines in the entire movie, many of them in flashbacks to prewar West Virginia.) The American forces that rescue her encounter no "blaze of gunfire," as was described in an early Los Angeles Times account attributed to "defense officials and reports from the battlefield," but instead confront only compliant doctors and nurses. The White House is portrayed as being disproportionately focused on the urgency of this single mission, for no apparent purpose other than p.r. As for Iraq itself, it is presented as a shooting gallery whose citizens despise Saddam but can also be skeptical of their American liberators. Al-Rehaief's own wife tells him that he has been "poisoned" by all "those John Wayne movies."
What does it say that "Saving Jessica Lynch" is more candid than much of the reportage on the war? It wasn't that long ago when correspondents on NBC's sibling network, MSNBC, were enthusing about President Bush's aircraft-carrier landing as "the president's excellent adventure." The movie even pays a dramatic price for its integrity; a reasonable approximation of the truth is less exciting than the bogus reports of Lynch-as-John Wayne. While its title character is still a hero, as she must be, the movie portrays Private Lynch as a lowly pawn of larger, mysterious forces operating in the shadows, whether in Baghdad or Washington.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/arts/09RICH.html?pagewanted=all&position=
"…Few authors deserve book sales and attention more than this brave young woman from Palestine, W.Va., who joined the Army to see the world after failing to land a job at Wal-Mart. But now, as in every other step of her time in the spotlight, the way her story plays out may tell us more about a country at war than it does about our hero."
Take, for instance, tonight's surprising "Saving Jessica Lynch," as written by John Fasano and drawn in part from the account of Mohammed Odeh Al-Rehaief, the Iraqi lawyer who has written his own book about how he risked his life to lead American forces to Private Lynch. The movie begins with the inevitable disclaimer that "some characters, scenes and events in whole or in part have been created for dramatic purposes." Even so, given the facts as we know them to date, it is startling in its relative accuracy — more than earlier reportage by The Washington Post (which attributed its initial Rambo version to "U.S. officials") and The New York Times (whose reporter Jayson Blair fictionalized some of the paper's Lynch coverage).
The Lynch of this film has not been pumped up with steroids. She's a supply clerk gravely injured in a Humvee collision, not G.I. Jessica spraying bullets in a shootout. (She has only a sprinkling of lines in the entire movie, many of them in flashbacks to prewar West Virginia.) The American forces that rescue her encounter no "blaze of gunfire," as was described in an early Los Angeles Times account attributed to "defense officials and reports from the battlefield," but instead confront only compliant doctors and nurses. The White House is portrayed as being disproportionately focused on the urgency of this single mission, for no apparent purpose other than p.r. As for Iraq itself, it is presented as a shooting gallery whose citizens despise Saddam but can also be skeptical of their American liberators. Al-Rehaief's own wife tells him that he has been "poisoned" by all "those John Wayne movies."
What does it say that "Saving Jessica Lynch" is more candid than much of the reportage on the war? It wasn't that long ago when correspondents on NBC's sibling network, MSNBC, were enthusing about President Bush's aircraft-carrier landing as "the president's excellent adventure." The movie even pays a dramatic price for its integrity; a reasonable approximation of the truth is less exciting than the bogus reports of Lynch-as-John Wayne. While its title character is still a hero, as she must be, the movie portrays Private Lynch as a lowly pawn of larger, mysterious forces operating in the shadows, whether in Baghdad or Washington.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/arts/09RICH.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Saturday, November 08, 2003
Fine Print Is Given Full Voice in Campaign Ads:
"In one of his television commercials, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts announces his candidacy for president before a throng of adoring, placard-waving supporters.
But at the end of the spot, amid the roar of the crowd, Mr. Kerry abruptly steps from the podium, looks into the camera and shouts, 'I'm John Kerry, and I approve this message!'"
Such odd juxtapositions occur often in the first commercials of this election season because of a little-noticed provision of the new election law requiring candidates — including President Bush, when his campaign begins running ads — to pledge responsibility for their ads.…
"It's really clumsy and awkward to put in an ad," said Steve McMahon, whose firm is handling the advertising for Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont. "Focus groups say `Of course you approve it, you wouldn't have said it.' "
Academics, lawmakers and lobbyists who helped write the provision said it was intended to force campaigns to stand by any attack ads they produce. That, some argued, could dissuade the production of such ads to begin with.
But the campaigns contend that it is unclear whether the provision will ultimately stanch the flow of negative political advertisements this election season anyway.
At the very least, strategists with every presidential campaign now advertising said the rule seemed silly at this early stage, when the vast majority of spots are positive.
"It's just one more example of reform gone amok," said David Axelrod, a consultant for Senator John Edwards of North Carolina. "It was meant to police negative ads, and now you have this absurd addendum to positive ads that makes absolutely no sense."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/08/politics/campaigns/08ADS.html
"In one of his television commercials, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts announces his candidacy for president before a throng of adoring, placard-waving supporters.
But at the end of the spot, amid the roar of the crowd, Mr. Kerry abruptly steps from the podium, looks into the camera and shouts, 'I'm John Kerry, and I approve this message!'"
Such odd juxtapositions occur often in the first commercials of this election season because of a little-noticed provision of the new election law requiring candidates — including President Bush, when his campaign begins running ads — to pledge responsibility for their ads.…
"It's really clumsy and awkward to put in an ad," said Steve McMahon, whose firm is handling the advertising for Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont. "Focus groups say `Of course you approve it, you wouldn't have said it.' "
Academics, lawmakers and lobbyists who helped write the provision said it was intended to force campaigns to stand by any attack ads they produce. That, some argued, could dissuade the production of such ads to begin with.
But the campaigns contend that it is unclear whether the provision will ultimately stanch the flow of negative political advertisements this election season anyway.
At the very least, strategists with every presidential campaign now advertising said the rule seemed silly at this early stage, when the vast majority of spots are positive.
"It's just one more example of reform gone amok," said David Axelrod, a consultant for Senator John Edwards of North Carolina. "It was meant to police negative ads, and now you have this absurd addendum to positive ads that makes absolutely no sense."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/08/politics/campaigns/08ADS.html
Friday, November 07, 2003
ZDNet UK - News - Whois database 'contributes to identity theft':
"A database publishing information about all Internet domain name holders is open to abuse and must be reformed, civil liberties groups have warned"
Whois, an online database that contains personal information about Internet domain name holders, is a major contributor to identity theft and defies advice from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), according to a group of civil liberties organisations.
When an Internet domain is registered, the details of the owner are entered into the Whois database and published by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). This procedure was designed to ensure that when technical difficulties or incompatibilities arose, it was relatively easy to contact the owner of the domain. However, the database has now grown beyond all expectations and is open for exploitation, privacy groups argue.…
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39117667,00.htm
"A database publishing information about all Internet domain name holders is open to abuse and must be reformed, civil liberties groups have warned"
Whois, an online database that contains personal information about Internet domain name holders, is a major contributor to identity theft and defies advice from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), according to a group of civil liberties organisations.
When an Internet domain is registered, the details of the owner are entered into the Whois database and published by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). This procedure was designed to ensure that when technical difficulties or incompatibilities arose, it was relatively easy to contact the owner of the domain. However, the database has now grown beyond all expectations and is open for exploitation, privacy groups argue.…
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39117667,00.htm
Jessica Lynch Criticizes U.S. Accounts of Her Ordeal:
"In her first public statements since her rescue in Iraq, Jessica Lynch criticized the military for exaggerating accounts of her rescue and re-casting her ordeal as a patriotic fable. "
Asked by the ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer if the military's portrayal of the rescue bothered her, Ms. Lynch said: "Yeah, it does. It does that they used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff. Yeah, it's wrong," according to a partial transcript of the interview to be broadcast on Tuesday.
After months of retreating from the news media, Ms. Lynch will be a ubiquitous presence next week. In addition to her appearance on ABC, she will be on the cover of Time magazine, and NBC will broadcast a movie based on an Iraqi's account of her ordeal. On Tuesday, the book publisher Knopf will release an account of her experience, "I Am a Soldier, Too," written with her cooperation by a former reporter for The New York Times, Rick Bragg.
The book and the movie are unrelated and tell different versions of Ms. Lynch's story, but the publisher has timed the book to capitalize on publicity from the television movie.
The book has already added another, lurid indignity to the public accounts of her capture. It reports that Ms. Lynch's military doctors found injuries consistent with sexual assault and unlikely to have resulted from the Humvee crash that caused her other wounds, suggesting that she was raped after her capture. Ms. Lynch, who was unconscious immediately after the crash, does not remember any such assault, according to people who have talked to her and read the book. Those details of the book's contents were reported yesterday in The New York Daily News.
In the book and in the interviews, Ms. Lynch says others' accounts of her heroism often left her feeling hurt and ashamed because of what she says was overstatement.
At first, a military spokesman in Iraq told journalists that American soldiers had exchanged fire with Iraqis during the rescue, without adding that resistance was minimal. Then the military released a dramatic, green-tinted, night-vision video of the mission. Soon news organizations were repeating reports, attributed to anonymous American officials, that Ms. Lynch had heroically resisted her capture, emptying her weapon at her attackers.
But subsequent investigations determined that Ms. Lynch was injured by the crash of her vehicle, her weapon jammed before she could fire, the Iraqi doctors treated her kindly, and the hospital was already in friendly hands when her rescuers arrived.
Asked how she felt about the reports of her heroism, Ms. Lynch told Ms. Sawyer, "It hurt in a way that people would make up stories that they had no truth about. Only I would have been able to know that, because the other four people on my vehicle aren't here to tell the story. So I would have been the only one able to say, yeah, I went down shooting. But I didn't."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/07/national/07LYNC.html
"In her first public statements since her rescue in Iraq, Jessica Lynch criticized the military for exaggerating accounts of her rescue and re-casting her ordeal as a patriotic fable. "
Asked by the ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer if the military's portrayal of the rescue bothered her, Ms. Lynch said: "Yeah, it does. It does that they used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff. Yeah, it's wrong," according to a partial transcript of the interview to be broadcast on Tuesday.
After months of retreating from the news media, Ms. Lynch will be a ubiquitous presence next week. In addition to her appearance on ABC, she will be on the cover of Time magazine, and NBC will broadcast a movie based on an Iraqi's account of her ordeal. On Tuesday, the book publisher Knopf will release an account of her experience, "I Am a Soldier, Too," written with her cooperation by a former reporter for The New York Times, Rick Bragg.
The book and the movie are unrelated and tell different versions of Ms. Lynch's story, but the publisher has timed the book to capitalize on publicity from the television movie.
The book has already added another, lurid indignity to the public accounts of her capture. It reports that Ms. Lynch's military doctors found injuries consistent with sexual assault and unlikely to have resulted from the Humvee crash that caused her other wounds, suggesting that she was raped after her capture. Ms. Lynch, who was unconscious immediately after the crash, does not remember any such assault, according to people who have talked to her and read the book. Those details of the book's contents were reported yesterday in The New York Daily News.
In the book and in the interviews, Ms. Lynch says others' accounts of her heroism often left her feeling hurt and ashamed because of what she says was overstatement.
At first, a military spokesman in Iraq told journalists that American soldiers had exchanged fire with Iraqis during the rescue, without adding that resistance was minimal. Then the military released a dramatic, green-tinted, night-vision video of the mission. Soon news organizations were repeating reports, attributed to anonymous American officials, that Ms. Lynch had heroically resisted her capture, emptying her weapon at her attackers.
But subsequent investigations determined that Ms. Lynch was injured by the crash of her vehicle, her weapon jammed before she could fire, the Iraqi doctors treated her kindly, and the hospital was already in friendly hands when her rescuers arrived.
Asked how she felt about the reports of her heroism, Ms. Lynch told Ms. Sawyer, "It hurt in a way that people would make up stories that they had no truth about. Only I would have been able to know that, because the other four people on my vehicle aren't here to tell the story. So I would have been the only one able to say, yeah, I went down shooting. But I didn't."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/07/national/07LYNC.html
Rush to War, Revisited:
"To appreciate the significance of James Risen's article in yesterday's Times about an 11th-hour Iraqi peace offer last March, it helps to think back to that period. For months the Bush administration had been arguing that the only hope of disarming Baghdad was to steadily ratchet up the threat of an imminent American invasion. Only at that point, Washington asserted, might Saddam Hussein yield to the demands of repeated United Nations Security Council disarmament resolutions."
Yesterday's article shows that such reasoning may well have been sound. With American forces massed and ready to invade, the Iraqis suddenly expressed interest in meeting their obligations. Yet the article also shows that the administration seems not to have been serious about the idea of a coerced but peaceful solution at the very moment it may have been a realistic possibility.
The offer described in the article was conveyed to the Pentagon by a Lebanese-American businessman who said he had been sent by the chief of Iraq's Intelligence Service. The Iraqi message was that Baghdad no longer had any unconventional weapons and that it was willing to let American troops and experts conduct a search to prove this. The envoy also conveyed an offer to turn over a suspect in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and relayed an Iraqi pledge to hold elections.
By March, Washington's military and political preparations for war were complete. The Bush administration was then showing little patience for diplomacy or anything else that might delay what it envisioned as a swift and easy military triumph, with jubilant Iraqis cheering American troops, a model Middle Eastern democracy rising in Baghdad, reconstruction paid for by Iraqi oil revenue and no lengthy military occupation.
Iraq has not worked out as planned in the last seven months.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/07/opinion/07FRI1.html
"To appreciate the significance of James Risen's article in yesterday's Times about an 11th-hour Iraqi peace offer last March, it helps to think back to that period. For months the Bush administration had been arguing that the only hope of disarming Baghdad was to steadily ratchet up the threat of an imminent American invasion. Only at that point, Washington asserted, might Saddam Hussein yield to the demands of repeated United Nations Security Council disarmament resolutions."
Yesterday's article shows that such reasoning may well have been sound. With American forces massed and ready to invade, the Iraqis suddenly expressed interest in meeting their obligations. Yet the article also shows that the administration seems not to have been serious about the idea of a coerced but peaceful solution at the very moment it may have been a realistic possibility.
The offer described in the article was conveyed to the Pentagon by a Lebanese-American businessman who said he had been sent by the chief of Iraq's Intelligence Service. The Iraqi message was that Baghdad no longer had any unconventional weapons and that it was willing to let American troops and experts conduct a search to prove this. The envoy also conveyed an offer to turn over a suspect in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and relayed an Iraqi pledge to hold elections.
By March, Washington's military and political preparations for war were complete. The Bush administration was then showing little patience for diplomacy or anything else that might delay what it envisioned as a swift and easy military triumph, with jubilant Iraqis cheering American troops, a model Middle Eastern democracy rising in Baghdad, reconstruction paid for by Iraqi oil revenue and no lengthy military occupation.
Iraq has not worked out as planned in the last seven months.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/07/opinion/07FRI1.html
Op-Ed Columnist: Flags Versus Dollars:
"I know these are fighting words. But the reliance of modern Republican political strategy on coded appeals to racism is no secret. Controversies over efforts to remove the Stars and Bars from the top of the South Carolina Statehouse, and to reduce its size on the Georgia flag, played a significant role in Republican victories in 2002. And the evidence that race is still a crucial factor is as fresh as Tuesday's election. "
The big story in that election was the victory of Republicans in Mississippi and Kentucky. The secondary story, however, was a string of victories by Democrats in affluent suburban areas in the Northeast. In my state, New Jersey, Democrats took firm control of the state's Legislature.
What this tells us is that some people — either in New Jersey, Mississippi or both — voted against their economic interests. For whatever you think of Bush's economic plan, it's clearly much better for New Jersey — a rich state, which gains a lot from tax cuts tilted toward the affluent — than for a poor state like Mississippi.
Consider, for example, the effects of estate tax repeal, a central feature of the 2001 tax cut. Almost nobody in Mississippi pays the estate tax. In 2001 only 249 estates in Mississippi paid any tax at all; raising the exemption to $5 million, which some Democrats suggested as an alternative to full repeal, would have reduced that to a couple of dozen. By contrast, New Jersey, with three times Mississippi's population, had almost 10 times as many taxable estates.
Or consider the 2003 tax cut. It was also heavily tilted toward the affluent, and therefore toward rich states. According to Citizens for Tax Justice estimates, the typical New Jersey family got a $409 tax cut. In Mississippi, the number was only $165.
So did Mississippi voters support the Republicans, even though they get very little direct benefit from Bush-style tax cuts, because they — unlike New Jersey's voters — understand the magic of supply-side economics? If you believe that, I've got an overpass on the Garden State Parkway you may be interested in buying.
Now maybe New Jersey voted Democratic because of irrational Bush hatred. But I think it's a lot more likely that white Mississippi voters, unlike their counterparts up north, are still responding to Republican flag-waving — and it's not just the American flag that's being waved.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/07/opinion/07KRUG.html
"I know these are fighting words. But the reliance of modern Republican political strategy on coded appeals to racism is no secret. Controversies over efforts to remove the Stars and Bars from the top of the South Carolina Statehouse, and to reduce its size on the Georgia flag, played a significant role in Republican victories in 2002. And the evidence that race is still a crucial factor is as fresh as Tuesday's election. "
The big story in that election was the victory of Republicans in Mississippi and Kentucky. The secondary story, however, was a string of victories by Democrats in affluent suburban areas in the Northeast. In my state, New Jersey, Democrats took firm control of the state's Legislature.
What this tells us is that some people — either in New Jersey, Mississippi or both — voted against their economic interests. For whatever you think of Bush's economic plan, it's clearly much better for New Jersey — a rich state, which gains a lot from tax cuts tilted toward the affluent — than for a poor state like Mississippi.
Consider, for example, the effects of estate tax repeal, a central feature of the 2001 tax cut. Almost nobody in Mississippi pays the estate tax. In 2001 only 249 estates in Mississippi paid any tax at all; raising the exemption to $5 million, which some Democrats suggested as an alternative to full repeal, would have reduced that to a couple of dozen. By contrast, New Jersey, with three times Mississippi's population, had almost 10 times as many taxable estates.
Or consider the 2003 tax cut. It was also heavily tilted toward the affluent, and therefore toward rich states. According to Citizens for Tax Justice estimates, the typical New Jersey family got a $409 tax cut. In Mississippi, the number was only $165.
So did Mississippi voters support the Republicans, even though they get very little direct benefit from Bush-style tax cuts, because they — unlike New Jersey's voters — understand the magic of supply-side economics? If you believe that, I've got an overpass on the Garden State Parkway you may be interested in buying.
Now maybe New Jersey voted Democratic because of irrational Bush hatred. But I think it's a lot more likely that white Mississippi voters, unlike their counterparts up north, are still responding to Republican flag-waving — and it's not just the American flag that's being waved.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/07/opinion/07KRUG.html
Thursday, November 06, 2003
Iraqis at the Wheel:
"There is much talk now about the need for 'Iraqification' of the police and armed forces, so Iraqis can take over for U.S. troops. No question, this is necessary. But it's not sufficient. We could have 100,000 Iraqis in the police and Army and it would not be enough — without one other person. We need an Iraqi leader (or a leadership council) elected as a result of an Iraqi constitutional or political process."
When you have an army and a police force, but no real legitimate government, it means that your army and police are always floating — unconnected to either a governing body above or to the people below. Security forces that are floating that way will never have the authority they need to keep order or crack down on retrograde elements trying to restore Baathist rule. The security forces must be anchored in an Iraqi political authority that is itself anchored in an Iraqi-written constitution.
This should be our drop-everything priority.
Imagine how different the U.S. position in Iraq would look to the world, to the American people and to the Arabs if President Bush could say, "Iraqis are now writing their own constitution, which will be the basis for elections, and we are in Iraq protecting that process until it's completed."
That is something Americans can understand and be proud of, and that is something that will make clear to the whole world that those people killing Iraqis and Americans today are really trying to kill the first popularly based constitution-writing process in the Arab world.
But hey, you ask, "I thought that was what we were doing?" It is what we were doing, but the process got so bogged down, and the Baathist resistance so heated up, that it now looks as if we have only a military process in Iraq and no political process.
The reason this happened is that the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, which is supposed to come up with a plan for forming the constitution-writing committee, is becoming dysfunctional. Several key G.C. members, particularly the Pentagon's favorite son, Ahmad Chalabi, have been absent from Iraq for weeks. Only seven or eight of the 24 G.C. members show up at meetings anymore.
The U.S. administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, needs to lock the 24 members of the G.C. in a room and not let them out until they produce a workable process for electing or appointing a constitution-writing committee. If they will not do that, then they should be bypassed and their powers devolved (which is happening anyway) onto the Iraqi cabinet. The one good thing the G.C. did was to appoint a 25-person Iraqi cabinet — and two-thirds of them have Ph.D.'s in their areas of expertise. Some ministers are probably corrupt and less than competent, but a majority has proved to be quite capable.
"Iraqis need to be running this country more than the Americans are letting them," says Hassan Fattah, editor of the Baghdad-based Iraq Today newspaper. "Let's remember something: this country had institutions — they badly needed reform, but it is not like people here don't know how to run things. Iraq was sort of like a country where people knew how to drive, but they were driving on the wrong side of the road. America needs to be the driving instructor, while we learn how to drive on the right side of the road. But America should not be the driver."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/opinion/06FRIE.html
"There is much talk now about the need for 'Iraqification' of the police and armed forces, so Iraqis can take over for U.S. troops. No question, this is necessary. But it's not sufficient. We could have 100,000 Iraqis in the police and Army and it would not be enough — without one other person. We need an Iraqi leader (or a leadership council) elected as a result of an Iraqi constitutional or political process."
When you have an army and a police force, but no real legitimate government, it means that your army and police are always floating — unconnected to either a governing body above or to the people below. Security forces that are floating that way will never have the authority they need to keep order or crack down on retrograde elements trying to restore Baathist rule. The security forces must be anchored in an Iraqi political authority that is itself anchored in an Iraqi-written constitution.
This should be our drop-everything priority.
Imagine how different the U.S. position in Iraq would look to the world, to the American people and to the Arabs if President Bush could say, "Iraqis are now writing their own constitution, which will be the basis for elections, and we are in Iraq protecting that process until it's completed."
That is something Americans can understand and be proud of, and that is something that will make clear to the whole world that those people killing Iraqis and Americans today are really trying to kill the first popularly based constitution-writing process in the Arab world.
But hey, you ask, "I thought that was what we were doing?" It is what we were doing, but the process got so bogged down, and the Baathist resistance so heated up, that it now looks as if we have only a military process in Iraq and no political process.
The reason this happened is that the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, which is supposed to come up with a plan for forming the constitution-writing committee, is becoming dysfunctional. Several key G.C. members, particularly the Pentagon's favorite son, Ahmad Chalabi, have been absent from Iraq for weeks. Only seven or eight of the 24 G.C. members show up at meetings anymore.
The U.S. administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, needs to lock the 24 members of the G.C. in a room and not let them out until they produce a workable process for electing or appointing a constitution-writing committee. If they will not do that, then they should be bypassed and their powers devolved (which is happening anyway) onto the Iraqi cabinet. The one good thing the G.C. did was to appoint a 25-person Iraqi cabinet — and two-thirds of them have Ph.D.'s in their areas of expertise. Some ministers are probably corrupt and less than competent, but a majority has proved to be quite capable.
"Iraqis need to be running this country more than the Americans are letting them," says Hassan Fattah, editor of the Baghdad-based Iraq Today newspaper. "Let's remember something: this country had institutions — they badly needed reform, but it is not like people here don't know how to run things. Iraq was sort of like a country where people knew how to drive, but they were driving on the wrong side of the road. America needs to be the driving instructor, while we learn how to drive on the right side of the road. But America should not be the driver."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/opinion/06FRIE.html
Diplomacy: Iraq Said to Have Tried to Reach Last-Minute Deal to Avert War:
"As American soldiers massed on the Iraqi border in March and diplomats argued about war, an influential adviser to the Pentagon received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman: Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal."
Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct a search. The businessman said in an interview that the Iraqis also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 who was being held in Baghdad. At one point, he said, the Iraqis pledged to hold elections.
The messages from Baghdad, first relayed in February to an analyst in the office of Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy and planning, were part of an attempt by Iraqi intelligence officers to open last-ditch negotiations with the Bush administration through a clandestine communications channel, according to people involved.
The efforts were portrayed by Iraqi officials as having the approval of President Saddam Hussein, according to interviews and documents.
The overtures, after a decade of evasions and deceptions by Iraq, were ultimately rebuffed. But the messages raised enough interest that in early March, Richard N. Perle, an influential adviser to top Pentagon officials, met in London with the Lebanese-American businessman, Imad Hage.
According to both men, Mr. Hage laid out the Iraqis' position to Mr. Perle, and he pressed the Iraqi request for a direct meeting with Mr. Perle or another representative of the United States.
"I was dubious that this would work," said Mr. Perle, widely recognized as an intellectual architect of the Bush administration's hawkish policy toward Iraq, "but I agreed to talk to people in Washington."
Mr. Perle said he sought authorization from C.I.A. officials to meet with the Iraqis, but the officials told him they did not want to pursue this channel, and they indicated they had already engaged in separate contacts with Baghdad. Mr. Perle said, "The message was, `Tell them that we will see them in Baghdad.' "
A senior United States intelligence official said this was one of several contacts with Iraqis or with people who said they were trying to broker meetings on their behalf. "These signals came via a broad range of foreign intelligence services, other governments, third parties, charlatans and independent actors," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Every lead that was at all plausible, and some that weren't, were followed up."
There were a variety of efforts, both public and discreet, to avert a war in Iraq, but Mr. Hage's back channel appears to have been a final attempt by Mr. Hussein's government to reach American officials.
In interviews in Beirut, Mr. Hage said the Iraqis appeared intimidated by the American military threat. "The Iraqis were finally taking it seriously," he said, "and they wanted to talk, and they offered things they never would have offered if the build-up hadn't occurred."
Mr. Perle said he found it "puzzling" that the Iraqis would have used such complicated contacts to communicate "a quite astonishing proposal" to the administration.
But former American intelligence officers with extensive experience in the Middle East say many Arab leaders have traditionally placed a high value on secret communications, though such informal arrangements are sometimes considered suspect in Washington.
The activity in this back channel, detailed in interviews and in documents obtained by The New York Times, appears to show an increasingly frantic Iraqi regime trying to find room to maneuver as the enemy closes in. It also provides a rare glimpse into a subterranean world of international networking.
The key link in the network was Imad Hage, who has spent much of his life straddling two worlds. Mr. Hage, a Maronite Christian who was born in Beirut in 1956, fled Lebanon in 1976 after the civil war began there. He ended up in the United States, where he went to college and became a citizen.
Living in suburban Washington, Mr. Hage started an insurance company, American Underwriters Group, and became involved in Lebanese-American political circles. In the late 1990's, he moved his family and his company to Lebanon.
Serendipity brought him important contacts in the Arab world and in America. An influential Lebanese Muslim he met while handling an insurance claim introduced him to Mohammed Nassif, a senior Syrian intelligence official and a close aide to President Bashar al-Assad.
On trips back to Washington last year, Mr. Hage befriended a fellow Lebanese-American, Michael Maloof, who was working in the Pentagon as an analyst in an intelligence unit set up by Mr. Feith to look for ties between terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and countries like Iraq. Mr. Maloof has ties to many leading conservatives in Washington, having worked for Mr. Perle at the Pentagon during the Reagan administration.
In January 2003, as American pressure was building for a face-off with Iraq, Mr. Hage's two worlds intersected.
On a trip to Damascus, he said, Mr. Nassif told him about Syria's frustrations in communicating with American officials. On a trip to the United States later that month, Mr. Hage said, Mr. Maloof arranged for him to deliver that message personally to Mr. Perle and to Jaymie Durnan, then a top aide to the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz. Pentagon officials confirmed that the meetings occurred.
Mr. Perle, a member of the Defense Policy Board at the Pentagon, is known in foreign capitals as an influential adviser to top administration officials.
After Mr. Hage told his contacts in Beirut and Damascus about meeting Mr. Perle, Mr. Hage's influential Lebanese Muslim friend asked Mr. Hage to meet a senior Iraqi official eager to talk to the Americans. Mr. Hage cautiously agreed.
In February, as the United States was gearing up its campaign for a Security Council resolution authorizing force against Iraq, Hassan al-Obeidi, chief of foreign operations of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, arrived in Mr. Hage's Beirut office.
But within minutes, Mr. Hage said, Mr. Obeidi collapsed, and a doctor was called to treat him. "He came to my office, sat down, and in five minutes fell ill," recalled Mr. Hage. "He looked like a man under enormous stress."
After being treated, Mr. Obeidi explained that the Iraqis wanted to cooperate with the Americans and could not understand why the Americans were focused on Iraq rather than on countries, like Iran, that have long supported terrorists, Mr. Hage said. The Iraqi seemed desperate, Mr. Hage said, "like someone who feared for his own safety, although he tried to hide it."
Mr. Obeidi told Mr. Hage that Iraq would make deals to avoid war, including helping in the Mideast peace process. "He said, if this is about oil, we will talk about U.S. oil concessions," Mr. Hage recalled. "If it is about the peace process, then we can talk. If this is about weapons of mass destruction, let the Americans send over their people. There are no weapons of mass destruction."
Mr. Obeidi said the "Americans could send 2,000 F.B.I. agents to look wherever they wanted," Mr. Hage recalled.
He said that when he told Mr. Obeidi that the United States seemed adamant that Saddam Hussein give up power, Mr. Obeidi bristled, saying that would be capitulation. But later, Mr. Hage recounted, Mr. Obeidi said Iraq could agree to hold elections within the next two years.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/politics/06INTE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
"As American soldiers massed on the Iraqi border in March and diplomats argued about war, an influential adviser to the Pentagon received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman: Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal."
Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct a search. The businessman said in an interview that the Iraqis also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 who was being held in Baghdad. At one point, he said, the Iraqis pledged to hold elections.
The messages from Baghdad, first relayed in February to an analyst in the office of Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy and planning, were part of an attempt by Iraqi intelligence officers to open last-ditch negotiations with the Bush administration through a clandestine communications channel, according to people involved.
The efforts were portrayed by Iraqi officials as having the approval of President Saddam Hussein, according to interviews and documents.
The overtures, after a decade of evasions and deceptions by Iraq, were ultimately rebuffed. But the messages raised enough interest that in early March, Richard N. Perle, an influential adviser to top Pentagon officials, met in London with the Lebanese-American businessman, Imad Hage.
According to both men, Mr. Hage laid out the Iraqis' position to Mr. Perle, and he pressed the Iraqi request for a direct meeting with Mr. Perle or another representative of the United States.
"I was dubious that this would work," said Mr. Perle, widely recognized as an intellectual architect of the Bush administration's hawkish policy toward Iraq, "but I agreed to talk to people in Washington."
Mr. Perle said he sought authorization from C.I.A. officials to meet with the Iraqis, but the officials told him they did not want to pursue this channel, and they indicated they had already engaged in separate contacts with Baghdad. Mr. Perle said, "The message was, `Tell them that we will see them in Baghdad.' "
A senior United States intelligence official said this was one of several contacts with Iraqis or with people who said they were trying to broker meetings on their behalf. "These signals came via a broad range of foreign intelligence services, other governments, third parties, charlatans and independent actors," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Every lead that was at all plausible, and some that weren't, were followed up."
There were a variety of efforts, both public and discreet, to avert a war in Iraq, but Mr. Hage's back channel appears to have been a final attempt by Mr. Hussein's government to reach American officials.
In interviews in Beirut, Mr. Hage said the Iraqis appeared intimidated by the American military threat. "The Iraqis were finally taking it seriously," he said, "and they wanted to talk, and they offered things they never would have offered if the build-up hadn't occurred."
Mr. Perle said he found it "puzzling" that the Iraqis would have used such complicated contacts to communicate "a quite astonishing proposal" to the administration.
But former American intelligence officers with extensive experience in the Middle East say many Arab leaders have traditionally placed a high value on secret communications, though such informal arrangements are sometimes considered suspect in Washington.
The activity in this back channel, detailed in interviews and in documents obtained by The New York Times, appears to show an increasingly frantic Iraqi regime trying to find room to maneuver as the enemy closes in. It also provides a rare glimpse into a subterranean world of international networking.
The key link in the network was Imad Hage, who has spent much of his life straddling two worlds. Mr. Hage, a Maronite Christian who was born in Beirut in 1956, fled Lebanon in 1976 after the civil war began there. He ended up in the United States, where he went to college and became a citizen.
Living in suburban Washington, Mr. Hage started an insurance company, American Underwriters Group, and became involved in Lebanese-American political circles. In the late 1990's, he moved his family and his company to Lebanon.
Serendipity brought him important contacts in the Arab world and in America. An influential Lebanese Muslim he met while handling an insurance claim introduced him to Mohammed Nassif, a senior Syrian intelligence official and a close aide to President Bashar al-Assad.
On trips back to Washington last year, Mr. Hage befriended a fellow Lebanese-American, Michael Maloof, who was working in the Pentagon as an analyst in an intelligence unit set up by Mr. Feith to look for ties between terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and countries like Iraq. Mr. Maloof has ties to many leading conservatives in Washington, having worked for Mr. Perle at the Pentagon during the Reagan administration.
In January 2003, as American pressure was building for a face-off with Iraq, Mr. Hage's two worlds intersected.
On a trip to Damascus, he said, Mr. Nassif told him about Syria's frustrations in communicating with American officials. On a trip to the United States later that month, Mr. Hage said, Mr. Maloof arranged for him to deliver that message personally to Mr. Perle and to Jaymie Durnan, then a top aide to the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz. Pentagon officials confirmed that the meetings occurred.
Mr. Perle, a member of the Defense Policy Board at the Pentagon, is known in foreign capitals as an influential adviser to top administration officials.
After Mr. Hage told his contacts in Beirut and Damascus about meeting Mr. Perle, Mr. Hage's influential Lebanese Muslim friend asked Mr. Hage to meet a senior Iraqi official eager to talk to the Americans. Mr. Hage cautiously agreed.
In February, as the United States was gearing up its campaign for a Security Council resolution authorizing force against Iraq, Hassan al-Obeidi, chief of foreign operations of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, arrived in Mr. Hage's Beirut office.
But within minutes, Mr. Hage said, Mr. Obeidi collapsed, and a doctor was called to treat him. "He came to my office, sat down, and in five minutes fell ill," recalled Mr. Hage. "He looked like a man under enormous stress."
After being treated, Mr. Obeidi explained that the Iraqis wanted to cooperate with the Americans and could not understand why the Americans were focused on Iraq rather than on countries, like Iran, that have long supported terrorists, Mr. Hage said. The Iraqi seemed desperate, Mr. Hage said, "like someone who feared for his own safety, although he tried to hide it."
Mr. Obeidi told Mr. Hage that Iraq would make deals to avoid war, including helping in the Mideast peace process. "He said, if this is about oil, we will talk about U.S. oil concessions," Mr. Hage recalled. "If it is about the peace process, then we can talk. If this is about weapons of mass destruction, let the Americans send over their people. There are no weapons of mass destruction."
Mr. Obeidi said the "Americans could send 2,000 F.B.I. agents to look wherever they wanted," Mr. Hage recalled.
He said that when he told Mr. Obeidi that the United States seemed adamant that Saddam Hussein give up power, Mr. Obeidi bristled, saying that would be capitulation. But later, Mr. Hage recounted, Mr. Obeidi said Iraq could agree to hold elections within the next two years.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/politics/06INTE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
From a Suicide Bomber's Father, No Praise, Just Grief:
"The day after 16-year-old Sabih Abu Saud blew himself up in a West Bank village, with Israeli troops in pursuit, his father Kamal Abu Saud did something extremely unusual — he declined to eulogize his son as a hero.
In the tortured calculus of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the parents of suicide bombers have rarely strayed from a consistent message: Our sons and daughters are heroes, they said, and we are proud of what they did.
In keeping with that tradition, Sabih was widely hailed as a martyr, and posters of the youth, with a wisp of a mustache, were plastered along city streets and at the cemetery. But Mr. Saud, a 53-year-old construction worker, said he saw only the pointless loss of his son's life."
"As a father, I am angry about what happened," Mr. Saud said Tuesday in an interview from the family's home, set on a ridge with a panoramic view of Nablus. Had he known his son's intentions, "I would have prevented him, if I could."
Sabih had just reached his 16th birthday on Oct. 23, and may have been the youngest of the more than 100 Palestinian suicide bombers to date. Nevertheless, Mr. Saud's sentiments did not appear to be shared even by his wife, let alone by the young men in the streets of Nablus.
As a crowd gathered for the noisy funeral procession, Mr. Saud's wife, Nawal, took a megaphone and issued a challenge to Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon.
"If Sharon wants peace, we are ready to make it," she shouted. "But if he wants war, I'll be the first one to fight."
Mr. Saud did not blame the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the group that armed his son. He suggested instead that the ultimate responsibility was Sabih's.
"The person who gave him the bomb belt didn't force him to take it," said Mr. Saud, who described his son as a "good and quiet boy."
On Sunday, Sabih's mother noticed that a picture of the boy's uncle was missing. The uncle, Nasser Abu Saud, a member of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, was killed in April of last year during a major Israeli raid.
Sabih had taken the photograph with him, but the family did not grow suspicious until he failed to show up for the sundown dinner that breaks the daytime fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
This put them a step behind Israel's security forces, who were already on his trail. Sunday evening, Israel issued a high alert for a possible attack in Jerusalem, believing this was the bomber's target.
Israeli security officials declined to comment on the information that led to the alert. But Israel maintains a large number of Palestinian informants, or collaborators, and the warning suggested the security forces had been tipped off.
By Monday morning, the warning had been revised to central Israel, across the border from the West Bank town of Qalqiliya. The bomber was believed to have moved there overnight, with plans to enter Israel north of Jerusalem.
Around midday, Israeli troops in armored jeeps began scouring the village of Azun, near Qalqiliya. The troops apparently had not spotted Sabih before he rushed toward one of their jeeps and blew himself up, a military official said.…
The Abu Sauds now face the threat of having the family home demolished by Israeli troops for a second time. The first was in 1986, after Nasser Abu Saud was convicted of killing a Palestinian suspected of collaborating with Israel. Israel says that tearing down the homes of Palestinian attackers serves as both punishment and a deterrent.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/international/middleeast/06BOMB.html
"The day after 16-year-old Sabih Abu Saud blew himself up in a West Bank village, with Israeli troops in pursuit, his father Kamal Abu Saud did something extremely unusual — he declined to eulogize his son as a hero.
In the tortured calculus of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the parents of suicide bombers have rarely strayed from a consistent message: Our sons and daughters are heroes, they said, and we are proud of what they did.
In keeping with that tradition, Sabih was widely hailed as a martyr, and posters of the youth, with a wisp of a mustache, were plastered along city streets and at the cemetery. But Mr. Saud, a 53-year-old construction worker, said he saw only the pointless loss of his son's life."
"As a father, I am angry about what happened," Mr. Saud said Tuesday in an interview from the family's home, set on a ridge with a panoramic view of Nablus. Had he known his son's intentions, "I would have prevented him, if I could."
Sabih had just reached his 16th birthday on Oct. 23, and may have been the youngest of the more than 100 Palestinian suicide bombers to date. Nevertheless, Mr. Saud's sentiments did not appear to be shared even by his wife, let alone by the young men in the streets of Nablus.
As a crowd gathered for the noisy funeral procession, Mr. Saud's wife, Nawal, took a megaphone and issued a challenge to Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon.
"If Sharon wants peace, we are ready to make it," she shouted. "But if he wants war, I'll be the first one to fight."
Mr. Saud did not blame the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the group that armed his son. He suggested instead that the ultimate responsibility was Sabih's.
"The person who gave him the bomb belt didn't force him to take it," said Mr. Saud, who described his son as a "good and quiet boy."
On Sunday, Sabih's mother noticed that a picture of the boy's uncle was missing. The uncle, Nasser Abu Saud, a member of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, was killed in April of last year during a major Israeli raid.
Sabih had taken the photograph with him, but the family did not grow suspicious until he failed to show up for the sundown dinner that breaks the daytime fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
This put them a step behind Israel's security forces, who were already on his trail. Sunday evening, Israel issued a high alert for a possible attack in Jerusalem, believing this was the bomber's target.
Israeli security officials declined to comment on the information that led to the alert. But Israel maintains a large number of Palestinian informants, or collaborators, and the warning suggested the security forces had been tipped off.
By Monday morning, the warning had been revised to central Israel, across the border from the West Bank town of Qalqiliya. The bomber was believed to have moved there overnight, with plans to enter Israel north of Jerusalem.
Around midday, Israeli troops in armored jeeps began scouring the village of Azun, near Qalqiliya. The troops apparently had not spotted Sabih before he rushed toward one of their jeeps and blew himself up, a military official said.…
The Abu Sauds now face the threat of having the family home demolished by Israeli troops for a second time. The first was in 1986, after Nasser Abu Saud was convicted of killing a Palestinian suspected of collaborating with Israel. Israel says that tearing down the homes of Palestinian attackers serves as both punishment and a deterrent.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/international/middleeast/06BOMB.html
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