 |
Anti-Warrers:
In this update:
- Panel Discussion on UN Res Tomorrow (7 PM ARH 102)
- TELL US IF YOU DRIVE, HAVE A CAR TO SHARE, or BOTH
- Armbands on Dec 10th
- Initiatives Update
- Jan 18th protest
- Tell Bush : Give Inspections a Chance from moveon.org
- Next Meeting: Tuesday 9 PM ARH 120
- News Digest
******* Panel Discussion on UN Res Today (7 PM ARH 102) ********
Jeffrey Weiss of the AFSC and Prof. Wayne Moyer speaking about the UN
Resolution and its effects.
Come learn Thursday (TODAY) 7-8:30 ARH 102
****** TELL US IF YOU DRIVE, HAVE A CAR TO SHARE, or BOTH *******
If, on short notice you can:
a) Lend a car
b) Drive a car
c) Do both
Contact Laura Mason-Marshall [masonmar] ASAP (right now would be
awesome)
If you care to know why... see below ;)
The Grinnell Anti-War Alliance, in conjunction with other groups around
Iowa, is making a plan for a "DAY OF/DAY AFTER ACTION", if it should be
needed. This would involve meeting in Des Moines at a pre-designated
time for an anti-war vigil, if one of several pre-designated triggers
for war does occur.
At this point, we need to make sure we have transportation for people
who want to be in Des Moines. We are looking to find people who would be
willing to drive their cars to Des Moines on short notice, or who would
be willing to let some other nice and competent person borrow their car
for a worthy reason.
If you have a car to share, can drive, do both, have questions, or if
you're interested in helping with the organization process, please
contact Laura at [masonmar] Thanks!
********* Armbands on Dec 10th ********
Rachel Miller is working on the armbands for Dec 10th. If you can help
her do some of the grunt work this weekend contact her [millerra].
*************** Initiatives Update *********************
Because Sarah Weiss and Laura Polstein, will be away from campus next
semester, the initiatives torch has been picked up by [student's name removed at their request, 12/15/04].
Contact her with any questions about the initiative, if you can help
with publicity, or want to pursue getting an SGA resolution.
********* Jan 18th protest ************
See www.internationalanswer.org
If you're looking for a ride from Iowa ... contact Eli Zigas [zigaseli]
******* Tell Bush : Give Inspections a Chance from moveon.org *********
Inspections in Iraq have started. Most of us breathed a sigh of relief.
Unfortunately, it's become clear that the ultra-hawks in the Bush
administration -- Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle -- will not take yes for an
answer. While the rest of the world thinks Iraq has backed down, these
men are beginning a massive public relations blitz for war.
With the possibility of a peaceful resolution to this crisis at hand, we
cannot allow a few men to push the world to war. Send a message to
President Bush to let the inspections work at:
http://www.moveon.org/winwithoutwar/
We'll compile your messages and present them to the Administration,
including Secretary of State Powell, and to U.N. Secretary General Kofi
Annan.
The good news is that the ultra-hawks face some serious opposition.
Secretary of State Colin Powell and other members of the Bush
Administration are willing to give diplomacy a chance, and the State
Department's interpretation of the U.N. resolution is a lot more
reasonable than the White House's interpretation.
But unless wiser heads prevail, this is what we should expect:
(1) starting December 8th, members of the Bush administration will claim
that Iraq is in material breach of the U.N. resolution, citing supposed
omissions in the coming multi-hundred page report, based on undisclosed
intelligence; (2) soon thereafter some "hot" incident, like
anti-aircraft fire on U.S. patrols in the no-fly zone, will be used to
solidify public support for war, and finally (3) the bombing campaign
will begin.
This could all begin before Christmas -- another wonderful gift to the
world from the Bush administration.
President Bush has agreed that war should be the very last resort. Let's
hold him and his administration to those words:
http://www.moveon.org/winwithoutwar/
Please sign on today. We must support policy makers who will oppose
these few extremists in the Bush White House who have been looking for
an excuse for war from the very beginning.
Sincerely,
--Eli Pariser
International Campaigns Director
MoveOn.org
December 4th, 2002
************** Next Meeting *********
Next Grinnell Anti-War Meeting: Tuesday 9 PM ARH 120
**************** News Digest ***********************
@@@@@@@@@ NY Times: US Monitoring Iraqi-Americans @@@@@
@@@@@@@@@ Long but worth the read @@@@@@@@@
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
November 17, 2002, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 1; Page 1; Column 6; National Desk
LENGTH: 1445 words
HEADLINE: THREATS AND RESPONSES: INTELLIGENCE;
AGENCIES MONITOR IRAQIS IN THE U.S. FOR TERROR THREAT
BYLINE: By DAVID JOHNSTON and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Nov. 16
BODY:
The Bush administration has begun to monitor Iraqis in the United States
in an effort to identify potential domestic terrorist threats posed by
sympathizers of the Baghdad regime, senior government officials said.
The previously undisclosed intelligence program involves tracking
thousands of Iraqi citizens and Iraqi-Americans with dual citizenship
who are attending American universities or working at private
corporations, and who might pose a risk in the event of a United
States-led war against Iraq, officials said.
Some of the targets of the operation are being electronically monitored
under the authority of national security warrants. Others are being
selected for recruitment as informers, the officials said. In the event
of an American invasion of Iraq, officials would intensify the program's
mission through arrests and detentions of Iraqis or Iraq sympathizers if
they are believed to be planning domestic terrorist operations.
The government officials who confirmed the outlines of the program did
so in an apparent effort to rebut critics in Congress and elsewhere who
have complained recently that American intelligence agencies are failing
in their war against terror. Senior Democratic senators have said the
problems are demonstrated by the government's inability to find Osama
bin Laden and to identify specific threats since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Iraqi domestic intelligence program is an addition to the
government's continuing effort since the attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon to identify citizens of Middle Eastern countries
who represent a potential threat. Those efforts have also been stepped
up as the country prepares for the possibility of war.
Next week, federal authorities plan to begin interviewing
Arab-Americans, asking them to report suspicious activity related to
Iraq, a senior government official said. The interviews will be
voluntary, but in the past, such efforts have been criticized by
Arab-American groups. The F.B.I. is planning to meet with Arab-American
civic leaders to explain the nonclassified aspects of the operation,
officials said.
Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the White House Office of Homeland
Security, declined to comment on the surveillance program, which is
classified. The effort by intelligence agencies, particularly the
F.B.I., to strengthen and expand their counterterrorism programs comes
at a time of serious discussion in Congress and in the Bush
administration about whether to create a domestic intelligence agency
like MI-5, the British agency that collects information about internal
threats.
Senior Bush administration counterterrorism officials gathered on
Veterans Day at a White House meeting directed by Condoleezza Rice, the
national security adviser, to discuss whether to strip the F.B.I. of its
domestic security responsibilities. The meeting was first reported today
by The Washington Post.
No one in the administration has formally proposed creating a domestic
intelligence agency. Several officials said dismantling the F.B.I.
remained an uncertain prospect, but they said a wide range of ideas were
likely to be considered with the creation of a Homeland Security
Department.
Another part of the new intelligence operation involves a focused effort
to assess whether the regime of Saddam Hussein has engaged in any
actions, through alliances with Middle Eastern terrorist organizations
or efforts to obtain weapons, that could threaten American interests in
this country or abroad. The operation is also tracing the movement of
money by the Iraqi government, and organizations sympathetic with Iraq,
around the world.
The officials said the monitoring had not detected any specific threats
in the United States or against American interests overseas.
The operation draws on the experience of a smaller program that was
undertaken in the Persian Gulf war with Iraq in 1991, a conflict that
resulted in little immediate threat of terrorism in the United States.
During the war, the F.B.I. and the Immigration and Naturalization
Service conducted thousands of interviews with Iraqis and other
Arab-Americans in the United States and investigated hundreds of Iraqis
who had entered the United States on visitors' visas and had not left
when their entry permits expired.
A large number of government agencies are part of the new operation,
including the Pentagon, the F.B.I., the Central Intelligence Agency, the
immigration service, the State Department and the National Security
Agency, which eavesdrops on communications around the world, officials
said.
Officials said the operation would also step up monitoring of Iraq's
foreign intelligence service, which they believe operates under
diplomatic cover from Baghdad's mission at the United Nations.
"This is the largest and most aggressive program like this we've ever
had," said one senior government official, who spoke on condition of
anonymity. "We think we know who most of the bad guys are, but we are
going to be very proactive here and not take any chances."
Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is departing as chairman of
the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an interview this week that
American intelligence agencies, in particular the F.B.I., had failed to
consider the full range of threats that might stem from a war with Iraq.
Mr. Graham said that beyond threats from Al Qaeda, American intelligence
agencies had not adequately assessed threats posed by other Middle
Eastern terror groups that are likely to be inflamed by a war with Iraq,
among them Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
"I think we make a mistake when we assume that the threat is only Al
Qaeda," Mr. Graham said. "There are a lot of terror groups out there,
some of them with a large presence in the United States, who shouldn't
be dismissed because in the past they have not attacked in the United
States."
Intelligence analysts said that for years the authorities have tracked
the movements of Islamic militant groups in the United States. The
groups were subjected to scrutiny because they engaged in fund-raising
or criminal activity that brought them into contact with law enforcement
agencies, the officials said. In contrast, Qaeda operatives like the 19
hijackers lived quietly and, except for a handful of minor traffic
violations, did not break the law.
But Mr. Graham said that F.B.I. officials, in closed sessions with the
committee, had been unable to provide basic information about Islamic
militant groups with a presence in the United States.
"The kinds of questions that I've asked are: how many operatives are in
the United States, where are they distributed, what is their
infrastructure -- financially, logistically and with communications,"
Mr. Graham said. "It's the same inability to answer."
For 90 minutes on Friday, Mr. Graham met with Robert S. Mueller III, the
F.B.I. director, to discuss his concerns. Mr. Mueller presented the
senator with a briefing of current counterterrorism operations in the
United States, officials said.
"Mr. Mueller was more forthcoming than in past sessions, and that seemed
to satisfy the senator," said Paul Anderson, a spokesman for Senator
Graham.
However, Mr. Anderson said that Senator Graham believed the F.B.I. "has
a long way to go" in its domestic counterterrorism efforts, "and very
few days in which to get there," a reference to the possibility that a
military confrontation with Iraq could occur within three months.
American officials contend that the Iraqi intelligence service learned a
lesson from its failure to engage in anti-American terrorist activities
during the first gulf war. Iraq's efforts were disrupted by the C.I.A.
and the F.B.I., and it was unable to mount any successful terrorist
attacks against American interests.
After the gulf war, Iraq botched an attempt to assassinate former
President George Bush on a visit to Kuwait in 1993, prompting President
Bill Clinton to order a cruise missile strike at the Iraqi intelligence
headquarters building in Baghdad. Since then, according to the C.I.A.,
there is no evidence that Iraq has engaged in terrorist activity against
the United States.
The Bush administration has said it has evidence of contacts over the
years between Iraqi intelligence and Qaeda operatives, and there have
been reports that some Qaeda operatives moved into Iraq after fleeing
Afghanistan. But American intelligence officials say there is no
evidence that Iraq has become involved in Qaeda terrorist operations,
and the Bush administration has never found hard evidence that Iraq
played any role in the Sept. 11 attacks.
http://www.nytimes.com
GRAPHIC: Photo: Senator Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida, has been
critical of intelligence agencies as chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee. (Agence France-Presse)(pg. 22)
******************************************************
The Anti-War Update and Digest is published by:
--Eli Zigas
antiwar@grinnell.edu
Norris 1st
X 4039
To subscribe or unsubscribe, contact me.
|
|
