'Code Orange Christmas'
Following a path well traveled
By George Ochenski, Missoula Independent
The snow fell softly as the skis swished silently through the deep green pines while the low winter sun suffused the slopes below in a golden glow. Deep and restful peace lay upon the land and I, like so many other Montanans, drank my fill of the rich and quiet beauty in which we are so lucky to live. Peace--such a simple word to say, and such a noble goal for society. Yet at this time when peace, tolerance, and generosity should be abundant, we are a society torn and fearful, and wondering when, if, and what kind of peace we will ever experience again.

Last week's big news, of course, was the capture of Saddam Hussein. "We got him," shouted the headlines, as intentionally humiliating pictures of Iraq's bedraggled former leader were broadcast around the globe.

This week's big news is raising the terror threat level from Code Yellow to Code Orange. In case you haven't gotten the color codes by which we are expected to live our lives down pat yet, in plain old English that means we went from "elevated" threat levels to "high."



Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge says Americans should "go about our business." But meanwhile, he is also telling us that the threats to our nation from terrorist attacks are higher than at any time since 9/11. The "intelligence chatter," according to our shadowy analysts, also suggests we may be subjected to "non-conventional" attacks involving chemical or biological agents. Oh, and by the way, Happy Holidays.

Time magazine, getting in the holiday spirit, slaps three soldiers, in full camo and armed to the teeth, on its cover, proclaiming them Time's "person of the year." The incongruity between the Season of Peace and those who carry out the grim business of war is not lost in translation.

So here we are, having outlasted and bankrupted the former "Evil Empire" of the Soviet Union, standing alone as the world's sole remaining superpower. Yet we are spending more on so-called "defense" than any nation on earth...by exponential magnitudes. Our aircraft carriers roam the high seas, our satellites spy from the heavens, and our submarines lurk silent and undetectable off the shores of friends and foes alike. We still have thousands of nuclear warheads ready to unleash hellfire and total destruction at a moment's notice. And our soldiers are scattered across the globe on every continent, in or around every country, securing, if not the peace, then at least their place on the cover of Time magazine.

Which brings us, of course, to the core question here: What kind of world and what kind of "peace" are we creating? As in Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken," we are at the juncture where "two roads diverge in a yellow wood." We, like Frost, are confronted with the choice of paths, knowing we "could not travel both and be one traveler."

Our current path is well traveled. Like so many nations and empires before us, we are searching for peace and security through the colonial approach of force of arms. Using all the might at our disposal--and indeed, our weapons have the combined might to destroy the globe--we seek the way of the sword, intimidating those who would challenge us with utter and total destruction.

Twice in rapid succession, President Bush has thrown our country into unprecedented pre-emptive wars on other nations, while threatening many more. Bush's so-called "war on terrorism" is global in nature we are told, wildly expensive as we're finding out, and, if you believe those who crafted and launched it, potentially endless. We are also told that such efforts are absolutely necessary to "secure the peace."

The evidence, however, does not seem to support the theory. The Code Orange warnings reflect an increased, not decreased, level of threat. Even as our carols laud "Peace on Earth, good will toward men," we are a fearful, vengeful nation, bristling with guns pointed outward at "the enemy," whomsoever it may be.

There is, of course, another way. Just as in Frost's poem, there is indeed a path "less traveled" that might deliver us to a future of real peace--not the peace enforced by threat of arms, conquest, and control, but the peace born of respect and admiration, tolerance and humility, understanding and empathy for all our fellow travelers on the globe as we whirl through time and space.

Many will dismiss such thoughts as the outmoded thinking of sentimentalists longing for a simpler world. "Times have changed," they will say, positing that if we don't "get the terrorists where they live," they will soon be coming to get us where we live. But that is far from new thinking; it is the primitive logic of the very old, very worn path that leads us where? Well, so far it is leading us to a loss of our basic freedoms, to being spied on by our own government, to massive deficits loaded on future generations, to an unconscionable loss of life, to the horrific maiming of thousands more, and to a Code Orange Christmas.

We've heard it all before: pound your "swords into plowshares," "love thy enemy," "thou shalt not kill," and "the meek shall inherit the earth." Indeed, we are celebrating the birth of Jesus, a man who expounded all those sentimentalist theories and who wound up nailed to a cross for his efforts. Yet, 2000 years later, he is still called the Prince of Peace.

We are lucky here in Montana. On any given day, most of us can walk to a quiet pine forest, stand on a windblown mountaintop, or lose ourselves in a vast prairie stretching from horizon to horizon. And we can find, for a moment at least, the deep and total peace of a nature that has no clue what Code Orange means.

Peace is still possible. But to get there, we have to take the path less traveled.

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Declassified documents show Rumsfeld backed Saddam even after chemical attacks
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington, The Independent
Fresh controversy about Donald Rumsfeld's personal dealings with Saddam Hussein was provoked yesterday by new documents that reveal he went to Iraq to show America's support for the regime despite its use of chemical weapons.

The formerly secret documents reveal the Defence Secretary travelled to Baghdad 20 years ago to assure Iraq that America's condemnation of its use of chemical weapons was made "strictly" in principle.

The criticism in no way changed Washington's wish to support Iraq in its war against Iran and "to improve bi-lateral relations ... at a pace of Iraq's choosing".

Earlier this year, Mr Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration regularly cited Saddam's willingness to use chemical weapons against his own people as evidence of the threat presented to the rest of the world.

Senior officials presented the attacks against the Kurds - particularly the notorious attack in Halabja in 1988 - as a justification for the invasion and the ousting of Saddam.



But the newly declassified documents reveal that 20 years ago America's position was different and that the administration of President Ronald Reagan was concerned about maintaining good relations with Iraq despite evidence of Saddam's "almost daily" use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops and Kurdish rebels.

In March 1984, under international pressure, America condemned Iraq's use of such chemical weapons. But realising that Baghdad had been upset, Secretary of State George Schultz asked Mr Rumsfeld to travel to Iraq as a special envoy to meet Saddam's Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz, and smooth matters over.

In a briefing memo to Mr Rumsfeld, Mr Shultz wrote that he had met Iraqi officials in Washington to stress that America's interests remained "in (1) preventing an Iranian victory and (2) continuing to improve bilateral relations with Iraq".

The memo adds: "This message bears reinforcing during your discussions."

Exactly what Mr Rumsfeld, who at the time did not hold government office, told Mr Aziz on 26 March 1984, remains unclear and minutes from the meeting remain classified. No one from Mr Rumsfeld's office was available to comment yesterday.

It was not Mr Rumsfeld's first visit to Iraq. Four months earlier, in December 1983, he had visited Saddam and was photographed shaking hands with the dictator. When news of this visit was revealed last year, Mr Rumsfeld claimed he had "cautioned" Saddam to stop using chemical weapons.

When documents about the meeting disclosed he had said no such thing, a spokesman for Mr Rumsfeld said he had raised the issue with Mr Aziz.

America's relationship with Iraq at a time when Saddam was using chemical weapons is well-documented but rarely reported.

During the war with Iran, America provided combat assistance to Iraq that included intelligence on Iranian deployments and bomb-damage assessments. In 1987-88 American warships destroyed Iranian oil platforms in the Gulf and broke the blockade of Iraqi shipping lanes.

Tom Blanton, the director of the National Security Archive, a non-profit group that obtained the documents, told The New York Times: "Saddam had chemical weapons in the 1980s and it didn't make any difference to US policy. The embrace of Saddam and what it emboldened him to do should caution us as Americans that we have to look closely at all our murky alliances."

Last night, Danny Muller, a spokesman for the anti-war group Voices in the Wilderness, said the documents revealed America's "blatant hypocrisy". He added: "This is not an isolated event. Continuing administrations have said 'we will do business'. I am surprised that Donald Rumsfeld does not resign right now."

© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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US, Spain caught in Libya missile mixup
By Tito Drago

MADRID - The US government needs to explain why the missile shipment on a vessel intercepted a year ago on the high seas by the Spanish navy ended up in Libya, a spokesman from Spain's Defense Ministry said this week.

The official was referring to declarations made by sources from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to the Madrid daily El Mundo that claim 15 complete Scud missiles, a set of conventional warheads and 85 containers of chemical products - some 20 holding nitric acid - were ultimately delivered to Libya under a Washington decision.

The episode began on December 5, 2002, when US intelligence services informed Madrid about the route of a freighter named So San, which they suspected of trafficking weapons and which was, at the time, crossing a zone under Spain's authority in the Indian Ocean. Four days later, a Spanish frigate and warship intercepted the So San after ordering the captain to halt and firing warning shots. The vessel was found to be sailing under the Cambodian flag.

The weapons and chemicals came from North Korea and did not appear on the ship's manifest, which showed only that the merchant vessel was carrying bags of cement. After intercepting the freighter, Spain then handed the ship over to the US Navy. Immediate official explanations out of Washington and Madrid said the missiles might have been headed for the al-Qaeda network, which the US government holds responsible for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. However, just hours later, the US administration took Spain by surprise by turning the So San over to Yemen, explaining that the cargo was actually a legal shipment of weapons purchased from North Korea by the Yemini government.

The handover was preceded by a telephone conversation between US Vice President Dick Cheney and Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. When that conversation was made public, the White House justified the move by calling Yemen a friendly nation. So what initially came off as a brilliant Spanish military operation to prevent illegal trade in weapons of mass destruction was reduced to a suspected manipulation directed from Washington, with Madrid in the role of receiving and carrying out orders that were not very clear in their purpose.

The NATO sources cited in El Mundo said that at the time the shipment was intercepted, the United States was secretly negotiating the possibility that Libya would accept Saddam Hussein, then still president of Iraq, in exile. And Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who played the role of go-between during the Gulf War in 1991 by assisting in Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait, had hopes of gaining access to the weapons.

"Gaddafi wanted the missiles and Yemen acted as intermediary. In the context of gestures with Libya, it was decided to look the other way, given that there was no international regulation that impeded it," said the newspaper, citing sources from the Pentagon.

Today, as it was a year ago, Madrid's reaction of disappointment regarding the United States' handling of the shipment was immediate, but not very explicit, because Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar continues to be a staunch, unconditional supporter of the policies of his US counterpart, President George W Bush.

As a result, the opposition United Left (IU) has announced that it will petition Defense Minister Federico Trillo to inform parliament about the country's participation, "past and present", in relation to the case of the weapons shipment. Madrid's handling of the issue "is one more demonstration of [Aznar's] erratic foreign policy and his troubling submission and total dependence on the policy marked by the US," IU general coordinator Gaspar Llamazares said. "The IU is highly concerned that Spain is extending political and commercial ties to a country that does not provide any democratic guarantees," such as Libya, he added.

Neither the Spanish government nor the opposition and civil-society organizations categorize the Gaddafi regime as terrorist and they agree on the need to facilitate his integration into the international community. In fact, Spain has not drawn up a list of countries it considers terrorist, noted a Foreign Ministry spokesperson, but the United States has, and Libya, which figures on that list, is subject to a commercial and military embargo. No US company is authorized to sell weapons to Libya directly or indirectly, nor to facilitate the delivery of arms.

When the United Nations Security Council lifted sanctions against Libya, then-US ambassador James Cunningham abstained from the vote, stating that Washington did not want to give the idea that it believed Libya had done an about-face, because, said the ambassador, the country continued to try to obtain weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. But things appear to have changed radically, given that the weapons shipment intercepted by Spain, and which ended up in Libya, includes such arms.

(Inter Press Service)

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