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CURRENT UPDATES: February 11, 2003
Dear Friends,
The police have denied United for Peace a permit to march on Feb. 15th, but the rally (and almost certainly the march as well) are going forward anyway. Hundreds of thousands are expected in NYC and people in more than 300 cities throughout the globe are organizing protests this weekend against the Iraq war, even as the Bush administration moves forward with its war plans. Feeder marches are being planned by dynamic and diverse groups including the Harlem Freedom Hall Feeder, the Mardi Gras Carnival Bloc, the Chicago Humanist Feeder, the Peace Ride/Bike Bloc, the Take Back the Future March and numerous others which will converge and then march (or bike or dance) to the rallying spot at 49th street and 1st avenue. For more information visit www.unitedforpeace.org
For an inspiring break from the mainstream media, and information on the constellations of anti-war activity, visit www.commondreams.org (this invaluable website has also scrupulously documented all the naked women actions for peace throughout the world, the most recent being in Australia, where 750 naked women spelled out "No WAR" on a cow pile strewn hillside). And, last but not least, cartoonist Tom Tomorrow taps into our deepest feelings of "OUTRAGE OVERLOAD" with a recent cartoon at www.workingforchange.com
In this update:
On February 9th Indonesia released a prisoner. Lesley McCulloch is a Scottish academic who had been held for five months by security forces, enduring physical and sexual harassment. McCulloch's imprisonment, along with her traveling companion, an American nurse named Joy Sadler, signals a continuation of Indonesia's tendency to respond to opposition and criticism with brute force and calls into question the extent of the "influence" Washington wields over its ally in the war on terrorism. Lesley McCulloch has authored a number of reports and studies on corruption and human rights abuses by the Indonesian military. In her October 2000 investigation of the role of the military in business activities she concludes "In its pursuit of the accumulation of capital and generation of profits, ABRI [Indonesian military] has systematically plundered the Republic of financial and other resources. The prevalence of the military business complex in Indonesia has had a negative impact on transparency and accountability." These remarks did not make McCulloch popular with military officials. In fact, Sadler told the Guardian newspaper in November that McCulloch's research enraged the military. "The level of pure hate towards Lesley has been so great, I was really honest to God afraid they would take her out. I've never seen such hate." McCulloch and Sadler were captured by the military in September 2002 as they traveled back from a research trip in Aceh. The oil rich province has suffered 27 years of conflict in which more than 30,000 have been killed. Last year alone, more than 1,000 people were killed. A peace agreement between the separatist Free Aceh Movement and the Indonesian government was signed in December. While in prison, McCulloch and Sadler witnessed the torment and torture suffered by other prisoners. "Sometimes the torture sessions would go on for half an hour and sometimes an hour," McCulloch said. "Then they might take the prisoner back to the cells for a bit and then they would drag him out again. While some would see the release of the two women as the end of the matter, human rights abuses and military impunity remain intractable. Despite this, the Bush administration is adamant about resumption of full military ties with Jakarta. In an effort to win support in the war on terrorism from the world's largest Muslim democracy, the Bush administration has offered renewed military aid and training. Already, the embargo on commercial sales of non-lethal defense articles has been lifted and bilateral contacts between the two militaries have increased. Congress reinstated classroom military training in 2002. Indonesia's military also benefits from the Regional Defense Counter-terrorism Fellowship Program, a $17.9 million military training program for Asian militaries. These steps send a message of support to the Jakarta government, even as many of the problems that sparked the U.S. Congress' decision to freeze all military aid have not been resolved. Recently, the Senate voted down an amendment that would have restricted IMET (International Military Education and Training) from Indonesia. In the past, soldiers trained by the U.S. under IMET have been found responsible for gross violations of human rights. At the same time, a Federal Bureau of Investigation concluded that the Indonesian military was responsible for the murder of two American citizens in Irian Jaya last summer. "There is no question there was military involvement," said a senior administration official. "There is no question it was premeditated." RESOURCES:
East Timor Action Center
U.S. Finds Indonesian Troops Killed Teachers, Reuters, January 30, 2003
II. PENTAGON BUSTS THE PIGGY BANK: The $400 Billion Military Budget Michelle Ciarrocca The Pentagon press release on the FY 2004 budget said the central theme of the new budget is "meeting today's threats while preparing for tomorrow's challenges." Real world translation?: Funding the weapons of yesterday, today, AND tomorrow. The President's Department of Defense budget for 2004 is $379.9 billion, $15.3 billion above the FY 2003 budget. Add in defense activities from the Department of Energy, the Coast Guard and other agencies and total military spending quickly reaches almost $400 billion. This figure, however, does not include money for military action against Iraq or for the war on terrorism. Funding for these items is expected to come from emergency supplemental requests. Steve Kosiak, director of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, told the Washington Post, "We've come to the point where we're spending more money than we spent during the Cold War. Whether this is sustainable over the next six years is questionable." Despite the Bush administration's ongoing talk of "transformation" and "skipping a generation" of weapons, there is very little reality in these assertions (much like last year's budget). The budget identifies $25 billion in "transformational programs," yet almost $10 billion of that figure is going to the administration's missile defense program -- a program that is light years away (whole solar systems away) from being "transformational" and is the world's most vivid representation of a Cold War Relic. The Pentagon's "Program Acquisition Costs by Weapon System" for FY 2004 indicates that more than one-third of the Pentagon's $72 billion weapons procurement budget will be allocated to big ticket, Cold War era systems that have little or nothing to do with the war on terrorism. In fact, many of these systems were mentioned as candidates for major reductions or cancellation during the Bush campaign and during the early months of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's defense review. The Cold War relics, along with their prime contractors and their budget allocations for 2004, as follows: - Army's RAH-66 Comanche helicopter
- Air Force's F-22 Raptor
- Navy's F-18E/F fighter plane
- Joint Strike Fighter/F-35
- V-22 Osprey
- DDG-51 destroyer
- Virginia class attack submarine
- Trident II Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile
In total, these systems are slated to receive $22.3 billion in the FY 2004 budget, despite the fact that they have been criticized in the past by Bush advisors or independent advocates of military reform as being redundant (the three new fighter plane programs), or otherwise out of step with a world in which the likely adversary is not a massively armed Soviet Union but a regional power or terror network which is not setting out to match the United States plane for plane or ship for ship. Add in the $9.8 billion allocated for ballistic missile defense, and more than $32 billion, or 44%, of the procurement budget is going towards items that have little or nothing to do with fighting the war on terrorism. By contrast, increased spending on precision munitions like the Boeing Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), the Raytheon Tomahawk cruise missile, and a variety of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, all of which were heavily utilized in the war in Afghanistan, are slated to receive $2.32 billion in the FY 2004 budget. National Defense Topline (Function 050) - $ in Billions
Some facts about the U.S. military budget:
The new Department of Homeland Security will be allocated $36.2 billion in the budget request, a 7.4% increase in funding over the FY 2003 budget. However, overall spending on domestic security programs will total $41.35 billion. Some highlights of the budget include requests for:
The Department of State and International Assistance Programs (Department of State, USAID, and other international agencies) budget request for 2004 is $27.4 billion, an 11.6-percent increase over the $24.5 billion requested for 2003. It's stated No. 1 goal is the war on terrorism, with that in mind, the budget includes "$2.3 billion to vulnerable states on the front lines of the war" -- these include Afghanistan, Colombia, Jordan, Pakistan, and Turkey. The budget proposes $800 million in the Economic Support Fund (ESF) for the frontline states, including $250 million for Jordan, $200 million each for Pakistan and Turkey and $150 million for Afghanistan. Over $171 million will go to assistance programs in the Central Asian states. The President's request for the Andean Counterdrug Initiative includes $463 million for Colombia. 2004 Budget Resources:
2. White House FY 2004 Budget www.whitehouse.gov 3. DoD News: Fiscal 2004 Department of Defense Budget Release 4. Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, reports and analysis by Steve Kosiak 5. Department of Homeland Security Budget Request: www.dhs.gov, www.whitehouse.gov and www.armscontrolcenter.org 6. Department of State and International Assistance Programs Request: www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2004/state.html
III. MISSILE DEFENSE: Again for the Very First Time? Michelle Ciarrocca "And this year, for the first time, we are beginning to field a defense to protect this nation against ballistic missiles," President Bush said during his State of the Union address. This year? For the first time? It appears that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forgot to inform Mr. Bush that the U.S. deployed a missile defense system before. In fact, Mr. Rumsfeld was Defense Secretary then too. Under the Nixon administration, the Safeguard system was developed, and eventually deployed. The system, using nuclear-tipped interceptors, became fully operational on October 1, 1975. Four months later, Rumsfeld announced that the Safeguard system was being terminated and shut down because it was too costly to operate while offering a very limited capability. Missile defense research has been underway since shortly after the Second World War. Early projects included the short-range Thumper and the longer-range Wizard. In the mid-1950s, the army began work on Nike-Zeus, a ground-based system. During the 1960's missile defense efforts continued under the Nike-X program. Measured in terms of today's purchasing power the total cost of Nike-Zeus, Nike-X and the Safeguard program combined is estimated at $37 billion. In March of 1983, Ronald Reagan unveiled his Star Wars plan, or Strategic Defense Initiative, an ambitious research program to defend the U.S. against a massive Soviet nuclear attack; a program that Reagan envisioned would make nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." With U.S.-Soviet relations warming by the end of Reagan's term, the program was reoriented to focus on limited attacks against American forces. President George Herbert Walker Bush called it GPALS, short for Global Protection Against Limited Strikes. The Pentagon's official funding estimate for ballistic missile defense for the period of FY 1984 to FY 1994 is $32.6 billion. However, a Congressional Research Service report from 1995 estimated the actual amount could be as much as $70.7 billion for that same time span. In 1992, President Clinton continued with the idea of defending against a limited ballistic missile attack, but gave precedence to theater defenses capable of protecting deployed troops. Then, in the later part of his term, Clinton bowed to congressional pressure to develop a National Missile Defense (NMD) system based on the perceived "rogue" threat facing the U.S. Missile Defense funding throughout the Clinton years averaged about $4 billion a year. Today, 20 years and $91 billion after Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" speech, President Bush has called for a layered missile defense system capable of defending the entire U.S., as well as "our friends and allies and deployed forces overseas," from ballistic missile attack. The layered approach would combine the ground-based NMD system inherited from the Clinton administration with sea-, air-, and space-based components to take out enemy missiles during all three phases of a missile launch - boost phase, midcourse, and terminal. Last December, President Bush directed the Pentagon to begin fielding initial missile defense capabilities in 2004-2005, which will build on the Ft. Greely, Alaska test-bed site. According to a press release from the Pentagon, they'll be employing an "evolutionary approach to the development and deployment of missile defenses over time. This means there is no final or fixed missile defense architecture." However, the most recent ground-based test failed to intercept its target, the tests are still using surrogate parts, and some parts haven't even been developed, let alone tested. President Bush's FY 2004 missile defense budget request is $9.8 billion, a hefty increase over the levels obtained in the last Clinton administration budget ($5.4 billion). The Pentagon is projecting yearly missile defense funding to reach $11.5 billion by 2007. While the Bush administration's short-term missile defense spending plans represent a substantial increase over the Clinton administration, they represent only the down payment on the actual costs of deploying a missile defense system. Commenting on the recently submitted budget, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said, "While I have not yet had time to examine the proposed budget in detail, I am concerned by the Administration's plans to increase missile defense spending by $1.5 billion." He continued, "A large part of this increase is apparently requested to begin deployment of a national missile defense system" -- a system that has yet to be shown to work. In President Bush's deployment statement he made reference to 9/11 saying the event "underscored that our Nation faces unprecedented threats." He went on to say that the "gravest danger of all" facing the United States is a hostile state or terrorist group armed with weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. However, the December 2001 National Intelligence Estimate (released after 9/11) disagrees with Bush's claims. The NIE noted that "U.S. territory is more likely to be attacked" with weapons of mass destruction by countries or terrorist groups using "ships, trucks, airplanes or other means" than by a long-range ballistic missile. Those delivery systems are "less expensive than developing and producing ICBMs," and unlike missiles, non-missile systems "can be overtly developed and employed" with the source being "masked in an attempt to evade retaliation." They can also be deployed in ways that will evade ballistic missile defenses, rendering the costly proposed investments in these systems irrelevant. The main focus of Washington's energy and resources should be on preventive measures, which are far more effective at reducing the threat of nuclear war than any pie-in-the-sky defensive schemes. At $1 billion per year, the federal government's entire budget for non-proliferation programs is roughly equivalent to four days of the estimated costs for the Bush administration's proposed military intervention in Iraq. Clearly, the enormous costs coupled with the limited defensive capability offered by Bush's missile defense system are similar to those which caused Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to pull the plug on the Safeguard system the first time around. Maybe Rumsfeld will come to his senses again, and hopefully it will be before the U.S. deploys a missile defense system for the second time. Missile Defense Resources:
2. The Center for Defense Information has compiled the budget details for the various missile defense programs on their webs site. 3. From the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and Economists Allied for Arms Reduction, The Full Costs of Ballistic Missile Defense
IV. RESOURCES AND TID BITS A. CONTESTED CASE: Do the Facts Justify the Case for War in Iraq? Kroc Institute/Fourth Freedom Forum Policy Brief F8 (February 2003) By David Cortright, Alistair Millar, George A. Lopez, and Linda Gerber available on the web at www.nd.edu B. RULE OF POWER OR RULE OF LAW? An Assessment of U.S. Policies and Actions Regarding Security-Related Treaties, Editors: Nicole Deller, Arjun Makhijani, and John Burroughs, "The United States has violated, compromised, or acted to undermine in some crucial way every treaty that we have studied in detail," said Nicole Deller, principal editor and co-author of the report. "Recent shifts of U.S. policy toward greater reliance on military force, including nuclear weapons, as the main component for securing the people of the United States from a variety of threats sets a dangerous course and a poor example." C. THE BOTTOM LINE "I want to speak my mind on this war in Iraq, or I will choke on my conscience...... The bottom line: this war is wrong and this war is un-American." Musician Dave Matthews. Read his whole statement at the band's website. Reports | Recent News Coverage | Updates
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