Democracy Now!
Wed., March 12, 2003
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From: Democracy Now!
Re: Rundown
Date: 3-12-03
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8:00-8:01 Billboard:
"Throughout the globe, the United States is becoming
associated with the unjustified use of force”: Diplomat
John Brown explains why he resigned from the State Department
to protest U.S. war plans in Iraq
Halliburton, Bechtel and other U.S. firms set to profit
from the rebuilding of postwar Iraq: Meanwhile the Guardian
reports Halliburton is still paying VP Dick Cheney up to $1
million annually
Marked for Death: How the SAT can recruit you for the military
Did Pakistani intelligence officials fake the arrest of
alleged Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?: Foreign
journalists in Pakistan begin to question Pakistani intelligence
officials. We’ll have a report from Islamabad.
Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic is assassinated: We
go to Belgrade for a live report from Democracy Now! correspondent
Jeremy Scahill
Angola, Guinea, and Cameroon: Rev. Jesse Jackson, Danny
Glover and US-based Africa advocacy groups are calling on
these Security Council members to stand firm against US pressure.
“Searching Jenin, Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli
Invasion”: Suzanne Barouds reads a personal accounts
of survivors from Jenin
8:01-8:06 Headlines
8:06-8:07 One Minute Music Break
8:07-8:20 "THROUGHOUT THE GLOBE, THE UNITED STATES
IS BECOMING ASSOCIATED WITH THE UNJUSTIFIED USE OF FORCE”:
DIPLOMAT JOHN BROWN EXPLAINS WHY HE RESIGNED FROM THE STATE
DEPARTMENT TO PROTEST U.S. WAR PLANS IN IRAQ
A veteran US diplomat resigned Monday in protest over the
Bush administration’s plans to invade Iraq.
In a letter of resignation to Secretary of State General
Colin Powell, John Brown wrote: "Throughout the globe,
the United States is becoming associated with the unjustified
use of force. The president's disregard for views in other
nations, borne out by his neglect of public diplomacy, is
giving birth to an anti-American century."
John Brown joined the State Department in 1981. He has served
at US embassies in London, Prague, Krakow, Kiev, Belgrade
and Moscow.
Meanwhile, a senior Australian intelligence officer has
quit in protest at what he said was Australia's dangerous
rush to war. Office of National Assessments analyst Andrew
Wilkie said Iraq does not pose any security threat to Australia,
the United States or Britain. He said Iraq's weapons program
was actually degraded and its military weak.
Just two weeks ago, US diplomat John Brady Kiesling resigned
from the US embassy in Athens.
John Brown joins us now from Washington, D.C. where he is
currently affiliated with the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy
at Georgetown University.
- John Brown, veteran US diplomat who served at the US
embassies in London, Prague, Krakow, Kiev, Belgrade and
Moscow. He is currently affiliated with the Institute for
the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University
8:20-8:21 One Minute Music Break
8:21-8:45 HALLIBURTON, BECHTEL AND OTHER U.S. FIRMS SET
TO PROFIT FROM THE REBUILDING OF POSTWAR IRAQ: MEANWHILE THE
GUARDIAN REPORTS HALLIBURTON IS STILL PAYING VP DICK CHENEY
UP TO $1 MILLION ANNUALLY
The Wall Street Journal is reporting the Bush administration
is preparing to award a contract valued at upwards of $900
million to a U.S. firm to rebuild post-war Iraq.
The U.S. Agency for International Development or USAID quietly
sent a detailed request to Halliburton, Bechtel, Fluor, Louis
Berger Group or Parsons Corp. for proposals.
USAID invoked special authority to bypass the usual procedures
and solicit bids from just these select companies. Spokeswoman
Ellen Yount told the Washington Post skirting the rules was
justified due to the “urgent circumstances and the unique
nature of this work.”
The Toronto Star is reporting international firms from countries
that are not publicly backing Washington’s on Iraq are
also expected to be prevented from profiting on the reconstruction
of Iraq.
The Pentagon already has tapped Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg
Brown & Root to help fight oil-well fires in Iraq. Halliburton
is the company Vice President Dick Cheney headed until 2000.
The London Guardian reports today vice President Cheney is
still receiving annual payments from Halliburton. Halliburton
refused to say how much the payments are. The required disclosure
statement filled by all top government officials says only
they are between $100,000 and $1 million.
The Toronto Star is reporting that the Canadian company
Safety Boss Inc., a which specializes in capping burning oil
wells, is likely not to see much business in a postwar Iraq
although it did such work in Kuwait after the first Gulf War.
The company’s chief executive told the Toronto Star,"It's
a big political football. We could be left out because we're
in Canada and the political waffling here isn't helping."
- Neil King, staff reporter with the Wall Street Journal.
His article “U.S. Is Quietly Soliciting Bids For Rebuilding
Postwar Iraq” appeared in Monday’s Journal.
- Pratap Chatterjee, independent journalist who has done
extensive research on Halliburton
Contact: www.corpwatch.org
8:40-8:41 One Minute Music Break
8:41-8:45 MARKED FOR DEATH: HOW THE SAT CAN RECRUIT YOU
FOR THE MILITARY
There is a little known provision in the “No Child
Left Behind Act” which requires public high schools
to release student contact information to military recruiters.
But is there a link between signing up for the SAT, and attracting
the interest of the military because fo the way the information
is distributed? Worried about the prospect of war with Iraq,
Youth Radio’s AJ Herrmann decided to investigate and
sent us this story.
Tape: “SAT and Military” by AJ Herrmann
8:45-8:58: LISTENER COMMENTS FROM DEMOCRACY NOW LISTENERS
AND VIEWERS
8:58-8:59 Outro and Credits
9:00-9:01 Billboard:
9:01-9:06 Headlines
9:06-9:07 One Minute Music Break
9:07-9:20 Did Pakistani intelligence officials fake the
arrest of alleged Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?:
Foreign journalists in Pakistan begin to question Pakistani
intelligence officials. We’ll have a report from Islamabad.
Foreign journalists are accusing Pakistan’s intelligence
service of faking the arrest of alleged Qaeda lieutenant Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed.
Pakistani agents announced they arrested Mohammed several
days ago in the city of Rawalpindi; the White House claims
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind behind the September
11 attacks.
But journalists have begun to question whether the arrest
was real.
On Monday, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI) held an unprecedented news conference to try to quell
the questions. Officials played a grainy video they claimed
showed the arrest.
But according to Reuters, few journalists were convinced.
The video never showed Mohammed's face nor any sign of a struggle.
Many said it looked like a crude reconstruction.
On Tuesday, former ISI chief Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul
told Reuters he believes Mohammed was actually arrested some
time ago in a different city.
Another intelligence source said Mohammed had been arrested
three days before, from the Tench Batta suburb of Rawalpindi.
Rumors of Mohammed's arrest had circulated in Pakistan for
months, but were consistently denied.
Gul said news of the arrest appeared to have been leaked
at a critical time, just as Pakistan was facing huge U.S.
pressure to support a U.N. Security Council vote authorizing
war on Iraq.
Gul said the raid was conducted much too casually to have
been real. Police didn’t even properly surround or secure
the house.
Some are accusing Pakistan of staging the raid to give it
leeway to abstain in a U.N. vote on an Iraq war. The Pakistani
government is under massive domestic pressure to oppose war
on Iraq. On Monday night, a senior ruling party official shocked
British and American diplomats in Islamabad when he told Reuters
the government had decided to abstain in the vote.
Pakistan wasn’t the only country to benefit from Mohammed’s
very publicized ‘arrest.’ The Bush administration
also had something to gain. On the Monday after the raid,
the Wall Street Journal’s top editorial headlined, “Al
Qaeda on the Run: Who says the war on terror isn't going well?”
That Thursday, President Bush opened a highly unusual press
conference with an announcement on the arrest.
The Reuters article appeared yesterday. Today, it looks
as though not one major Western paper has picked up the story.
We’re joined right now on the telephone from Islamabad
by the Reuters Bureau Chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan,
Simon Denyer.
- Simon Denyer, Reuters Bureau Chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan.
He wrote a story published yesterday called “Pakistan
Accused of Staging Bin Laden Aide Arrest”. He was
one of the journalists present at the unprecedented press
conference held by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI)) on Monday.
Link to article: www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/ISL285340
Tape: President George W. Bush, speaking at a March 6th
“press conference”
9:20-9:21 One Minute Music Break
9:21-9:35 Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic is assassinated:
We go to Belgrade for a live report from Democracy Now! correspondent
Jeremy Scahill
Breaking news: The Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic,
was assassinated today in the capital, Belgrade.
The pro-reform, pro-Western leader was shot in the stomach
and in the back outside government offices and died of his
wounds in hospital.
Unconfirmed Serbian media reports say that two people were
arrested at the scene of the shooting.
Djindjic was a key leader of the revolt that toppled former
President Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000.
We go to Belgrade for a live report from Democracy Now!
correspondent Jeremy Scahill who is in Belgrade.
- Jeremy Scahill, Democracy Now! correspondent
9:35-9:45 US groups urge African UN Council members to oppose
Iraq plan
Angola. Guinea. And Cameroon. These three African countries
have been at the center of the world’s attention this
week. They all sit on the United Nations Security Council
and are under an enormous amount of pressure from both the
U.S. and opponents of war in Iraq.
And now prominent African-Americans including the Rev. Jesse
Jackson and Danny Glover, as well as a number of Washington,
D.C.-based advocacy groups focused on Africa, are calling
on the three nations to oppose a U.S. invasion of Iraq.
A letter was recently to the three nations that warned a
war in Iraq QUOTE "will have devastating economic and
social consequences for the most impoverished and most vulnerable
citizens and countries throughout the world."
The letter also argued that HIV/AIDS should be QUOTE“receiving
the attention and resources that have been devoted instead
to debating and designing interventions against Iraq.”
According to a recent report by the Inter Press Service,
of the three nations Angola is considered the most likely
to go along with the U.S. Angola sells much of its oil to
U.S. companies and is in need of economic aid from the World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund, where Washington
holds great influence.
Guinea, which receives military aid from Washington, is
also considered more likely to vote with Washington.
Cameroon has been considered a staunch ally of French President
Jacques Chirac.
9:40-9:41 One Minute Music Break
9:41-9:58 “Searching Jenin, Eyewitness Accounts of
the Israeli Invasion”: Suzanne Barouds reads personal
accounts of survivors from Jenin
The Israeli State Prosecutor's Office represented the Israeli
film censorship board on Sunday and asked the High Court to
maintain a ban on the film Jenin, Jenin.
The film documents the Israeli invasion of the Jenin refugee
camp in April of last year. Estimates of the number of Palestinians
killed by Israeli range from 52 to several hundred. Some Palestinians
fought back and about two dozen Israeli soldiers were also
killed.
On Sunday, the state argued the film purports to be a documentary,
but instead portrays Israeli soldiers as brutal war criminals
who are committing genocide.
The Documentary Creators Forum and the film’s director,
Mohammed Bakri, are petitioning the court to lift the ban.
They say it is a violation of freedom of speech and artistic
expression, and undermines the public's right to hear the
film’s message.
Director Mohammed Bakri has also been sued by five Israeli
reserve soldiers, who accuse Bakri of libellously portraying
them as war criminals.
During and immediately after the invasion, Israel cracked
down on the flow of information. Journalists were not allowed
in the camp, and Israeli propaganda officials immediately
got to work. They succeeded in spinning news coverage of the
invasion into a single question: did Israeli soldiers purposefully
massacre hundreds of civilians? News outlets haggled over
the number of people killed instead of the known fact
that Israeli soldiers had killed unknown numbers of innocent
people.
Well, I recently had the opportunity to talk to journalist
Ramzy Baroud. Baroud is the editor of a new book called Searching
Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion, 2002.
He is also the editor of PalestineChronicle.com.
Baroud coordinated a network of independent Palestinian
journalists, who were able to sneak into the camp, interview
residents, and smuggle the interviews out.
The interviews have been published in Baroud’s new
book. In a few minutes, Suzanne Baroud will read some of the
accounts. But first, I asked Ramzy Baroud why he put the book
together.
- Ramzy Baroud, editor of Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts
of the Israeli Invasion, 2002 and Editor-in-Chief of the
palestinechronicle.com. He was born in the Nuseirat refugee
camp in Gaza. The first intifada erupted there when he was
a teenager.
- Suzanne Baroud, assistant editor of Searching Jenin:
Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion, 2002 and managing
editor of palestinechronicle.com. She taught History of
Western Civilization in a high school in Ramallah from 1990-1993,
during the first intifada.
9:58-9:59 Outro and Credits
For a copy of today's program, call 1 (800) 881 2359. Our
website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Kris Abrams, Mike Burke, Angie
Karran, Ana Nogueira. Mike Di Filippo is our engineer and
webmaster.
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