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COUP DE FORCE AMERICANO-OCCIDENTAL A KIEV · ON ATTEND LA CONTRE-ATTAQUE DE L’EURASIE
Pour ceux qui ont vécu le déroulement des événements de Serbie ces dernières années, l’agitation actuelle en Ukraine a comme un air de déjà vu. Comme hier à Belgrade une opposition entretenue et stimulée par l’Occident met en avant une hypothétique fraude électorale et multiplie les manifestations dans la capitale pour faire pression sur les institutions et essayer de gagner par la rue ce qu’elle a perdu par les urnes.

Comme naguère en Serbie après des élections contestées l’affaire de Kiev paraît bien ficelée et préméditée pour jeter dans la rue les figurants et les acteurs d’une série télévisée au scénario écrit ailleurs.  Avec du son, de la couleur et des caméras bien placées il n’a pas été difficile de rallier des partisans, de donner une impression de masse et de focaliser l’attention du monde extérieur. Quand la presse anglo-saxonne donne le ton c’est immédiatement le début d’ une intense campagne dénonçant les «fraudes» et présentant les estimations d’instituts de sondage made in USA , les fameux « exit polls », comme les vrais résultats et les chiffres officiels comme de misérables mensonges. On dénie d’emblée toute valeur aux résultats définitifs de la commission électorale.  Le subterfuge a été utilisé à Tbilissi il y a un an et à Belgrade à plusieurs reprises (dont en octobre 2000). A peine le processus est-t-il enclenché  que c’est le déchaînement,  le viol des foules par la propagande médiatique, l’annonce de la «victoire» du «pro western candidate» avant même la clôture des bureaux de vote.  La méthode est partout la même, seul le contexte diffère.
Il y a trois semaines un referendum légal voulu par l’opposition sur un volet des accords d’Ohrid , une réforme territoriale qui favorise les Albanais, s’est tenu dans l’ancienne république yougoslave de Macédoine( FYROM). Là on ne peut même pas parler de fraude mais d’un sabotage total organisé par le pouvoir en place à  la demande de la «communauté internationale».  Le jour du vote 20% des bureaux étaient fermés, la partie albanaise (comme d’habitude quand le rapport de force lui est défavorable) boycottait le scrutin, les médias étaient verrouillés et l’ on avait même menacé les citoyens de perdre leur emploi s’ils y participaient. Résultat 26% de votants et un coup pour rien. Ce scandale électoral était accompagné d’une grossière manœuvre,  Washington trois jours avant le scrutin reconnaissait la FYROM sous le nom interdit de Macédoine. On froissait les Grecs mais on «sauvait la démocratie» en bafouant les fameux «standards mondiaux» tant brandis et exigés ailleurs. L’Organisation pour la Sécurité et la Coopération en Europe, l’OSCE, dont on ne dira pas assez que c’est un machin américain, se fendait d’un communiqué affirmant que le scrutin s’était déroulé normalement. Quand l’intérêt américano-occidental est en jeu, on oublie les «normes démocratiques» et les «standards mondiaux», autant de fariboles.
(1)   

La guerre de l’information précède la guerre tout
court

En Ukraine donc la grande victime de la fraude à la présidentielle aurait été le candidat de l’opposition Victor Yushchenko. Ancien premier ministre et ancien gouverneur de la banque centrale, il est présenté comme un chevalier blanc de la démocratie, un «western liberal» ,  « western reformer », well « US educated ». Un avantage, sa femme, Kateryna Chumachenko,  de nationalité états-unienne a été fonctionnaire au Département d’Etat. Visage grenelé parce qu’ on a tenté de l’empoisonner (Arafat n’a pas eu droit à ce diagnostic…). En face de monsieur propre, le vulgaire apparatchik d’une époque révolue, un certain Viktor Fiodorovych Yanukovych,  ex affairiste et délinquant du Donetsk russophone, «handpicked successor to Soviet-style president», est en train, si la vigilance citoyenne ne s’impose pas, de lui voler la victoire au profit de Vladimir Poutine,  du nouveau KGB, des spetsnaz et du Front Noir Rouge Vert. Cette salade est remâchée, rabâchée sans cesse à l’opinion internationale depuis le second tour.  Où l’on s’aperçoit encore une fois que ce qui compte n’est pas la réalité des faits mais la mise en scène hollywoodienne, la transmission instantanée des images et la diffusion réticulaire des «news». A Kiev on ne se prive pas d’utiliser le vieux truc de l’accusation en miroir consistant dans le cas présent à dénoncer une volonté de main mise russe sur l’Ukraine alors que c’est précisément l’objectif des Etats-Unis et de leurs complices. En anglais appauvri le réquisitoire vaut son pesant de hamburger: «An exit poll conducted by anonymous questionnaires under a program funded by several western governments said Yushchenko had received 54 per cent of the vote»(…).Après tout, d’autres ont bien affirmé que la terre était plate.

La vitesse est un facteur capital de la «guerre de l’information» et dans la première phase de l’agression, l’élément décisif de la propagation des fausses nouvelles,  (dés)information. L’important est que l’intox soit bombardée «in live» aux quatre coins de la planète. Textes, images et vidéos sont propulsées à un tel rythme que l’ennemi doit rester pétrifié, il ne doit plus pouvoir, lui ni ses éventuels soutiens, dire un seul mot. Par le flux massif des infos ad hoc et le rythme effréné de leur diffusion, on ôte la parole à l’ennemi et on lui dénie de droit de vivre. Il ne s’agit donc plus d’informer mais d’ impressionner et de subjuguer. Les perroquets et les béni-oui-oui du «reste du monde» reprennent l’antienne. C’est ainsi que les Etats-Unis d’Amérique se sont arrogés le monopole de désigner les amis et les ennemis.

Ces dernières années on a assisté en Ukraine à l’ éclosion d’une ribambelle de thinks tanks, de sites internet, d’instituts de sondages, de mouvements de jeunes , de groupes de rock, de comités d’électeurs, de syndicats indépendants, de radios “libres” (en plus de Radio Free Europe), et même de sectes, toute cette “open society”  chargée de préparer le terreau d’une nouvelle “nation building” et d’ une nouvelle (contre)révolution de velours, des roses, des châtaignes…  S’appuyant sur la nombreuse diaspora ukrainienne aux Etats-Unis et au Canada, des sectes virulentes se sont mises à proliférer, cherchant à diminuer l’influence de l’Eglise orthodoxe, en complément du travail de sape dévolu depuis le début à l’Eglise Uniate. On connaît le rôle joué par la Fondation Soros omniprésente des Balkans au Caucase - un Soros , nom qui en Hongrois signifie voyou – fermement contré hier en Biélorussie et dont les bureaux ont été fermés récemment en Russie. Ce «grand philanthrope», qui finance une bonne partie des activités subversives des Etats-Unis entre Trieste et le Kamtchatka était présent en Crimée fin mars pour mettre la dernière touche à l’opération en cours (il devait d’ailleurs y être entarté par le groupe Bratstvo). On connaît aussi le rôle joué par le clone d’Otpor en Serbie, Pora, qui donne le ton des manifestations, National Endowment for Democracy-NED, National Democratic Institute(NDI), International Republican Institute (IRI), Freedom House, mais d’autres associations moins connues s’activent aussi comme le Committee to Expand NATO de Bruce. K. Jackson (CFR, PNAC et Comité Chalabi…), Poland America Ukraine Cooperation Initiative (PAUCI), un organisme à cheval sur la Pologne et l’Ukraine, destiné à former des cadres, et qui distribue de l’argent dans la perspective annoncée par Zbiniew Brzezinski,  faire de la Pologne et de l’Ukraine «libérée» l’axe principal de la New Europe chargée de contrebalancer l’axe franco-allemand coupable, lors de la guerre d’agression contre l’Irak, de s’ être abouché avec la Russie: «PAUCI is financed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and administrated by Freedom House» nous indique la brochure. « In connection with the allegation of voter fraud, Freedom House has called the United States and Europe to pressure Ukraine’s parliament to defend due process and fair voting. » Freedom House a dans son staff du beau monde et, de la Yougoslavie à l’Ukraine en passant par l’Irak, on retrouve toujours les mêmes: James Woolsey, Kenneth Adelman, Samuel Huntington, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Bill Richardson, Diana Villiers Negroponte, etc. « To pressure», comme disent les braves gens de ces « charitable trusts »…

Les collègues de William Walker

Pour «accompagner les élections» on a monté avec l’appui de NED et du NDI de Madeleine Albright des groupes spécifiques de « social monitoring » comme Democratic Initiatives Foundation,  the independant domestic Committee of Voters of Ukraine (CVU) et European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO). Particularité de cette ONG, elle se compose d’observateurs en provenance des pays récemment ralliés à la croisade (anti)terroriste américaine et rassemblés sous la bannière de la «New Europe».  Ces goumiers de la démocratie, les 1000 observateurs d’ENEMO, prétendent avoir surveillé 5000 bureaux de vote. On retrouve dans toute cette agitation des têtes connues comme le sénateur de l’Indiana Richard Lugar, «republican head of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee»,  qui a déjà sévi en Serbie avant et après octobre 2000. L’individu est tellement antiserbe qu’il accusait en 2002 Vojislav Kostunica, alors président de la RFY, d’être «le continuateur de Slobodan Milosevic».  Et puis il y a son collègue le sénateur démocrate du Delaware Joseph Biden jr. Celui-là aussi a montré qu’il adorait les Slaves Orthodoxes. Citons enfin l’ancien émissaire spécial de Clinton pour les Balkans Richard Holbrooke dont on connaît l’acharnement à soutenir les séparatismes antiserbes et le clan Brzezinski, le concepteur du plan global de démantèlement et de colonisation armée de l’espace slave orthodoxe. (2)

Mais penchons-nous sur le rôle véritable de ces observateurs et autres vérificateurs occidentaux, en particulier de ces Américains que l’on devrait croire à tout prix (à l’Ouest - comme on dit à l’Est - on a complètement passé sous silence la présence d’autres observateurs comme ceux de la Communauté des Etats Indépendants (CIS),  des ploucs à mauvaise vue ou chaussés de très mauvaises lunettes puisqu’ils n’ont pas observé la même chose. Sans doute étaient-ils des employés du « nouveau KGB ». C’est que l’acuité visuelle des observateurs occidentaux, en particulier celle des Américains,  est excellente, et leur valeur morale inégalée, on s’en est aperçu au Kossovo, en Irak et en Afghanistan. Il se trouve que l’une de nos amies, la Française Béatrice Lacoste, devenue plus tard porte-parole de la MINUK (UNMIK) faisait partie de ces observateurs à un mètre cinquante de William Walker, le chef de la mission de vérification de l’Organisation pour la Sécurité et la Coopération en Europe (OSCE) au Kossovo juste avant les bombardements de l’OTAN et qu’elle a pu tester sur le terrain l’acuité visuelle et la moralité de ces observateurs.«J’étais entourée, nous disait-elle récemment, d’agents du renseignement américain et britannique, le personnel de l’OSCE en était truffé». Ces membres particuliers de l’OSCE renseignaient aussi bien leurs gouvernements que les terroristes de l’UCK qu’ils connaissaient bien puisque certains d’entre eux les avaient recrutés et entraînés quelques temps auparavant. Avant de déguerpir au coup de sifflet de Madeleine Albright, ces opérateurs déguisés devaient laisser à l’UCK un matériel de communication par satellites des plus moderne et répartir les taches d’objectifs pour les bombardements imminents. Rien d’étonnant alors à ce que, dès les premières frappes (pour reprendre cette expression inadaptée), l’Armée Nationale Yougoslave (JNA) ait découvert et liquidé proprement quelques dizaines de ces agents américains et britanniques restés sur place et leurs renforts venus d’Albanie. En uniforme des forces spéciales ils étaient chargés d’encadrer l’ UCK en prévision de l’attaque au sol prévue et de faire jouer à cette dernière le même rôle que les Kurdes ou les mercenaires de Chalabi ou Allaoui en Irak. Béatrice Lacoste a vécu de près le montage de Racak et elle confirme avec le médecin légiste finlandais Helène Ranta avec qui elle a longuement conversé ce qu’un certain nombre de personnes, dont l’ambassadeur de France à Belgrade Keller, savaient et ont diplomatiquement tu: Racak fut le montage macabre d’un ex opérateur US au Salvador et au Nicaragua promu général à l’Ecole des Amériques, la SOA fabricante d’assassins, le nécessaire point d’orgue médiatique utilisé pour justifier auprès d’une opinion publique mondiale trompée les sanglants bombardements de l’OTAN à partir du 24 mars 1999. Comme Markale en Bosnie, les Armes de Destruction Massives (ADM-WMD)en Irak, le « massacre de Racak » hyper médiatisé fut une fabrication d’ individus agissant sous la couverture d’ inspecteurs de l’OSCE. Ces montages continueront tant que le drang nach Osten de l’impérialisme américano-occidental se poursuivra.  Les choses étant ce qu’elles sont, on n’a aujourd’hui aucune raison de croire sur parole ces messieurs les observateurs de l’OSCE, de l’ENEMO ou d’un quelconque autre Comité Théodule, au sein desquels sont lovés les collègues de William Walker en Ukraine.

Il suffit de consulter une carte pour saisir l’ importance de l’Ukraine dans la grande bataille en cours pour une Russie qui a perdu sa façade maritime occidentale aux Pays Baltes, se trouve menacée par le zèle atlantiste d’ anciens satellites de l’Union Soviétique devenus les satellites rabiques des Américains, comme la Pologne, la Roumanie et la Bulgarie, et par une éventuelle entrée dans l’OTAN d’une Ukraine westernisée sur son flanc sud.

La Grande Europe est concernée

Ceux qui violent sans vergogne la souveraineté et l’indépendance des Etats, les Etats-Unis en tête, agitent les thèmes habituels de la démocratie et des droits de l’homme mais l’on sait très bien que derrière ces mots se cachent des intérêts et des objectifs n’ayant rien à voir avec le discours entendu:  les opérations ukrainiennes visent la prise de contrôle d’une région pivot, absolument nécessaire à la conquête de l’Eurasie et à la destruction de la Russie.  On va donc assister, quelles que soient les tentatives de conciliation, les missions de bons offices des uns et des autres - avoir fait venir les Walesa et les Kwasniewski était de fort mauvais goût - et la politique des apparences, à une sourde bataille masquant pour la galerie la nature réelle du bras de fer, mais lorsque cela dérapera on risque fort de voir scintiller la lame des couteaux. On doit d’ores et déjà émettre comme une hypothèse plausible la création à l’Est et au Sud d’une Ukraine libre et indépendante si les dissidents de l’Occident persistent dans leur entreprise séparatiste et belliciste. L’Ukraine occidentale perdrait alors sa façade maritime de la Mer Noire, dont la Crimée, et la route des oléoducs entre l’Est et l’Ouest tomberait sous contrôle “pro-russe”...

L’affaire yougoslave a peut-être été un hors d’œuvre par rapport à ce qui se prépare. Le feu couve entre Transnitrie et Caucase avec des effets qui risquent de se manifester bien au-delà de cette région. Toute l’Europe, la Grande Europe est concernée. Toute l’Europe risque d’être entraînée dans le tourbillon d’une guerre qui pourrait être d’une bien plus grande ampleur que la guerre yougoslave. Il est évident que l’Europe dont nous parlons n’a pas grand chose à voir avec celle des nains de jardins de Bruxelles, cette pseudo Europe dont l’actuel représentant, le portugais José Manuel Barroso , cet ancien maoiste recyclé OTAN (dans la lignée des Solana et des Fisher), n’est rien d’autre que le porte-parole des intérêts états-uniens. Derrière Glucksman, Bruckner et Cohn Bendit, les pseudopodes de Washington incriminent et insultent Poutine pour la légitime défense de la Tchétchénie contre le terrorisme wahhabite sur son limes mais se gardent bien de fustiger les crimes de guerre des envahisseurs anglo-américains en Irak. Quand ils évoquent l’Europe, les cercles eurasistes pensent évidemment à tout autre chose qu’à cette flasque zone de libre échange sans volonté politique ni capacité de décision, à cette « intégration euro-atlantique » qui n’est qu’une désintégration continentale.  Dans cette perspective le rôle dévolu à l’Ukraine investie serait de permettre la jonction des colonies américaines de la « New Europe » avec le Caucase et l’Asie Centrale et d’empêcher l’unité géopolitique européenne grand-continentale par le morcellement organisé de l’Eurasie et le dépeçage de la Russie (comme la Yougoslavie). 

De Vladivostok à Dublin et même Montréal et Caraquet-l’Acadie de Philippe Rossillon (dans le cadre de l’extension du domaine de la lutte et de la balkanisation de l’Amérique du Nord), aujourd’hui le parti européen qui comprend évidemment la Russie, possède un avantage, il connaît les méthodes de l’ennemi. Il doit donc être en mesure de le contrer sur son propre terrain et pour cela d’ engager les moyens matériels et humains nécessaires à la contre-attaque. Les Américains ont de l’argent, des plans et des moyens techniques importants , mais leur talon d’Achille est toujours le facteur humain. S’appuyant sur des personnels avides et corrompus, de piètre qualité, et développant une mauvaise relation avec les populations à qui ils veulent imposer leurs travers déguisés en vertus, ils se voient vite rejetés là où ils campent et contraints de changer en permanence les pions. Il ne suffit pas de prodiguer des stages de formation et de faire du «monitoring électoral ». Encore faudrait-il pouvoir recruter un personnel fiable avec des convictions profondes et non des intérêts sordides ou simplement superficiels. Un peu partout une grosse partie de l’argent dispensé pour la «défense de la démocratie» se perd dans la poche des Kollabos.  Le mode opératoire des forces d’agression est connu et leurs réseaux en fiche. Aujourd’hui l’enjeu ukrainien est à la hauteur des cris d’orfraie poussés au nom de la démocratie par le clergé  de la Nouvelle Carthage. On attend avec intérêt la contre-attaque de l’Eurasie.
        Yves BATAILLE

(1)  Intérêt de la Macédoine: c’est sur son territoire que doit passer l’oléoduc entre Mer Noire et Mer Adriatique selon le projet AMBO (Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Pipeline) impliquant de grosses firmes américaines dont Halliburton tout le long du Corridor n°8. Ce projet prévoit aussi d’autres infrastructures (autoroutes, fibres optiques, système de télécommunication modernes). A la faveur de l’agression contre la Serbie on a construit au Kossovo la grande base militaire de Camp Bondstel à deux pas de la Macédoine où l’on entretient soigneusement les factions. On maintient en (sur)vie des pouvoirs qui n’en sont pas et dépendent totalement des plans et de l’humeur des « proconsuls ». A cheval sur plusieurs pays et entités, les chefs de clans albanais sont particulièrement appréciés et courtisés pour leur rôle de perturbateur. L’Europe de Bruxelles collabore les yeux fermés à cette mascarade.

(2) On a pu noter ces temps-ci les points marqués par la Russie en Amérique Latine, au Brésil et au Venezuela de Chavez (liens renforcés notamment dans le domaine des fournitures militaires), ainsi qu’en Asie Centrale. En date du 12 novembre un texte publié sous l’égide d’ Heritage Foundation, l’un des think tanks neocons les plus importants,  par Ariel Cohen, définit l’enjeu ukrainien: « After the Ukrainian predidential elections, the Kremlin will likely exercice much greater geopolitical influence in Ukraine. The US has a strategic interest in preserving Ukraine’s sovereignty and keeping the democratic process on track »  En conséquence « the Bush administration should:

· Support Ukrainian groups that are committed to democracy, free market, and Euro-Atlantic integration by providing diplomatic, financial, and media support.

· Support sovereignty and territorial integrity of all post-Soviet states by expanding cooperation via NATO’s Partsnership for Peace, bilateral military-to-military ties, exchanges, train-and equip programs, and even limited troop deployment where necessary.

· Expand high-level diplomatic dialogue with Moscow about contentious issues, such as South Ossetia and Abkhazia and the US presence in Central Asia. » La couleur orange en vogue à Kiev ces jours-ci n’est pas la couleur de la liberté mais celle des prisonniers de Guantanamo et d’Abu Graib.                                                                                                   

U.S. Troop Level In Iraq To Grow

Deployments Will Be Extended for Elections

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 2, 2004; Page A01

The Pentagon said yesterday that it will boost the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to about 150,000, the highest level since the U.S. occupation began 19 months ago.

Most of the increase in the troop count—which now stands at about 138,000—will come from the extended deployment of units already there as others arrive. That will keep some troops in Iraq for combat tours of 14 months, beyond the year-long mission that most service members are told to expect, Pentagon officials said. In addition to extending some brigades from the 1st Cavalry Division, the 25th Infantry Division and the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, the Pentagon will send about 1,500 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, N.C., to Baghdad for about 120 days.

The increase in troop strength, which had been hinted at by senior U.S. military officials for weeks, is driven primarily by the need to tamp down the Iraqi insurgency as the elections set for the end of January draw near. “The purpose is mainly to provide security for the elections, but it’s also to keep up the pressure on the insurgency,” Army Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon briefing.

Other military experts, however, said the escalation reflects the more intense nature of the war after the U.S.-led assault on the rebellious Sunni city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad.

“The ferocity with which the war is being waged by both sides is escalating,” said Jeffrey White, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who is now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “It is not just that the number of incidents are increasing. The war looks to be changing in character.”

Retired Army Col. Ralph Hallenbeck, who worked in Iraq with the U.S. occupation authority last year, said he is worried that the move represents a setback for the basic U.S. strategy of placing a greater burden on Iraqi security forces to control the country and deal with the insurgency. “I fear that it signals a re-Americanization . . . of our strategy in Iraq,” he said.

Adding troops at this point is the opposite of what senior Pentagon officials expected when the war began in March 2003.

Before the invasion, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz dismissed an estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to occupy Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government. “I am reasonably certain that they will greet us as liberators,” Wolfowitz told a congressional committee, “and that will help us to keep requirements down.”

The original war plan, which was based on that assumption, called for a series of quick reductions in troop levels in 2003, to perhaps 50,000 by the end of that year.

A revision of that plan, devised 12 months ago, called for steady reductions this year.

Instead, occupation forces hit their lowest level last winter, bottoming out at about 110,000 in February. Then, in late March, the insurgency intensified and broadened, with heavy fighting in Shiite areas of south-central Iraq for the first time.

Since then, U.S. troop numbers have risen in response to the unexpected strength and growing sophistication of the enemy.

“Plan A—what the U.S. actually did—failed, and Plan B—the adaptations since the end of ‘major combat’—hasn’t worked either, so far,” said retired Army Col. Raoul Alcala, who has served as an adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, referring to President Bush’s May 1, 2003, announcement that major combat operations had ended in Iraq.

Some observers said the latest announcement indicates that the Pentagon is recognizing just how long the effort in Iraq may take. “This announcement makes it clear that commanders in Iraq need more troops and that this will be a long and very expensive process for the United States,” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed Services Committee who recently returned from a visit to Iraq.

Reed, who served in the Army with the 82nd Airborne, also said in an interview that it is becoming increasingly clear that Iraqi forces will not be capable of taking over from U.S. forces for five to 10 years.

Yesterday’s extensions mark the third time that the military has ordered troops to serve in Iraq longer than they expected.

Such extensions at first provoked anguish among family members who had been counting the days until the return of their deployed soldiers. When the 3rd Infantry Division’s tour was extended in the summer of 2003, it prompted widespread grumbling, with some soldiers criticizing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld by name.

But as the extensions have become more common in Iraq, the troops, their wives and their children have become more accustomed to them.

One of the units affected by yesterday’s move, the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division, based at Fort Hood, Tex., is being extended for the second time.

Originally sent to Baghdad for a 10-month tour, it had already been told that it would not leave in November but would stay until January. Now, it is being told to remain in Iraq for an additional 45 days.

The second major Army unit extended, the 2nd Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division, was supposed to go home to Hawaii in January but is being held in Iraq until March.

Rodriguez said he expects troop levels to return to the current level in March.

But he also noted that “the plan is flexible, and we can adjust.”

Although he said there are no plans to accelerate the deployment of other units scheduled to go to Iraq next year, other officials said some work is already being done to prepare for the early movement of some units. For example, said one Army official, the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment—which in March 2004 returned from Iraq to Fort Carson, Colo.—was scheduled to head back to Iraq in March or April 2005 but has now been told it might be sent there in February, just after the scheduled elections.

Overall, the boost in troop levels and the continuing changes in U.S. plans for Iraq are likely to raise new concerns in Congress and elsewhere about whether the size of the Army is adequate, and also about the strain that the fighting in Iraq is placing on the military.

“The fact that we are increasing numbers, and the likelihood that the fighting will continue for a long time, highlights a fundamental problem: Our active-duty ground forces are much too small,” said Eliot Cohen, a Johns Hopkins University strategy expert. “We should have begun expanding them some time ago.”

© 2004 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25454-2004Dec1.html?referrer=email

Socialists in France give lift to EU charter
By Katrin Bennhold and Graham Bowley International Herald Tribune Friday, December 3, 2004
PARIS A resounding vote in favor of the European Union constitution by France’s opposition Socialist Party was welcomed Thursday across a Continent that faces a string of national referendums on the treaty next year.

After three months of fierce debate between high-profile advocates and opponents of the constitution, an unexpected 59 percent of card-carrying Socialists endorsed the document in a late-night ballot on Wednesday, a result that was the stronger for a turnout of 80 percent.

At a press conference on Thursday, the leader of the Socialist Party, François Hollande, said the vote was an example for the rest of Europe.

“The Socialists have opened the way for the ratification process in all of Europe,” said Hollande, who had led the campaign in favor of the treaty. “They have sent the best signal possible to mobilize the trust of Europeans in their common future.”

The treaty, which was signed by EU leaders in Rome in October, needs ratification by all 25 member states by October 2006 if it is to be adopted.

Supporters of increased European integration said Thursday that they hoped the French vote would help turn around skeptical public opinion and increase the odds of the treaty’s acceptance by all countries.

In Brussels, José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, said: “The positive signal given by French Socialist Party members will have resonance across the European Union. It is part of what is now a trans-European debate on the kind of Europe we want.”

The constitution would simplify the EU’s existing treaties and proposes deeper integration in several areas, like providing Europe with a single foreign minister and developing a common foreign policy.

It has already been approved by the Lithuanian Parliament and is likely to pass in other countries, like Italy. But it faces the fierce test of national referendums in 11 countries, and polls suggest that it could fall at this hurdle. Referendums are to be held in Belgium, Denmark, France, Portugal, Spain and other countries.

The French decision will notably focus debate in Britain, among the most euroskeptical of nations, where Prime Minister Tony Blair has promised a popular vote by 2006. But Blair has remained wary of the sensitive issue of Britain’s involvement in Europe, which tore past governments apart, and he has not begun campaigning in its favor.

Polls suggest British voters would reject the constitution if it were put to a referendum now. According to John Palmer, director of the European Policy Center in Brussels, “yes” votes in all other 24 member states would still not sway the British public.

Pro-integrationists believe the constitution would survive a rejection in a small European nation, but fear that it would be hurt fatally if voters reject it in a large nation at the heart of Europe, like France, Britain or even the Netherlands, a founding member of the EU, where opinion is turning against the constitution.

On Thursday, Martin Schulz of Germany, the Socialist group’s leader in the European Parliament, welcomed the outcome in France. “This vote is a very important step forward for ratification of the constitution, both in France and in Europe,” he said. “It is indeed good news for progressive forces throughout Europe.”

But later a spokeswoman for Barroso took a cooler line, pointing out that the French party vote was an internal matter for one political movement in one member state only.

The Socialists’ “yes” vote capped a momentous week in French politics, played out against a backdrop of ceremonies marking the 200th anniversary of Napoleon’s coronation as emperor. On Monday, Nicolas Sarkozy resigned as finance minister after taking the helm of President Jacques Chirac’s governing center-right party, a position widely seen as a springboard for the country’s presidency. On Wednesday an appeals court upheld the conviction but reduced the sentence of a former prime minister, Alain Juppé, in a decade-old party-financing scandal, raising the possibility that he could return to political life within a year. On Thursday, Juppé resigned as mayor of Bordeaux but did not rule out a political comeback.

The “yes” vote reaffirmed the French Socialist Party’s pro-European tradition and avoided a politically dangerous turn to the left ahead of the next presidential election, in 2007, analysts said.

Laurent Fabius, the party’s No. 2 and the lead campaigner for the “no” vote, had tried to rally the party behind him by calling the constitution too free-market-oriented and not “social” enough. While the criticism struck a chord with many of his fellow Socialists worried to see their generous French social model fall victim to an enlarged EU, Hollande’s warning that France would find itself isolated and unable to shape Europe from the fringes if it voted “no,” appeared to outweigh those concerns.

After leading his party to victory in regional and European ballots earlier this year, Hollande now looks well positioned to become its presidential candidate, according to Brice Teinturier, director of political studies at the Sofres polling institute. Fabius, who until recently had a reputation for being on the modern, more market-oriented fringe of the Socialist Party, was the biggest loser of the vote on Wednesday. Having staked his future political ambition on a “no” vote, the former prime minister was dealt a humiliating blow from which he may never recover, Teinturier said.

But Hollande is not the only beneficiary of the “yes” vote. It also comes as a relief to Chirac himself, who backs the constitution and who has scheduled a national referendum on the treaty next year.

“The two winners of this referendum are François Hollande and Jacques Chirac,” Teinturier said. “It will make for an interesting presidential race in 2007.”

Katrin Bennhold reported from Paris and Graham Bowley from Brussels.

Czech leader sees a threat

President Vaclav Klaus said Thursday that the EU constitution threatened democracy in Europe, and he criticized the Czech government for endorsing the document without a thorough discussion, The Associated Press reported in Prague.

“I have the feeling that steps like the constitution are threatening democracy, freedom and prosperity in Europe,” Klaus said in an interview with Czech radio.

“That concerns me very much, because, in the past, they were threatened by all kind of ‘isms,”’ he said. He said a threat was present in “what I call Europe-ism, incarnated in the constitution.”

Klaus said that by shifting many powers to a center far from the citizens and by “excessive harmonization and standardization, we threaten the very essence” of Europe.

It is not clear whether the document will be ratified by Parliament or by a referendum in the Czech Republic, which joined the EU on May 1 along with nine other mostly former Communist nations.

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2004/12/02/news/france.html

J avoue etre vraiment perplexe par votre analyse - tres genereuse pour l establishment - de l affaire des tankers. Pour qui est un observateur - desinteresse - des methodes d acquisition du Pentagone, il ne fait pas de doute que l equivoque est maitresse en la matiere. L equivoque c est tout simplement ce difficle partage entre les interets economiques, politiques et de defense nationale. En d autres termes tout est bon, mais il ne faut pas se faire prendre. Encore que la encore les peines et penalites sont toujours minimes en consideration de l enormite des sommes en jeu. A noter que dans ce cas la dame Druyun a ete condamnee a ... 5000 dollars d amende.
Alors, soyons serieux.
L affaire de l A12 c est un peu la meme chose ... en pire peut etre. Mais il faut lire - entre les lignes -  le (volumineux et extremenet bien documente) livre de James Stevenson (“The 5 billion dollars misunderstanding” publie par les Naval Institute Press) et son precedent livre (“The Pentagon paradox”) tourne autour des memes problemes ou l equilibre economique de l industriel etait base en partie sur le bombardier A12 - qui intriguait de nombreux pays - et l evolution strategique.
Il s agit en conclusion en matiere economique de soutenir l industrie, en matiere politique d accomoder tout le monde interesse et en matiere de defense nationale de faire peur a l ennemi exterieur avec des programmes monstrueux a l echelle des autres nations. En un mot d appater mais de toujours conserver un oeil vigilant sur le strategique. Chacun doit y jouer un role et malheur a celui ou celle qui oublie qu il s agit (peut etre ?)d un miroir aux alouettes.
Le programme des ravitailleurs n est pas un programme strategique dans le cadre de la RMA (revolution des affaires militaire). C est aussi simple que cela.
Un gateau pour Airbus ? Peut etre. mais avancer que le Pentagone et l US Air Force se sont fait blouser par la dame en question c est a mon avis bien meconnaitre le systeme de controle des actes individuels qui existe aux Etats-unis surtout pour les hauts fonctionnaires et surtout les membres du SES (Senior Executive Service). Je me demande si James Stevenson n est pas en train d ecrire un livre sur cette affaire. Ce serait une suite extremement interessnte a son A12.

Il n’y a pas qu’en politique que le virtualiseme règne : les américains sont en train de continuer à propager une sexualité virtuelle manifestement made in Bible Belt. Pas étonnant qu’avec le taux de frustrations qu’elle leur occasionne, ils se retrouvent à avoir constamment envie de taper sur tout ce qui bouge….

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Le sida traverse les préservatifs, l’avortement rend les femmes dépressives, un embryon de 6 semaines “peut être considéré comme une personne consciente”: des manuels d’éducation sexuelle multiplient les aberrations scientifiques pour prêcher l’abstinence aux jeunes Américains.

Alors même que l’Etat fédéral finance généreusement les programmes d’éducation sexuelle prêchant l’abstinence comme seule méthode efficace contre maladies et grossesses non désirées, l’enseignement dispensé contredit bien souvent les positions des autorités sanitaires.

Un rapport parlementaire indique que sur 13 des manuels les plus populaires utilisés dans 25 des 50 Etats américains, onze contiennent “des erreurs majeures et distorsions” de faits.

Globalement, ils “déforment la réalité sur l’efficacité des contraceptifs, donnent de fausses informations sur les risques de l’avortement, entretiennent un flou entre science et religion, traitent comme des faits avérés des stéréotypes sur filles et garçons, et contiennent des erreurs scientifiques de base”, selon le rapport commandé par un démocrate californien, Henry Waxman.

Le résultat, c’est que, mal informés, les jeunes ne savent pas se protéger contre les maladies sexuellement transmissibles (MST) et éviter les grossesses. “Les jeunes ayant fait des voeux d’abstinence recourent moins à la contraception quand ils ont tout de même des rapports, et font moins de dépistage de MST”, constate une étude récente de l’Université Columbia.

Bien souvent teintés de positions défendues par des organisations religieuses ultra-conservatrices, certains manuels présentent l’avortement comme une procédure particulièrement dangereuse, et meurtrière, puisque des embryons à peine formés sont considérés comme des personnes à part entière.

Ainsi un manuel intitulé “moi, mon monde, mon avenir” affirme que “5 à 10% des femmes ne pourront jamais plus être enceintes après un avortement légal”. “En fait, précise le rapport, les manuels d’obstétrique enseignent que la fertilité n’est pas altérée par un avortement volontaire”.

A en croire le même manuel, contredit par les recherches médicales, un avortement multiplierait aussi les risques de naissances prématurées et de grossesses extra-utérines ultérieures, et “après un avortement, selon certaines études, les femmes sont plus prédisposées au suicide”.

Par ailleurs, “plusieurs programmes présentent comme des faits scientifiques des définitions morales ou religieuses” des embryons. L’un d’eux explique qu’”à 43 jours, des ondes électriques sont détectables dans le cerveau, preuve d’une activité mentale. Cette vie nouvelle peut être considérée comme une personne consciente”.

Sur la contraception, un manuel affirme que “dans les rapports hétérosexuels, dans environ 31% des cas les préservatifs n’empêchent pas (la contamination) par le virus VIH”.

En fait, selon les CDC fédéraux (Centres de prévention des maladies), “les préservatifs en latex fournissent une barrière étanche contres les particules de la taille des pathogènes de maladies sexuellement transmissibles” (MST).

Concernant les rapports sans pénétration, “un manuel affirme que toucher le sexe d’un partenaire +peut aboutir à une grossesse+”.

Certains ouvrages affirment que toute activité sexuelle accroît le risque de cancer de col de l’utérus. D’autres enseignent par ailleurs que “les problèmes de santé mentale sont une conséquence de l’activité sexuelle, sans prendre en compte le fait que ces problèmes peuvent eux-mêmes être à l’origine d’une activité sexuelle précoce, ou que problèmes psychologiques et sexualité précoce peuvent avoir une même origine”, souligne le rapport.

http://84.96.22.11/observabilis/FMPro?-db=archives&-layout=base&-op=eq&id=10670&-format=request1result.html&-find
info qu’on ne verra pas dans les grands médias en France

Giscard backs plan for Turkish/EU ‘partnership’

By Daniel Dombey in Brussels and Vincent Boland in Ankara
Published: November 24

2004 22:03 | Last updated: November 24 2004 22:03

Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former French president and chief architect of Europe’s draft constitution, has backed a growing campaign to offer Turkey a “privileged partnership” with the European Union rather than full membership.

“Accession by Turkey would change the nature of the European project. . . it would [because of its size and population] become the major decision-maker in the EU,” he writes in Thursday’s Financial Times. “We have been concerning ourselves with Turkey a good deal recently. Is it not time to give more thought to Europe?”

Mr Giscard d’Estaing’s hostility to Turkish membership is long-standing, but his comments come at a sensitive time ahead of a December 17 decision by EU leaders on opening accession talks with Turkey. EU leaders are all but certain to agree to begin accession negotiations next year with the ultimate goal of giving the country full membership. The process could take at least 10 years.

However, Jacques Chirac, the French president, recently indicated that a “privileged partnership”, which would deepen ties with Turkey but stop short of formal membership and all the rights that such status would grant, should be considered as a fallback option.

Mr Chirac has already promised a referendum on Turkey’s membership at the end of any entry negotiations. Opinion polls suggest more than 50 per cent of French voters oppose Turkey’s entry. Turkish officials declined to comment on Mr Giscard d’Estaing’s analysis. But, speaking on Wednesday, in The Hague, Abdullah Gul, Turkey’s foreign minister, again appealed to the EU for a “fair and impartial” decision on December 17.

At least some of Mr Giscard d’Estaing’s arguments coincide with those of a handful of Turkish commentators and academics who argue that, since much of Europe appears not to want Turkey, it should begin to negotiate for a privileged partnership or other special status short of membership.
Hasan Unal, a professor of international relations at Bilkent University who is a prominent exponent of this view, said on Wednesday: “A close examination of the political and economic situation of the EU tells us that Turkey’s accession is not going to be easy and will not materialise for 15 or 20 years, if it materialises at all.

“There are a number of strong lobbies in Europe who believe that the EU’s integration in the past 10 to 15 years was to achieve cultural unity. This cultural perception is so entrenched that, if the other side believes it, there is not much I can do about it.”

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Being ‘clear,’ EU keeps pressure on Turkey
By Katrin Bennhold International Herald Tribune Thursday, November 25, 2004
THE HAGUE Three and a half weeks before European Union leaders will decide whether to allow Turkey to start membership talks, the EU pressed the country to step up the pace of legal reforms and hinted that there was still no consensus in the Union’s 25 capitals.

After the last high-level meeting between the two sides before the long-awaited decision on Dec. 17, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul of Turkey insisted that his country had earned “the right” to begin formal accession negotiations after a favorable report by the European Commission last month.

But Foreign Minister Ben Bot of the Netherlands, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency until the end of the year, said governments had the last word on whether or not Turkey had fulfilled the criteria for beginning talks, irrespective of the commission’s report.

“Let’s be clear on this: The member states decide,” Bot said at a joint press conference here. “In a number of fields more progress should be made.”

Over the next three and a half weeks, it would be “helpful” if Turkey passed draft laws on criminal procedures and judicial policing, Bot said. In addition, he urged Ankara to implement four other pieces of legislation that have been approved by Parliament.

Turkey’s bid to join the EU has deeply split a region that is still coming to grips with its eastward expansion in May, when it opened its door to 10 mainly Eastern European countries and 75 million new citizens. Advocates argue that taking a Muslim country into the Christian club that is the EU would be an important geopolitical gesture at a time when conflict in various parts of the Middle East has pitted Western countries against the Islamic world and helped spark terrorism. They say the EU can export its stability and democracy to Turkey, a gateway to several hot spots in the Middle East and the Caucasus.

Skeptics, on the other hand, warn that with a gross domestic product per head of only 29 percent of the EU average, Turkish accession risks flooding Western labor markets with Turkish immigrants and costing EU taxpayers billions of euros in regional subsidies and farm aid.

As a result, public opinion in many European countries, especially those with large immigrant communities, has turned hostile toward the prospect of Turkish entry, making it harder for their governments to back it.

While few diplomats believe EU leaders will turn Turkey down entirely on Dec. 17, many say lingering doubts in several member states could lead to a string of conditions attached to a tentative starting date for entry talks. Austria has made no secret about its opposition to Turkish accession talks, but recently the language has also hardened in France.

“There are some countries that are ready to give Turkey a clear date, but then there are some who have floated the idea of an alternative relationship that falls short of membership,” said one European diplomat close to the talks between EU governments on the issue, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We will need some middle-of-the-road wording that works for everybody.” Bot said the Dutch presidency had been in touch with other European capitals to gauge what different leaders were ready to sign up to.

“We got a very good feeling and very positive reactions,” he said after the press conference Wednesday. “But many member states still have doubts about certain issues.”

Gul, meanwhile, said he was confident that EU leaders would give Turkey a date for accession talks and insisted that his country merited a favorable outcome. “Since the commission report is there and there is a clear-cut recommendation, it’s our right to see all member countries honor their signature,” Gul said. “We fulfilled the political conditions, and the commission declared this. I think we have a right to start negotiations.”

Gul added that his government would pass the outstanding legislative measures demanded by the EU. “Definitely, we will be able to pass all of them. We will fulfill all conditions, and then we expect a good decision.”

The meeting Wednesday was also attended by the foreign minister of Luxembourg, Jean Asselborn, the Dutch European Affairs minister, Atzo Nicolai, and the EU’s new enlargement commissioner, Olli Rehn, who said the Union’s relations with Turkey were a “key priority” for the incoming Commission.

A diplomat from a pro-Turkish country said those countries that dragged their feet at present were lobbying loudly for something they already had secured. The commission report contains a number of strictures to ensure that Turkey, even if allowed to negotiate its membership, would not slow or reverse reform.

EU specialists said a hardening of the line in some countries so shortly before the decision was rooted in domestic opposition to Turkey’s membership.

“It’s meant for home consumption,” said Katinka Barysch, chief economist at the Center for European Reform in London. “They have to take public opinion seriously, but it’s a pity that they are on the defensive, rather than making the positive case for Turkey’s entry.”

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2004/11/24/news/union.html

.... allons, allons ... et si la depart de Colin Powell etait tout simplement lie a la presentation de sa candidature pour remplacer Koffi Anan ... puisque la candidature de Clinton n a pu etre avancee pour cause de defection de John Kerry dans le processus (prematurement) annonce ...

washingtonpost.com
Bush Seeks to Rule The Bureaucracy
Appointments Aim at White House Control
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 22, 2004; Page A04

President Bush has ousted Saddam Hussein, toppled the Taliban and defeated the Democrats, but last week he took aim at a more enduring foe: the federal bureaucracy.

In a flurry of actions in recent days, he and his top lieutenants have taken steps to quell dissent at two fractious agencies—the CIA and the State Department—and to increase White House control over others, including the Justice and Education departments.

The White House moves, and similar changes anticipated at other departments, are likely to quiet some of the already infrequent dissent that has leaked from agencies during Bush’s first term. They may also put a more conservative stamp on the bureaucracy’s administration of the laws and making of rules on everything from the environment to business to health care.

But political scientists and others who follow the Cabinet agencies say the Bush efforts, like those of several other presidents, are unlikely to cause fundamental changes in how the federal government is run.

James Pfiffner, a specialist in presidential personnel at George Mason University, said Bush’s efforts are closest to those of Richard M. Nixon’s after his 1972 reelection, when he installed eight new Cabinet members and several White House officials at sub-Cabinet positions. “It was seen as heavy-handed,” Pfiffner said, and created an us-vs.-them tension between political appointees and civil servants. “They didn’t get the kind of inside, deep-down control that they wanted.”

Still, past failures to rein in the federal bureaucracy have not deterred the Bush administration, which even before the recent moves had been unusually successful at enforcing control over the Cabinet agencies.

Last Monday at the CIA, new Director Porter J. Goss issued a memo outlining the “rules of the road” for the agency. “We support the administration and its policies in our work,” he wrote. “As agency employees we do not identify with, support, or champion opposition to the administration or its policies.” At least three top CIA officials have resigned, and Goss has brought in loyalists from outside the agency.

On Tuesday, Bush named trusted aide Condoleezza Rice to be secretary of state, replacing Colin L. Powell, who frequently and publicly sided with the department’s staff against the White House. Administration officials are talking about several other White House aides joining Rice at State, and about several top-level Foreign Service officers being removed from prominent positions.

The Rice announcement followed by six days Bush’s announcement that he would nominate another White House aide, Alberto R. Gonzales, to be attorney general—succeeding John D. Ashcroft, with whom Gonzales and others at the White House had feuded. Other Bush loyalists have been or soon will be tapped to head the Education, Energy, Agriculture and Treasury departments, agencies where, in some cases, past secretaries have embarrassed Bush with their independence.

Taming the Cabinet agencies is a daunting task. There are 3,000 political appointees and a U.S. civil service of 1.8 million workers, many of whom are nearly impossible to fire.

And the Bush administration has discovered that workers in the agencies—political appointees and civil servants alike—often stray from White House orthodoxy; examples of administration critics include CIA terrorism official Michael Scheuer, who wrote a book about flaws in the fight against al Qaeda; former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who criticized Bush about the case for war in Iraq; and former Treasury secretary Paul H. O’Neill, who frequently contradicted the White House.

Still, the Bush administration has done better than its predecessors at controlling the agencies. “They’ve created a multiplier effect in which these 3,000 political appointees feel like three times that many,” said Paul C. Light, a New York University professor who advised the Bush campaign in 2000 about bureaucracy reforms. Light points out that political appointees now occupy positions in the top 10 or 15 layers of management at the Cabinet agencies. And he says Bush’s top political adviser, Karl Rove, keeps the agencies in line by having a weekly conference call with the chiefs of staff to the agency secretaries and administrators.

Light said the new moves to enforce loyalty at Cabinet agencies, combined with the existing efforts, will drive many of the senior executives in the civil service to retire in frustration, which will give Bush “more coordination and control” over the agencies and “slow down the regulatory process.” Still, Light said, he has found “no interest” in the more far-reaching overhaul of the federal workforce that Bush proposed after consulting with him during the 2000 campaign—which would have, among other things, changed the rules for employing federal workers, making the bureaucracy more like the private sector.

Privately, officials in the White House say there is little hope of truly taming the bureaucracy. Publicly, there is little talk of attempting it. “I don’t think any of the personnel changes at the senior level will influence” the broader civil service reforms, said Office of Management and Budget spokesman Chad Colton. “It’s something we’ll continue at the edges to improve.”

That is not good enough for advocates of fundamental changes in the agencies. Fred Smith, who heads the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, said he has acquired a “natural, realistic despair” about hopes for major reforms of the regulatory process.

“Since Jimmy Carter, there has been an effort to get control of the regulatory process and nobody has come close to succeeding,” Smith said. “It’s worse than ever.” Although “the body language” in the new personnel moves indicates Bush is serious about restraining the agencies, “the administration hasn’t decided whether the regulatory threat is serious enough to expend capital on.”

To some extent, every president since Nixon has tried to assert more White House control over the agencies. Some, particularly Nixon and Carter, found that Cabinet secretaries and other political appointees wound up representing their agencies’ bureaucracies rather than the White House’s wishes. Before Bush, the most successful was the Reagan administration, which controlled staffing of Cabinet agencies at the White House.

Bruce Reed, who was the White House domestic policy chief under President Bill Clinton, expressed some approval of Bush’s personnel style. “It’s a good idea to promote from within and there’s nothing wrong with wanting a Cabinet whose agenda is the same as the president’s,” he said.

But Reed cautioned against expecting major changes. “When people take jobs at agencies, they tend to go native and start championing the institution rather than the agenda of the person who put them there,” he said. “Someone who is blindly loyal to the president at the White House may try to develop dual citizenship.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2474-2004Nov21.html?referrer=email

Croyez-vous sincèrement que le votergate ait une chance d’éclater ou, comme disait l’autre, les médias ont-ils les moyens de nous faire taire ?

washingtonpost.com
Moves Cement Hard-Line Stance On Foreign Policy
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 16, 2004; Page A01
By accepting Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s resignation, President Bush appears to have taken a decisive turn in his approach to foreign policy.
Powell’s departure—and Bush’s intention to name his confidante, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, as Powell’s replacement—would mark the triumph of a hard-edged approach to diplomacy espoused by Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Powell’s brand of moderate realism was often overridden in the administration’s councils of power, but Powell’s presence ensured that the president heard divergent views on how to proceed on key foreign policy issues.
But, with Powell out of the picture, the long-running struggle over key foreign policy issues is likely to be less intense. Powell has pressed for working with the Europeans on ending Iran’s nuclear program, pursuing diplomatic talks with North Korea over its nuclear ambitions and taking a tougher approach with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Now, the policy toward Iran and North Korea may turn decidedly sharper, with a bigger push for sanctions rather than diplomacy. On Middle East peace, the burden for progress will remain largely with the Palestinians.
Moreover, in elevating Rice, Bush is signaling that he is comfortable with the direction of the past four years and sees little need to dramatically shift course. Powell has had conversations for six months with Bush about the need for a “new team” in foreign policy, a senior State Department official said. But in the end only the key official who did not mesh well with the others—Powell—is leaving.
“My impression is that the president broadly believes his direction is correct,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).
Rice sometimes backed Powell in his confrontations with Cheney and Rumsfeld, but more often than not she allowed the vice president and the defense secretary to have enormous influence over key diplomatic issues. More to the point, she is deeply familiar with the president’s thinking on foreign policy—and can be expected to ride herd on a State Department bureaucracy that some conservatives have viewed as openly hostile to the president’s policies. The departures of Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, could trigger a wholesale reshuffling of top State Department officials.
“Condi knows what the president wants to accomplish and agrees with it,” said Gary Schmitt, director of the Project for the New American Century, a think tank that frequently reflects the views of hard-liners in the administration. “One of Powell’s weaknesses is that even when he signed on to the president’s policy, he was not effective in managing the building to follow the policy as well.”
Of course, senior officials often become advocates of the bureaucracies they head. For decades, there has been an institutional split between the State and Defense departments—though many say the battles in Bush’s first term were especially intense—and so ultimately Rice may find herself in conflict with her Cabinet colleagues over the best diplomatic approach.
Danielle Pletka, vice president of the American Enterprise Institute, said she doubts the battles will end, even if the top officials are less divided on ideology. “This has nothing to do with Colin Powell or Don Rumsfeld or Condi Rice,” she said. “This is a time of real turmoil, a crossroads in history, and figuring out how to deal with these things is not a smooth plot where everything unrolls easily from beginning to end.”
For the rest of the world, Powell was considered a sympathetic ear in an administration that often appeared tone-deaf to other nations’ concerns. There will be “teeth-gnashing” over Powell’s departure by many foreign officials, said Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, national security adviser in President Bill Clinton’s second term. “Colin was the side door they could get into when they could not get through the front door.”
“The president ultimately set the course,” Berger added. “Colin has had a hard hand to play over the last several years in selling policies not popular to allies.”
Powell had long indicated he planned to leave when Bush’s first term ended. But with Rumsfeld under fire for his handling of the Iraq war, particularly the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and new opportunities for peacemaking in the Middle East after the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, some people close to Powell detected hints he might consider staying for a period of time in the second term—in part to burnish his legacy.
Powell has had a mixed and frustrating tenure as secretary of state, with his most memorable moment—his 2003 speech to the United Nations making the case that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that were later never found—arguably also his lowest point. The U.N. speech tarnished Powell’s legacy, even though his personal popularity remains high—both among the public and inside the State Department.
Much of Powell’s tenure was marked by fierce battles with his bureaucratic foes and by few lasting achievements in key foreign policy areas. Under his watch, North Korea added to its arsenal of nuclear weapons and Iran has advanced dramatically in building a nuclear weapon. The invasion of Iraq was ordered by Bush despite Powell’s misgivings, and Powell was often frustrated as he tried to steer U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Powell did, however, champion a new approach to development aid, tied to whether a country advances in building political and economic institutions.
A senior State Department official said that Powell’s resignation was almost a foregone conclusion given the tension Powell had with the president, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Powell just never fit: Bush had to ask for reassurance that Powell would be with him in the Iraq war, Powell believed Cheney had a “fever” about al Qaeda and Iraq, and Powell felt Rumsfeld was never straightforward, practicing his “rubber gloves” approach of never taking a stand in the inner council, this official said.
The bad blood between Cheney and Powell dates to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when Cheney, then the defense secretary, felt that Powell sometimes failed to keep him informed, and even tried to exclude him from some aspects of war planning. In his 1996 autobiography, “My American Journey,” Powell expressed some puzzlement about Cheney’s character. As a leader of congressional Republicans, he wrote, Cheney “preferred losing on principle to winning through further compromise.”
Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52540-2004Nov15.html?referrer=email
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washingtonpost.com
Powell Announces His Resignation
Secretary of State Clashed With Cheney and Rumsfeld; Rice to Succeed Him
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 16, 2004; Page A01
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell announced his resignation yesterday, ending four years of battles with Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld over the course of U.S. foreign policy.
Administration officials said Powell, whose departure was announced by the White House along with three other Cabinet resignations, will be replaced by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, one of President Bush’s most trusted confidantes. Rice will be replaced by her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, administration officials said. The Rice and Hadley announcements will be made as soon as today, the officials said.
Republican officials said the selection of Rice reflects Bush’s determination to take personal control of the government in a second term, especially departments and agencies that he felt had undermined him in the first four years. Powell’s departure is also a victory for conservatives, removing the administration’s most forceful advocate for negotiations and multilateral engagement on such issues as Middle East peace and curbing nuclear activities in Iran and North Korea.
A White House official said Powell, who helped persuade Bush to seek approval from the United Nations before invading Iraq, indicated to the president weeks or months before Nov. 2 that he planned to leave soon after the election. But one government official with personal knowledge of the situation said Powell had second thoughts and had prepared a list of conditions under which he would be willing to stay. They included greater engagement with Iran and a harder line with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Powell and Bush met at the White House on Friday, the date on the secretary’s letter of resignation. Details of the meeting could not be learned, but White House officials said the secretary was not asked to stay. A senior State Department official said Powell made no demands of the president and gave no hints that he might stay, an account echoed by White House aides.
Bush issued a statement yesterday calling Powell “one of the great public servants of our time” and praising “the calm judgment and steady resolve he has brought to our foreign policy.”
In an appearance yesterday afternoon in the State Department briefing room, Powell said he will stay “a number of weeks or a month or two, as my replacement goes through the confirmation process.” He described his departure as long in the making.
“In recent weeks and months, President Bush and I have talked about foreign policy and we’ve talked about what to do at the end of the first term,” Powell said. “It has always been my intention that I would serve one term. And after we had had a chance to have good and fulsome discussions on it, we came to the mutual agreement that it would be appropriate for me to leave at this time.”
Foreign policy experts predicted that Powell’s resignation, and Rice’s ascension, could result in a more coherent message from the Bush administration. Kenneth Adelman, a conservative foreign policy specialist, worked with Powell during the Reagan administration. “Powell is a wonderful, wonderful person,” he said. “The sad part about this episode in this Bush administration is fundamentally he and the president disagreed on central issues on national security and foreign policy.”
Rice, by contrast, “certainly shares Bush’s views and has learned better than anyone what Bush’s views are,” Adelman said. “You are not going to have that split in a second term.”
The White House announced Powell’s departure along with the resignations of three other Cabinet members—Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige, Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. Their departures—along with the earlier resignations of Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans, and the likely departure of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge for a lucrative post in private industry—mean that Bush will replace about half of the 15 heads of executive departments for his second term.
Administration officials said more departure announcements are likely, including one from Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, the lone Democrat in the Cabinet.
Three of the departments will be headed by officials who are White House staff members and close to Bush: Ashcroft is being replaced by White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, and Paige is likely to be replaced by Bush domestic policy adviser Margaret Spellings. Both Gonzales and Spellings worked for Bush in Texas. A Bush aide said the goal is to signal a Cabinet “that clearly takes a team approach.”
The impact, according to one Republican close to the administration, will be to “control the government, not just the White House” in the second term and to give the president “an enhanced ability to control the broad sweep of policy undertaken in the second term.”
White House press secretary Scott McClellan suggested that the resignations were a mix of voluntary and involuntary. “The president has the right to make decisions about who makes up his team for a second term,” he said.
Administration officials said Rumsfeld, the other most prominent member of Bush’s war cabinet, will continue to run the Pentagon for the foreseeable future.
“The decision was made to keep Rumsfeld and drop Powell because if they would have kept Powell and let [the Rumsfeld team] go, that would have been tantamount to an acknowledgment of failure in Iraq and our policies there,” one government official said, requesting anonymity to speak more candidly. “Powell is the expendable one.”
Rumsfeld was asked during a news conference yesterday if he had submitted his resignation to Bush. “I haven’t discussed that with him at all, in writing or orally,” he said. Rumsfeld did not say whether he had discussed the matter with Cheney.
Powell has consistently shown up in polls as the administration’s most popular figure. He was accorded movie-star treatment by mammoth crowds in 1995 during the book tour for his autobiography, “My American Journey.” He kept his party affiliation secret during his military career, and both parties sought him as a presidential candidate. He finally said he was a Republican who supports affirmative action and abortion rights.
When Bush was Texas governor and running for president, his flirtations with Powell—who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush during the Persian Gulf War—bolstered his case that he could handle foreign policy. Powell was the first African American to become secretary of state, and Rice will be the first black woman in that office.
During his tenure as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Powell was known for the Powell Doctrine, which called for the use of overwhelming force for a quick, clean victory and minimal cost in American lives. But as secretary, he was repeatedly outmaneuvered by the Pentagon and was never able to persuade the administration to adopt that approach in Iraq, or to accept the State Department’s plans for post-invasion occupation in Iraq.
Powell brought together representatives of the United Nations, the European Union and Russia to design the “road map” for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but has not been able to persuade the White House to use the muscle necessary to implement it. Powell is also credited with improving U.S. relations with Russia and China, helping to persuade Libya to give up weapons of mass destruction, pushing the administration to increase its commitment to the international fight against AIDS, and promoting the administration’s Millennium Fund, which linked U.S. aid to democratic reform.
Powell, 67, objected in private to the timing of the invasion of Iraq and to the way the United States prepared for it. But in what friends see as irony, one of the most memorable appearances of his tenure was his February 2003 presentation to the United Nations, televised live worldwide, in which he used satellite photos and other evidence—some of it since discredited—to make the case for using force against Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
Kenneth M. Duberstein, chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan and a friend of Powell’s, said the secretary’s decision “is about him getting his life back again.”
“He wants to be able to tinker under the hood and go to hardware stores and eat rotisserie chicken, just like he used to,” Duberstein said.
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) said in a statement lamenting Powell’s resignation that he has “commanded international respect” and “leaves the State Department as still the most respected, most trusted, and most popular leader in America today.”
Staff writer Glenn Kessler contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50926-2004Nov15.html?referrer=email

Bush vows to improve ties with Europeans

By David Stout The New York Times Saturday, November 13, 2004

WASHINGTON President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed Friday to shore up the frayed relationship between the United States and Europe and to work together for the creation of a stable, democratic Palestinian state.

On a day when Bush said he would visit Europe “as soon as possible” after his inauguration in January, both leaders said that deeper ties between America and European nations were vital for the promotion of worldwide democracy. They also said they were deeply committed to seeing a Palestinian state side by side with Israel.

In a White House room resplendent with the red, white and blue of the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack, Bush emphasized the friendship and trust he and Blair have built up.

Blair has been Bush’s most steadfast ally in the campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein and build a new Iraq.

The president seized upon a chance to dispel any notion that Blair is only the junior partner in the alliance and that Bush’s forthcoming trip to Europe is meant to repay Britain and its leader.

Asked by a British questioner whether he agreed with the characterization of his closest European ally in Iraq as “your poodle,” Bush said: “He’s plenty capable of making his own mind. He’s a strong, capable man.”

Of the prime minister’s commitment to the Iraq campaign, Bush said: “The prime minister made the decision he did because he wanted to do a duty to secure the people of Great Britain.”

The president went on to extol Blair as a visionary who stands by his word, unlike some people in politics.

“What this world needs is steady, rock-solid leaders who stand on principle, and that’s what the prime minister means to me,” Bush said.

The leaders agreed that, in a world transformed by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it is not enough that states be merely stable. They must be both stable and democratic for lasting stability, they said, citing the emerging governments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bush did not specify which European countries he hoped to visit, although there have been strains between the United States and Germany and France, both of which opposed Bush’s decision to wage war in Iraq.

Some European leaders - and many of their countrymen, according to opinion surveys - saw the Iraq campaign as a reckless American adventure, rather than an undertaking by a broad coalition, as Bush has tried to portray it.

The president did not mention those frayed relationships Friday, but his announcement that he intends to visit Europe was tacit acknowledgment that they need mending.

“My second term, I will work to deepen our trans-Atlantic ties to nations of Europe,” Bush said.

“I intend to visit Europe as soon as possible after my inauguration. My government will continue to work through the NATO alliance and with the European Union to strengthen cooperation between Europe and America.”

Blair also dismissed the idea of an American “payback” for London’s support in Iraq and elsewhere, suggesting in effect that some people see things backwards.

“We’re not fighting the war against terrorism because we are an ally of the United States,” he said.

“We are an ally of the United States because we believe in fighting this war against terrorism. We share the same objectives. We share the same values.”

Bush and Blair both offered their condolences to the Palestinian people without mentioning the cause of their grief, the death of Yasser Arafat, who was buried Friday at Ramallah on the West Bank. Bush, who never met the Palestinian leader and made no secret of his disdain for him while he was alive, did not change his tone Friday.

“Our sympathies are with the Palestinian people as they begin a period of mourning,” he said, “yet the months ahead offer a new opportunity to make progress toward a lasting peace.”

The president also seemed lukewarm at best toward Blair’s idea for an international conference on Middle East peace. “I’m all for conferences just so long as the conferences produce something,” Bush said. He added that, if a conference could indeed pave the way toward a Palestinian state, “you bet I’m a big supporter.”

As for a timetable on creation of a Palestinian state, Bush said he dislikes being pinned to artificial time constraints.

But he added, “I think it is fair to say that I believe we’ve got a great chance to establish a Palestinian state, and I intend to use the next four years to, to spend the capital of the United States on such a state.”

Just after winning re-election, Bush commented that the American people had given him political capital to spend, and that he intended to do just that.

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2004/11/12/news/blair.html

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News Analysis: The benefits of ‘special relationship’
By Patrick E. Tyler The New York Times Saturday, November 13, 2004
WASHINGTON Whatever the cynics say about the special relationship between the United States and Britain, it appeared to pay off Friday for Prime Minister Tony Blair, who came to Washington seeking to reinvigorate America’s commitment to a Palestinian state on Israel’s flanks.

On a crass political level, it was payback time. President George W. Bush conferred on his friend and principal ally the status of being the first foreign leader to visit the White House since Bush’s electoral victory. But that was not enough for Blair, whose popularity has plummeted, at home and in Europe, precisely because he so closely allied himself and Britain with the American military campaign in Iraq.

The Guardian newspaper sent the prime minister off to Washington with a scolding editorial that his judgment on Bush’s leadership was still “on probation” and America’s policies in Iraq in no way had been vindicated by Bush’s victory.

Facing his own re-election contest next spring, and an on-going rebellion in his governing Labour Party over the course of the war, Blair would have gotten no political boost from just another appearance with Bush under the chandeliers of the White House East Room.

He came with a mission to get an unambiguous and strategic commitment from the American president to close a deal for a Palestinian state that has eluded all their predecessors.

The reason is that Blair believes that the restoration of hope for Palestinians will bring a sense of balance back to Middle East policy and sap some of the energy feeding the jihadist movement and a world wide network of Islamic extremist groups.

A great many Britons - and Europeans - have come to believe that the war in Iraq has contributed to the spread of terrorism and, thus, on the other side of the Atlantic, Blair has been waging a fight for his own credibility as violence and instability threaten elections in Iraq and the prospects for any success in the Holy Land.

Speaking here as the memorial services for Yasser Arafat were under way in Cairo, Bush and Blair - though short on providing any details - changed the language Friday of the Middle East peace process by stating they were going to do whatever it takes in coming months to support democratic elections in the Palestinian territories. They pledged to mobilize the international community to help rebuild security and other civil institutions in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, allowing a new and democratic Palestinian authority to emerge for negotiations with Israel.

Wearing a red tie and blue shirt to match Bush, Blair seemed bursting with satisfaction when the president said with crystalline clarity, “I think it is fair to say that I believe we’ve got a great chance to establish a Palestinian state, and I intend to use the next four years to - to spend the capital of the United States on - on such a state.”

But Blair has been disappointed before.

In language far more blunt than he used at the White House, he told Labor Party leaders this fall at their conference in Brighton, England, “This party knows the depth of my commitment to the Middle East peace process and shares my frustration at the lack of progress.”

“Military action will be futile unless we address the conditions in which this terrorism breeds and the causes it preys upon,” he said.

It has been a struggle to influence Bush’s course in the second term, and Blair has waged his own campaign to sway the policy debates of Washington.

In greeting the president’s re-election on Nov. 3, Blair used a megaphone across the Atlantic to say that revitalizing the Middle East peace process “is the single most pressing political challenge in our world today.” In doing so, he was also taking on some of the ideologues of the Bush administration who had downgraded to insignificance the conflict over homeland between Israelis and Palestinians, even though it has triggered four wars and still animates politics in the region.

The prime minister’s visit may have had the effect of elevating it once again to the status as a strategic concern for American policy in the Middle East. And Blair knows, because he was just last week in Brussels with the 24 other leaders of the European Union, that a new commitment to building a viable and democratic Palestinian state would also do a lot to bring Europe and the United States back together after the estrangement over Iraq.

Bush’s pledge that he would work in his second term to “deepen our transatlantic ties to nations of Europe” and visit the Continent soon after his inauguration in January was a strong signal that both he and Blair understand how much damage needs to be repaired if the old cold war partnership across the Atlantic is to be summoned again - this time for effective diplomacy on an urgent agenda of supporting elections in Iraq, preventing nuclear proliferation in Iran and finding a settlement in the Holy Land.

By delivering Bush for the European agenda on Middle East peace, Blair stands also to restore his badly tarnished credentials on the continent, where had styled himself as the essential European leader with real influence in Washington. Now, he appears to have told Bush that Britain can help deliver the Europeans for greater assistance and cooperation in the in the Holy Land, perhaps through an international conference in London. That would make cooperation on Iraq and on containing Iran’s nuclear program easier, his aides say.

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For EU and NATO, snags over intelligence

By Judy Dempsey International Herald Tribune
Thursday, November 11, 2004

BERLIN While NATO and the European Union appeared to absorb former Communist nations and other new members with ease last spring, diplomats from both groups say that doubts about the reliability of some countries and lingering disputes have brought the important function of sharing secrets to a virtual standstill.

The ability to exchange intelligence is extremely important for both alliances as their military experts work around the clock for the EU to take over in early December the NATO-led mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina - the Europeans’ most ambitious and largest military role to date.

Diplomats said Wednesday that the success of the Bosnian mission would depend on both sides’ working very closely on intelligence issues. But neither Cyprus nor Malta, which along with eight former Communist countries joined the EU on May 1, has clearance to share NATO secrets.

“Enlargement, and continuing disagreements over Iraq, has weakened the level of trust among the member states belonging to both organizations and between the organizations,” said Jean-Yves Haine, a military expert at the EU-backed Institute for Security Studies in Paris. “It is making cooperation very, very difficult.”

According to diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity, two of the countries that are causing some of the biggest difficulties for the enlarged NATO and EU are Bulgaria and Turkey.

Bulgaria joined NATO last spring and is due to join the EU in 2007. But 15 years after the overthrow of the Communist leader Todor Zhivkov, the small Balkan country has yet to rid the top echelons of its military and security services of officers trained in the former Soviet Union.

Last month, Emil Vulev, who was chosen to be Bulgaria’s first ambassador to NATO, was denied security clearance. General Dimitur Georgiev, commander in chief of the Bulgarian Air Force, was denied access to NATO classified documents.

Another general, Pavlomir Kunchev, was blocked from becoming Bulgaria’s military representative to NATO’s military headquarters in Mons, Belgium.

The cases have been acutely embarrassing, both for the current government in Sofia and for NATO itself, which has put great store in its ability to share intelligence with the seven new former Communist countries that joined the alliance last spring.

But it is Turkey that has tried to use EU enlargement to pursue its own agenda, NATO and EU diplomats say.

On the one hand, Turkey, a key longtime member of NATO, is still furious over Cyprus’s refusal earlier this year to accept a United Nations peace plan that would have ended the island’s 30-year-old division. Denying security clearance to Cyprus and Malta, is, in the view of some European Union diplomats, Turkey’s way of showing its displeasure.

On another level, Turkey is using the security issue as a means of exerting pressure on EU leaders who are to decide next month whether to give the final go-ahead for what are expected to be long negotiations ending in membership for Turkey.

Turkey has used similar tactics in the past. For nearly two years, throughout 2001 and 2002, it blocked a NATO-EU agreement - known as Berlin Plus - that would have allowed both organizations to share and exchange intelligence. Ankara lifted its veto only after receiving assurances from EU leaders at their December 2002 summit in Copenhagen that they would speed up pre-accession negotiations with Turkey.

NATO diplomats said the result then and now is the same: Cooperation between NATO and the EU has almost come to a standstill.

“In fact, the cooperation is simply not developing,” bemoaned a senior NATO diplomat who requested anonymity.

What it means in practice is that whenever the North Atlantic Council, which consists of the 26 NATO ambassadors, meets with counterparts from the EU’s Political and Security committee, Cyprus and Malta are regularly excluded. “If intelligence or security issues are on the agenda, we are asked beforehand not to attend,” said a Maltese diplomat.

The result is that the EU, on security issues, cannot function as a union of 25 countries. NATO, as an alliance, is then extremely reluctant to share intelligence with the 23 other EU countries, fearing that its intelligence would be compromised by being shared with Cyprus and Malta, who have no right to see it.

“It is very messy,” said the NATO diplomat. “Cyprus and Malta could be trusted with some classified material. And if not, they could easily tighten up their systems. The point is that security clearance requires agreement from all NATO members.”

Some diplomats said the stalemate between the EU and NATO could be broken at the EU summit. A French official said: “Maybe, if Turkey gets what it wants from EU leaders next month - a date for starting accession talks - cooperation will improve. It is hard to know.”

“Turkey may even hold out longer until Cyprus, under EU pressure, opts for the UN peace plan.”

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et

Goss provokes crisis at CIA
By Shaun Waterman
UPI Homeland and National Security Editor

Published 11/14/2004 8:31 PM

WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 (UPI)—The senior management of the CIA’s clandestine=
service was poised to resign en masse Monday, robbing the nation’s spies o=
f a leadership team that one agency veteran said was the best for many year=
s.

According to two former senior agency officials who maintain close contacts=
at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., and who were independently interviewe=
d by United Press International, the crisis follows a series of clashes wit=
h a new chief of staff, imported by recently appointed CIA Director Porter =
Goss from his team at the house committee he chaired.

Others suggest that the clandestine service managers are merely playing bur=
eaucratic games, in an effort to undermine the new leadership of Goss and s=
tymie efforts at reform.

The clandestine service, formally known as the Directorate of Operations is=
headed by Steven Kappes, the deputy director of operations; his deputy Mic=
hael Sulick and the service’s No. 3, a woman who cannot be named because sh=
e works undercover.

The three are “The strongest leadership the DO has had in many, many years,=
” John Macgaffin, who held Sulick’s post in the early 1990’s told UPI.

“More importantly,” he added, “they are seen by the rank and file as the st=
rongest leadership to date, and most importantly of all they have taken a l=
ong hard look at what went wrong before Sept. 11 and have begun to address =
those flaws.

“It would be truly tragic if these individuals, who have done so much alrea=
dy to prevent another Sept. 11 were to be lost to the agency and to the nat=
ion.”

Macgaffin refused to comment further on the controversy and would not confi=
rm or deny a reports over the weekend that Kappes had tendered his resignat=
ion after being told to “get rid” of Sulick, but the broad outlines of the =
account were verified to UPI by several other serving and former intelligen=
ce officials.

One report said that Kappes and the others had been persuaded to hold off a=
ny decision until Monday, but one of the two former senior CIA officials wh=
o were the main sources for this story suggested to UPI it was a done deal.

“They have taken down the pictures in their offices,” he said.

The other was less sure: “I would say ‘poised’ is the word.”

According to the mostly matching accounts provided by these two sources, th=
e threatened resignations are the culmination of two to three weeks of conf=
lict with new CIA Chief of Staff Patrick Murray and Jay Jakub, special assi=
stant to the director for operations and analysis.

The two officials, men with intelligence backgrounds but political career t=
racks, are part of a leadership team that Goss has brought in from his staf=
f at the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which he led as =
a Republican congressman from Florida, until his nomination over the summer=
to the director’s post at the CIA.

The new team has recently been given carte blanche by Goss to make key appo=
intments and other decisions in the Directorate of Operations, say the two =
former officials.

“He’s bringing in political people and giving them hire-and-fire power,” sa=
id one.

Murray and his new team have been given the authority to appoint new chiefs=
of station and new division heads—a power previously exercised by Kappe=
s

But one serving national security official cautioned the new powers might n=
ot been granted yet. “My sense is that this decision has not been finalized=
=2E It may be what they’re pushing for, but if that deal had been closed, w=
e’d have heard more about it.”

The national security official also cautioned that allies of the clandestin=
e service leadership might be trying to spin the media. “Whenever there’s t=
his kind of struggle in an agency, with new people coming in and old ones t=
rying to hang on, there are always going to be attempts to use the availabl=
e mechanisms—including the media—to influence the outcome,” the offic=
ial said.

The official’s warning echoes a comment made over the summer by former Iraq=
weapons hunter David Kay. Speaking to reporters after a conference address=
in Washington, Kay said of anyone who would try to reform the CIA, “They’l=
l need to be ready to be up to their knees in bureaucratic blood ... My for=
mer colleagues in the (Directorate of Operations) will start leaking to the=
ir friends in the media as soon as they hear the swish of the new broom.”

A CIA official authorized to speak on behalf of the agency told UPI he coul=
d not comment on personnel matters. “Will there be changes? Without getting=
into specifics, yes. Is it customary for a new director to make leadership=
changes, and to bring in his own people to handful of senior positions? Ye=
s.”