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“la décision a été prise à la suite d’un ordre du général américian” ... je me demande ce qu’ils ont demandé aux polonais ? ... un bel ordre d’attaque sans doute ... les polonais ne doivent pas adhérer pleinement au fameux : “it was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it”

Les forces polonaises remettent Najaf et Qadissiyah aux Américains
AFP | 09.08.04 | 18h32

Les forces polonaises en Irak ont remis aux troupes américaines le contrôle des provinces irakiennes de Najaf et de Qadissiyah, au sud de Bagdad, a annoncé lundi la division multinationale dirigée par la Pologne dans un communiqué cité par l’agence de presse polonaise PAP.La décision a été prise à la suite d’un ordre du général américain George Casey, cité par le colonel Artur Domanski, porte-parole de la division multinationale commandée par la Pologne.Des combats font rage à Najaf, une ville sainte chiite où plus de 360 miliciens chiites et quatre soldats américains ont été tués depuis cinq jours, selon l’armée américaine à Bagdad.

THE RACE TO THE WHITE HOUSE

Allies Not in Formation on Kerry’s Troops Plan

Nations have a hard time supporting his proposal to use their soldiers to fill out the force in Iraq.

By Paul Richter and Maria L. La Ganga
LA Times Staff Writers

August 9, 2004

WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry has staked much of his campaign on a proposal he hopes will convince voters that he can extricate the United States from Iraq more quickly and at less cost than President Bush.

But Kerry’s plan, which promises to effectively shift much of the Iraq war burden from America to its allies, so far is failing to receive the international support the proposal must have to succeed.

Kerry in recent appearances and interviews has been intensifying his effort to spotlight what he sees as the Bush administration’s mistakes in Iraq — especially the failure to broaden international involvement — as a fundamental difference between the two candidates. But Kerry’s proposals depend on changing the minds of foreign leaders who do not want to defy their electorates by sending forces into what many consider to be a U.S.-made mess.

“I understand why John Kerry is making proposals of this kind, but there is a lack of realism in them,” Menzies Campbell, a British lawmaker who is a spokesman on defense issues for the Liberal Democratic Party, said in a typical comment.

Many allied countries may welcome a new team in Washington after years of friction with the Bush administration. But foreign leaders are making it clear they don’t want to add enough of their own troops to allow U.S. forces to scale back to a minority share in Iraq, as Kerry has proposed.

Allies say they are ready to consider further financial aid and other help for the fragile new Iraqi government. But some officials overseas already are fretting about Kerry’s talk of burden-shifting.

“Some Europeans are rather concerned that Mr. Kerry might have expectations for relief [from abroad] that are going to be hard to meet,” said one senior European diplomat in a statement echoed in several capitals.

In an interview with The Times last week, Kerry said that by building up international support, it would be a “reasonable goal” to replace most U.S. troops in Iraq with foreign forces within his first term. There are now about 140,000 U.S. troops stationed there, or 88% of a total international force of about 160,000.

In the last several days, Kerry has begun arguing that he could substantially reduce the number of U.S. troops within the first six months of a Kerry administration. In an interview with National Public Radio on Friday, Kerry said: “I believe that within a year from now, we could significantly reduce American forces in Iraq, and that’s my plan.”

The proposal could be accomplished by increasing the number of foreign troops and boosting the size of the Iraqi security force, Kerry aides say.

Yet some key countries have already ruled out providing troops, and others are badly strained from the deployments they have already made.

The French and German governments have made clear that sending troops is out of the question. British officials have made no such categorical statement, but they have expressed concern that their troops are overstretched.

Although Japan has supplied a 550-member noncombat force as a symbol of its international commitment, analysts there see little chance the nation would agree to send more.

Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Andrei Denisov, ruled out a commitment of troops. “We are not going to send anybody there, and that’s all there is to say,” Denisov said.

“From the major European countries, there’s simply not a lot of available troops out there, for both practical and political reasons,” said Christopher Makins, president of the Atlantic Council of the United States, which supports U.S. engagement abroad.

Many allied countries have a limited number of troops suitable for the Iraq mission, and most of those are already deployed on other missions, including in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Africa, Makins said.

Dana Allin of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London said, “I think there’s no question, in general, you’ll find it easier to get cooperation from allies if there is a new [U.S.] administration.” But Allin added that if new troops were to be sent to Iraq “it’s unclear where they would come from.”

Kerry has at times said he would particularly like to bring in troops from Arab countries. But diplomats, including those from Arab nations, say they consider the scenario unlikely. The Iraqi interim government has for months excluded the possibility of any peacekeeping troops coming from immediate neighbors, in part because the Iraqi people would be suspicious of neighbors’ intentions.

The recent collapse of a Saudi proposal to bring in peacekeeping troops from other Arab and Muslim countries also indicates the long odds against the idea.

Senior Iraqi officials told U.S. officials this summer that they opposed the idea of bringing in additional troops from any foreign country.

Campbell, the British lawmaker, added that Kerry “has to overcome the very considerable barrier of the fact that he himself voted for military action in support of President Bush.”

Analysts said, moreover, that if the United States was able to reduce its military by substantial numbers in Iraq, at least one or two major nations — such as France or Britain — would have to accept a lead role.

Kerry’s proposal comes at a time when the Bush administration is struggling to convince about 30 countries to keep their troops in Iraq. Late last month, Ukraine announced that it would start negotiations to pull out some of its 1,650 troops in Iraq, the fourth-largest non-U.S. contingent.

Kerry, however, insists that he can gather international support by showing leadership and by giving other countries decision-making authority they have not had before now.

But the Massachusetts senator has repeatedly declined to say how he would find the added support, saying it is unwise to get into the details of diplomacy. “No future president should ever lay this out on the table,” he has said.

A senior foreign policy advisor to Kerry, who asked to remain unidentified, said that campaign officials knew through foreign contacts that other governments would cooperate.

“There are enough indications through enough channels that we wouldn’t be saying it if we didn’t think we could do it,” the advisor said.

A spokesman for the Bush campaign scoffed at the Democrats’ claim to have such support. Steve Schmidt recalled the highly publicized squabble early in the campaign in which Kerry claimed the support of unspecified foreign leaders.

“He won’t name the foreign leaders,” Schmidt said. “He won’t disclose the conversations.”

Kerry has proposed two other measures he has said would help draw support — convening an international conference on Iraq and naming through international consultations a “high commissioner,” with U.N. backing, to give other countries more say.

Several diplomats said allies would probably welcome signals of new interest in consultation. But they said that, with sovereignty now assumed by an interim Iraqi government, there was no longer a demand for an international authority that could give the occupation a legitimacy that was missing under U.S. military control.

“Nine months or a year ago, this could have made a difference,” said the senior European diplomat. “Now, it’s too late.”

At this point, he said, many of the allies think it would be better to concentrate on providing help directly to the new Iraqi government to improve its chances of creating a stable democracy.

Makins, of the Atlantic Council, said he thought the Kerry proposal for a conference and joint leadership would have limited value in drawing allies into a new partnership.

“I don’t think it would be a deal maker, as far as European participation,” he said. “I think major governments are looking for ways to build up the Iraqi government and constitutional process.”

Another Kerry proposal is to rebuild relationships with foreign governments by permitting them to bid for U.S. reconstruction contracts. Under Bush, companies from countries that didn’t take part in the Iraq war coalition were excluded from bidding for prime contracts.

But now, the administration has announced it will allow all comers to bid for a new tranche of contracts in September. Yet some of the European countries that were excluded from the earlier rounds have said for months that their industries never clamored for permission to seek such contracts.

Leaders from allied countries emphasized that they would be ready to reconsider financial aid and other assistance to Iraq under either a Kerry or Bush administration. Some said that they already had stepped up financial assistance to Iraq, even as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization military alliance agreed to Iraqi requests to begin training local security forces.

As they assess Kerry’s proposal, foreign leaders also are trying to decipher where he stands philosophically on Iraq. Similar questions have followed Kerry in his campaign at home.

Kerry, even when he supported the congressional resolution in October 2002 that authorized the war, has been consistent in pressing for more international backing for U.S. policies toward Iraq and reconstruction efforts there.

“The international community’s support will be critical because we will not be able to rebuild Iraq single-handedly,” Kerry said in an October 2002 Senate speech in which he outlined steps he thought Bush should take. “We will lack the credibility and the expertise and the capacity.”

In an address at UCLA in late February, 16 months later, Kerry said, “It is time to return to the United Nations and return America to the community of nations and share both authority and responsibility in Iraq.”

Addressing the Democratic National Convention on July 29, Kerry echoed the same themes. “I know what we have to do in Iraq,” he told delegates. “We need a president who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers and reduce the risk to American soldiers.”

But while he has criticized the Bush administration’s competence, he has not challenged the fundamentals of its policy, nor the path it is following toward Iraq’s own upcoming elections.

Still, polls suggest that many Europeans and Asians would prefer a new administration. A recent survey found 77% of Germans prefer Kerry, to 10% for Bush; another found that 13% of Russians “like” Bush as a politician, while 60% dislike him.

There is a widespread public expectation in Europe — despite what U.S. polls show — that Bush will be ousted in November because of the troubled course of the Iraq war, analysts said.

But many European diplomats say they are coming to the conclusion that Bush and Kerry are close on key international issues and that there would be substantial continuity between the administrations.

Kerry, like Bush, insists that U.S. troops should not be tried before the International Criminal Court, the multinational tribunal that has been a contentious subject between Europe and the United States. The U.S. has not ratified creation of the court.

On another issue that divides the United States and Europe, Kerry has signaled that he would track the Bush administration on dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, although he has said he would more aggressively seek a solution.

One German newspaper, the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, suggested Europeans were in for a rude awakening if Kerry becomes president. Under the headline “The Big Kerry Illusion,” the newspaper said Kerry would diverge from Bush, but any hope that he would more fully embrace the “global village” was “wishful thinking that will get a cold shower.”

By contrast, there is a widespread belief in Russia that a Kerry win would launch a new era of U.S.-European goodwill — a prospect Russian leaders view with alarm.

The Russian government is happy with tensions between Bush and Europe, which gives Moscow an opening to build its own relations with European governments and distracts world attention from its own difficulties, analysts said.

“The Kremlin feels very comfortable with the notion that Bush is playing the enfant terrible in the world arena, because of his Middle East policy, and thus he keeps distracting the world from, for example, problems in Russia,” said Stanislav Belkovsky, general director of the National Strategy Council, a think tank considered close to Russian security services. “The Kremlin is not at all interested in the Democrats’ victory in the presidential polls.”

*

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Times staff writers Bruce Wallace in Tokyo, Jeffrey Fleishman in Berlin, Kim Murphy in Moscow, Janet Stobart in London, Achrene Sicakyuz in Paris, Michael Finnegan in St. Louis and Maggie Farley in New York contributed to this report.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-kerryiraq9aug09.story

GEOPOLITICS - OPINION
Turkey’s Chill Further Isolates Israel

Ankara’s terrorist-state charge sets back a relationship that once was expanding. The change is laid in part to internal Turkish concerns.

By Henri J. Barkey

Henri J. Barkey, chairman of the international relations department at Lehigh University, was on the State Department’s policy planning staff (1998-2000).

August 8, 2004

BETHLEHEM, Pa. — In May, when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan characterized Israel’s incursions into the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza as the actions of a terrorist state, there was no mistaking that something had gone terribly awry in Turkish-Israeli relations. Their correct but standoffish relationship began to blossom in 1996. So numerous were their military agreements and commercial deals that it appeared, certainly in the Arab world, that the two countries were entering a strategic relationship.

Turkey’s changed tone doesn’t signify the end of the relationship, but it augurs a time of greater differences ahead, as well as underlining Israel’s increasing isolation. The worsening situation in the Palestinian territories and the rise of the post-Sept. 11 terrorist threat have contributed to the falling-out. But the transformation in Turkish attitudes also stems from internal developments in Turkey.

The most important domestic change is the political ascent of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party. Yet despite its leaders’ desire to be moderate and centrist, the party cannot escape its roots in Turkey’s Islamist movement. To its credit, the party has charted a liberal and reformist agenda to facilitate Turkey’s entry into the European Union. At the same time, Justice and Development has had to be careful not to rile Turkey’s military establishment, which is anxious about Erdogan’s growing power. For example, the party has backed down on such divisive religious issues as relaxing the ban on women wearing headscarves in government offices, schools and universities.

Erdogan’s blast at Israel similarly gives his party some political maneuvering room. First and foremost, it signals to his bedrock supporters that though the party at times makes concessions to the military, it can hold its own when it comes to Tel Aviv. On this the Turkish public is solidly behind the Justice and Development Party, because the Palestinian issue has always been important to Turks. Furthermore, limiting contacts with Israel puts the military on the defensive. Many Turks, especially Erdogan’s rank and file, regard the Israeli-Turkish relationship as the creation of the military, which needed access to weaponry, and Israel’s staunchest friend, Washington.

There are other reasons for Turkey’s new ambivalence toward Israel. The Turkish government is more self-confident than at any time in recent history. Reflecting a palpable transformation in Europe’s attitude toward it, Turkey’s prospect for getting a date to begin accession negotiations with the EU is excellent. No longer is the country perceived as crisis-prone. Turkish views are well received, and Turkey’s leaders enjoy greater esteem. As a result, the Justice and Development Party doesn’t need to curry favor with either Israel or its powerful supporters in Washington.

Second, the party wants to cash in Turkey’s new respectability for a greater say in international institutions. It was no coincidence that Erdogan’s criticism of Israel came soon after Ankara succeeded in landing the secretary-general office in the Organization of Islamic Countries.

Finally, Turkey’s harsher attitude toward Tel Aviv coincides with an unprecedented anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic diatribe in the Turkish press. Conspiracy theories, many of them with origins in Sept. 11, abound about Israel’s abilities and intentions everywhere in the world. My favorite one was in a recent column in Turkey’s most pro-government paper. It claimed that the events in Darfur, Sudan, were the result of Israel’s desire to claim the waters of the Nile. The Israelis, the conspiracy asserts, induced its Ethiopian Christian allies to rebel against the Sudanese government. Not only did the columnist not know where Darfur is, but he also was ignorant of the fact that the genocide in Darfur is perpetrated by Arab Muslim Sudanese on African Muslims.

Exaggerated, if not unsubstantiated, reports in the U.S. media about Israeli activities in northern Iraq have fed this frenzy. Israel’s long-standing connections to Iraq’s Kurds have added to the anxiety among Turks, who believe that Israel wants another like-minded non-Arab state in the region in the hope of undermining Arab unity. Ankara fears that such a Kurdish state would inspire Turkey’s Kurds, who make up about 20% of the country’s population, to seek independence of their own. Although it’s in Israel’s interests that Iraq remain a unified — albeit federal — state devoid of fundamentalist impulses a la Iran, few in Turkey would believe this.

The developments in Turkey, as important as they are in altering its attitude toward Tel Aviv, are also another manifestation of Israel’s growing isolation. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s unilateralist policies and seeming indifference to their political costs have erased much of the goodwill his predecessors had built up in parts of the world. One only need to return to August 1999, when Israeli rescue teams, credited with saving many lives, were the first on the ground after a terrible earthquake in Turkey. Today, those efforts have disappeared from the collective Turkish memory.

The change in Turkey-Israeli atmospherics is not a welcome development for Washington, which had hailed and supported the two countries’ rapprochement. It means that Washington’s role as Israel’s lone supporter, and all the attendant consequences, will only grow.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-barkey8aug08.story

THE NATION
Private, Public Roles Overlap in Washington

Insiders are advising officials and working for businesses that profit from government contracts. It’s a growing pattern of networking.

By Walter F. Roche Jr.
Times Staff Writer

August 8, 2004

WASHINGTON — Suzanne H. Woolsey is a trustee of a little-known defense consulting group that had inside access to senior Pentagon leaders directing the Iraq war. Last January, she joined the board of California-based Fluor Corp.

Soon afterward, Fluor and a joint venture partner won about $1.6 billion in Iraq reconstruction contracts.

Her husband, former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, a leading advocate for the war, is serving as a government policy advisor. He too works for a firm with war-related interests.

The Woolseys’ overlapping affiliations are part of a growing pattern in Washington in which individuals play key roles in quasi-governmental organizations advising officials on major policy issues but also are involved with private businesses in related fields.

Such activities generally are not covered by conflict of interest laws or ethics rules. But they underscore an insiders network in which contacts and relationships developed inside the government can meld with individual financial interests.

Suzanne Woolsey, 62, is a former executive with the National Academies, the institution that advises the government on science, engineering and medicine. In October 2000, she was named a trustee of the Institute for Defense Analyses, a nonprofit corporation paid by the government to do research for the Pentagon.

James Woolsey, 62, who headed the CIA from 1993 to 1995, is a member of the Defense Policy Board, an unpaid advisory panel serving Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other senior Pentagon officials. Woolsey is also on CIA and Navy advisory boards and was a founding member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a private advocacy group set up in 2002 at the instigation of the White House to build public support for the war.

He is also a vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm that co-sponsored a May 1, 2003, conference on business opportunities in the reconstruction of Iraq. Woolsey was one of the keynote speakers for the event.

Booz Allen is a subcontractor on a $75-million telecommunications project in Iraq. The firm does extensive work for the Defense Department as well. It was recently awarded $14 million in contracts by the Navy. The former CIA director said in an interview that he had not been involved in Booz Allen’s Iraq contracts.

Last month, Woolsey appeared at a Capitol Hill news conference to announce the creation of a group called the Committee of the Present Danger, which he said would try to focus public attention on the threat “to the U.S. and the civilized world from Islamic terrorism.”

Others with war-related overlapping interests include Richard N. Perle and Christopher A. Williams.

Perle, assistant secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration, was chairman of the Defense Advisory Board but stepped down from that post and eventually the board itself after questions were raised about possible conflicts between his advisory role and his private business interests.

Christopher A. Williams, a former aide to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), is another Defense Policy Board member. He has registered as a lobbyist for Boeing and other defense contractors.

In Suzanne Woolsey’s case, during the U.S.-led attack on Iraq, the Institute for Defense Analyses provided senior Pentagon officials with assessments of the operation.

Personnel from the institute formed part of an 18-member civilian analysis team working from the Joint Warfighting Center in Virginia.

The operation was described in a June 3, 2003, briefing by Army Brig.Gen. Robert W. Cone. “This team did business within the Centcom headquarters on a daily basis by observing meeting and planning sessions, attending command updates, watching key decisions being made, watching problems being solved and generally being provided unrestricted access to the business of the conduct of this war,” Cone said, according to a transcript of the session.

Tax records show Suzanne Woolsey was paid $11,500 in trustee fees for serving on the Institute for Defense Analyses board last year.

A spokesman for Fluor declined to discuss why she had been invited to become a director or what role if any she played in the company’s Iraq contracts. Fluor pays its outside directors $40,000 a year, plus stock options and additional fees for attending meetings, according to Securities and Exchange Commission records and the Fluor spokesman.

At the National Academies, Suzanne Woolsey served as chief operating officer from 1993 to 2000 and as chief communications officer from 2000 to 2003. She also is a former newspaper editorial writer and holds degrees in psychology.

Her appointment to Fluor’s board came in late January 2004, while Fluor and its joint venture partner, AMEC, were competing for two federal contracts to do reconstruction work in Iraq.

A little over a month after her appointment, Fluor and AMEC got both contracts, with a combined value of $1.6 billion.

Records show Fluor’s stock has risen steadily since the war began; it has a price of about $42 a share, up from about $30 a share in March of 2003.

According to reports filed with the SEC, Woolsey owns 1,500 shares of Fluor stock and could gain an additional 800 shares under a deferred compensation program.

In a Jan. 27 news release announcing Woolsey’s appointment to Fluor’s board, the company noted that she was a trustee for the Institute for Defense Analyses. Fluor’s chairman and chief executive, Alan L. Boeckmann, said, “Sue’s expertise in and passion for government policy, private industry and science will be important enhancements to our board.”

Earlier, Fluor had won two other government contracts for reconstruction work in Iraq. These contracts had a potential value of more than $1.5 billion over the next five years, according to company spokesman Jerry Holloway. They covered a range of assignments including power generation, construction of a U.S. military camp and a subcontract to renovate an Iraqi military facility.

Holloway said all the contracts — the first one dates to April of last year — were awarded on a competitive basis. He noted that many of Fluor’s contracts were awarded before Woolsey’s appointment.

Holloway said the actual amount paid to Fluor under its Iraq contracts may never reach the company’s potential $2.5-billion share; the ultimate amount will depend on the individual work orders issued to the company by federal agencies.

Still, Fluor considered the Iraq contracts an important element in its financial performance. In a recent SEC filing, the company reported that its revenue for the first quarter of the current fiscal year from work in Iraq totaled “approximately $190 million. There was no work in Iraq in the comparable period in 2003.”

The quarterly report concluded that increased profits in the first quarter were primarily due to work in Iraq along with the purchase of a new company.

According to other filings with the SEC, Suzanne Woolsey is also affiliated with other firms, including the Paladin Capital Group, a Washington venture capital firm in which her husband is a partner.

Suzanne Woolsey did not respond to messages left for her at Paladin and at Fluor.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-woolsey8aug08.story

Bravo pour le commentaire. Il est vrai que les Français ont une vue idyllique des Etats-Unis, je pense cependant que cela est due à la confusion entretenue entre l’Amérique et les Etats-Unis. On pense à l’Amérique du noble sauvage, des grands espaces, de la nature en discourant sur les Etats-Unis. D’ailleurs, dans le film ”Mon oncle d’Amérique” un des personnages a eu cette remarque très frappante (pour moi au moins): l’Amérique n’exite pas, j’y étais.

Nos amis états-uniens ont l’air décidés à tuer le logiciel libre Linux.

Le Parlement Européen semble (étonnamment ?) décidé à soutenir Linux.

Mais le Conseil des Ministres semble préférer, pour on ne sait quelle obscure raison, faire plaisir à l’Oncle Sam. Probablement parce qu’ils sont tout autant inféodés au capitalisme néo-libéral que le sont les membres de l’establishment US.

Une pétition est lancée pour sauver Linux sur le site http://petition.eurolinux.org/index_html?LANG=en

Voici ce que l’on trouve sur le site ZDnet sur la question :

http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/business/0,39020715,39163808,00.htm?feed

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Le noyau Linux sous la menace de 283 brevets de logiciels déposés aux États-Unis

Par Estelle Dumout

ZDNet France

Lundi 2 août 2004

Selon une étude réalisée pour le compte d’une société d’assurances, quelque 280 brevets, encore non validés par les tribunaux, pourraient être utilisés contre les utilisateurs de solutions Linux.

Le noyau Linux pourrait potentiellement enfreindre 283 inventions validées comme telles par l’Office américain des brevets et des marques (US PTO). Telle est la principale conclusion d’une enquête publiée le 2 août par Open Source Risk Management (OSRM), une compagnie d’assurances spécialisée dans la gestion des risques juridiques liés à l’utilisation de logiciels à “code source ouvert”, et en particulier ceux soumis à la licence GPL des “logiciels libres”.

Cette étude aux conclusions radicales a été réalisée par Dan Ravicher, un avocat américain spécialiste des questions de propriété intellectuelle. Fondateur de la Public Patent Foundation aux États-Unis, il est aussi le principal conseiller juridique de la Free Software Foundation (FSF), le groupe de militants historique des solutions GNU/Linux et de la GPL.

«J’ai une bonne et une mauvaise nouvelle», lance Dan Ravicher dans un communiqué. Côté positif, il a passé en revue tous les brevets logiciels validés en appel par les tribunaux américains: selon son analyse, les versions 2.4 et 2.6 du noyau ou “kernel” Linux ne contreviennent à aucun d’entre eux.

Toutefois, la médaille a son revers. «La mauvaise nouvelle est que nous avons identifié 283 brevets logiciels publiés, mais non encore validés par les tribunaux, qui contiennent des détails pouvant être raisonnablement utilisés contre les utilisateurs professionnels de logiciels à base de noyau Linux», souligne Dan Ravicher. «Ces derniers s’exposeraient, si ces brevets venaient à être validés, à de lourdes conséquences financières.»

Un tiers des brevets aux mains des amis de Linux

L’avocat refuse cependant de dresser un tableau alarmiste de la situation: environ un tiers de ces brevets sont détenus «par de grandes entreprises qui sont favorables à Linux, certaines d’entre elles ayant même des intérêts financiers à voir l’adoption de ces solutions se développer: Cisco Systems, HP, IBM, Intel, Novell, Oracle, Red Hat, Sony…» Reste une ombre au tableau: Microsoft, adversaire déclaré des solutions open source en général, et des logiciels libres GPL en particulier, détient 27 de ces 283 inventions, le reste étant entre les mains de particuliers ou de sociétés «qui n’ont rien à perdre à entamer des procédures légales contre les utilisateurs professionnels de Linux, à la recherche de compromis lucratifs».

«Au final, nous avons confirmé ce que la communauté savait déjà: [l’utilisation de] Linux, comme n’importe quel autre produit à succès, comporte des risques au niveau des brevets», poursuit Dan Ravicher. La question est au cœur de toutes les polémiques depuis que la société SCO, qui détient des droits sur le système propriétaire Unix System V, prétend que le noyau Linux et les distributions complètes qui l’utilisent ont en quelque sorte “plagié” Unix. SCO s’en est pris à des poids lourds de l’informatique, dont IBM, puis a tenté d’imposer des licences aux autres utilisateurs; avec un relatif insuccès pour l’instant.

OSRM profite opportunément de la publication de cette étude pour présenter sa nouvelle police d’assurance, qui devrait être lancée d’ici le début de 2005. Pour 150.000 dollars par an, cette police couvre, dans la limite de 5 millions de dollars, tous les coûts d’une entreprise qui serait poursuivie pour son utilisation des solutions à base du noyau Linux.

Avec Stephen Shankland, CNET News.com

Une dépêche de Reuters nous apprend que l’on trouve à présent du Prozac, l’antidépresseur le plus connu, dans l’eau des robinets britanniques. Serait-ce le moyen trouvé par Tony Blair pour remonter le moral de ses concitoyens déprimés par son affligeante politique ? Non, il semble plutôt que ce qui se passe dans la vie de tous les jours les déprime tant qu’ils prennent leur Prozac en telle quantité que celui-ci se retrouve dans leurs excrétions et fini par se retrouver dans l’eau retraitée. Cela en dit long sur notre merveilleuse société occidentale de libre-échange. La logique capitaliste néo-libérale ne semble pouvoir fonctionner qu’en détruisant les liens entre les êtres humains, et donc en détruisant ceux-ci, comme le montrent par exemple les films lucides de Ken Loach (Navigator et d’autres…)

On pourrait aussi voir dans cette “prozacisation” de l’eau courante une illustration singulière du virtualisme : on prend du Prozac pour mener une existence somme toute artificielle, permettant de peindre en rose tous les aspects effroyablement noirs de notre condition d’esclaves du capitalisme avancé et nous nous le refilons les uns aux autres par l’anus et la vessie. Nous permettant ainsi mutuellement de continuer à prendre, toujours davantage… des vessies pour des lanternes.

Question subsidiaire : quelle quantité de Prozac y a-t-il dans l’eau des robinets des autres pays ? En France et en Belgique ? Aux Etats-Unis ?

Amusons-nous un peu, même s’il n’y a vraiment pas de quoi rire : pourrait-on élaborer une mesure du degré de virtualisme d’un pays à partir de ce paramètre ?

Dernière réflexion qui montre à quel point on est bien en plein virtualisme dans toute cette affaire : des méta-analyses statistiques effectuées par Irving Kirsch (Université du Connecticut) montreraient que l’efficacité du Prozac est à peine supérieure à celle de l’Effet Placebo. Pour ceux que cela intéresse, son texte “Listening to Prozac but Hearing Placebo:
A Meta-Analysis of Antidepressant Medication” se trouve en ligne à l’adresse :

http://www.journals.apa.org/prevention/volume1/pre0010002a.html

Cette analyse est par ailleurs congruente aux réflexions de Philippe Pignarre dans son excellent livre “Comment la dépression est devenue une épidémie” (Editions La Découverte). L’auteur y met l’accent sur les effets en boucle de contagion mentale et d’imitation. Bref, sur le virtualisme…

Report: Prozac Found in Britain’s Drinking Water

8/8/2004

“LONDON (Reuters) - Traces of the anti-depressant Prozac have been found in Britain’s drinking water supply, setting off alarm bells with environmentalists concerned about potentially toxic effects.

The Observer newspaper said Sunday that a report by the government’s environment watchdog found Prozac was building up in river systems and groundwater used for drinking supplies.

The exact quantity of Prozac in the drinking water was unknown, but the Environment Agency’s report concluded Prozac could be potentially toxic in the water table.

Experts say that Prozac finds its way into rivers and water systems from treated sewage water, and some believe the drugs could affect reproductive ability.

A spokesman for Britain’s Drinking Water Inspectorate said Prozac was likely to be found in a considerably watered down form that was unlikely to pose a health risk.
“It is extremely unlikely that there is a risk, as such drugs are excreted in very low concentrations,” the spokesman said. “Advanced treatment processes installed for pesticide removal are effective in removing drug residues.”

But environmentalists called for an urgent investigation into the findings.

Norman Baker, environment spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said it looked “like a case of hidden mass medication upon the unsuspecting public.”
“It is alarming that there is no monitoring of levels of Prozac and other pharmacy residues in our drinking water,” he told the Observer.

The Environment Agency has held a series of meetings with the pharmaceutical industry to discuss any repercussions for human health or the ecosystem, the Observer said.

Prescription of anti-depressants has surged in Britain. In the decade up to 2001, overall prescriptions of antidepressants rose from 9 million to 24 million a year, the paper said. “

source: courrier international.

Un haut fonctionnaire de l’administration américaine a proposé, quelques jours après les attentats du 11 septembre 2001, de “surprendre les terroristes” en attaquant l’Amérique du Sud ou l’Asie du Sud-Est au lieu de l’Afghanistan qui, selon lui, “manquait de bonnes cibles”, rapporte l’hebdomadaire américain Newsweek.

L’idée, révélée dans le récent rapport de la commission d’enquête sur le 11 septembre 2001, dans une volumineuse note de bas de page, recommandait “une attaque envers des groupes terroristes en Amérique du Sud, par exemple à la jonction des trois frontières du Brésil, de l’Argentine et du Paraguay, où la présence d’Iraniens soutenus par le Hezbollah a été enregistrée”. L’objectif était de capturer des terroristes en dehors des zones surveillées comme l’Afghanistan, là où aucune attaque n’était redoutée, et “également de provoquer un effet boule de neige sur d’autres opérations terroristes”, relate Newsweek.

La note de bas de page reprend le contenu d’un mémo top secret et anonyme, néanmoins attribué au sous-secrétaire à la Défense Douglas Feith. Dans ce mémo figuraient “de nombreux documents du Pentagone avançant des idées peu orthodoxes sur la guerre contre la terreur”, soutient Newsweek. Certaines de ces idées suggérait d’attaquer “des cibles en dehors du Moyen-Orient comme première riposte” ou “des cibles qui ne sont pas liées à Al Qaida, comme par exemple l’Irak.”

Les suggestions concernant les attaques en Amérique du Sud, informe le journal, seraient le fruit des réflexions de Michael Maloof et David Wurmser, deux membres des services secrets du Pentagone. David Wurmser est maintenant un proche conseiller de Dick Cheney en politique extérieure.

Les démocrates haussent le ton contre George W. Bush

LEMONDE.FR | 06.08.04 | 08h44

La campagne électorale a pris un ton plus offensif jeudi 5 août aux Etats-Unis. John Kerry, mais aussi Bill Clinton, s’en sont durement pris au président George W. Bush. Le candidat démocrate lui reproche de ne pas avoir réagi immédiatement le 11 septembre après avoir eu connaissance des attentats. L’ancien président a sévèrement critiqué l’hôte de la Maison Blanche, sans le nommer, en l’accusant d’avoir affaibli la lutte contre le terrorisme en renversant Saddam Hussein, qui ne représentait qu’une “menace de cinquième ordre” pour les Etats-Unis.
Le ton monte dans la campagne présidentielle aux Etats-Unis, comme si quelques semaines après la convention démocrate et à quelques jours de celle des républicains, on s’était passé le mot pour durcir le discours et déstabiliser l’adversaire entre deux conventions, période propice pour affûter les armes.  Côté démocrate, c’est d’abord l’ancien président, Bill Clinton, qui a ouvert le feu contre son successeur sans le nommer, en l’accusant d’avoir affaibli la lutte contre le terrorisme en renversant Saddam Hussein, qui ne représentait qu’une “menace de cinquième ordre” pour les Etats-Unis.

En visite au Canada pour faire la promotion de son autobiographie, l’ancien président a déclaré dans une interview télévisée que la guerre en Irak avait drainé des ressources vitales pour la guerre contre Al-Qaida. Il a reproché M. Bush de n’avoir pas mis suffisamment d’hommes et de fonds dans la bataille engagée pour capturer Oussama Ben Laden et détruire les caches d’Al-Qaida et des talibans le long de la frontière pakistano-afghane.

“Nous ne saurons jamais si nous aurions pu attraper [Ben Laden] car nous n’en avons jamais fait une priorité”, a déclaré Bill Clinton dans cette interview à la télévision canadienne (CBC). Clinton, qui soutient l’adversaire démocrate de Bush, le sénateur John Kerry, dans la campagne électorale américaine, a estimé qu’au moment de la guerre, Saddam Hussein n’était qu’une “menace du cinquième ordre”. “Pourquoi a-t-on confié aux Pakistanais le soin de lutter contre ce qui représente la menace la plus importante pour la sécurité des Etats-Unis en se contentant d’un rôle américain d’appoint, pendant que nous placions toutes nos ressources militaires en Irak, qui ne représentait au pire qu’une menace de cinquième ordre?”, s’est demandé l’ancien président démocrate. “Comment en est-on arrivé au point d’avoir 130 000 hommes en Irak et 15 000 en Afghanistan ?” a-t-il ajouté.

Selon l’ancien président, George W. Bush aurait dû se concentrer sur d’autres menaces plus importantes pour les Etats-Unis comme le conflit au Proche-Orient, la tension pakistano-indienne et la Corée du Nord, plutôt que de s’en prendre au régime de Saddam Hussein. Il s’est interrogé sur le bien-fondé stratégique “de prendre tous ces engagements en Irak, puis de mettre la sécurité de notre pays de fait entre les mains des Pakistanais en Afghanistan et en ce qui concerne Ben Laden et Al-Qaida, car c’est incontestablement ce qui est arrivé”. Clinton a aussi estimé que, eût-il été président dans les mois précédant la guerre en Irak, il aurait cru l’ancien inspecteur des Nations unies, Hans Blix, s’il lui avait indiqué que Saddam Hussein n’avait pas d’armes de destruction massive, et ce malgré les informations américaines affirmant le contraire.

“La question n’est pas de le croire lui (Hans Blix) plutôt que les agences de renseignement américaines, mais les renseignements (fournis par les services américains) étaient véritablement ambigus sur ce point”, a-t-il estimé.

KERRY CRITIQUE VIVEMENT BUSH

Puis c’est au tour du candidat démocrate, John Kerry, de prendre le relais des critiques. Il a vivement critiqué jeudi son adversaire républicain, pour ne pas avoir réagi immédiatement le 11 septembre 2001 après avoir eu connaissance des attentats.

“En premier lieu, si j’avais été en train de lire un livre à des enfants et que mon conseiller m’avait murmuré à l’oreille l’Amérique est attaquée, j’aurais dit très poliment et très gentiment à ces enfants que le président des Etats-Unis avait à s’occuper de quelque chose”, a-t-il dit à Washington, lors d’une conférence de l’Association des journalistes de couleur. Le 11 septembre 2001, M. Bush lisait un livre à des enfants dans une école de Floride (sud-est) quand il a été avisé que des avions avaient percuté les tours du World Trade Center à New York. Il a ensuite continué à lire pendant sept minutes.

John Kerry estime disposer, au contraire de George W. Bush, d’une crédibilité pour être chef des armées, du fait de sa participation à la guerre du Vietnam. “Je prends la fonction de commandant en chef avec une expérience rare, heureusement, mais importante, celle d’avoir combattu dans une guerre,” a-t-il dit, ajoutant qu’il n’enverrait de troupes américaines au feu que si toutes les autres options avaient été épuisées.

“Et je crois que nous avons besoin d’un commandant en chef qui comprend l’épreuve avant d’envoyer des jeunes gens à la guerre. Vous devez pouvoir regarder des parents dans les yeux s’ils perdent leur fils ou leur fille, et leur dire : J’ai tenté de faire tout ce qui était en mon pouvoir pour éviter ça, mais nous n’avions pas le choix en tant que nation, en tant que peuple”, a-t-il ajouté.

Aussitôt, les responsables de la campagne du président américain George W. Bush et de la Maison Blanche ont vivement réagi jeudi aux attaques de son adversaire démocrate John Kerry. “Je veux regarder plus attentivement ce qu’il a dit, mais cela ressemble aux genres d’attaques politiques auxquelles il se livre plutôt que d’essayer de justifier ses décisions passées et de débattre des véritables questions et de nos différences sur ces questions”, a affirmé le porte-parole de la Maison Blanche Scott McClellan en marge d’un déplacement de M. Bush à Colombus (Ohio, nord).

“John Kerry va avoir des désillusions s’il prend conseil auprès de Michael Moore. John Kerry est un candidat faisant preuve d’indécision, qui a montré cette indécision dans la guerre contre le terrorisme, qui n’a pas voté pour financer nos troupes en guerre et ne peut exposer clairement sa position sur la décision de renverser Saddam Hussein”, a affirmé pour sa part Rudy Giuliani, ancien maire de New York.

Avec AFP
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3222,36-374673,0.html

M. Bush userait de la menace terroriste comme “carte” électorale

LE MONDE | 04.08.04 | 13h32 •  MIS A JOUR LE 04.08.04 | 16h18

Depuis l’alerte décrétée dimanche, la polémique enfle sur l’usage de la peur à des fins politiques en vue du scrutin présidentiel de novembre. L’actualité des plans d’attaque de centres financiers à New York et Washington par Al-Qaida est mise en doute par la presse et des démocrates.
George Bush exploite-t-il plus que de raison le filon de la peur à des fins électorales ? La question, qui a toujours trotté dans la tête de certains démocrates sans qu’ils osent s’en inquiéter trop haut, est désormais ouvertement posée aux Etats-Unis. 

Le doute a commencé à s’installer dès la nouvelle alerte lancée dimanche 1er août par le secrétaire à la sécurité intérieure, Tom Ridge, sur de possibles attentats terroristes contre les institutions financières sur le territoire américain. Trois jours après la clôture de la convention démocrate, avec en point d’orgue un discours très ferme et très médiatisé de John Kerry sur la force de l’Amérique, la date tombait en effet à pic pour permettre à l’administration Bush de reprendre l’initiative en matière de sécurité. Certains sondages donnaient un léger avantage à M. Kerry sur M. Bush, et l’un d’entre eux, en particulier, révélait que le problème de crédibilité dont souffrait le candidat démocrate en matière de lutte contre le terrorisme était presque surmonté.

“DÉTAIL ET PRÉCISION”

Mais les renseignements “nouveaux” et “alarmants” sur lesquels Tom Ridge déclarait fonder cette nouvelle alerte dissuadaient, dans un premier temps, les mauvais esprits de s’exprimer. “Sur une échelle de 1 à 10, la qualité de ces renseignements est de 10”, avait proclamé Tom Ridge sur l’un des shows télévisés les plus regardés du dimanche matin. Habitués à franchir différents paliers d’anxiété depuis le 11 septembre 2001 au gré des couleurs des alertes - orange, rouge -, les Américains renouaient avec la peur et les mesures de sécurité accrues.

Lundi 2 août pourtant, c’est de la bouche même d’une collaboratrice de la Maison Blanche que les interrogations les plus légitimes sont sorties. Questionnée par le présentateur de l’émission d’information “The News Hour” sur la chaîne publique PBS, Frances Townsend, conseillère en sécurité intérieure auprès du président Bush, explique sereinement que les renseignements sur la base desquels cette nouvelle alerte a été lancée “ont été collectés en 2000 et 2001”. “Il semble que certains d’entre eux aient été actualisés en janvier, mais ce n’est pas clair, ajoute-t-elle. Il est impossible de dire, à partir de ces renseignements, si les individus - soupçonnés de vouloir commettre des attentats - sont encore là”. Le journaliste, Jim Lehrer, se fait plus pressant, demande des précisions, que Mme Townsend est incapable de fournir. “Alors, s’étonne-t-il, vous n’avez donc aucune information sur des noms, des visages, ou d’autres choses concrètes ?”

Conscient des risques que comportent des attaques frontales contre la politique antiterroriste de l’équipe Bush, John Kerry s’abstient d’intervenir directement dans le débat. Il laisse ce soin à Howard Dean, son concurrent malheureux à l’investiture démocrate, qui souligne, sur CNN, la troublante coïncidence de l’alerte avec le traditionnel “rebond” dont bénéficie un candidat à l’élection présidentielle à l’issue de la convention de son parti : chaque fois que le contexte politique l’exige, lance-t-il, “Bush sort sa carte maîtresse, et sa carte maîtresse, c’est le terrorisme”. Plus simplement, accuse M. Dean, l’équipe Bush “manipule la diffusion de l’information en fonction de la campagne présidentielle”.

Le lendemain, mardi 3 août, plusieurs journaux, le New York Times et le Washington Post en tête, s’inquiètent à leur tour de la faiblesse et de l’ancienneté de ces fameux renseignements venus du Pakistan, où plusieurs arrestations de responsables présumés d’Al-Qaida ont été opérées ces dernières semaines. Déjà, la semaine dernière, l’hebdomadaire indépendant The New Republic avait fait état de pressions américaines pour que l’arrestation d’un important suspect d’Al-Qaida soit annoncée pendant la grand-messe des démocrates, histoire de leur voler la vedette.

Cette fois-ci, Tom Ridge est contraint de se justifier, pendant que le président Bush, en tournée électorale au Texas, tente de rester à l’écart de la polémique : “Nous ne faisons pas de politique au département de la sécurité intérieure, répond-il, mardi, lors d’une intervention publique à New York. Le détail, la précision, le sérieux des renseignements vous frapperaient aussi bien que moi si vous y aviez accès. Il est du devoir des autorités de l’Etat de porter de telles situations à la connaissance du public.” Plusieurs experts des services de renseignement, interrogés sous couvert de l’anonymat par divers journaux américains, montent au créneau : il s’agit bien, disent-ils, de renseignements de valeur, mentionnant des cibles spécifiques ; les fichiers et documents saisis remontent bien à trois ou quatre ans, mais certains ont été mis à jour aussi récemment que janvier, prouvant que les terroristes n’ont pas abandonné leurs projets.

LES FAILLES DE LA RÉFORME

L’autre volet sur lequel M. Bush a essuyé, mardi, de sérieuses critiques porte sur sa décision de créer un poste de directeur fédéral du renseignement, suivant en cela les recommandations de la commission sur les attentats du 11 Septembre. Là aussi, l’effet d’annonce, lundi 2 août, a joué à fond. Mais, dès le lendemain, experts et commentateurs soulignent les failles du plan du président, qui renonce à adopter les suggestions les plus audacieuses et les plus contraignantes de la commission : le poste qu’envisage de créer M. Bush n’est pas doté, en effet, des pouvoirs nécessaires pour lui garantir une quelconque efficacité. Le New York Times dénonce là “la marque inimitable de Donald Rumsfeld”, le secrétaire à la défense, qui refuse d’abandonner la moindre de ses prérogatives.

A l’approche de la convention républicaine, qui s’ouvre fin août à New York - un choix déjà hautement symbolique -, la controverse ne peut que rebondir dans les semaines qui viennent. Elle fait en tout cas apparaître un fait politique nouveau aux Etats-Unis : la sécurité, intérieure et extérieure, est en passe de détrôner l’économie comme thème électoral numéro un.

Sylvie Kauffmann

• ARTICLE PARU DANS L’EDITION DU 05.08.04

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3222,36-374483,0.html
——

L’éditorial du Monde
La peur et les urnes
LE MONDE | 04.08.04 | 14h28

Il est toujours risqué de jouer avec le terrorisme et avec la crainte qu’il suscite, de l’agiter ou de l’instrumentaliser dans des buts politiques ou électoraux. Les électeurs espagnols ne s’y étaient pas laissé prendre, qui avaient sanctionné le gouvernement Aznar pour avoir tenté de manipuler à son avantage l’attentat du 11 mars à Madrid et avaient donné la victoire au socialiste Zapatero. 

Ce qui se passe aujourd’hui aux Etats-Unis appelle également à s’interroger. Depuis ce week-end, peu après la clôture de la convention démocrate qui a intronisé son candidat à la présidence, John Kerry, et les critiques émises par la commission du Congrès sur le 11-Septembre, l’administration Bush agite à nouveau le spectre de la menace terroriste. Le niveau d’alerte a été relevé à New York et à Washington. Or le gouvernement a été contraint de reconnaître que les renseignements invoqués étaient vieux de plusieurs années, dataient même d’avant le 11 septembre 2001, avant d’assurer qu’ils auraient été remis à jour récemment.

Dans ces circonstances, on ne peut que se demander s’il s’agit d’une coïncidence, ou bien si cette menace a été à nouveau mise en avant pour briser l’élan de la candidature Kerry. En effet, comme l’a remarqué le New York Times qui, avec le Washington Post, a été le premier à émettre des doutes, les sondages montrent que sa gestion du risque terroriste est l’unique avantage de George Bush dans une élection extrêmement disputée. Ce dernier sait qu’il joue sur du velours. L’opinion américaine, encore traumatisée par les attentats du 11 septembre 2001, est prête à beaucoup croire. L’opposition démocrate ne peut se permettre d’attaquer le “commandant en chef” sur un sujet aussi délicat et a dû abandonner l’initiative au président sortant, de peur d’être - si un incident devait arriver - taxée d’antipatriotisme.

Mais, quand la crédibilité d’un gouvernement est mise en doute sur un sujet aussi grave, c’est toute sa politique qui risque de l’être. Et, depuis son arrivée au pouvoir en janvier 2001, l’administration Bush n’a jamais cessé de jouer la politique de la tension, et de la peur. Au point d’intoxiquer l’opinion, comme l’a montré le débat sur les introuvables armes de destruction massive dans le dossier irakien. Le 11-Septembre et la guerre en Afghanistan avaient permis fort opportunément à un président mal élu de geler le débat politique et d’adopter une série de mesures d’exception. La guerre en Irak - envisagée bien avant les attentats d’Al-Qaida - a, dans un premier temps, forcé cet avantage.

On aimerait croire que George Bush n’a pas décidé d’utiliser Al-Qaida comme son meilleur agent électoral. Mais la mise en scène de ces derniers jours, après tant d’autres, semble dire le contraire. Certes, la menace terroriste existe et des attentats sont toujours possibles, aux Etats-Unis ou ailleurs. Mais, loin d’armer une démocratie, la manipulation de l’opinion, cette politique de la peur, la fragilise.

• ARTICLE PARU DANS L’EDITION DU 05.08.04
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3208,36-374513,0.html

A Low Profile For the Big Issue
Kerry Treads Lightly on War in Iraq

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 5, 2004; Page A06

In the early days of the general-election campaign, Democrat John F. Kerry has mounted a strong effort to erode President Bush’s advantage on national security. But on the defining issue of war in Iraq, his shots have appeared oblique at best.

The war received relatively short shrift at last week’s Democratic National Convention—Kerry devoted only six sentences to Iraq policy in his 45-minute acceptance speech—and on the stump he seldom discusses his plans for bringing the U.S. occupation to a close and stabilizing the country.

Kerry has strongly criticized the Bush administration’s competence in handling the war, principally its failure to enlist other nations to its cause in Iraq. But he has not questioned the basic tenets of the policy, nor has he outlined a course of action substantially different from the one Bush is pursuing to shore up the interim government and prepare for national elections.

While he has said he would substantially cut troop strength in Iraq by the end of his first term, he has not provided details on how.

And when Kerry does raise questions about Bush’s Iraq policies, they seem to be suggestive, not pointed. Surrounding the nominee on stage in Boston were his former Swift boat crewmates in Vietnam, the subtext being that Kerry knew all about the horrors of war—unlike Bush, who served stateside in the National Guard—and is better capable to extricate the United States from that troubled nation.

“I defended this country as a young man,” Kerry told the convention, “and I will defend it as president.”

Kerry’s careful approach on Iraq is born from something of necessity. As senator, after all, he voted to give Bush authorization to conduct the war. But Kerry campaign officials also say the candidate has chosen not to address Iraq in detail at this point because of their desire to introduce the Massachusetts senator to the American public, over a range of domestic and international themes.

Polls have suggested voters do not know Kerry well.
“The acceptance speech was clearly intended to be thematic,” said Richard C. Holbrooke, a senior foreign policy adviser to Kerry. “It was not just about Iraq.”

Holbrooke and other Kerry advisers point out that Kerry has spoken about Iraq in detail before and will do so again. In a July 4 op-ed article in The Washington Post, for instance, Kerry said he would bring in allies to share more of the burden by giving them access to reconstruction contracts and helping to repair Iraq’s oil industry, if they forgave Iraq’s debt and helped pay reconstruction costs. He also called for a conference with Iraq’s neighbors and a potential deployment of NATO forces in Iraq.

Indeed, his advisers say, it is Bush who has followed Kerry’s calls for more international support and a United Nations imprimatur for U.S. policies in Iraq. “Kerry’s been the consistent one, and Bush is the one who has changed his position,” Holbrooke said.
Bush and his surrogates are working hard to use Iraq to frame Kerry as a flip-flopper, seizing repeatedly on his opposition last year to an $87 billion spending measure to support the troops and provide reconstruction money for Iraq—a Senate vote cast in the midst of the Democratic presidential primary contests when antiwar candidate Howard Dean was riding high.

Kerry has said he voted against the measure because it was not funded—he supported the request if tax cuts for the wealthy were trimmed to pay for it—but one of his closest advisers, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), has told other Democrats that he begged Kerry not to vote against the $87 billion.

Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt said Kerry’s inability to “talk straight about that vote on Iraq” will haunt him. “He voted for the war and voted against funding for Iraq,” Holt said. “As long as you look at John Kerry through a gauzy haze of images and rhetoric, they have a chance. You have to look at his record.”

In Bush’s revamped stump speech Friday, he drew particular glee in focusing on the vote over the $87 billion. “He tried to explain his vote by saying: I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it. End quote,” Bush said to laughter. “He’s got a different explanation now. One time he said he was proud he voted against the funding, then he said that the whole thing was a complicated matter.” Bush then added: “There is nothing complicated about supporting our troops in combat!”

There is some precedent for Kerry’s approach on Iraq. In 1968, Republican challenger Richard M. Nixon took virtually the same tack as Kerry when he accepted the GOP nomination. Despite mass protests against the Vietnam War, Nixon only briefly touched on the conflict in his speech, criticizing the Democrats for incompetence in conducting the war, pledging to bring it to an “honorable end,” and calling on allies to bear more of “the burden of defending peace and freedom around this world.” Nixon, who had been Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vice president, also said he had experience in ending wars, pointing to the conclusion of the Korean War during the Eisenhower administration.

The Vietnam War did not end for another seven years.
Much like Nixon, Democrats plan to use Bush’s handling of war—particularly what they call poor planning, the violence and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction that followed the lightning victory by U.S. and British forces—as a broader metaphor for his competence to continue as president. While Kerry did not speak much about Iraq specifically, his speech was sprinkled with indirect references to the protracted struggle the United States faces in Iraq.

“The American people know that whatever you thought about going into the war, that there could have been a better way to go about executing it,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “Because of the lack of preparation and understanding as to what to expect, many more men and women have died and been wounded. . . . The administration will be held accountable for its policy.”

The Bush campaign brushes aside those questions and focuses instead on the threat ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein might have posed to the United States before the war, implicitly contrasting Bush’s certainty against Kerry’s more protracted decision making. “When he [Hussein] continued to deceive the weapons inspectors, I had a decision to make: to hope for the best and to trust the word of a madman and a tyrant or remember the lessons of September the 11th and defend our country,” Bush said Friday. “Given that choice, I will defend America every time.”

While Republicans strongly favor Bush’s decision to attack Iraq, Kerry also must energize a Democratic base that is deeply split over the war. Nine out of 10 delegates to the convention opposed the war, surveys indicated.

That balancing act was on display at the convention. Kerry’s running mate, John Edwards, in his acceptance speech, said a Kerry administration would work for a stable, democratic Iraq, which he called “a real chance for freedom and peace in the Middle East.” He also said Kerry would bring NATO forces into Iraq and win debt relief for Iraq from balking allies.

But unlike Edwards, Kerry did not say his goal was a stable, democratic Iraq. Instead, he spoke only of bringing allies into the coalition. “I know what we have to do in Iraq,” Kerry said. “We need a president who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers, reduce the risk to American soldiers. That’s the right way to get the job done and bring our troops home.”

Some experts, such as Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, felt Kerry’s language came very close to suggesting that he would pull the 140,000 U.S. troops out of Iraq. “I was a bit surprised,” said Kagan, who strongly supported the invasion of Iraq but has been critical of the administration’s postwar policy. “Edwards was pretty straightforward and clear about the commitment to Iraq. Kerry was far more tentative. He held out hope that he would get out.”

His advisers, however, denied Kerry meant to leave that impression. “John Kerry has resisted left-wing pressure to set a date certain for withdrawal because he knows the consequences would be catastrophic,” Holbrooke said. “But he believes . . . he will do better to create international support to deal with this problem.”
Staff writer Charles Babington contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40925-2004Aug4.html

Insurgency Not Anticipated
Chicago Tribune
August 3, 2004

WASHINGTON - According to the General in command, the U.S. went to war in Iraq without expectation of the violent insurgency that followed or a clear understanding of the psychology of the Iraqi people.

“We had a hope the Iraqis would rise up and become part of the solution,” said former Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the U.S. military’s Central Command until his retirement last August. “We just didn’t know (about the insurgency).”

Interviewed Monday in connection with the publication of his memoir, “American Soldier,” Franks also said he had expected large numbers of foreign troops to join the U.S. in its Iraq effort. Franks attributes the stresses on American forces in Iraq now, in part, to the failure of that to happen.

A product of officer candidates school instead of West Point, Franks is a 37-year Army veteran who was wounded three times as an artillery officer in Vietnam and served as assistant commander of the 1st Cavalry Division in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. He is considered the architect of the U.S.‘s initial victories in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he pioneered tactics involving heavy use of special operations troops.

In both book and interview, the retired general largely supported the administration’s conduct of the war, and he said he admired President Bush for his leadership in both the Afghan and Iraq conflicts.

A Texan who attended the same high school as First Lady Laura Bush, Franks held out the possibility of campaigning for the president. Several prominent retired generals have begun doing so for Democratic nominee John Kerry.

As he noted in his book, Franks initially projected that troop strength in Iraq might have to rise to 250,000 for the U.S. to meet all of its objectives, but it never got higher than 150,000.

“The wild card in this was the expectation for much greater international involvement,” he said in the interview. “I never cared whether the international community came by way of NATO or the United Nations or directly. ... We started the operation believing that nations would provide us with an awful lot of support.”

Instead, the other members of the coalition the administration assembled have only about 22,000 soldiers in Iraq, and several nations have pulled out. Franks said he thinks the U.S. will have to maintain substantial numbers of troops in Iraq for three to five years.

Initial planning for the war centered on achieving a speedy victory in the major combat phases of the conflict followed by rapid reconstruction of the country, he said.

Though an insurgency was feared, there was no assumption it would happen, he said.

“I think there was not a full appreciation of the realities in Iraq - at least of the psychology of the Iraqis,” he said.

“On the one hand,” he continued, “I think we all believed that they hated the regime of Saddam Hussein. Over the last year, we have seen that come to pass. That’s where the intelligence came from that allowed us to get the sons of Saddam Hussein.

“On the other hand, the psychology of the people - the mix of the Sunnis, the Shiites, the tribal elements and the Kurds - and what they would expect and tolerate in terms of coalition forces, their numbers, where they are and what they’re doing in Iraq, I don’t know that we made willful assumptions with respect to that.”

Franks said he was not surprised when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked him to “dust off” Iraq war planning while the U.S. was still embroiled in fighting al-Qaida terrorists and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“At the same time we were conducting military operations in (Afghanistan), we were continuing to fly Operation Southern Watch and Operation Northern Watch and our young pilots flying over Iraq were being shot at on virtually ever occasion,” he said. “Sen. John McCain, a man I respect, asked why in the world would we continue to let our pilots be shot at without taking more stringent action against Iraq.”

Franks said he fully expected Hussein to use some form of weapons of mass destruction against the American-led invasion. He said he was told personally by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah that they existed.

In his book, Franks quotes Mubarak as saying: “We have spoken with Saddam Hussein. He is a madman. He has WMD-biologicals, actually - and he will use them on your troops.”

Franks quotes Abdullah as telling him: “General, from reliable intelligence sources, I believe the Iraqis are hiding chemical and biological weapons.”

On Monday, wire services reported that spokesmen for both rulers denied there were such warnings. “Such a claim is void of truth,” said Mubarak spokesman Magad Abdel Fattah. A Royal Palace official in Jordan said, “His Majesty did not have information that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.”

Franks wrote that U.S. troops occupying Iraq discovered large supplies of raw materials and chemicals that could be used to manufacture weapons of mass destruction - likening them to “the equivalent of a disassembled pistol, lying on a table beside neatly arranged trays of bullets.”

Franks had terse words for some in the administration.

He used an expletive in the book to describe the Joint Chiefs of Staff because of what he called their insistence on championing their individual services rather than thinking of the military as a whole.

In his book, Franks referred to Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy and one of Rumsfeld’s close advisors, as “a theorist whose ideas were often impractical.”

“I generally ignored his contributions,” Franks wrote of one meeting.

He was critical of former White House terrorism advisor Richard Clarke, saying in the book he “was better at identifying a problem than at finding a workable solution.”

According to Franks, Secretary of State Colin Powell contacted him directly, without going through the chain of command, to voice his concern that the U.S. was invading Iraq with a comparatively small, highly-mobile force, instead of the kind of overwhelming massive force such as Powell deployed when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Persian Gulf War.

Franks said he considered Powell’s views as from a different time and situation.
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_franks_080304,00.html?ESRC=dod.nl

Washington Suffocates for Sake of Security, City Officials Argue

Local leaders say street closures and other federal anti-terrorism precautions are too much and regard citizens too little.

By Johanna Neuman
LA Times Staff Writer

August 4, 2004

WASHINGTON — As a target for terrorists, the nation’s capital is at the top of the list, a city of such world-famous symbols of political and economic might as the White House, the Capitol and the World Bank.

But in the eyes of local officials, security-obsessed federal authorities may kill the city before America’s enemies get the chance.

Furious at the latest street closings and checkpoints, imposed by Senate edict Monday night, city officials took to the streets Tuesday to express their outrage that congressional law enforcement officials were turning Washington into a fortress without regard for the people who live and work there — or the officials elected to govern it.

“We concede this certainly makes it easier for security,” Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s congressional representative, said as she stood on 1st Avenue N.E., now closed between the Capitol and Union Station. “You want to really make it easier? Close down all the streets! Close down the city! You can make it real safe.”

A member of the Homeland Security Committee, Norton emphasized her commitment to fighting terrorism. “I recognize this is perhaps the highest-target city in the world,” said Norton, a Democrat who serves on committees but is not entitled to vote on the House floor because the District of Columbia is not a state. “But we have to remember that we are fighting to preserve security and freedom, not one or the other.”

Washington Mayor Anthony Williams, a normally low-key former accountant, raised his voice when meeting with reporters Tuesday.

“This is a living, breathing city; this isn’t just a dead, static piece of concrete,” he said, straining to be heard above the noise of an ambulance siren a block away. “We can’t continue to close streets without doing death to commerce in this city, to tourism in this city, to a tax base in this city that provides all the services people need…. If someone hiccups in this city, traffic already backs up into Maryland and Virginia. You start closing streets like this, it will be backed up to Delaware.”

Part of the anger comes from the city’s efforts to recover from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, which killed 189 people at the Pentagon and devastated the city’s tourism industry.

“We worked so … hard to get the city’s economy back up after Sept. 11, against all these obstacles,” Williams said, referring to the lengthy shutdown of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and the shuttering of the White House and the Capitol to visitors that finally yielded, this year, to a tourist turnaround.

“Now here we are reversing ground again. Yeah, it makes me angry,” he said.

Last week, Williams and other city officials were at the Democratic National Convention, dumping tea in Boston Harbor to protest their status as a city that paid taxes but had no vote in Congress.

That status is unlikely to change as long as Republicans are in charge on Capitol Hill, where the District of Columbia’s historically liberal politics would probably mean two more Democratic votes in the Senate and one in the House.

“To me, this feels like another glaring manifestation of lack of representation,” Williams said. “If we had two senators representing the district … there is no way they would just do this.”

Sharon Ambrose, the city councilwoman who represents the Capitol Hill area, was even more suspicious of federal motives. Noting Sunday’s decision by the Department of Homeland Security to raise the terrorist threat alert here from “yellow” (elevated) to “orange” (high), she accused congressional leaders of using “a sneak attack in the dead of night, under an orange blanket,” to “do something they wanted to do for several years.”

Congressional officials acknowledged Tuesday that they had long wanted to close 1st Street N.E. between Constitution Avenue and D Street, which allows traffic to pass by the Dirksen and Russell Senate Office Buildings.

“Yes, the Senate leadership made a deliberate decision to close 1st Street, based on intelligence and the advice of security officials,” Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle said in an interview.

“We discussed it for several weeks. We had to speed it up because of the orange alert.”

Agreeing with city officials that “no one likes closing streets,” Pickle said that congressional leaders opted to “err on the side of safety, to ensure the institution survives.”

Still, the symbolism of Washington’s city officials ruffled by federal edict — and by traffic jams around Capitol Hill — was lost on no one, particularly in a week when New Yorkers showcased a seemingly united front. New York City authorities banned commercial traffic on several bridges and from the inbound Holland Tunnel and conducted random searches of vans and service vehicles. Amid planning for the Republican National Convention at the end of the month and increasing security at the perimeter of Wall Street, city officials also reopened the Statue of Liberty on Tuesday — at least its pedestal.

Elsewhere in Washington, city police instituted heightened security measures around the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, cited by Homeland Security officials in their alert Sunday, and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the Federal Reserve buildings. The mayor had no comment about those measures. But Norton did.

Asked if the orange alert was politically motivated by the Bush administration to increase voter concern about terrorism, Norton dismissed the idea. “In the District of Columbia we can’t afford to speculate that maybe it’s politics and maybe it’s not,” she said. “We’ve got a whole city to defend here…. We’re not going to second-guess them. But they sure are second-guessing us.”

Privately, city officials scoffed at federal explanations. One observer noted that after a farmer drove his tractor into a pond on the National Mall in a 2003 protest over reduced tobacco subsidies — and sat there for two workdays — federal law enforcement officials diverted traffic, snarling commutes. Publicly, city officials raised the concern that new traffic jams radiating from the Capitol to all parts of the city could impede emergency trips to the hospital or swift reaction by first responders to a terrorist attack.

Mostly, they expressed anguish that, once again, federal officials had ignored the city’s autonomy and its interests.

“They are turning what are supposed to be symbols of democracy — the Capitol, the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court — into a fortress of fear,” Tony Bullock, the mayor’s press secretary, said.

“That sends entirely the wrong message. It’s just wrong. It’s the wrong optics. It looks like a war zone.”

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-dcsecurity4aug04.story

August 4, 2004
NEWS ANALYSIS

War and Peace, and Politics
By TODD S. PURDUM
WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 - In an election that could well turn on questions of war and peace, danger and safety, all politics sometimes seem to be security these days. And all security has an unmistakable overtone of politics, whatever the reality or immediacy of any announced threat.

“We don’t do politics in the Department of Homeland Security,” Secretary Tom Ridge said on Tuesday in dismissing any suggestion that his latest threat warning had a political motive. But on Sunday, Mr. Ridge, a former Republican congressman and governor of Pennsylvania, did do some politics all the same, when he declared that the intelligence behind his alert was “the result of the president’s leadership in the war against terror.”

John Kerry may not share that view, of course, but it is hard for him to say so, and the biggest thing the Democrats may have to fear in this campaign is the power of fear itself.

Polls show that Mr. Bush’s handling of terrorism remains his only clear advantage over Mr. Kerry in a razor-close race, and the president would not be either human or the canny politician he has proved himself to be in the past if he did not do all he could to remind the public of that strong suit - and to reinforce it.

That is why Mr. Bush chose to hold the Republican National Convention this month in Madison Square Garden, a short subway ride from ground zero, and why he released a new campaign advertisement on Tuesday with images of the firefighters and the flag, proclaiming, “The last few years have tested America in many ways, but together, we’re rising to the challenge: standing up against terrorism and working to grow our economy.”

But Mr. Bush must also take pains not to be seen as letting the political tail wag the terrorism dog. Word that much of the newly discovered intelligence that prompted the latest alert was years old led even some law enforcement officials to wonder why Mr. Ridge had raised the threat level just now.

“My own view is that the White House will be granted huge latitude by the public on matters involving potential terrorist attacks,” said Don Sipple, a longtime Republican political consultant. “Only the most cynical would view any political motivation. They have up to this point erred on the side of caution. It so happens he’s a candidate for re-election, but first and foremost he’s the president of the United States, fulfilling that role in dangerous times and a dangerous world. Shame on anybody who challenges that.”

The political risk for Mr. Kerry is clearer. Last week, when he wanted to show himself as a qualified commander in chief, he imported a parade of veterans, admirals and generals to the Democratic convention to praise him, then spoke passionately about his own combat service in Vietnam.

On Monday, Mr. Bush reminded Mr. Kerry and anyone else who was watching that he is already commander in chief, as he stepped into the White House Rose Garden with the gravitas that only the president can grasp - flanked by the secretaries of state, defense and homeland security and the attorney general - to announce support for creation of a new national intelligence director and comment on the latest terror alert.

“What this last 48 hours has shown is that the incumbent president really can dictate the agenda of a presidential campaign, and all of Kerry’s efforts on the road can be derailed by a morning press conference in Washington,” said Scott Reed, who ran Bob Dole’s unsuccessful campaign against Bill Clinton in 1996. “That’s just the challenge of running against an incumbent president. It’s tough. Take it from me.”

Polls show that while handling terrorism remains the one area where Mr. Bush is seen as a surer hand than Mr. Kerry, he has lost considerable ground in recent months, and the Democratic convention closed the gap even more.

In a CBS News poll conducted over the weekend, a majority of Americans, 51 percent, said they approved of the way Mr. Bush was handling the campaign against terrorism while 43 percent disapproved, down from March, when 60 percent approved and 32 percent disapproved.

Kenneth M. Duberstein, who was President Ronald Reagan’s last White House chief of staff, said that Mr. Bush and his aides “have to play this absolutely straight, and I think they are.” He added, “I think they have an imperative to explain to the American people not only the danger, but also enough of the background so that people are convinced this is for real.”

Mr. Bush is all too aware of the price he would pay if he had information about a possible attack and failed to share it. The report of the Sept. 11 commission detailed the missed clues and miscues that might have foiled the hijackers’ plot. So the president’s advisers make it clear that they are more than willing to suffer some second-guessing of their motives as they go about doing what they see as their jobs, and they insist that politics plays no part.

“We wouldn’t be, you know, contacting authorities at the local level unless something was real,” Mr. Bush said on Monday.

Among Democrats, only former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont has gone so far as to say out loud that he believes the administration is “manipulating the release of information in order to affect the president’s campaign.”

And even those remarks, barbed as they are, are no sharper than the comments some Republicans leveled at President Bill Clinton six years ago, when he ordered cruise missile strikes against Qaeda outposts in retaliation for the bombing of American embassies in East Africa days after confessing to his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Daniel R. Coats, then a Republican senator from Indiana and now Mr. Bush’s ambassador to Germany, summed up his feeling at the time.

“The danger here,” Mr. Coats said then of Mr. Clinton, “is that once a president loses credibility with the Congress, as this president has through months of lies and deceit and manipulations and deceptions, stonewalling, it raises into doubt everything he does and everything he says, and maybe everything he doesn’t do and doesn’t say.” He added: “I just hope and pray the decision that was made was made on the basis of sound judgment, and made for the right reasons, and not made because it was necessary to save the president’s job.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/04/politics/campaign/04assess.html?th

Je découvre à peine ce site, et je n’ai pas mis longtemps à l’adopter.

En lisant il y a deux heures ce papier mettant en exergue la façon dont la Maison Blanche compte user de l’effet “menace terroriste” durant cette campagne, je me suis dit : “il y a des chances pour que les documents exhumés de l’ordinateur du terroriste pakistanais arrêté la semaine dernière soient vieilles de plusieurs années”. A cet instant, je n’avais pas encore lu le compte rendu des enquêtes du Post et du NYT par Le Monde (cf : http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3222,36-374389,0.html).

D’après ces deux enquêtes, de haut responsables impliqués dans les officines américaines chargées de la sécurité estime que les données dont a fait état Tom Ridge, et à sa suite G.W. Bush lors de sa conférence de presse de dimanche dernier, daterait de plusieurs années. Ci fait.

Au-delà de tout cela, qui a un irresistible caractère cocasse, la question que je me pose est la suivante : Si l’intoxication du citoyen à l’effet “menace terroriste permanente’ a bel et bien fonctionné à plein durant la préparation de la guerre en Irak et durant les premiers mois de l’offensive, il semble qu’une fois détaché du conflit le risque d’un effet boomerang à la Aznar soit de plus en plus grand, d’où ma question : les armes de communication massive de Bush (Guerre en Irak, sureté nationale, risque permanent d’une attaque terroriste, etc.) ne sont-elles pas devenues tellement instables qu’il ne pourra plus les manipuler ? Le cas échéant, de quelles armes dispose-t-il ?

Certes Kerry se fait coincer par la logique médiatique quand il approuve le relèvement de l’état d’alerte au bénéfice du doute provoqué par l’annonce de GWB, mais puisque les grands quotidiens ont eux décidé de s’affranchir de l’esprit de mobilisation générale (cf le mea culpa du NYT), les campagnes d’intoxication vont faire long feu et Kerry retrouvera une sorte de légitimité sans prendre le risque majeur de contredire Bush le jour où ce dernier aura eu raison (ce qui peut arriver, à force de crier au loup…).

Reste une interrogation plus profonde que toutes les autres : les Américains feront-ils payer ou non à Bush d’avoir menti sans cesse avec la sincérité d’un bon Américain dévoué corps et âme (et portefeuille) à son pays ? Partagent-ils ou non, ce sens de la démocratie et de la vérité qui a si souvent (mais pas tout le temps, loin s’en faut) fait l’honneur de ce pays ?

C’est là que la portée d’un film comme F911 a une dimension historique que l’on pourrait rapprocher de Thoreau le jour où il a refusé de payer ses impôts à cause des états esclavagistes du sud, provoquant indirectement la guerre civile.

Nous verrons bien, en tous cas, la présidence de Bush restera dans les annales comme un tournant majeur dans l’histoire de la démocratie de masse.