Democracy Now! March 12, 2003

8:00-8:01 Billboard 8:01-8:06 Headlines 8:06-8:07 One Minute Music Break 8:07-8:20: A veteran US diplomat resigned Monday in protest over the Bush administration s plans to invade Iraq. In a letter of resignation to Secretary of State General Colin Powell, John Brown wrote: "Throughout the globe, the United States is becoming associated with the unjustified use of force. The president's disregard for views in other nations, borne out by his neglect of public diplomacy, is giving birth to an anti-American century." John Brown joined the State Department in 1981. He has served at US embassies in London, Prague, Krakow, Kiev, Belgrade and Moscow. Meanwhile, a senior Australian intelligence officer has quit in protest at what he said was Australia's dangerous rush to war. Office of National Assessments analyst Andrew Wilkie said Iraq does not pose any security threat to Australia, the United States or Britain. He said Iraq's weapons program was actually degraded and its military weak. Just two weeks ago, US diplomat John Brady Kiesling resigned from the US embassy in Athens. John Brown joins us now from Washington, D.C. where he is currently affiliated with the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. * John Brown, veteran US diplomat who served at the US embassies in London, Prague, Krakow, Kiev, Belgrade and Moscow. He is currently affiliated with the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University 8:20-8:21 One Minute Music Break 8:21-8:45: The Wall Street Journal is reporting the Bush administration is preparing to award a contract valued at upwards of $900 million to a U.S. firm to rebuild post-war Iraq. The U.S. Agency for International Development or USAID quietly sent a detailed request to Halliburton, Bechtel, Fluor, Louis Berger Group or Parsons Corp. for proposals. USAID invoked special authority to bypass the usual procedures and solicit bids from just these select companies. Spokeswoman Ellen Yount told the Washington Post skirting the rules was justified due to the urgent circumstances and the unique nature of this work. The Toronto Star is reporting international firms from countries that are not publicly backing Washington s on Iraq are also expected to be prevented from profiting on the reconstruction of Iraq. The Pentagon already has tapped Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root to help fight oil-well fires in Iraq. Halliburton is the company Vice President Dick Cheney headed until 2000. The London Guardian reports today vice President Cheney is still receiving annual payments from Halliburton. Halliburton refused to say how much the payments are. The required disclosure statement filled by all top government officials says only they are between $100,000 and $1 million. The Toronto Star is reporting that the Canadian company Safety Boss Inc., a which specializes in capping burning oil wells, is likely not to see much business in a postwar Iraq although it did such work in Kuwait after the first Gulf War. The company s chief executive told the Toronto Star, "It's a big political football. We could be left out because we're in Canada and the political waffling here isn't helping." * Neil King, staff reporter with the Wall Street Journal. His article U.S. Is Quietly Soliciting Bids For Rebuilding Postwar Iraq appeared in Monday s Journal. * Pratap Chatterjee, independent journalist who has done extensive research on Halliburton Contact: http://www.corpwatch.org 8:40-8:41 One Minute Music Break 8:41-8:45 : There is a little known provision in the No Child Left Behind Act which requires public high schools to release student contact information to military recruiters. But is there a link between signing up for the SAT, and attracting the interest of the military because fo the way the information is distributed? Worried about the prospect of war with Iraq, Youth Radio s AJ Herrmann decided to investigate and sent us this story. Tape: SAT and Military by AJ Herrmann 8:45-8:58: LISTENER COMMENTS FROM LISTENERS 8:58-8:59 Outro and Credits 9:00-9:01 Billboard: 9:01-9:06 Headlines 9:06-9:07 One Minute Music Break 9:07-9:20 Did Pakistani intelligence officials fake the arrest of alleged Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?: Foreign journalists in Pakistan begin to question Pakistani intelligence officials. We ll have a report from Islamabad. Foreign journalists are accusing Pakistan s intelligence service of faking the arrest of alleged Qaeda lieutenant Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Pakistani agents announced they arrested Mohammed several days ago in the city of Rawalpindi; the White House claims Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks. But journalists have begun to question whether the arrest was real. On Monday, Pakistan s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) held an unprecedented news conference to try to quell the questions. Officials played a grainy video they claimed showed the arrest. But according to Reuters, few journalists were convinced. The video never showed Mohammed's face nor any sign of a struggle. Many said it looked like a crude reconstruction. On Tuesday, former ISI chief Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul told Reuters he believes Mohammed was actually arrested some time ago in a different city. Another intelligence source said Mohammed had been arrested three days before, from the Tench Batta suburb of Rawalpindi. Rumors of Mohammed's arrest had circulated in Pakistan for months, but were consistently denied. Gul said news of the arrest appeared to have been leaked at a critical time, just as Pakistan was facing huge U.S. pressure to support a U.N. Security Council vote authorizing war on Iraq. Gul said the raid was conducted much too casually to have been real. Police didn t even properly surround or secure the house. Some are accusing Pakistan of staging the raid to give it leeway to abstain in a U.N. vote on an Iraq war. The Pakistani government is under massive domestic pressure to oppose war on Iraq. On Monday night, a senior ruling party official shocked British and American diplomats in Islamabad when he told Reuters the government had decided to abstain in the vote. Pakistan wasn t the only country to benefit from Mohammed s very publicized arrest. The Bush administration also had something to gain. On the Monday after the raid, the Wall Street Journal s top editorial headlined, Al Qaeda on the Run: Who says the war on terror isn't going well? That Thursday, President Bush opened a highly unusual press conference with an announcement on the arrest. The Reuters article appeared yesterday. Today, it looks as though not one major Western paper has picked up the story. We re joined right now on the telephone from Islamabad by the Reuters Bureau Chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Simon Denyer. * Simon Denyer, Reuters Bureau Chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan. He wrote a story published yesterday called Pakistan Accused of Staging Bin Laden Aide Arrest . He was one of the journalists present at the unprecedented press conference held by Pakistan s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)) on Monday. Link to article: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/ISL285340 Tape: President George W. Bush, speaking at a March 6th press conference 9:20-9:21 One Minute Music Break 9:21-9:35 Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic is assassinated: We go to Belgrade for a live report from Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill Breaking news: The Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic, was assassinated today in the capital, Belgrade. The pro-reform, pro-Western leader was shot in the stomach and in the back outside government offices and died of his wounds in hospital. Unconfirmed Serbian media reports say that two people were arrested at the scene of the shooting. Djindjic was a key leader of the revolt that toppled former President Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000. We go to Belgrade for a live report from Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill who is in Belgrade. * Jeremy Scahill, Democracy Now! correspondent 9:35-9:45 US groups urge African UN Council members to oppose Iraq plan Angola. Guinea. And Cameroon. These three African countries have been at the center of the world s attention this week. They all sit on the United Nations Security Council and are under an enormous amount of pressure from both the U.S. and opponents of war in Iraq. And now prominent African-Americans including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Danny Glover, as well as a number of Washington, D.C.-based advocacy groups focused on Africa, are calling on the three nations to oppose a U.S. invasion of Iraq. A letter was recently to the three nations that warned a war in Iraq QUOTE "will have devastating economic and social consequences for the most impoverished and most vulnerable citizens and countries throughout the world." The letter also argued that HIV/AIDS should be QUOTE receiving the attention and resources that have been devoted instead to debating and designing interventions against Iraq. According to a recent report by the Inter Press Service, of the three nations Angola is considered the most likely to go along with the U.S. Angola sells much of its oil to U.S. companies and is in need of economic aid from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, where Washington holds great influence. Guinea, which receives military aid from Washington, is also considered more likely to vote with Washington. Cameroon has been considered a staunch ally of French President Jacques Chirac. * Salih Booker, executive director of Africa Action Link: http://www.africaaction.org * Njoki Njoroge Njehu, director of 50 Years is Enough Link: http://www.50years.org/9:40-9:41 One Minute Music Break 9:41-9:58 Searching Jenin, Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion : Suzanne Barouds reads personal accounts of survivors from Jenin The Israeli State Prosecutor's Office represented the Israeli film censorship board on Sunday and asked the High Court to maintain a ban on the film Jenin, Jenin. The film documents the Israeli invasion of the Jenin refugee camp in April of last year. Estimates of the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli range from 52 to several hundred. Some Palestinians fought back and about two dozen Israeli soldiers were also killed. On Sunday, the state argued the film purports to be a documentary, but instead portrays Israeli soldiers as brutal war criminals who are committing genocide. The Documentary Creators Forum and the film s director, Mohammed Bakri, are petitioning the court to lift the ban. They say it is a violation of freedom of speech and artistic expression, and undermines the public's right to hear the film s message. Director Mohammed Bakri has also been sued by five Israeli reserve soldiers, who accuse Bakri of libellously portraying them as war criminals. During and immediately after the invasion, Israel cracked down on the flow of information. Journalists were not allowed in the camp, and Israeli propaganda officials immediately got to work. They succeeded in spinning news coverage of the invasion into a single question: did Israeli soldiers purposefully massacre hundreds of civilians? News outlets haggled over the number of people killed instead of the known fact that Israeli soldiers had killed unknown numbers of innocent people. Well, I recently had the opportunity to talk to journalist Ramzy Baroud. Baroud is the editor of a new book called Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion, 2002. He is also the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. Baroud coordinated a network of independent Palestinian journalists, who were able to sneak into the camp, interview residents, and smuggle the interviews out. The interviews have been published in Baroud s new book. In a few minutes, Suzanne Baroud will read some of the accounts. But first, I asked Ramzy Baroud why he put the book together. * Ramzy Baroud, editor of Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion, 2002 and Editor-in-Chief of the palestinechronicle.com. He was born in the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza. The first intifada erupted there when he was a teenager. * Suzanne Baroud, assistant editor of Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion, 2002 and managing editor of palestinechronicle.com. She taught History of Western Civilization in a high school in Ramallah from 1990-1993, during the first intifada. 9:58-9:59 Outro and Credits Democracy Now! is produced by Kris Abrams, Mike Burke, Angie Karran, Ana Nogueira and Elizabeth Press. Mike Di Filippo is our music maestro and engineer.