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November 18, 2001
Suicidal ignorance
By Edward Said
The extraordinary turbulence of the present moment during the US military campaign against Afghanistan, now in the middle of its second month, has crystallised a number of themes and counter themes that deserve some clarification here. I shall list them without too much discussion and qualification, as a way of broaching the current stage of development in the long, and terribly unsatisfactory history of relationships between the US and Palestine. Full Article
Newsweek:
Secret Legal Document Gave Bush Wartime Powers, Including Holding Secret Tribunals
NEW YORK, Nov. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- After he signed an order allowing the use of military tribunals in terrorist cases, President George W. Bush insisted he alone should decide who goes before such a military court, his aides tell Newsweek. The tribunal document gives the government the power to try, sentence -- and even execute -- suspected foreign terrorists in secrecy, under special rules that would deny them constitutional rights and allow no chance to appeal.
Bush's powers to form a military court came from a secret legal memorandum, which the U.S. Justice Department began drafting in the days after Sept. 11, Newsweek has learned. The memo allows Bush to invoke his broad wartime powers, since the U.S., they concluded, was in a state of "armed conflict." Bush used the memo as the legal basis for his order to bomb Afghanistan. Weeks later, the lawyers concluded that Bush would use his expanded powers to form a military court for captured terrorists. Officials envision holding the trials on aircraft carriers or desert islands, report Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff and Contributing Editor Stuart Taylor Jr. in the November 26 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, November 19). Full Article
New letter supports 'US madman' theory
By David Usborne in New York
Suspicions deepened last night that the source of the anthrax scare in the United States lay within its borders, rather than with foreign terrorists, after the discovery of another letter laced with the deadly spores and addressed to a US senator.
Authorities revealed that the letter, meant to arrive at Capitol Hill, Washington, for the attention of Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, had been found by bio-hazard teams sorting through mail which was impounded five weeks ago after an earlier anthrax-filled letter sent to the Senate leader, Tom Daschle.
Senator Leahy, a Democrat, is chairman of the Judiciary Committee. While in an important position on the Hill, he would seem to be an obscure target for a foreign terrorist. It is more credible, however, that he might be familiar to a domestic perpetrator, sources indicated. Full Article
British troops caught in stand-off between Blair and the warlords
By Peter Popham in Kabul, Colin Brown and Raymond Whitaker
Tony Blair refused demands last night from Afghanistan's Northern Alliance to pull out 70 Special Boat Squadron troops from the strategic Bagram air base, 30 miles north of Kabul. Confrontation loomed as the newly victorious Alliance sought to tighten its grip on the country.
Hundreds more British troops are due to arrive at Bagram this weekend, ostensibly to help with aid shipments into Afghanistan. But the Western countries sending troops to areas under Alliance control clearly intend them to restrain the movement's attempts to begin negotiations on the country's future from a position of strength. The atmosphere of mutual suspicion among the Alliance's warlords, and their increasingly assertive stance towards the international community, increases the risk to incoming troops.
Yesterday the Alliance's leader, Burhanuddin Rabbani, returned in triumph to Kabul and proclaimed himself president, though he insisted that he would give way to a broad-based, multi-ethnic interim government. But the Alliance's recent history is of saying one thing and doing another: it sent 3,000 troops into Kabul after promising to stay out of the city, claiming that the Taliban's sudden withdrawal had forced it to act. Full Article
Mounting concern over human cost of war in Afghanistan
QUETTA: Doctors and relief workers are voicing growing concerns that the psychological impact of the war in Afghanistan is not being addressed as the human cost mounts. There are no accurate figures on how many civilians have been killed, wounded or maimed in Afghanistan since the US unleashed its military might on October 7, but it undoubtedly runs into the hundreds, perhaps thousands.
Millions more Afghans have been displaced, watched family members die or their homes destroyed. Outside of Afghanistan, the most visible sign of the human impact can be seen in this southwestern Pakistani city, close to the border where the war-wounded and others who have run for their lives are found. Full Article
