[casi] News, 26/03-02/04/03 (8)

[Peter Brooke <pbrooke@DELETETHISukonline.co.uk>]

News, 26/03-02/04/03 (8)

DISHONEST CASE FOR WAR

*  US may 'fabricate' WMD evidence in Iraq: Russia
*  Coalition faked it, says UN
*  Saddam moves chemical weapons, U.S. officials say
*  Sarin gas kit found by British troops
*  Special Search Operations Yield No Banned Weapons
*  IAEA sees return with full authority after Iraq war

WAR OF THE WAVES

*  Al Jazeera's web site - DDoSed or unplugged?
*  My station is a threat to American media control - and they know it
*  Hackers divert al-Jazeera users to US porn and patriot sites
*  Al-Jazeera Defends Images,Won't Censor War Horror
*  Arnett Fired; Fox's Geraldo In Hot Water
*  Fired By America For Telling The Truth, Britain's "Daily Mirror" Hires
Journalist Peter Arnett To Carry On Telling The Truth
*  Malaysia sends own reporters to cover war "because of biased reporting by
Western media"


DISHONEST CASE FOR WAR

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_221875,0005.htm

*  US MAY 'FABRICATE' WMD EVIDENCE IN IRAQ: RUSSIA
Hindustani Times, 26th March

Press Trust of India, Moscow, March 26: Russia on Wednesday expressed
concern that Washington could fabricate evidence of Iraq allegedly hiding
its weapons of mass destruction in an effort to justify the US-led attack on
Baghdad.

Speaking before the Federation Council (Russian Upper House) on Wednesday
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov cautioned Washington and London that Moscow is
not going to trust their claims of finding evidence of WMD in Iraq.

"Even if the American-British forces report that they have found weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq, the final assessment of their origin can be given
only by international inspectors," Ivanov said.

"No other assessments (WMD evidence) can lead to a final conclusion, this is
the understanding within the framework of the UN Security Council," Ivanov
said.

Earlier, similar apprehensions were voiced by the former deputy chief of the
Russian Defence Staff Gen (retd) Valery Manilov and Iraqi ambassador in
Moscow Abbas Khalaf in the wake of US Gen Tommy Franks and US ambassador
Alexander Vershbow's statements that the US would produce the evidence of
Iraqi WMD.

When asked by NTV channel on Tuesday that coalition troops are inside Iraq
for the fifth day and have not found any Iraqi WMD, the US ambassador
Vershbow said they will soon find this evidence.

Iraqi Ambassador to Russia in an interview to the same channel, did not rule
out the use of chemical or other weapons of mass destruction by the US-led
coalition forces to later pin the blame on Baghdad.


http://www.metimes.com/2K3/issue2003-13/methaus.htm

*  COALITION FAKED IT, SAYS UN
by Louis Charbonneau Vienna
Middle East Times, from Reuters, 28th March (I think - PB)

A few hours and a simple internet search was all it took for UN inspectors
to realize documents backing US and British claims that Iraq had revived its
nuclear program were crude fakes, a UN official said.

Speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, a senior official from the UN
nuclear agency who saw the documents offered as evidence that Iraq tried to
buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger, described one as so badly forged his
"jaw dropped".

"When [UN experts] started to look at them, after a few hours of going at it
with a critical eye things started to pop out," the official said, adding a
more thorough investigation used up "resources, time and energy we could
have devoted elsewhere".

The US first made the allegation that Iraq had revived its nuclear program
around September last year when the CIA warned that Baghdad "could make a
nuclear weapon within a year" if it acquired uranium.

US President George W. Bush found the proof credible enough to add it to his
State of the Union speech in January.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) official said the charge that
Iraq sought the uranium was to be the "stake in the heart" of Baghdad and
"would have been as close to a smoking gun as you could get" because Iraq
could only want it for weapons.

Once the IAEA got the documents ­ which took months - French nuclear
scientist Jacques Bautes, head of the UN Iraq Nuclear Verification office,
quickly saw they were fakes.

Two documents were particularly bad. The first was a letter from the
president of Niger which referred to his authority under the 1965
constitution. That constitution has been defunct for nearly four years, the
official said.

There were other problems with the letter, including an unsuccessful forgery
of the president's signature.

"It doesn't even look close to the signature of the president. I'm not a
[handwriting] expert but when I looked at it my jaw dropped," the official
said.

Another letter about uranium dated October 2000 purportedly came from
Niger's foreign minister and was signed by a Mr. Alle Elhadj Habibou, who
has not been foreign minister since 1989.

To make matters worse, the letterhead was out of date and referred to
Niger's "Supreme Military Council" from the pre-1999 era ­ which would be
like calling Russia the Soviet Union.

After determining the documents were fakes, the IAEA had a group of
international forensics experts ­ including people from the US and Britain -
verify their findings. The panel unanimously agreed with the IAEA.

"We don't know who did it," the official said, adding that it would be easy
to come up with a long list of groups and states which would like to malign
the present Iraqi regime.

The IAEA asked the US and Britain if they had any other evidence backing the
claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium. The answer was no.

IAEA chief Muhammad Al Baradei informed the UN Security Council in early
March that the Niger proof was fake and that three months with 218
inspections at 141 sites had produced "no evidence or plausible indication"
Iraq had a nuclear program.

But last week US Vice President Dick Cheney repeated the US position and
said that Al Baradei was wrong about Iraq.

"We know [Iraqi President Saddam Hussein] has been absolutely devoted to
trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has in fact
reconstituted nuclear weapons," he said.


http://www.iht.com/articles/91421.html

*  SADDAM MOVES CHEMICAL WEAPONS, U.S. OFFICIALS SAY
by Bernard Weinraub
International Herald Tribune, from New York Times, 29th March

5TH CORPS HEADQUARTERS, near the Kuwait border: Statements from Iraqi
prisoners of war and electronic eavesdropping on Iraqi government
communications indicate that Saddam Hussein has moved chemical weapons to
the Medina Division, one of three Republican Guard divisions guarding the
approaches to Baghdad, U.S. Army officials said.

The officials said they strongly believed that Saddam would use the weapons
as troops move toward Baghdad to overthrow him.

Officials with the 5th Corps said that intelligence information pointed to
Saddam deploying 155mm artillery weapons with shells carrying mustard gas as
well as sarin or other nerve agents, an especially deadly weapon. Saddam
used these chemical agents against the Iranians and the country's Kurdish
population in the 1980s.

Army officials said monitoring the movement of chemical weapons was
sometimes difficult because Saddam often hid chemical pellets inside bunkers
that carry conventional arms.

But some military officers said Saddam had, in the last week or so, moved
the artillery pieces that could fire chemical weapons into hiding, not only
near the Medina Division, south of Baghdad, but in western Iraq.

Officials said Iraqi officers had been warned by the United States, through
leaflets and other means, that they would be held responsible for war crimes
if they participated in a chemical attack.

Intelligence officers said the apparent deployment of chemical weapons by
Saddam was not merely a sign of rage by the Iraqi leader toward the
Americans. Although deployment of the weapons would reveal Saddam's denial
that he had them to be a lie, officers said he might be calculating that the
step would actually turn to his advantage and stunt the allies' assault.

Military officials said that, in the event of a chemical attack, U.S. forces
might receive an early warning if satellite photos picked up Iraqi units
wearing protective gear against chemicals at a weapons site. Officials said
the protective clothing was usually worn at least one hour before the
launching of a chemical weapon. But officials also said that well-hidden
Iraqi artillery sites about to launch such a weapon could possibly avoid
detection.

Since the war started, U.S. and British soldiers in Iraq and Kuwait have
been threatened by Iraqi missiles, but any missiles that may have been
launched have so far been intercepted and destroyed by Patriot missiles. No
chemical weapons have been used against the troops to date.

Colonel Tim Madere, the 5th Corps chemical officer, said he was not alarmed
about the potential for a chemical attack.

"The soldiers have gone through training and know what to do and know how
their equipment works in the event we get hit," he said. "But it's a concern
because most soldiers have not experienced real agents."

Madere said such an attack would slow down the advance on Baghdad, but would
not seriously set back the effort to depose Saddam.

Mustard gas is a blister agent that causes medical casualties by burning or
blistering exposed skin, eyes and lungs. It can remain a serious hazard for
days and, if inhaled, may lead to death.

Nerve agents such as sarin, cyclosarin and tabun act within seconds of
absorption through skin or inhalation. Untreated, the agents cause
convulsions, loss of consciousness and death.

The U.S. forces in Kuwait and Iraq not only carry protective gas masks and
protective clothes, boots and gloves, but also antidote kits for nerve
agents. These include atropine as well as pralidoxime, which must be
injected quickly after exposure to the gas.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1-629133,00.html

*  SARIN GAS KIT FOUND BY BRITISH TROOPS
by Tim Butcher, near Basra
The Times, 30th March

A stash of Iraqi training equipment for nuclear, biological and chemical
warfare was discovered by British troops today, including a Geiger counter,
nerve gas simulators, gas masks and protective suits.

One of the chemicals found in the cache was marked ominously both in Russian
and English with the name Sarin, a dangerous nerve gas which Saddam Hussein
is suspected to have in his arsenal.

The chemical appeared not to be a sample of Sarin but some sort of simulator
used to test if Sarin was in the atmosphere. Nevertheless it was marked
"dangerous to humans if exposed for ten minutes without a respirator".

The discovery was made in an Iraqi ordnance facility south of Basra in
territory now controlled by coalition forces.

Although it did not provide the "smoking gun" to support Allied claims that
Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction, it nevertheless
represented a propaganda coup for Britain and America.

It showed that nuclear, biological and chemical weapons training was at
least available to Iraqi forces.

"Until further tests are carried out on the vials of chemicals we have found
here we do not know exactly what the material is," Captain Kevin Cooney of
the Joint NBC Regiment said.

"To my eye it looks like training equipment to teach people how to identify
if there is something like Sarin in the air and what to do in the event of a
nuclear attack.

"Further tests will have to be done and this is now a matter that has been
passed up the chain of command for further consideration."

The equipment included relatively modern "Combo Pens", devices carried by
troops who anticipate possible attack by nerve agents and which deliver a
small but concentrated dose of antidote if punched against the thigh.

There were vials of atropine, the antidote for nerve gas attack using by
British and American forces. There were 13 large wooden cases, some marked
"Ministry of Defence, Baghdad", containing gas masks, plastic suits and
other materiel.

Perhaps the most worrying thing were two packets of thin, glass vials, each
containing some coloured crystals, apparently with instructions on how to
use them for detection of nerve agents, including "Sarin, Soman and
V-Gases".

The directions indicated how the vials could be broken and the vapour in
some way pumped into a small hand pump which was then filled with the
atmosphere that was to be tested.

A certain colour change in the chemical appeared to the indicator of the
presence of Sarin, one of the most sinister and dangerous nerve agents,
believed by western intelligence agencies to be in Saddam's arsenal.

There were also relatively modern posters on the walls of the room, with
Arabic inscriptions, depicting what to do in the event of a nuclear attack.

The building in which the material was found was located in what appeared to
be a military training establishment with examples of how to build trench
systems and bunkers, and how to string out razor wire defences.

This was a pooled report for the British media. The reporter is from The
Daily Telegraph.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49385-2003Mar29.html

*  SPECIAL SEARCH OPERATIONS YIELD NO BANNED WEAPONS
by Barton Gellman
Washington Post, 30th March

 Shortly before the first bombs fell on Baghdad earlier this month, special
operations teams from the United States, Britain and Australia swept low
over Iraq's western desert to seize four targets of highest priority to the
U.S. Central Command. The teams set down at camouflaged structures believed
to house chemical warheads, Scud missiles and eight wheeled
transporter-erector launchers, known as TELs.

After short firefights, the teams secured the sites, according to sources
briefed on the after action reports. But the mission turned up nothing.
There were "no missiles, no TELs and no chemicals" where blueprints and
scale-model terrain tables had directed the teams to look, one knowledgeable
official said.

Ten days into a war fought under the flag of disarmament, U.S.-led troops
have found no substantial sign of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. In some
ways, that is unsurprising. The war is far from won, and most of Iraq's
covert arms production and storage historically have taken place within a
60-mile radius of Baghdad. That is roughly the forward line of U.S. armored
columns in their thrust to the Iraqi capital.

At the same time, U.S. forces have tested 10 of their best intelligence
leads, four that first day and another half-dozen since, without result.
There are nearly 300 sites in the top tier of a much larger list that the
Defense Intelligence Agency updated in the run-up to war, officials said.
The 10 sites reached by Friday were among the most urgent. If equipped as
suspected, they would have posed an immediate threat to U.S. forces. "All
the searches have turned up negative," said a Joint Staff officer who is
following field reports. "The munitions that have been found have all been
conventional."

Two disarmament planners said the Bush administration is determined to
conduct the weapons hunt without the U.N. agencies that hold Security
Council mandates for the job. Administration officials distrust the United
Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the
International Atomic Energy Agency.

Administration officials are negotiating contracts with private companies
for some of the work. They have also begun to recruit inspectors - the
cohort, one official said, will grow to as many as two dozen - to break any
remaining contracts with UNMOVIC and join a parallel effort under U.S.
command.

The White House will consider "a role for an international entity" to verify
U.S. discoveries after the fact, two officials said, but that augurs another
clash in the Security Council. Hans Blix, UNMOVIC's executive chairman, said
in an interview Wednesday that the commission would not accept "being led,
as a dog" to sites that allied forces choose to display.

Planners now predict the "near term" of the weapons hunt could last eight
months or more. They are counting on help from Iraqi scientists and facility
managers who will no longer fear President Saddam Hussein, or who can be
made to fear the consequences of failure to cooperate after his fall.

But U.S. analysts have also said that layers of secrecy may have left the
Iraqi scientists unaware of how much was produced, to whose custody it was
transferred, where it was hidden, how it was transported and dispersed in
subsequent moves, and where it may be now.

Some U.S. officials also caution that Iraqi weaponeers could have competing
motives for what they say. Desperate for leniency, they may invent details
to inflate their importance. Others may try to conceal technology the can be
sold for private gain. And even a friendly successor government in Iraq may
try secretly to preserve the means to reconstitute nonconventional weapons,
as a counterweight to regional rivals.

"The same conditions that led Saddam to proliferate are going to apply to
whoever's in power, in terms of Iran holding [similar] weapons, and Israel,"
said a State Department official.

Bush administration officials are acutely aware that their declared war aims
call for an early display of evidence. John S. Wolf, assistant secretary of
state for nonproliferation, recently said that the seventh floor of the
State Department - where Secretary Colin L. Powell and other top political
appointees work - was keen on swift discovery of a "smoking gun," according
to someone present.

"The president has made very clear that the reason why we are in Iraq is to
find weapons of mass destruction," Wolf said in a telephone interview
yesterday. He added, "The fact that we haven't found them in seven or eight
days doesn't faze me one little bit. Very clearly, we need to find this
stuff or people are going to be asking questions."

In the fighting thus far, U.S. forces have taken custody of one potentially
significant informant, a brigadier general who commanded an ammunition depot
at Najaf. "That's the first site that showed any kind of promise," one
senior official said, but "it was not anywhere close to the top of the
list." The general has not led U.S. forces to forbidden weapons, and
"whether he was knowledgeable or a caretaker it's hard to tell" from early
debriefings, the official said.

Searchers from the Army's 3rd Infantry Division "haven't seen anything there
that would tell us there are chemical or biological weapons," said a
military officer who consulted yesterday's updated reports. Asked about
Iraqi chemical protection gear found at Najaf and elsewhere, the officer and
other officials said there was no sign suggesting they were freshly issued,
actually worn by Iraqi troops or linked to orders to fire chemical
munitions.

Some planners said they foresaw laborious site surveys to update the nearly
1,000 conducted since 1991 by U.N. inspectors. The broadest U.S.
intelligence list of suspect facilities, officials said, numbers about
1,400. Najaf is one such site, and after a week the search is not yet
complete.

"If they're working from a list of 1,400 sites, they are really suffering,"
said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and
International Security and a former U.N. inspector. Albright said he still
believed there was a hidden nuclear weapons program to be found. "Even 200
or 300 is a lot. I think they are struggling."

Increasingly aware of their limited manpower and expertise, White House
officials have backed Defense Department efforts to create a substitute
organization for UNMOVIC and the Vienna-based IAEA.

"We're trying to do something here that's never been done, and we're just
trying to get the mechanisms in place," said a senior Bush administration
official.

Officials at the two U.N. agencies said in interviews that the United States
would not have access to more than 1 million pages in their archives on
Iraq, although they acknowledged that the U.S. government had obtained some
of the data informally.

State Department officials are warning that the Security Council will resist
U.S. efforts to conduct inspections on its own. This week, British Prime
Minister Tony Blair urged President Bush privately to let U.N. inspectors
back in as soon as possible.

The Security Council debate is important because the United States wants to
lift economic sanctions on Iraq as soon as the current government falls. But
the council must vote to do that, and some members are warning already that
they will not support such a vote until U.N. weapons inspectors - not U.S.
military forces - certify Iraq's disarmament.

Bush's top advisers, those at the cabinet level and their immediate
deputies, have not yet met to resolve interagency disputes over who will pay
for the disarmament mission and what to do about U.N. inspectors. But two
people familiar with the working group now guiding U.S. policy said they
foresaw "a role for an international entity" that was limited to validating
U.S. discoveries after the fact.

To locate and identify the forbidden weapons, the Pentagon has recruited
four or five of the most experienced U.N. inspectors to resign from UNMOVIC.
They will take unspecified roles in Kuwait at the Weapons of Mass
Destruction Intelligence Exploitation Base under Army Maj. Gen. James A.
Marks.

The recruits must sign waivers acknowledging the perils of a war zone and
must hold or obtain a security clearance recognized under U.S.
intelligence-sharing agreements. In practice that will limit the inspectors
to those from closely allied governments including Britain, Australia and
perhaps Canada.

Charles Duelfer, the first and most senior of the recruits, told a former
colleague by e-mail last week that he had joined the weapons search, and
hoped others would too, because the government had few experts with personal
knowledge of Iraqi weaponeers and their records. He did not reply to a
request for comment.

Some associates in New York describe Blix as dispirited and angry about the
talent raids. In an interview Wednesday, Blix said three of his UNMOVIC
inspectors had come to him for advice about the recruitment effort, but "we
have not heard one word from Washington" directly. Blix said that he was
attempting to "maintain operational readiness" by keeping inspectors
"available on the roster," but in general he maintained a careful
neutrality.

"They are free individuals," Blix said. "If they want to terminate their
contracts, anyone can do that, including myself. . . . But they would not be
allowed to reveal anything that they have done here, because that is part of
their contract. They cannot take with them their files." Blix has previously
said he did not intend to renew his contract when it expired in June.

At the IAEA, Director General Mohamed ElBaradei is described by two
associates as determined to regain primacy in verifying Iraq's nuclear
disarmament. "It is clear that [the IAEA] mandate still exists, and the
credibility of the findings and the assessment will rely on that," one of
them said. ElBaradei believes he has "full responsibility" under compulsory
U.N. Security Council resolutions dating from April 1991, and has "a
unanimous international community, minus one" to take the lead as soon as
fighting stops.

"We have a lot of rights vis-a-vis the Iraqi government," Blix said. "We can
go into any government office, we can ask for any document, we can interview
any person. . . . If we were to go in now, could we go into the allied
headquarters and ask for their files? If they had got hold of some
interesting Iraqi ammunition, could we ask General [Tommy R.] Franks or
somebody else for an interview? I can see important questions coming up
there, and they lead me to caution and to go to the Security Council."

An interagency and international team of scientists and engineers known as
XTF 75, for exploitation task force, intended as a mobile detective unit, is
still in Kuwait and has yet to deploy into Iraq. Each large Army and Marine
combat unit has a small "site survey team," expected to summon the mobile
task force if fighting brings U.S. forces to a suspicious site. But XTF 75,
organized around an artillery headquarters company from Fort Sill, Okla.,
needs transport helicopters to carry a heavy burden of delicate equipment.
Officials said these helicopters can operate only in "a permissive
environment."

Presuming that U.S. forces will find banned weapons stocks, the Defense
Threat Reduction Agency, or DTRA, is negotiating potentially costly
contracts with multinational companies to destroy them. One of the companies
is KBR, formerly Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, which
Richard B. Cheney chaired until his selection as George W. Bush's running
mate in July 2000.

Wendy Hall, a Halliburton spokeswoman, said the company "currently has two
task orders" from the defense agency, but "due to the sensitivity of the
details KBR is not in a position to elaborate at this time." A DTRA
spokesman declined to comment.

Blix, in a 90-minute conversation, reiterated his disappointment with the
outbreak of war but acknowledged that an occupying power will have
advantages in the weapons hunt - above all the removal of a feared police
state that may have inhibited scientists from telling all they knew. He also
said the Americans will need every advantage they can get. Gaps in the known
Iraqi record - for instance, 10,000 liters of unaccounted-for growth media
that could have been used to manufacture anthrax - are far from positive
proof that the weapons exist, he said.

The United States and Britain have said "they should deliver the anthrax,
while we would say they should present any anthrax," Blix said. "Now that's
a very basic difference in the attitude to the evidence."

He added, speaking of the U.S.-led search teams: "Good luck to them. We are
also damned interested in learning if they find something."

Staff researchers Robert Thomason and Mary Lou White contributed to this
report.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63575-2003Mar31.html

*  IAEA SEES RETURN WITH FULL AUTHORITY AFTER IRAQ WAR
Washington Post, 31st March
['the IAEA is the sole body with legal authority to verify Iraq's nuclear
disarmament," IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei told Reuters in an emailed
statement.']

VIENNA, March 31 (Reuters) - The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency
said on Monday that his weapons inspectors' mandate to hunt for banned arms
in Iraq was still valid and he expected to return to Baghdad with full
authority after the war.

Inspectors from the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the
UNMOVIC monitoring and verification agency left Iraq two weeks ago after the
United States informed the agencies that it would use military force to
disarm Iraq.

"The IAEA mandate in Iraq is still valid and has not changed, and the IAEA
is the sole body with legal authority to verify Iraq's nuclear disarmament,"
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei told Reuters in an emailed statement.

"Our operation is interrupted because of hostilities. We expect to go back
with full authority after the cessation of hostilities, to resume our
inspection activities in Iraq," he said, adding that only impartial
international inspections would be credible.

The United States has said that U.N. inspectors might play a limited
post-war role in Iraq.


WAR OF THE WAVES

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/29984.html

*  AL JAZEERA'S WEB SITE - DDOSED OR UNPLUGGED?
by John Lettice
The Register, 27th March

The launch of Arab satellite TV network Al Jazeera's new Web site on Monday
drew immediate hack attacks, but this has been swiftly followed up by the
disappearance of the site's DNS records. These now point to mydomain.com
nameservers, but this company's site is also currently inaccessible; as you
might expect, under the circumstances.

Al Jazeera (aljazeera.net, for the record) could have been taken offline by
DDoS attacks, but considering the timing one is also drawn to the
possibility that something involving a Big Red Switch might have been
involved. Prior to the site's complete removal company IT manager Salah Al
Seddiqui told Reuters that its Qatar-based vendor had said "US-based
DataPipe could no longer host its site from the end of this month," and that
Al Jazeera would be moving its servers to Europe.

Al Jazeera had two listed nameservers - one at datapipe.com and one at
nav-link.net. NavLink has offices in the US (it's incorporated in Delaware),
Europe and the Middle East (the UAE and Lebanon), so there's a logic to Al
Jazeera using it. However if the dual-server system is intended to provide
some form of resilience it clearly hasn't worked.

The problem seems to have taken Al Jazeera unawares. When The Register spoke
to the company's London office earlier today they said that their most
recent information from Qatar had been that the site was unavailable because
of heavy demand, and that they were trying to get through to Qatar for an
update.

Al Jazeera is not, as you will no doubt have noticed, universally popular,
and today in particular it has been heavily criticised by UK military
spokesmen for screening pictures of dead British servicemen. But even at the
best of times the network is not a customer that many hosting companies in
the US would want to boast about. At the worst of times - which probably
includes now - it's unlikely the company would stand any chance whatsoever
of being accepted by US providers.

So it's perfectly possible that someone along the line decided, owing to
pressure and/or common prudence, not to continue involvement with the
company. This sort of thing might of course trigger legal action, but Al
Jazeera itself is well-aware that it treads a very tricky line, so probably
won't want to make unnecessary waves. And as its site was already pretty
unavailable because of the attacks, and it's said it's heading off to
Europe, what difference would it make?

That you will note is one of two possible conspiracy theories, and does not
necessarily involve US.gov. But we expect that if the site hadn't
disappeared already, pretty soon US.gov would get involved until it did -
which is conspiracy theory two.

The alternative to the conspiracy theories is that weaknesses in Al
Jazeera's DNS meant they were vulnerable to load, and that the disappearance
of the DNS was therefore a consequence of the attack. As we understand it,
this is technically possible, although it has also been suggested to us that
the company's DNS did not come under an insupportable load during the
attacks.

So right now we think the jury is still out. But in the long run the
question of whether the company was DDoSed or unplugged will be fairly
academic. Given that it's pretty much unthinkable that it could have been
allowed to continue running via US companies, it was going to go anyway, one
way or the other. Europe might be some form of solution, but one might
estimate that here too quite a few hosting outfits will view Al Jazeera as a
poisoned chalice, a customer with a profile several notches to high.

And even if it does get itself sorted out on the other side of the pond, it
will still be likely to gain experience of how much of the Internet, when it
comes down to it, is actually US owned. But perhaps it has some cards. US
companies wanting to play in the Middle East are unlikely to find their
local operations going down a storm if they're refusing to do business with
a popular TV station like Al Jazeera, so they'll be pressured in both
directions. That's the trouble with the Internet - it connects things that
sometimes you'd rather didn't get connected.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,924469,00.html

*  MY STATION IS A THREAT TO AMERICAN MEDIA CONTROL - AND THEY KNOW IT
by Faisal Bodi
The Guardian, 28th March

Last month, when it became clear that the US-led drive to war was
irreversible, I - like many other British journalists - relocated to Qatar
for a ringside seat. But I am an Islamist journalist, so while the others
bedded down at the £1m media centre at US central command in As-Sayliyah, I
found a more humble berth in the capital Doha, working for the internet arm
of al-Jazeera.

And yet, only a week into the war, I find myself working for the most
sought-after news resource in the world. On March 23, the night the channel
screened the first footage of captured US PoW's, al-Jazeera was the most
searched item on the internet portal, Lycos, registering three times as many
hits as the next item.

I do not mean to brag - people are turning to us simply because the western
media coverage has been so poor. For although Doha is just a 15-minute drive
from central command, the view of events from here could not be more
different. Of all the major global networks, al Jazeera has been alone in
proceeding from the premise that this war should be viewed as an illegal
enterprise. It has broadcast the horror of the bombing campaign, the
blown-out brains, the blood-spattered pavements, the screaming infants and
the corpses. Its team of on-the ground, unembedded correspondents has
provided a corrective to the official line that the campaign is, barring
occasional resistance, going to plan.

Last Tuesday, while western channels were celebrating a Basra "uprising"
which none of them could have witnessed since they don't have reporters in
the city, our correspondent in the Sheraton there returned a rather flat
verdict of "uneventful" - a view confirmed shortly afterwards by a spokesman
for the opposition Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. By
reporting propaganda as fact, the mainstream media had simply mirrored the
Blair/Bush fantasy that the people who have been starved by UN sanctions and
deformed by depleted uranium since 1991 will greet them as saviours.

Only hours before the Basra non-event, one of Iraq's most esteemed Shia
authorities, Ayatollah Sistani, had dented coalition hopes of a southern
uprising by reiterating a fatwa calling on all Muslims to resist the US-led
forces. This real, and highly significant, event went unreported in the
west.

Earlier in the week Arab viewers had seen the gruesome aftermath of the
coalition bombing of "Ansar al-Islam" positions in the north-east of the
country. All but two of the 35 killed were civilians in an area controlled
by a neutral Islamist group, a fact passed over with undue haste in western
reports. And before that, on the second day of the war, most of the western
media reported verbatim central command statements that Umm Qasr was under
"coalition" control - it was not until Wednesday that al-Jazeera could
confirm all resistance there had been pacified.

Throughout the past week, armed peoples in the west and south have been
attacking the exposed rearguard of coalition positions, while all the time -
despite debilitating sandstorms - western TV audiences have seen litte
except their steady advance towards Baghdad. This is not truthful reporting.

There is also a marked difference when reporting the anger the invasion has
unleashed on the Muslim street. The view from here is that any vestige of
goodwill towards the US has evaporated with this latest aggression, and that
Britain has now joined the US and Israel as a target of this rage.

The British media has condemned al-Jazeera's decision to screen a 30-second
video clip of two dead British soldiers. This is simple hypocrisy. From the
outset of the war, the British media has not balked at showing images of
Iraqi soliders either dead or captured and humiliated.

Amid the battle for hearts and minds in the most information-controlled war
in history, one measure of the importance of those American PoW pictures and
the images of the dead British soldiers is surely the sustained "shock and
awe" hacking campaign directed at aljazeera.net since the start of the war.
As I write, the al-Jazeera website has been down for three days and few here
doubt that the provenance of the attack is the Pentagon. Meanwhile, our
hosting company, the US-based DataPipe, has terminated our contract after
lobbying by other clients whose websites have been brought down by the
hacking.

It's too early for me to say when, or indeed if, I will return to my
homeland. So far this war has progressed according to a near worst-case
scenario. Iraqis have not turned against their tormentor. The southern Shia
regard the invasion force as the greater Satan. Opposition in surrounding
countries is shaking their regimes. I fear there remains much work to be
done.

Faisal Bodi is a senior editor for aljazeera.net


http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,924905,00.html

*  HACKERS DIVERT AL-JAZEERA USERS TO US PORN AND PATRIOT SITES
by Jason Deans
The Guardian, 28th March

The al-Jazeera website has suffered further attacks from hackers, who
hijacked the Arabic news broadcaster's domain name and redirected users to
what appears to be an American patriot's website.

Users trying to log onto the al-Jazeera website in the US found a message
that read "Hacked by Patriot, Freedom Cyber Force Militia" beneath a logo of
the US flag.

A spokeswoman for al-Jazeera in London said users trying to access the
website from the US were also being redirected towards other internet
destinations, including porn sites.

In the UK, both al-Jazeera's Arabic and English language websites could not
be reached today.

Staff at al-Jazeera's HQ in Doha, Qatar, have been trying to sort out the
hacking problems for the past two days, the spokeswoman added.

The hacking of the al-Jazeera websites began on Wednesday and at first it
was thought the problem was so-called "denial of service" attacks, when
sites are deliberately taken out by unprecedented volumes of traffic.

Salah Al Seddiqui, al-Jazeera's IT manager, said the new problems had
started after someone hijacked the domain name and redirected it to another
server.

"Our website is working but nobody can see it," Mr Seddiqui said.

The Arabic news service has also moved its data centre from US hosting
service DataPipe to a new location in France, according to Mr Seddiqui.

Hackers started attacking the al-Jazeera websites after they carried video
footage of US soldiers captured by the Iraqis on Sunday.


http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=QBZYAJTVBVGOECRBAEOCFEY?
type=focusIraqNews&storyID=2472953

*  AL-JAZEERA DEFENDS IMAGES,WON'T CENSOR WAR HORROR
by Jim Wolf
Reuters, 30th March

DOHA, Qatar: Blasted by Washington and London for beaming distressing
pictures from Iraq, al-Jazeera television said on Sunday it would not censor
the horrors of war.

"I think the audience has the right to see all aspects of the battle," said
Jihad Ballout, spokesman for the Qatar-based Jazeera, seen by many as being
a major influence in shaping Arab opinion over the U.S.-led war.

The 24-hour, Arabic-language, broadcaster deliberated carefully before
beaming pictures that could be especially troublesome to viewers, he said,
and denied any political bias.

"We're not catering for any specific side, or any specific ideology. What we
are doing is our business as professionally as possible," Ballout added.

Images of bombed Baghdad buildings, bloodied and screaming Iraqi children
and slain or captured U.S. and British troops seen by millions of viewers
anger Washington and London which seek to portray the war as one to liberate
Iraqis.

"If there's a perceived imbalance, it's purely a function of access," said
Ballout

He said if the Americans and British gave the station more access to their
troops, who invaded Iraq 11 days ago "you would certainly find as much
coverage on the ground from there as you would find from the Iraqi side."

The station says it has at least 35 million viewers in the Arab world. In
Europe, Ballout said, its subscriber figures doubled to eight million homes
in the first week of the war. These came mainly in countries with large
Muslim populations such as Britain and France.

The Pentagon initially offered Jazeera several opportunities to travel with
U.S. combat units but only one of these "embed" offers worked out, he said.

The others fell through because of visa headaches from Bahrain, a base for
allied warships, and Kuwait, launchpad for many journalists covering U.S.
and British ground forces.

With many ordinary Arabs protesting angrily at the U.S.-led war to oust
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, authorities in some Arab states also object
to Jazeera's conflict coverage.

The station has also drawn U.S. ire for its cover in the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, its broadcast messages from al Qaed leader Osama bin Laden and,
more recently, for showing video footage of Iraqi interrogation of U.S.
prisoners of war.

"They tend to portray our efforts in a negative light," Secretary of State
Colin Powell said in an interview with National Public Radio broadcast last
Wednesday.

The same day, Powell appeared on Jazeera, as have other Bush administration
officials to get their messages to Arab viewers.

Britain's military commander in the Gulf, Air Marshal Brian Burridge even
suggested the station might have become a tool of Iraqi propaganda and
violated the Geneva Conventions. The 1949 protocols bind states, not media
organizations.

Burridge slammed Jazeera for showing "shocking, close-up" pictures of two
British troops later said by Prime Minister Tony Blair to have been executed
by Iraqis.

"Quite apart from the obvious distress that such pictures cause friends and
families of the personnel concerned, such disgraceful behavior is a flagrant
breach of the Geneva Convention," Burridge told a briefing at U.S. Central
Command's forward headquarters in Qatar last Thursday.

But Ballout, a 45-year-old former London-based journalist of Lebanese
descent, dismisses such criticism as hypocritical and self-serving. He said
other 24-hour news channels like the BBC and CNN had also used footage of
Iraqi POWs, hands bounds and heads bowed, that could have upset viewers.

"We have covered similar incidents, similar conflicts, in Serbia, in Bosnia,
in the (Israeli-) occupied territories and in Afghanistan, and nobody said a
thing," he said.

"It just strikes me a little bit funny that all the outcrying is taking
place" now.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63534-2003Mar31.html

*  ARNETT FIRED; FOX'S GERALDO IN HOT WATER
by Howard Kurtz
Washington Post, 31st March

NBC and MSNBC dumped correspondent Peter Arnett yesterday for criticizing
the United States on Saddam Hussein's television station, while Fox News
star Geraldo Rivera is being withdrawn from Iraq amid Pentagon charges that
he revealed sensitive information.

Arnett apologized for his conduct, but NBC News President Neal Shapiro
dismissed him during an anguished middle-of-the-night conversation. "When
you give an interview to a guy in an army uniform who works for a dictator
whose government we're at war with, it raises some real questions about your
judgment," said Erik Sorenson, MSNBC's president. "It's just unbelievable."

Sources familiar with the Rivera situation said Fox News will pull the
flamboyant reporter from the country today in response to complaints from a
ground commander that he broke Pentagon rules by reporting on future
military plans. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said yesterday morning that
Rivera was being expelled.

But after Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes called a Pentagon official, Whitman
said the situation was still under review -- part of an apparent agreement
under which Rivera will be voluntarily recalled instead of officially
evicted.

Rivera, for his part, took to the airwaves, surrounded by members of the
101st Airborne, to deny the earlier reports on CNN and MSNBC that he was
being expelled. "It sounds to me like some rats at my former network, NBC,
are spreading lies about me . . . trying to stab me in the back. . . . MSNBC
is so pathetic a cable news network they have to do anything they can to
attract attention."

The contretemps was triggered by a Fox report shortly after midnight
yesterday in which Rivera got down on one knee, sketched the location of
various coalition forces in the sand and described a plan by one unit to
"join in the surrounding of An Najaf."

Whitman said Rivera was "compromising tactical information. . . . I can't
imagine that anyone who saw that report would not think it was a gross lack
of judgment. He gave real time information about a unit's location, their
mission and their pending activity, which would clearly aid the enemy."
Whitman said Fox was taking the matter "very seriously."

"He's a very enthusiastic guy and he goes with his gut," Fox News Vice
President John Moody said. "It's part of what makes him Geraldo."

He noted that Rivera went to Iraq as an "untrained" journalist who is not
part of the Pentagon's embedding program. Like the Christian Science
Monitor's Phil Smucker, who was expelled last week for a similar violation,
Rivera arrived in Iraq without being assigned to a military unit.

Richard Hanley, an assistant professor of communications at Quinnipiac
University in Connecticut who has been monitoring the war coverage, accused
Rivera of "giving away operational information that could lead to the death
of American servicemen. He's a cowboy. He wants to be part of the gang. He
wants to get in the dirt and draw. . . . Fox should do the right thing and
fire him, much as NBC fired Arnett."

Arnett, meanwhile, was contrite in an interview on NBC's "Today," saying: "I
want to apologize to the American people for clearly making a misjudgment. .
. . I created a firestorm in the United States, and for that I am truly
sorry."

Arnett said he had offered "some personal observations, some analytical
observations, which I don't think are out of line with what experts think. .
. . Maybe people think I'm insane, but I'm not anti-military."

In a statement, NBC's Shapiro said: "It was wrong for Mr. Arnett to grant an
interview to state-controlled Iraqi TV -- especially at a time of war -- and
it was wrong for him to discuss his personal observations and opinions in
that interview."

After an NBC spokeswoman defended Arnett on Sunday, Shapiro stayed up all
night in an effort to reach him, finally connecting at 5 a.m. Shapiro said
he initially "felt compelled to give him the benefit of the doubt" but
changed his mind during the lengthy call.

Sources familiar with the situation say that Shapiro pressed Arnett on
whether he felt pressured to do the Iraqi TV interview, during which the
correspondent said that "there is growing challenge to President Bush about
the conduct of the war" and that the U.S. effort "has failed because of
Iraqi resistance."

Arnett said he did the interview voluntarily. When Shapiro asked if he
understood why talking to a state-controlled station might be a problem,
Arnett said he gives plenty of interviews and considers himself a
reporter-analyst. At that point, Shapiro told Arnett he could not continue
reporting for NBC and its cable network.

MSNBC's Sorenson said he had hoped to learn that "there was a guy with an
AK-47 behind the curtain" while Arnett was being interviewed. He said the
network had been counting on Arnett "to give us an objective view of the
war," and that this would be impossible because "he has these clearly
pro-Iraqi or anti-American viewpoints."

Arnett was also reporting in Baghdad for "National Geographic Explorer,"
which severed ties with him yesterday. He was quickly picked up by the
London tabloid the Daily Mirror.

The Pulitzer Prize winner was especially vulnerable to charges that he
sympathizes with Iraq, since the first Bush administration charged during
the 1991 Gulf War that he was conveying propaganda with his CNN reports from
Baghdad. Some of his reporting in Vietnam was equally controversial.

"If ever there was a poster boy for bias, it is now Peter Arnett," said
Robert Lichter, director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs.
Referring to the Arnett and Rivera incidents, he said: "The public has been
satisfied by the way the war has been reported, but these are two
journalistic stories that will quickly turn their mood sour."


http://www.haveeru.com.mv/english/news_show.phtml?id=1256&search=&find=

*  FIRED BY AMERICA FOR TELLING THE TRUTH, BRITAIN'S "DAILY MIRROR" HIRES
JOURNALIST PETER ARNETT TO CARRY ON TELLING THE TRUTH
Haaveru Daily (Maldives), 1st April

LONDON - Award-winning news correspondent Peter Arnett, sacked by American
TV network NBC after suggesting on Iraqi television that the US war plan had
failed, has joined the Daily Mirror -- the British newspaper most opposed to
the conflict.

"Fired by America for telling the truth... Hired by Daily Mirror to carry on
telling it," read the headline on the tabloid's front page Tuesday.

"I report the truth of what is happening here in Baghdad and will not
apologise for it," Arnett told the daily.

"I have always admired your newspaper and am proud to be working for it."

Famed for his coverage of the Vietnam War and the first Gulf war, Arnett was
sacked by NBC on Monday, and later also let go by National Geographic.

Arnett's comments, broadcast this past weekend by Iraqi television, said
that Washington's "first war plan has just failed because of Iraqi
resistance."

"Clearly the American war planners misjudged the determination of the Iraqi
forces," Arnett, 68, told Iraqi journalists.

His comments met with severe criticism in the United States, with some
accusing him of aiding the Iraqis.

Displaying a sense of humour, Arnett, a naturalised American, wrote in the
Daily Mirror that he was in "shock and awe" over his sacking. "Shock and
awe" is the term used by Washington to describe the heavy bombing of
Baghdad.

"I am still in shock and awe at being fired... Now I am really shocked that
I am no longer reporting this story for the US and awed by the fact that it
actually happened."

Arnett said there was an "enormous sensitivity" within the US government to
reports coming out from Baghdad.

"They don't want credible news organisations reporting from here because it
presents them with enormous problems," he said in the Mirror.

Arnett admitted to making a "misjudgement" but said that after interviewing
hundreds of people in Iraq during the past four months, "it was only
professional courtesy to give them a few comments."

He added: "We have to watch the reality now and some Iraqis are fighting and
the government does seem very determined. For me to see that and to be
criticised for saying the obvious is unfair."

Arnett said he believed great commercial pressure was responsible for his
sacking, but did not blame the White House for his departure.

He added that he would decide later Tuesday whether to stay on in Baghdad.

"But whatever happens I will never stop reporting on the truth of this war
whether I am in Baghdad or somewhere else in the Middle East -- or even back
in Washington."

Arnett, who has been in the news business for 40 years, was already fired by
CNN for his involvement in a 1998 story on Operation Tailwind, which alleged
that American forces used nerve gas in a 1970 mission to hunt down US
defectors during the Vietnam War.

That story was vigorously denied by US military officials, and ultimately
was retracted by CNN.

The reporter who was one of a handful of western journalists to stay in the
Iraqi capital during the 1991 war had initially said he had no immediate
plans for his future. "There's a small island in the South Pacific,
uninhabited, which I will try to swim to," he quippped.

‹

The US military gave few details on why Fox News' Rivera had been asked to
leave the unit he was with.

According to US news reports, the order came after an on-air appearance
during which he drew a map in the sand revealing information about US troop
locations.

Rivera became known for his coverage of the OJ Simpson trial but also
carrying out stunts during missions such as the Afghanistan war where he
carried his own gun.

Last week, US journalist Phil Smucker with the Christian Science Monitor was
expelled from Iraq after US forces accused him of being too specific about
troop locations in a report.

More than 800 journalists are embedded with US and British units in Iraq,
military officials said.


http://www.haveeru.com.mv/english/news_show.phtml?id=1256&search=&find=

*  MALAYSIA SENDS OWN REPORTERS TO COVER WAR "BECAUSE OF BIASED REPORTING BY
WESTERN MEDIA"

KUALA LUMPUR, April 1 (AFP) - The Malaysian government is paying for 30
local journalists to travel to the Middle East and cover the US war on Iraq
because of biased reporting by Western media, officials said Tuesday.

³We want Malaysians to know the truth about the situation in Iraq. We donıt
want to rely on the foreign media as the reports are not based on neutral
ground,² Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar was quoted as saying by the New
Straits Times.

Syed Hamid said the government agreed to the idea after complaints of biased
reporting by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the US-based
Cable News Network (CNN).

An information ministry spokeswoman told AFP that 30 journalists
representing Malaysian television channels, major newspapers and the
official Bernama news agency would participate in the government-sponsored
trip.

Officials from the information, home and foreign ministries would also join
the group, she said.

³I want to be able to give a first-hand account of the real scenario in
Iraq, especially from the human angle, how the women and children suffer
most in the war,² Ishak Dalib, a senior editor at private television station
NTV7, told AFP.

The group would leave this week for Damascus, Amman, Doha and Kuwait before
crossing the border into Iraq, he said. They had been promised assistance by
Iraqi diplomats in Malaysia and would spend up to a month in the region.

The government of Muslim-majority Malaysia is firmly opposed to the US-led
war in Iraq, and newspapers regularly carry pictures of civilians killed or
injured by coalition forces.




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