Rumsfeld, Munich Conference Speech
There is a momentous fact of life that we must come to terms with and it is the nexus between weapons of mass destruction, terrorist states and terrorist networks. On September 11th, terrorist states discovered that missiles are not the only way to strike Washington-or Paris, or Berlin or Rome or any of our capitals. There are other means of delivery-terrorist networks. To the extent a terrorist state transfers weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups, they could conceal their responsibility for an attack. To this day, we still do not know with certainty who was behind the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. We still do not know who was responsible for the anthrax attacks in the United States. The nature of terrorist attacks is that it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to identify those responsible. And a terrorist state that can conceal its responsibility for an attack certainly would not be deterred. United States Department of Defense News Transcript On the web: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2003/t02082003_t0208sdmunich.html Media contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] or +1 (703) 697-5131 Public contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] or +1 (703) 428-0711 Presenter: Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld Saturday, February 08, 2003 Secretary Rumsfeld Address to the Munich Conference on European Security Policy (Address to the Munich Conference on European Security Policy in Munich, Germany) Dr. Horst Teltschik, ministers, parliamentarians, distinguished guests, friends, ladies and gentlemen. I thank you so much. Horst, I'm delighted to be with you. Indeed it is most certainly not my first visit to this conference. I've come off and on over many decades. It's a particular pleasure to be back in Europe! I'm told that when I used the phase old Europe the other day, it caused a bit of a stir. I don't quite understand what the fuss is about. As I said at the time -at my age, I consider old a term of endearment. Like an old friend. As a matter of fact, you mentioned, I forget quite how you said I say things, but I'm told one of the German newspapers referenced the fact that my ancestors came from northern Germany and that it is an area known for plain, straight talk. One of the advantages of age, and I've got some, when you are as old as I am, you've seen a lot of history. I lived through our depression and World War II. A young man when the NATO Alliance was founded, the names Churchill, Roosevelt, Adenauer, Marshall and Truman were not figures I learned about from history, but leaders that we all followed over the years, as Europe drifted into war and then was lifted from the ashes of World War II. They helped build our transatlantic Alliance and fashioned it into a bulwark against tyranny and in defense of common values and our freedom. When the President appointed me Ambassador to NATO in the early 1970s, it was a defining moment in my life. I worked closely with dedicated and highly skilled diplomats such as Andre de Starke, the former dean of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, my close friend Francois de Rose, then the French Ambassador to NATO, Franz Krapf from the Federal Republic of Germany, and so many other very talented diplomats. None of us could have imagined then that NATO leaders would one day meet in Prague, where they would invite Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania to become members of the Atlantic Alliance. It is remarkable how Europe has changed just over the course of my lifetime. Thanks to NATO's efforts, the center of Europe has indeed shifted eastward-and our Alliance is stronger for it. Not only is the map of Europe being transformed, but so too is the map of the world. Out of the tragedy of September 11th came great responsibilities to be sure, but also unprecedented opportunities-to tear down calcified barriers left over from earlier eras and build new relationships with countries that would have been unimaginable just a few short years ago. And that is precisely what we have been doing in the global war on terror. Our coalition for the global war on terror today includes some 90 nations-almost half the world. It is the largest coalition in human history. We are fighting alongside old allies and new friends alike. (Whoops-there's that word old again.) Some are involved in the military effort in Afghanistan. Others are helping elsewhere in the world-in Asia, the Gulf, the Horn of Africa. Some are helping with stability operations; still others are providing basing, re-fueling, over-flight, and intelligence. Some are not participating in the military effort but are helping in the financial, diplomatic and law enforcement efforts. All of these are important and deeply appreciated by all nations committed to the global war on terrorism. As to Iraq, we still hope that force may not be necessary to disarm Saddam Hussein. If it comes to that; however, we already know that the same will hold true-some countries will
US War Plan: Shock Awe, Newsweek
Newsweek February 17, 2003 Boots, Bytes and Bombs The Pentagon calls it 'shock and awe.' Iraq will call it a nightmare. The military's new high-tech road map for taking out Saddam-and how he might fight back By John Barry and Evan Thomas Feb. 17 issue - It's called the E-bomb. Delivered by a cruise missile, the E-bomb is a warhead that explodes to emit a high-energy pulse that, like a bolt of lightning, will fuse any electrical equipment within range. THE E-BOMB HAS been more than a little temperamental in testing, and engineers would still like another year to work out the bugs, but on the first night of the war against Iraq, E-bombs will detonate over President Saddam Hussein's key command-and-control bunkers in and around Baghdad. If all goes according to plan, lights will blink out, computers will melt down, phones will go silent. Saddam and his lieutenants will be left shivering in silent darkness, alone and waiting to die. The desired effect of the first night's bombing, in the expression commonly used by military planners, is shock and awe. The overall goal of the American blitz against Iraq will be to so stun and demoralize the Iraqi Army that Saddam's forces will quickly give up. The Iraqis will realize that resistance is futile and throw down their weapons-or turn them on Saddam. In the first 48 hours of the attack, the United States armed forces are expected to rain some 3,000 precision-guided bombs and missiles on-Iraqi air defenses, command-and-control, WMD sites and leadership targets, which is to say they will try to kill Saddam, his sons and their closest followers. WHAT IF? But what if they miss? What if Saddam succeeds in going underground and fomenting a guerrilla war in the streets of Baghdad? (He is said to have several doubles; he could hang one, vanish, then come back from the dead.) What if Saddam hits back with chemical and biological weapons against American troops, Israel-or Washington or New York? What if Saddam does not patiently await his doom but decides to strike first? Because Saddam knows we're coming to get him this time, he will not be reluctant to use all the weapons at his disposal, says former White House national-security aide and retired Army Gen. Wayne Downing, commander of U.S. Special Forces in the first gulf war. All the more reason to strike as hard and as quickly as possible. The U.S. invasion force will not be at full strength until mid-March, but an earlier rolling start is not out of the question. President George W. Bush and his war cabinet may want to paralyze Saddam before he can hit back-or execute some kind of Gotterdmmerung strategy, burning oil fields or gassing his own people. With all the war talk and the accelerating buildup of troops and forces, America cannot hope for true surprise. Rather, the battle planners are counting on a new kind of war to oust Saddam without wrecking Iraq in the process. It may be the first war of the Information Age. Battlefields are usually murky and chaotic. Troops get lost, orders are bungled, bombs go astray. Historically, American armies have tried to cut through the fog of war with brute force: by slowly, ponderously grinding down the enemy with overwhelming firepower. This war will be different, say the planners. They use buzzwords like simultaneity, agility and effects-based targeting. What they mean is the creation of a nimble force that can see the whole battlefield and act quickly, using its superior information and its high-precision firepower to strike deep and fast, enveloping and disabling enemy units before they can mount a coherent defense. The concepts, and the high technology to carry them out, have been in the works for some years. But they have never before been tested on such a grand scale. High-tech forces are smart, even brilliant. But they can also be fragile. Sandstorms can blind eye-in-the-sky satellites and crash helicopters, communication links can go down, and some of the new gizmos have never been battle-tested. Indeed, a run through for the war at Gen. Tommy Franks's new CENTCOM headquarters in Qatar last month was a blizzard of computer glitches. Gulf War II will bear only a superficial resemblance to Gulf War I. Many of the weapons will look the same: Abrams main battle tanks, Apache helicopters, F-14, -15, -16, -18 warplanes. But look a little closer. That odd black drum poised over the rotor shaft on the Apache is a new targeting system, called a Longbow, that allows the chopper to target 16 enemy tanks at once. That extra aerial sticking up from the Abrams is for GPS-Global Positioning System-which allows every vehicle commander to know precisely where he is. And the bombs hanging from the warplanes are JDAMS, equipped with minicomputers and GP systems to steer themselves within, on average, 10 feet of their targets. (In Gulf War I, less than 10 percent of bombs were smart; in Gulf War II, old-fashioned dumb bombs will account for less than a tenth of payloads.) OLD WAR,
Ed Epstein, Anthrax Letters 9-11
http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/teamb/2.htm Ed Epstein Team B Analysis Team B Issue #2: The Case that the Anthrax Mailings Were Related to the 9-11 attacks On September 18th, 2001, one week after the aerial attack, an anonymous party mailed two letters containing dry anthrax bacteria to the New York Post and NBC. Two more letters were mailed 3 weeks later to U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle containing more lethal dosages of the same strain of anthrax. All four letters connected themselves to the aerial attack by beginning, in bold print, 09-11-01. The last two letters also stated We Have This Anthrax. But who is the We? After 16 months of investigation, the FBI has not solved the mystery. It did not find the person(s) who mailed the letters, the photocopier on which the messages were reproduced, the equipment for inserting the powdered anthrax into the envelopes, or the laboratory establishment where the anthrax was grown, dried and processed into a micron-sized weapon that aerosolized into a lethal mist. As of February 8, 2003, Secretary Of Defense Rumsfeld summed up the status of the investigtion: We still do not know who was responsible for the anthrax attacks in the United States. A possible explanation for this investigative failure is that the perpetrators and labs were not within the usual jurisdiction of the FBI. If so, the heading of 09-11-01 on all the letters may be relevant. Like the four 9-11 aerial attacks, the four anthrax letters presumably were aimed at damaging America. They all carried the message Death To America. If the attacks by separate aircrafts on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were assumed to be part of the same event by the government (and insurers), why exclude the possibility that the anthrax attacks were also part of that event- especially since they were labeled 09-11-01? To consider it as a part of the same conspiracy, three issues have to be addressed: 1) Did the parties that organized the aerial attacks have an interest in powdered anthrax? American intelligence, according to Secretary of State Powell, has established that al-Qaeda had demonstrated an interest in biological weapons over a year before the 9-11 attack. Powell stated in his UN speech that al- Qaeda prisoners revealed that Iraq had offered chemical or biological weapons training for two al-Qaeda associates beginning in December 2000. Iraq, which had 35,000 liters of dry anthrax, certainly had the ability to provide what it offered. Even earlier than that offer, Dr. Ayman Zawahiri, who merged his Egyptian Islamic Jihad into al-Qaeda in 1998, had sought anthrax for use against US targets, according to the March 1999 statement of an al-Qaeda member who had been working for the Egyptian intelligence services. And he apparently got it. When Dr. Zawahari's home in Kabul was subsequently examined after the fall of the Taliban, it tested positive for anthrax. So al-Qaeda had the means as well as the intent of using anthrax. 2) Did the hijacking conspirators in America have any contact with anthrax bacteria? The first encounter with anthrax may have occurred in Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, three months before 9-11. In June 2001, Dr. Christos Tsonas examined an ugly black lesion on the leg of Ahmed Alhaznawi. Dr. Tsonas had not previously seen a black lesion of that type, and, at the time, was unable to identify the cause. Alhaznawi identified himself as a pilot, as did the friend who had brought him to the emergency room with the lesion. Dr. Tsonas prescribed an antibiotic for the infection which was found in Ahmed Alhaznawi's room after he was identified as one of the hijackers of United Airlines Flight 93. In October 2001, after the first confirmed anthrax case, Dr. Tsonas was shown pictures of black lesions caused by anthrax by experts at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies. He concluded from these photos and other information about anthrax that the lesion he had examined in June had been caused by handling anthrax. He stated for the record that the lesion was consistent with cutaneous (skin) anthrax. If so, Alhaznawi and his associate had lied to Dr. Tsonas to conceal their contact with anthrax bacteria. This would mean that at least two of the hijackers were involved in with anthrax bacteria. The proximity of these men's residences to the headquarters of American Media, Inc. in Boca Raton, Florida, is also of interest. On October 2, 2001, Robert Stevens, an employee, died of anthrax. Although the anthrax proved to be the same strain as the subsequent letter, it could have been delivered to the building before or after September 11th (since the incubation period prior to symptoms can be up to a month). Because the entire 66,000 square foot office building was contaminated with anthrax spores, its point of origin is unknown. Nor do traces of anthrax found in local post offices solve the mystery since they could have been the result of cross-
