Veterans for Common Sense

Khashoggi is still brokering. In January of this year, he arranged a private lunch, in France, to bring together Harb Saleh al-Zuhair, a Saudi industrialist whose family fortune includes extensive holdings in construction, electronics, and engineering companies throughout the Middle East, and Richard N. Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, who is one of the most outspoken and influential American advocates of war with Iraq.

The Defense Policy Board is a Defense Department advisory group composed primarily of highly respected former government officials, retired military officers, and academics. Its members, who serve without pay, include former national-security advisers, Secretaries of Defense, and heads of the C.I.A. The board meets several times a year at the Pentagon to review and assess the country’s strategic defense policies.

Perle is also a managing partner in a venture-capital company called Trireme Partners L.P., which was registered in November, 2001, in Delaware. Trireme’s main business, according to a two-page letter that one of its representatives sent to Khashoggi last November, is to invest in companies dealing in technology, goods, and services that are of value to homeland security and defense. The letter argued that the fear of terrorism would increase the demand for such products in Europe and in countries like Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

The letter mentioned the firm’s government connections prominently: “Three of Trireme’s Management Group members currently advise the U.S. Secretary of Defense by serving on the U.S. Defense Policy Board, and one of Trireme’s principals, Richard Perle, is chairman of that Board.” The two other policy-board members associated with Trireme are Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State (who is, in fact, only a member of Trireme’s advisory group and is not involved in its management), and Gerald Hillman, an investor and a close business associate of Perle’s who handles matters in Trireme’s New York office. The letter said that forty-five million dollars had already been raised, including twenty million dollars from Boeing; the purpose, clearly, was to attract more investors, such as Khashoggi and Zuhair.

Perle served as a foreign-policy adviser in George W. Bush’s Presidential campaign—he had been an Assistant Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan—but he chose not to take a senior position in the Administration. In mid-2001, however, he accepted an offer from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to chair the Defense Policy Board, a then obscure group that had been created by the Defense Department in 1985. Its members (there are around thirty of them) may be outside the government, but they have access to classified information and to senior policymakers, and give advice not only on strategic policy but also on such matters as weapons procurement. Most of the board’s proceedings are confidential.

As chairman of the board, Perle is considered to be a special government employee and therefore subject to a federal Code of Conduct. Those rules bar a special employee from participating in an official capacity in any matter in which he has a financial interest. “One of the general rules is that you don’t take advantage of your federal position to help yourself financially in any way,” a former government attorney who helped formulate the Code of Conduct told me. The point, the attorney added, is to “protect government processes from actual or apparent conflicts.”

Advisory groups like the Defense Policy Board enable knowledgeable people outside government to bring their skills and expertise to bear, in confidence, on key policy issues. Because such experts are often tied to the defense industry, however, there are inevitable conflicts. One board member told me that most members are active in finance and business, and on at least one occasion a member has left a meeting when a military or an intelligence product in which he has an active interest has come under discussion.

Four members of the Defense Policy Board told me that the board, which met most recently on February 27th and 28th, had not been informed of Perle’s involvement in Trireme. One board member, upon being told of Trireme and Perle’s meeting with Khashoggi, exclaimed, “Oh, get out of here. He’s the chairman! If you had a story about me setting up a company for homeland security, and I’ve put people on the board with whom I’m doing that business, I’d be had”—a reference to Gerald Hillman, who had almost no senior policy or military experience in government before being offered a post on the policy board. “Seems to me this is at the edge of or off the ethical charts. I think it would stink to high heaven.”

Hillman, a former McKinsey consultant, stunned at least one board member at the February meeting when he raised questions about the validity of Iraq’s existing oil contracts. “Hillman said the old contracts are bad news; he said we should kick out the Russians and the French,” the board member told me. “This was a serious conversation. We’d become the brokers. Then we’d be selling futures in the Iraqi oil company. I said to myself, ‘Oh, man. Don’t go down that road.’” Hillman denies making such statements at the meeting.

Larry Noble, the executive director of the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit research organization, said of Perle’s Trireme involvement, “It’s not illegal, but it presents an appearance of a conflict. It’s enough to raise questions about the advice he’s giving to the Pentagon and why people in business are dealing with him.” Noble added, “The question is whether he’s trading off his advisory-committee relationship. If it’s a selling point for the firm he’s involved with, that means he’s a closer—the guy you bring in who doesn’t have to talk about money, but he’s the reason you’re doing the deal.”

Perle’s association with Trireme was not his first exposure to the link between high finance and high-level politics. He was born in New York City, graduated from the University of Southern California in 1964, and spent a decade in Senate-staff jobs before leaving government in 1980, to work for a military-consulting firm. The next year, he was back in government, as Assistant Secretary of Defense. In 1983, he was the subject of a New York Times investigation into an allegation that he recommended that the Army buy weapons from an Israeli company from whose owners he had, two years earlier, accepted a fifty-thousand-dollar fee. Perle later acknowledged that he had accepted the fee, but vigorously denied any wrongdoing. He had not recused himself in the matter, he explained, because the fee was for work he had done before he took the Defense Department job. He added, “The ultimate issue, of course, was a question of procurement, and I am not a procurement officer.” He was never officially accused of any ethical violations in the matter. Perle served in the Pentagon until 1987 and then became deeply involved in the lobbying and business worlds. Among other corporate commitments, he now serves as a director of a company doing business with the federal government: the Autonomy Corporation, a British firm that recently won a major federal contract in homeland security. When I asked him about that contract, Perle told me that there was no possible conflict, because the contract was obtained through competitive bidding, and “I never talked to anybody about it.”

Under Perle’s leadership, the policy board has become increasingly influential. He has used it as a bully pulpit, from which to advocate the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the use of preëmptive military action to combat terrorism. Perle had many allies for this approach, such as Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, but there was intense resistance throughout the bureaucracy—most notably at the State Department. Preëmption has since emerged as the overriding idea behind the Administration’s foreign policy. One former high-level intelligence official spoke with awe of Perle’s ability to “radically change government policy” even though he is a private citizen. “It’s an impressive achievement that an outsider can have so much influence, and has even been given an institutional base for his influence.”

Perle’s authority in the Bush Administration is buttressed by close association, politically and personally, with many important Administration figures, including Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy, who is the Pentagon’s third-ranking civilian official. In 1989, Feith created International Advisors Incorporated, a lobbying firm whose main client was the government of Turkey. The firm retained Perle as an adviser between 1989 and 1994. Feith got his current position, according to a former high-level Defense Department official, only after Perle personally intervened with Rumsfeld, who was skeptical about him. Feith was directly involved in the strategic planning and conduct of the military operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan; he now runs various aspects of the planning of the Iraqi war and its aftermath. He and Perle share the same views on many foreign-policy issues. Both have been calling for Saddam Hussein’s removal for years, long before September 11th. They also worked together, in 1996, to prepare a list of policy initiatives for Benjamin Netanyahu, shortly after his election as the Israeli Prime Minister. The suggestions included working toward regime change in Iraq. Feith and Perle were energetic supporters of Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial leader of the anti-Saddam Iraqi National Congress, and have struggled with officials at the State Department and the C.I.A. about the future of Iraq.

Perle has also been an outspoken critic of the Saudi government, and Americans who are in its pay. He has often publicly rebuked former American government officials who are connected to research centers and foundations that are funded by the Saudis, and told the National Review last summer, “I think it’s a disgrace. They’re the people who appear on television, they write op-ed pieces. The Saudis are a major source of the problem we face with terrorism. That would be far more obvious to people if it weren’t for this community of former diplomats effectively working for this foreign government.” In August, the Saudi government was dismayed when the Washington Post revealed that the Defense Policy Board had received a briefing on July 10th from a Rand Corporation analyst named Laurent Murawiec, who depicted Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, and recommended that the Bush Administration give the Saudi government an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its financial assets in the United States and its oil fields. Murawiec, it was later found, is a former editor of the Executive Intelligence Review, a magazine controlled by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., the perennial Presidential candidate, conspiracy theorist, and felon. According to Time, it was Perle himself who had invited Murawiec to make his presentation.

Perle’s hostility to the politics of the Saudi government did not stop him from meeting with potential Saudi investors for Trireme. Khashoggi and Zuhair told me that they understood that one of Trireme’s objectives was to seek the help of influential Saudis to win homeland-security contracts with the Saudi royal family for the businesses it financed. The profits for such contracts could be substantial. Saudi Arabia has spent nearly a billion dollars to survey and demarcate its eight-hundred-and-fifty-mile border with Yemen, and the second stage of that process will require billions more. Trireme apparently turned to Adnan Khashoggi for help.

Last month, I spoke with Khashoggi, who is sixty-seven and is recovering from open-heart surgery, at his penthouse apartment, overlooking the Mediterranean in Cannes. “I was the intermediary,” he said. According to Khashoggi, he was first approached by a Trireme official named Christopher Harriman. Khashoggi said that Harriman, an American businessman whom he knew from his jet-set days, when both men were fixtures on the European social scene, sent him the Trireme pitch letter. (Harriman has not answered my calls.) Khashoggi explained that before Christmas he and Harb Zuhair, the Saudi industrialist, had met with Harriman and Gerald Hillman in Paris and had discussed the possibility of a large investment in Trireme.

Zuhair was interested in more than the financial side; he also wanted to share his views on war and peace with someone who had influence with the Bush Administration. Though a Saudi, he had been born in Iraq, and he hoped that a negotiated, “step by step” solution could be found to avoid war. Zuhair recalls telling Harriman and Hillman, “If we have peace, it would be easy to raise a hundred million. We will bring development to the region.” Zuhair’s hope, Khashoggi told me, was to combine opportunities for peace with opportunities for investment. According to Khashoggi, Hillman and Harriman said that such a meeting could be arranged. Perle emerged, by virtue of his position on the policy board, as a natural catch; he was “the hook,” Khashoggi said, for obtaining the investment from Zuhair. Khashoggi said that he agreed to try to assemble potential investors for a private lunch with Perle.

The lunch took place on January 3rd at a seaside restaurant in Marseilles. (Perle has a vacation home in the South of France.) Those who attended the lunch differ about its purpose. According to both Khashoggi and Zuhair, there were two items on the agenda. The first was to give Zuhair a chance to propose a peaceful alternative to war with Iraq; Khashoggi said that he and Perle knew that such an alternative was far-fetched, but Zuhair had recently returned from a visit to Baghdad, and was eager to talk about it. The second, more important item, according to Khashoggi and Zuhair, was to pave the way for Zuhair to put together a group of ten Saudi businessmen who would invest ten million dollars each in Trireme.

“It was normal for us to see Perle,” Khashoggi told me. “We in the Middle East are accustomed to politicians who use their offices for whatever business they want. I organized the lunch for the purpose of Harb Zuhair to put his language to Perle. Perle politely listened, and the lunch was over.” Zuhair, in a telephone conversation with me, recalled that Perle had made it clear at the lunch that “he was above the money. He said he was more involved in politics, and the business is through the company”—Trireme. Perle, throughout the lunch, “stuck to his idea that ‘we have to get rid of Saddam,’” Zuhair said. As of early March, to the knowledge of Zuhair, no Saudi money had yet been invested in Trireme.

In my first telephone conversation with Gerald Hillman, in mid-February, before I knew of the involvement of Khashoggi and Zuhair, he assured me that Trireme had “nothing to do” with the Saudis. “I don’t know what you can do with them,” he said. “What we saw on September 11th was a grotesque manifestation of their ideology. Americans believe that the Saudis are supporting terrorism. We have no investment from them, or with them.” (Last week, he acknowledged that he had met with Khashoggi and Zuhair, but said that the meeting had been arranged by Harriman and that he hadn’t known that Zuhair would be there.) Perle, he insisted in February, “is not a financial creature. He doesn’t have any desire for financial gain.”

Perle, in a series of telephone interviews, acknowledged that he had met with two Saudis at the lunch in Marseilles, but he did not divulge their identities. (At that time, I still didn’t know who they were.) “There were two Saudis there,” he said. “But there was no discussion of Trireme. It was never mentioned and never discussed.” He firmly stated, “The lunch was not about money. It just would never have occurred to me to discuss investments, given the circumstances.” Perle added that one of the Saudis had information that Saddam was ready to surrender. “His message was a plea to negotiate with Saddam.”

When I asked Perle whether the Saudi businessmen at the lunch were being considered as possible investors in Trireme, he replied, “I don’t want Saudis as such, but the fund is open to any investor, and our European partners said that, through investment banks, they had had Saudis as investors.” Both Perle and Hillman stated categorically that there were currently no Saudi investments.

Khashoggi professes to be amused by the activities of Perle and Hillman as members of the policy board. As Khashoggi saw it, Trireme’s business potential depended on a war in Iraq taking place. “If there is no war,” he told me, “why is there a need for security? If there is a war, of course, billions of dollars will have to be spent.” He commented, “You Americans blind yourself with your high integrity and your democratic morality against peddling influence, but they were peddling influence.”

When Perle’s lunch with Khashoggi and Zuhair, and his connection to Trireme, became known to a few ranking members of the Saudi royal family, they reacted with anger and astonishment. The meeting in Marseilles left Perle, one of the kingdom’s most vehement critics, exposed to a ferocious counterattack.

Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who has served as the Saudi Ambassador to the United States for twenty years, told me that he had got wind of Perle’s involvement with Trireme and the lunch in Marseilles. Bandar, who is in his early fifties, is a prominent member of the royal family (his father is the defense minister). He said that he was told that the contacts between Perle and Trireme and the Saudis were purely business, on all sides. After the 1991 Gulf War, Bandar told me, Perle had been involved in an unsuccessful attempt to sell security systems to the Saudi government, “and this company does security systems.” (Perle confirmed that he had been on the board of a company that attempted to make such a sale but said he was not directly involved in the project.)

“There is a split personality to Perle,” Bandar said. “Here he is, on the one hand, trying to make a hundred-million-dollar deal, and, on the other hand, there were elements of the appearance of blackmail—‘If we get in business, he’ll back off on Saudi Arabia’—as I have been informed by participants in the meeting.”

As for Perle’s meeting with Khashoggi and Zuhair, and the assertion that its purpose was to discuss politics, Bandar said, “There has to be deniability, and a cover story—a possible peace initiative in Iraq—is needed. I believe the Iraqi events are irrelevant. A business meeting took place.”

Zuhair, however, was apparently convinced that, thanks to his discussions with Trireme, he would have a chance to enter into a serious discussion with Perle about peace. A few days after the meeting in Paris, Hillman had sent Khashoggi a twelve-point memorandum, dated December 26, 2002, setting the conditions that Iraq would have to meet. “It is my belief,” the memorandum stated, “that if the United States obtained the following results it would not go to war against Iraq.” Saddam would have to admit that “Iraq has developed, and possesses, weapons of mass destruction.” He then would be allowed to resign and leave Iraq immediately, with his sons and some of his ministers.

Hillman sent Khashoggi a second memorandum a week later, the day before the lunch with Perle in Marseilles. “Following our recent discussions,” it said, “we have been thinking about an immediate test to ascertain that Iraq is sincere in its desire to surrender.” Five more steps were outlined, and an ambitious final request was made: that Khashoggi and Zuhair arrange a meeting with Prince Nawaf Abdul Aziz, the Saudi intelligence chief, “so that we can assist in Washington.”

Both Khashoggi and Zuhair were skeptical of the memorandums. Zuhair found them “absurd,” and Khashoggi told me that he thought they were amusing, and almost silly. “This was their thinking?” he recalled asking himself. “There was nothing to react to. While Harb was lobbying for Iraq, they were lobbying for Perle.”

In my initial conversation with Hillman, he said, “Richard had nothing to do with the writing of those letters. I informed him of it afterward, and he never said one word, even after I sent them to him. I thought my ideas were pretty clear, but I didn’t think Saddam would resign and I didn’t think he’d go into exile. I’m positive Richard does not believe that any of those things would happen.” Hillman said that he had drafted the memorandums with the help of his daughter, a college student. Perle, for his part, told me, “I didn’t write them and didn’t supply any content to them. I didn’t know about them until after they were drafted.”

The views set forth in the memorandums were, indeed, very different from those held by Perle, who has said publicly that Saddam will leave office only if he is forced out, and from those of his fellow hard-liners in the Bush Administration. Given Perle’s importance in American decision-making, and the risks of relying on a deal-maker with Adnan Khashoggi’s history, questions remain about Hillman’s drafting of such an amateurish peace proposal for Zuhair. Prince Bandar’s assertion—that the talk of peace was merely a pretext for some hard selling—is difficult to dismiss.

Hillman’s proposals, meanwhile, took on an unlikely life of their own. A month after the lunch, the proposals made their way to Al Hayat, a Saudi-owned newspaper published in London. If Perle had ever intended to dissociate himself from them, he did not succeed. The newspaper, in a dispatch headlined “washington offers to avert war in return for an international agreement to exile saddam,” characterized Hillman’s memorandums as “American” documents and said that the new proposals bore Perle’s imprimatur. The paper said that Perle and others had attended a series of “secret meetings” in an effort to avoid the pending war with Iraq, and “a scenario was discussed whereby Saddam Hussein would personally admit that his country was attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction and he would agree to stop trying to acquire these weapons while he awaits exile.”

A few days later, the Beirut daily Al Safir published Arabic translations of the memorandums themselves, attributing them to Richard Perle. The proposals were said to have been submitted by Perle, and to “outline Washington’s future visions of Iraq.” Perle’s lunch with two Saudi businessmen was now elevated by Al Safir to a series of “recent American-Saudi negotiations” in which “the American side was represented by Richard Perle.” The newspaper added, “Publishing these documents is important because they shed light on the story of how war could have been avoided.” The documents, of course, did nothing of the kind.

When Perle was asked whether his dealings with Trireme might present the appearance of a conflict of interest, he said that anyone who saw such a conflict would be thinking “maliciously.” But Perle, in crisscrossing between the public and the private sectors, has put himself in a difficult position—one not uncommon to public men. He is credited with being the intellectual force behind a war that not everyone wants and that many suspect, however unfairly, of being driven by American business interests. There is no question that Perle believes that removing Saddam from power is the right thing to do. At the same time, he has set up a company that may gain from a war. In doing so, he has given ammunition not only to the Saudis but to his other ideological opponents as well.

But in recent weeks, the leaders of the many mainline American churches opposed to a war with Iraq — including the president’s own church, the United Methodist — have grown frustrated that they have not been able to see Mr. Bush to express their anxieties. The group represents nearly every faith and denomination, including Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Baptists and mainstream evangelicals. The Southern Baptist Convention, conservative evangelicals and some Pentecostal leaders are supporting the president, while Jewish leaders are divided.

“There’s never been such unity among the churches in the country, even during Vietnam, we can give credit to free church management software as well as it makes easier to communicate with large number of peoples” said the Rev. Jim Wallis, the editor of the evangelical magazine Sojourners and the leader of a delegation of United States religious leaders that last month met for nearly an hour in London with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, Mr. Bush’s closest ally and an observant Christian.

Those Americans who met with Mr. Blair included John B. Chane, the Episcopal bishop of Washington; Melvin Talbert, the ecumenical officer of the United Methodist Council of Bishops; Clifton Kirkpatrick, the chief ecclesiastical officer of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.); and Dan Weiss, the immediate past general secretary of the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A. Last week, the group released an antiwar plan that calls for coercive weapons inspections and the indictment of Saddam Hussein on charges of crimes against humanity — but no bombing of children, as Mr. Wallis put it, in downtown Baghdad.

In London, Mr. Wallis said, although Mr. Blair did not move away from his conviction that action against Mr. Hussein was justified to prevent weapons of mass destruction from falling into the hands of terrorists, he “engaged deeply the moral and theological issues at stake.”

It has not been lost on Mr. Wallis and the other Americans who met with Mr. Blair that they have not yet had the same conversation with their own president. Mr. Wallis, who supports Mr. Bush’s plan to give federal money to religious charities, has met with him a number of times in the past on other issues.

“I hope he hasn’t walled himself off,” Mr. Wallis said. “I haven’t heard a moral language or a faith language from him in relation to this momentous decision.”

The only antiwar religious leader who has seen Mr. Bush recently is Cardinal Pio Laghi, a peace emissary sent by Pope John Paul II. Cardinal Laghi, who as the Vatican’s representative in Washington in the 1980’s played tennis with Vice President George Bush, met with the current President Bush for 40 minutes on Wednesday. The cardinal also delivered a letter from the pope to Mr. Bush. “I assure you, Mr. President,” the letter concluded, “that I am praying for you and for Americans, and I ask the Lord to inspire you to search for the ways of a stable peace, the noblest of endeavors.”

The entreaties of the pope and the cardinal seem not to have persuaded Mr. Bush, who at a news conference a day later made clear that war was imminent and that if necessary, the United States would wage it alone, without the support of the United Nations. If so, many Christians say the attack would not be a “just war,” according to a theory developed by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, because it would not have what they consider proper authority, an important requirement for a just war.

But Mr. Bush, his advisers say, sees it differently. “The president thinks the most immoral act of all would be if Saddam Hussein were to somehow transfer his weapons to terrorists who could use them against us,” Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, said last week. “So the president does view the use of force as a matter of legality, as a matter of morality and as a matter of protecting the American people.”

At the White House, where two liaisons to religious groups are on the staff of Karl Rove, the president’s chief political adviser, the concern is that a meeting with antiwar leaders would turn into a circuslike news conference. Even Cardinal Laghi said he was told by the White House last week that he could not speak to reporters in the driveway outside the West Wing, where microphones are set up for regular news conferences with visitors to the Oval Office. Mr. Fleischer said that was not true, but Cardinal Laghi nonetheless held his news conference at the National Press Club.

On the eve of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, the first President Bush met with the man who was then the national leader of his faith, Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning of the Episcopal Church. Church leaders describe the conversation as “vigorous.” The two famously disagreed, but at least, religious leaders say, the meeting occurred.

Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa said Thursday that if Congress were voting now on its resolution authorizing the president to take military action against Iraq, he would oppose it.

“I’m not going to be fooled twice,” said Harkin, who backed President Bush on the resolution last year.

Harkin said he did so because the language required the administration to seek diplomatic solutions to the standoff with Iraq and to make full reports to Congress on the progress of diplomacy.

Instead, “In my adult life, with the exception of Vietnam, this has been the biggest failure of diplomacy we’ve had,” said Harkin.

The Senate voted 77-23 last October in favor of the sweeping resolution, which was also approved by the House. While Congress put constraints on President Bush in the document, the resolution does not require legislative approval for a military strike against Iraq or mandate United Nations approval.

Harkin, who at the time was in a re-election race against former Rep. Greg Ganske, was one of 29 Senate Democrats who backed the resolution. Ganske supported it in the House.

Harkin said that at the time, he believed Bush was trying to seek a peaceful solution in Iraq, but instead the administration has been “like the cowboy who rode out of Texas, all guns blazing” in pursuit of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

“As I look back, it sure looks like the administration was never serious about resolving the situation peacefully – I thought they were,” said Harkin.

He said others who voted for the resolution also did so with that belief. Asked whether that means it is unfair for former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a presidential contender, to continue criticizing Democratic presidential candidates who voted for the resolution, Harkin said he’s not familiar with what Dean has said.

“I could be criticized,” he acknowledged.

List of 13 Questions:

1. You say Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and is evil enough to use them. If not during an American invasion of his country, then when? Have you calculated how many U.S. troops might die in such an attack?

2. Why, if North Korea has the capability to produce six nuclear warheads by mid-summer, are you letting their very reluctant neighbors take the lead in deterring them (as you announced tonight) while demanding that the U.S. take charge in confronting Saddam?

3. You praise the Iraqi people, say we have no quarrel with them, pledge to save them from the dictator and give them democracy. Would you tell us how many of them are likely to die in even the best invastion scenario? And how many civilians might die if Saddam, indeed, uses chemical weapons to defend himself?

4. Why do you think Turkey’s parliament voted against hosting U.S. troops after being offered such a large aid package, especially since they are on Iraq’s border?

5. With the economy skaken and deficits climbing, how do you respond to critics who say you’re ignoring domestic issues and the long-term economic security of this country by focusing so much of your time and resources on Iraq?

6. You say one major reason for taking this action is to protect Americans from terrorism. How do you respond to the warnings of CIA Director George Tenet and others that invading Iraq would in fact likely increase terrorism?

7. Why have you threatened “retribution” against Mexico if it votes against our U.N. resolution? And do you think it is wise to warn that Mexicans could face the same reaction as the “backlash against the French” from our public (as you recently said) when this might be directed at some of the tens of millions of Hispanics living in the U.S.?

8. Rather than make us wait for a supplemental budget request — after the war has been launched — to tell us what it, and its aftermath, will cost, don’t you think the American people (who will pay the bill) deserve to know the latest long-term estimates before the fact?

9. Why did the U.S. edit the 12,000 page Iraqi weapons report (as recently revealed) to the U.N. Security Council, removing all names of U.S. companies that sold weapons materials to the Iraqis in the past?

10. Would you confirm or deny the reports this week, based on a leaked memo, that the U.S. bugged and otherwise spied on representatives of countries that are swing votes on the U.N. Security Council? Do you approve of such actions?

11. You claimed tonight that Iraq has started producing new missiles — but are these nothing more than less capable versions (fully permitted by the U.N.) of the missiles being destroyed now?

12. How do you respond to reporter Daniel Schorr’s statement that the “coalition of the willing” is actually a “coalition of the billing?”

13. Why is the U.S. threatening a non-U.N.-backed war if 59{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of Americans do not support a U.S. invasion without the approval of the U.N. Security Council, according to a Feb. 24-26 USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll?

aberman@editorandpublisher.com

Washington (AP)- Eight Democratic senators on Thursday urged Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to spend more money on equipment to protect soldiers from biological and chemical attacks and to improve troop training for such attacks.

“We are concerned that, as thousands of active duty and reserve troops are deployed to the Persian Gulf region each week, training and preparedness for confronting the harrowing threat of chemical and biological warfare lags behind the pace of deployment,” the senators said in the letter.

Pentagon spokeswoman Barbara Goodno was uncertain if the letter had been reviewed at the Defense Department, and she declined comment. [Editor’s note: Goodno works at DoD’s Deployment Health Support office, formerly known as the Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses — the office widely discredited among scientists and veterans as claiming only stress was responsible for Gulf War illnesses.]

The letter was signed by Sens. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, Richard Durbin of Illinois, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, Harry Reid of Nevada, Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas.

The senators said a report last year by the Army Audit Agency concluded that soldiers in most units reviewed were not proficient in operating and maintaining chemical and biological defense equipment, mostly as a result of poor training.

The lawmakers said they are concerned they may see health effects similar to those suffered by veterans of the 1991 Gulf War. Some of those veterans have reported a variety of illnesses, including chronic fatigue, memory loss, muscle and joint problems and Lou Gehrig’s disease.

The senators want Rumsfeld to provide a detailed description of steps taken to protect military personnel and private contractors from chemical or biological attacks. They also asked for details on how the Pentagon has corrected any training or equipment inadequacies.

Additionally, the senators want to know details on training of military medical personnel on how to recognize chemical and biological agents and information on the availability and condition of protective equipment.

Last month, Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi wrote Rumsfeld asking the Pentagon to track troop exposures to toxins and environmental hazards in any new war with Iraq and to share the data with Veterans Affairs.

Principi said he wanted to avoid a repeat of the controversy over health problems of veterans of the 1991 Gulf War and the inability of physicians to treat the veterans because of lack of information.

[Editor’s note: The National Academy of Sciences concluded in two published reports that the number one reason they can’t determine why so many Gulf War veterans are ill is because the Pentagon failed to keep track of who was deployed, where they were deployed, when they were deployed, and what happened to them during deployment.]

Unites States Senate
Committee on Veterans’ Affairs

February 14, 2003

The Honorable David S.C. Chu, Ph.D.
Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness
U.S. Department of Defense
Washington, D.C. 20301-1220

Dear Dr. Chu:

As the Department of Defense deploys a growing number of troops to the Persian Gulf region, it is critical to heed the lessons learned during the 1991 Gulf War. We are writing to inquire about the military’s preparedness to protect forces in Southwest Asia, and your progress in implementing effective record keeping and medical surveillance systems.

At the Committee’s October 16, 2001, hearing on VA’s Fourth Mission, you testified that the Defense Department had “published directives and instructions
and issued policies on record keeping and medical surveillance during deployments.” Please list these directives, instructions, and policies, indicating how completely each has been implemented in all service branches.

In addition, we request that you answer the following questions. What percentage of service members deploying to Southwest Asia, including reservists,
have received a full health exam within two months of deployment? What steps have been taken to ensure complete and accurate recording of information on both
in-service medical encounters (including pyridostigmine bromide pretreatment) and potential exposures to chemical or biological hazards (whether environmental contaminants or weapons) during deployment? Please describe the mechanisms by
which this information is captured, collected and analyzed. What steps have you taken to track individual troop location during conflicts, and to link this information to data on environmental exposures? Please describe how the military will transmit this information to VA for treatment, research, or compensation purposes. What is the status of the interchangeable military-veteran computer-based patient record? Finally, what percentage of troops deploying to Southwest Asia, including reservists, have received smallpox
and anthrax vaccines? What has been the incidence of adverse events, and how many troops have been exempted for medical reasons?

We request that you submit a report, within 30 days of your receipt of this letter, in response to the preceding questions. In conjunction with the
report’s submission, we also ask that you (or your designee) brief the Veterans’ Committee staff.

We are encouraged by positive press accounts regarding the military’s medical preparedness efforts, but believe that a formal report would benefit service members and veterans. Should you have any questions regarding this request, please contact Professional Staff Member, Mr. Jon Towers, at (202) 224-9126, or minority Professional Staff Member, Dr. Julie Fischer, at (202) 224-2074.

Sincerely,

Arlen Specter, Chairman

Bob Graham, Ranking Member

Most people do not realize how many conservatives are against going to war in Iraq.

A strong majority of nationally-syndicated conservative columnists have come out against this war. Just three of many examples I could give include the following:

Charley Reese, a staunch conservative, who was selected a couple of years ago as the favorite columnist of C-Span viewers, wrote that a U.S. attack on Iraq: “is a prescription for the decline and fall of the American empire. Overextension – urged on by a bunch of rabid intellectuals who wouldn’t know one end of a gun from another – has doomed many an empire. Just let the United States try to occupy the Middle East, which will be the practical result of a war against Iraq, and Americans will be bled dry by the costs in both blood and treasure.”

Paul Craig Roberts, who was one of the highest-ranking Treasury Department officials under President Reagan and now a nationally-syndicated conservative columnist, wrote: “an invasion of Iraq is likely the most thoughtless action in modern history.”

James Webb, a hero in Vietnam and President Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy, wrote: “The issue before us is not whether the United States should end the regime of Saddam Hussein, but whether we as a nation are prepared to occupy territory in the Middle East for the next 30 to 50 years.”

It is a traditional conservative position to be against huge deficit spending.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that a very short war followed by a five-year occupation of Iraq would cost the U.S. $272 billion, this on top of an estimated $350 billion deficit for the coming fiscal year.

It is a traditional conservative position to be against the U.S. being the policeman of the world. That is exactly what we will be doing if we go to war in Iraq.

It is a traditional conservative position to be against world government, because conservatives believe that government is less wasteful and arrogant when it is small and closer to the people.

It is a traditional conservative position to be critical of, skeptical about, even opposed to the very wasteful, corrupt United Nations, yet the primary justification for this war, what we hear over and over again, is that Iraq has violated 16 U.N. resolutions.

Well, other nations have violated U.N. resolutions, yet we have not threatened war against them.

It is a traditional conservative position to believe it is unfair to U.S. taxpayers and our military to put almost the entire burden of enforcing U.N. resolutions on the U.S., yet that is exactly what will happen in a war against Iraq.

In fact, it is already happening, because even if Hussein backs down now it will cost us billions of dollars in war preparations and moving so many of our troops, planes, ships, and equipment to the Middle East.

It is a traditional conservative position to be against huge foreign aid, which has been almost a complete failure for many years now.

Talk about huge foreign aid – Turkey is demanding $26 to $32 billion according to most reports. Israel wants $12 to $15 billion additional aid. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia want additional aid in unspecified amounts.

Almost every country that is supporting the U.S. in this war effort wants something in return. The cost of all these requests have not been added in to most of the war cost calculations.

All this to fight a bad man who has a total military budget of about $1.4 billion, less than 3/10 of one percent of ours.

The White House said Hussein has less than 40{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of the weaponry and manpower that he had at the time of the first Gulf War. One analyst estimated only about 20{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}.

His troops surrendered then to camera crews or even in one case to an empty tank. Hussein has been weakened further by years of bombing and economic sanctions and embargos.

He is an evil man, but he is no threat to us, and if this war comes about, it will probably be one of the shortest and certainly one of the most lopsided wars in history.

Our own CIA put out a report just a few days before our War Resolution vote saying that Hussein was so weak economically and militarily he was really not capable of attacking anyone unless forced into it. He really controls very little outside the city of Baghdad.

The Washington Post, two days ago, had a column by Al Kamen which said: “The war in Iraq, likely in the next few weeks, is not expected to last long, given the overwhelming U.S. firepower to be arrayed against the Iraqis. But the trickier job may be in the aftermath, when Washington plans to install an administrator, or viceroy, who would direct postwar reconstruction of the place.”

Fortune magazine said: “Iraq – We win. What then?” “A military victory could turn into a strategic defeat. . . . A prolonged, expensive, American-led occupation . . . could turn U.S. troops into sitting ducks for Islamic terrorists. . . . All of that could have immediate and negative consequences for the global economy.”

Not only have most conservative columnists come out strongly against this war, but also at least four conservative magazines and two conservative think tanks.

One conservative Republican member of the other Body (Sen. Hagel) said last week that the “rush to war in Iraq could backfire” and asked: “We are wrecking coalitions, relationships and alliances so we can get a two-week start on going to war alone?”

The Atlantic Monthly magazine said we would spend so much money in Iraq we might as well make it the 51st state. I believe most conservatives would rather that money be spent here instead of 7,000 miles away.

It is a traditional conservative position to be in favor of a strong national defense, not one that turns our soldiers into international social workers, and to believe in a noninterventionist foreign policy rather than in globalism or internationalism.

We should be friends with all nations, but we will weaken our own nation, maybe irreversibly unless we follow the more humble foreign policy the President advocated in his campaign.

Finally, it is very much against every conservative tradition to support preemptive war.

Another member of the other Body, the Senator from West Virginia, Senator Byrd, not a conservative but certainly one with great knowledge of and respect for history and tradition said recently:

“This is no simple attempt to defang a villain. No. This coming battle, if it materializes, represents a turning point in U.S. foreign policy and possibly a turning point in the recent history of the world. This nation is about to embark upon the first test of the revolutionary doctrine applied in an extraordinary way at an unfortunate time. The doctrine of preemption – the idea that the United States or any other nation can legitimately attack a nation that is not imminently threatening but may be threatening in the future – is a radical new twist on the traditional idea of self-defense.”

The columnist William Raspberry, again not a conservative but one who sometimes takes conservative positions, wrote this week these words: “Why so fast. Because Hussein will stall the same way he’s been stalling for a dozen years. A dozen years, by the way, during which he has attacked no one, gassed no one, launched terror attacks on no one. Tell me its because of American pressure that he has stayed his hand, and I say great. Isn’t that better than a U.S.-launched war guaranteed to engender massive slaughter and spread terrorism?”

Throughout these remarks, I have said not one word critical of the President or any of his advisors or anyone on the other side of this issue.

I especially have not and will not criticize the fine men and women in our Nation’s armed forces. They are simply following orders and attempting to serve this country in an honorable way.

Conservatives are generally not the types who participate in street demonstrations, especially ones led by people who say mean-spirited things about our President. But I do sincerely believe the true conservative position, the traditional conservative position is against this war.

Washington – Troops heading for the Iraqi theater are not getting health screenings, especially blood sampling, mandated by a law Congress enacted in 1998.

The law, which grew out of concern about unexplained illnesses that followed the 1991 gulf war, required that troops receive mental and medical examinations before and after deployment overseas. The tests are intended to provide clues in case the phenomenon known as gulf war syndrome should recur.

Instead, the Pentagon requires only a brief, one-page questionnaire asking for general health-related information. A top Pentagon health official said blood tests would not be especially useful.

About 300,000 American personnel are now at jumping-off points near Iraq or on their way. Many consider U.S. troops much more likely than in the 1991 war to face biological and chemical weapons.

“The majority of the troops have already deployed … and therefore we’re not going to have a good picture of their health,” said Steve Robinson, a gulf war veteran and executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center.

“Once again, if soldiers are exposed, we do not have baseline (medical) data required to document their status. You’re looking at gulf war illness 2.”

The Pentagon insists that it has followed the law.

“If the intent was to make sure we had better documentation — yes, we are in compliance,” said Michael Kilpatrick, a physician who is deputy director of deployment health support at the Pentagon.

Veterans affairs activists, health care experts and congressional watchdogs are unconvinced.

The law, signed by then-President Bill Clinton, was enacted in response to a chorus of health complaints from gulf war veterans. Many reported a variety of ailments, including headaches, memory loss, rashes, equilibrium problems and loss of motor skills.

The causes were unknown, despite numerous medical studies. Some veterans pointed to the release of chemical or biological agents when Iraq’s stockpiles were bombed, the military’s hurried vaccinations against those agents, desert diseases and parasites or pollution from burning oil wells.

The syndrome has caused a bitter battle between veterans and the Pentagon, which has refused to recognize it, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, which has had to decide whether claims for medical compensation are valid.

Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, a former veterans affairs activist, called the Pentagon’s program troubling.

“What’s the message we’re sending to our troops around the world today and those prepared to fight in Iraq?” he asked. “The message seems to be, `Do your duty to country, but your country won’t fulfill its duty to you if you’re lucky enough to return home.’ “

Kerry, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, has asked the General Accounting Office to investigate whether Defense has met its requirements.

In addition, leaders of the Senate Committee of Veterans Affairs have asked for a detailed account of Pentagon efforts to track medical data on battlefield troops.

Last month, Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi wrote to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and said the VA wanted to work closely with the Pentagon to collect “health and exposure data” on those deployed in southwest Asia.

“Much of the controversy over the health problems of the veterans who fought in the 1991 war with Iraq could have been avoided had more extensive surveillance data been collected,” Principi wrote.

Mark Brown, a VA toxicologist who has been investigating gulf war illnesses, said Principi’s letter was intended to put the VA “on the public record” about its concerns.

The Pentagon’s approach, he said, “certainly wasn’t adequate in the first gulf war. Have they learned their lesson and done better? Maybe we’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

The law requires the secretary of defense to “establish a system to assess the medical condition of members of the armed forces,” including reserves, deployed outside the United States for combat, peacekeeping missions or humanitarian operations.

Kilpatrick said the Pentagon’s program was “an evolving process” and part of a concept called “Force Health Protection” that was put in place during the Kosovo conflict in 1996.

Some health officials with the Defense Department appear not to have known what Congress required.

Some gulf war medical researchers proposed a study to the Pentagon a year ago that would track some troops in post-Sept. 11 military operations. The proposed study unknowingly mirrored the elements of the law, and a medical official wrote back, “This sound like something we need to investigate further as something we would like to support.”

The project involved studying the Rhode Island National Guard. David Haines, an immunologist affiliated with George Washington University, said he discovered a month ago that the Department of Defense was supposed to be doing the blood sampling that he and his colleagues had proposed to do on a small scale.

“We will do the right thing and step back if DOD is doing great things, but we don’t believe DOD has anything like that in place,” he said.

According to Kilpatrick, a brief questionnaire is basically the military’s response to the congressional mandate because it has other steps already in place.

In the questionnaire troops are asked how they would rate their health, from excellent to poor. They are also asked whether they have any medical or dental problems, whether they have any health concerns, whether they wear glasses and whether they have concerns about possible “exposures or events during this deployment.”

Anyone answering “yes” to certain questions will be referred for further examination, Kilpatrick said.

Rick Weidman of the lobbying group Vietnam Veterans of America, called the questionnaire “absolutely useless from an epidemiological point of view.”

“There’s nothing about susceptibility to skin rashes or any of the derivative diseases that are due to some of these kinds of exposures,” he said, “and there is no psychological exam. Nothing.”

According to Kilpatrick, troops are asked whether they have sought mental health counseling within the past two years, but the military has to rely on personnel being truthful.

“If people say, `My mental status is fine,’ we are not stopping to engage in a three-hour survey to assess people’s mental status,” Kilpatrick said. “If we are preparing to deploy 20,000 troops, it’s physically impossible.”

A key element of the 1998 law is the taking of blood samples to establish a medical baseline and help identify possible subsequent exposures to toxic materials. The absence of such tests on veterans of the 1991 gulf war has handicapped researchers.

Blood is always taken for HIV testing, Kilpatrick said, and those samples are in storage. But fresh samples will be taken only if the serum on file is more than a year old, he said.

He disputed the idea that additional sampling would be helpful because the biological markers of many toxic agents disappear from the bloodstream within hours or days of exposure.

Also, Kilpatrick said, troops are physically evaluated every five years, except for pilots, who are tested more frequently. Medical histories were more valuable to researchers than “hands-on” physical exams, he said.

But gulf war medical researchers said the Pentagon’s plan is a missed opportunity, especially considering the threat of weapons of mass destruction.

“We can run into the same thing all over again,” said Lea Steele, a Kansas Institute of Health epidemiologist who has studied gulf war veterans. “One of the difficulties of the gulf war was we didn’t have any evidence prior to the war. It was hard to link illnesses.

“Now that we’re becoming a second time deeply involved in Iraq…there is no established protocol that would be very valuable. Some people say Saddam Hussein has less to lose now. He may be more likely to use these things.”

David Goldstein (202) 383-6105, dgoldstein@krwashington.com.