Veterans for Common Sense

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.

Baltimore – In a rare leak that could prove embarrassing to the U.S. government, a British newspaper has printed a seemingly authentic National Security Agency memo ordering stepped-up eavesdropping against countries on the U.N. Security Council whose votes are crucial in the U.S. effort to build support for war against Iraq.

Intelligence experts say the memo, dated Jan. 31, marked “Top Secret” and printed Sunday in The Observer, appears genuine. While no surprise to those familiar with the global eavesdropping the NSA conducts from Fort Meade, the memo may complicate U.S. diplomacy by underscoring that the intelligence agency routinely monitors phone calls, faxes and e-mail not only of hostile countries but of allies and neutral nations.

“As you’ve likely heard by now, the Agency is mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council members (minus US and GBR [Great Britain] of course) for insights as to [how] membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE:Iraq,” says the memo, from Frank Koza, described as NSA’s chief of staff for “Regional Targets.”

It asks the unnamed eavesdroppers who got the memo – apparently NSA staff members or their British counterparts at Government Communications Headquarters – to report “the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US goals or to head off surprises.”

Specifically, it asks the recipients to target Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, while putting “extra focus” on Pakistan.

All the named countries except Bulgaria are among the so-called “middle six” on the United Nations Security Council whose votes are being sought by pro- and anti-war factions, though Pakistan has indicated that it is likely to back the United States. Bulgaria has been a strong supporter of the U.S. and British position that war may be required to disarm Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Nine votes are needed in the 15-member Security Council to approve any resolution.

The leaked memo was dated five days before Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s dramatic presentation to the U.N. General Assembly at which he played NSA intercepts of Iraqi officers and showed satellite photos of efforts to hide banned weapons. The memo says the eavesdropping push “will probably peak” after Powell’s speech.

A critical speech by the chief U.N. weapons inspector, Hans Blix, is expected Friday, with a Security Council vote possible next week.

Intelligence historians say U.S. eavesdropping at the United Nations is routine. The NSA’s predecessors listened in on foreign delegations to the United Nations’ founding conference in San Francisco in 1945 and pushed for its permanent location in New York to make listening in more convenient, historians say.

“One would have to have the innocence of an unborn child to believe that espionage doesn’t go on every day at the United Nations,” said Loch K. Johnson, an authority on intelligence at the University of Georgia. “From a purist point of view, it’s unfortunate in a way, because after all, we’re the host nation for the United Nations. But the reality is, Europeans and everyone else engages in espionage in New York City, much of it focused on the United Nations.”

What is a surprise, experts say, is the apparent leak, which political analysts speculated may have come from someone at the British eavesdropping agency who opposes the push for war. A Senate intelligence committee staff member said the panel would investigate the leak, which would violate federal law designed to protect sensitive intelligence methods.

A former U.S. ambassador with experience in U.N. affairs called the memo’s disclosure “shocking.”

In a climate of international opposition and skepticism to the war, he said, the perception that the United States is subverting U.N. deliberations through espionage could hurt already shaky public opinion abroad.

“Diplomatically, it may stiffen opposition to the United States,” he said. “It’s not a helpful development.”

A Pakistani official said yesterday that the revelation of the NSA’s targeting of his country is disappointing, especially after the close Pakistani-U.S. cooperation in the capture Saturday of a key al-Qaida leader, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

“One realizes that high politics is something that Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts don’t engage in,” the official said. “But for Pakistan, given the level of intelligence sharing with the United States that’s going on right now, it means they don’t trust what we say behind closed doors. … It is overkill. It won’t be appreciated.”

The targeted U.N. delegations had little to say yesterday about the memo. Maria Aliaga, the spokeswoman for Chile’s delegation, said her country asked the British foreign minister to investigate the memo’s authenticity. How Chile will react “depends on the answer,” she said.

The Observer’s headline called the NSA eavesdropping “U.S. dirty tricks to win vote on Iraq war,” and initial reports from France to Australia picked up similar accusatory language.

U.S. officials declined to comment on the memo. “As a matter of long-standing policy, the administration never comments on anything involving any people involved in intelligence,” said Ari Fleischer, the Bush administration spokesman.

Patrick Weadon, an NSA spokesman, said: “At this point, we’re not issuing a statement.” Koza could not be reached for comment.

Martin Bright, the home affairs editor at The Observer and lead writer on the story, said yesterday that a free-lance reporter was shown the electronic message and allowed to copy its contents. The Observer’s reporters spent two weeks consulting intelligence experts before feeling confident enough about the memo’s authenticity to publish.

“We verified it as best as we can,” he said, adding that its publication is likely to inflame “perceptions of American bully-boy tactics.”

James Bamford, author of two books on the NSA, said the memo sounds authentic, particularly in its use of such NSA lingo as “surge” for a boost in eavesdropping coverage and “product lines” for areas of NSA specialization.

“Whether this memo is real or not, there’s probably a memo very much like this one,” Bamford said. “This is what NSA’s there for, basically.”

If the memo is authentic, the leak is highly unusual, Bamford said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an actual memo get out so quickly. Leaks come out every so often, but they’re usually verbal.”

Matthew M. Aid, an intelligence historian writing a book on the NSA, said he recognized the memo’s purported author, Koza, as the name of a “senior operational manager” at the NSA.

“This guy is saying, ‘Let’s be on the lookout.’ … We really want to know how these countries are thinking and how they’re going to vote,” Aid said.

U.S. eavesdropping on foreign delegations to international bodies goes back virtually to the invention of electronics, including the Washington Naval Disarmament Conference in 1921 and 1922, Bamford said.

“The major powers got together to decide how to disarm Japan,” he said. “Then it was Japan. Now it’s Iraq.”

Eavesdropping on foreigners on U.S. soil – such as delegates to the United Nations – is overseen by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which meets in secret in a high-security room at Justice Department headquarters in Washington.

It is a delicate business for the NSA, which is not permitted to deliberately target U.S. citizens for eavesdropping and must delete names of Americans that turn up by chance in foreign phone calls.

For operations on U.S. soil, the NSA works closely with the FBI, whose agents usually place room bugs and target phone numbers as directed by NSA intelligence officers.

More than 30 times in the last seven months, Bush has used variations on a theme to describe the U.S. as vulnerable. For example, speaking to a conference of religious broadcasters in Nashville on Feb. 10, he said that before 9/11, “we thought oceans would protect us forever.”

The same day, at an informal press conference, Bush said: “The world changed on Sept. 11…. In our country, it used to be that oceans could protect us — at least we thought so.” Meeting with small-business owners in Georgia on Feb. 20, he invoked the oceans again.

But since Pearl Harbor, the oceans have not served as a buffer. And the intercontinental ballistic missiles of the Soviet Union kept the U.S. in a bull’s-eye for 40 years, notwithstanding our vaunted seas.

Why does Bush insist on such rhetoric? “This notion of unprecedented vulnerability is absolutely crucial to the Bush team’s anti-constitutional program,” says Mark Crispin Miller, author of “The Bush Dyslexicon.” “What that statement really means is, ‘We were safe, now we’re in danger, and the danger is so severe that you must give me all possible power. What the oceans once did, now only I can do.’ “

In another example, Bush called Iraq a “mounting threat” in his State of the Union speech. In Georgia, he called it a “growing danger.” On Wednesday, he called it a “direct and growing threat.” How can Iraq be a “mounting” or “growing” threat when British and American planes have intensified their bombing raids on Iraqi military facilities, when U.N. inspectors are now going anywhere they want anytime they want, and when U.S. spy satellites can survey every inch of Iraqi territory?

One final example: Twice in his State of the Union speech and again Wednesday, Bush used the words, “if war is forced upon us.” No one is forcing war on the U.S. or on the administration. Quite the contrary: Bush has been forcing the war issue for months now. For him to claim otherwise is to shirk responsibility for the grave consequences his war may have.