-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! ARTICLE 1 Nat'l Guard Teams Found Unprepared Ed.: These anti-terrorism teams are probably more important than all the Star Wars gadgets combined. I sincerely hope the new administration will use our tax money better than the last one. A recent AP report. By MATT KELLEY WASHINGTON (AP) - After three years and $143 million, the Army National Guard has no anti-terrorism teams ready to respond to nuclear, chemical, or biological attacks because of defective safety equipment and poor training, an internal Pentagon review found. The Pentagon inspector general report said preparedness is so bad that Guard members at one point were given mobile labs with air filters installed backward and gas masks with incompatible parts. ``The (team) commanders and personnel lack confidence in the unknown, untested and unsubstantiated reliability of the equipment that they were issued,'' investigators said. Pentagon officials are ``moving as fast as we can'' to fix the problems, said Charles L. Cragin, who oversees the National Guard. ``All I can say is, everyone is working with great perseverance to resolve all the issues that the inspector general has identified,'' said Cragin, the acting assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs. Pentagon planners authorized 10 teams in 1998 with a goal that they be ready for duty in 2000. But the National Guard so badly bungled preparations that none met last year's deadline, the report said. An additional 22 teams authorized by Congress in 1999 and 2000 are in various stages of formation. After investigators presented their preliminary findings last fall, the Pentagon transferred management of the teams and launched an official review. Many of the problems arose because officials tried to get the teams ready very quickly, Cragin said. The National Guard units, each with 22 full-time members, are supposed to help local authorities respond to a terrorist attack by identifying what nuclear, chemical or biological agents were used. But Pentagon investigators concluded that defective safety equipment could put team members at risk of succumbing to the very weapons they were meant to identify. Investigators found that air filters had been installed backward in the teams' mobile laboratories and team members were given gas masks with parts that were not designed to work together. One team commander, referring to the gas masks, told investigators, ``It probably would work. I'm just not willing to bet my life on it.'' Cragin said that problem has been fixed. Plans originally called for the teams to be stationed near Air National Guard bases so they could be flown to the site of a terrorist attack. A second draft of those plans, however, called for team members to drive their personal cars to attack scenes, which could be hundreds of miles away. The guidelines have not been completed. Coinciding with the recent release of the Pentagon report, a congressional commission recommended focusing the National Guard on protecting U.S. territory from weapons of mass destruction. President Bush last week said he would like to see the Guard and Reserve ``more involved in homeland security.'' Frank Hoffman, a researcher for the U.S. Commission on National Security, said the problems with the National Guard response teams show the Pentagon is not paying enough attention to terrorist threats. "Everyone knows we're not prepared,'' said Hoffman, an officer in the Marine Corps reserves. Cragin said all safety problems identified by the inspector general will be fixed before he recommends that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld certify the teams ready for duty. Cragin said he did not know when he that would be. ARTICLE 2 Bush concerned over Chinese aid to Iraq Ed.: Justified concerns by our new President. But how do you deal with China when 90% of our goods are made there? A recent Reuters message. US President George W. Bush said on Thursday he was worried China had helped Baghdad enhance its air defense systems, risking the lives of US aircrews patrolling a "no-fly" zone over Iraq. Protecting pilots was the reason given for US-British strikes on air defense installations near Baghdad on Feb. 16. Bush said Washington was asking Beijing for an explanation of an issue that has clouded relations with the communist giant in his first month in office. "We're concerned about the Chinese presence in Iraq and ... my administration is sending the appropriate response to the Chinese," Bush told a news conference. "It's troubling that they be involved in helping Iraq develop a system that will endanger our pilots," he said. "It has risen to the level where we are going to send a message to the Chinese." His words were among the sharpest against China by Washington since relations recovered from a low hit in May 1999, when US jets on a NATO mission bombed China's embassy in Belgrade. Washington said it was a mistake. The US first went public about its concerns about the Chinese workers after last week's bombing. Beijing has denied the allegations, first carried in US newspapers this week. A foreign ministry spokesman said Washington was trying to distract attention from the strikes against Iraq. ARTICLE 3 US crews Involved in Colombian Battle Ed.: A dangerous precedent that reminds you of the beginnings of Vietnam. America seems to resort to outsourcing its nice little drug war in Columbia to ex military run organizations such as DynCorp and MPRI. Once again, we should be asking Washington to clarify strategy and intent, especially since they maintain that there isn’t a war. Report excerpts from The Scotsman. By Jeremy McDermott - MedellÃn Columbia US PERSONNEL have become involved in fighting in Colombia’s 37-year civil war for the first time, rescuing the crew of a helicopter brought down by left-wing guerrillas… The US is funding the world’s largest aerial eradication programme in an attempt to destroy drug crops in Colombia. In an engagement at the weekend, guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) fired on a crop dusting aircraft and supporting helicopters. The pilot of a US-supplied Huey helicopter was hit in the barrage of small arms fire, but managed to land his stricken craft. Two other helicopter gun ships circled the grounded helicopter, firing on the guerrillas, while the crew of a third helicopter rescued the crew. The pilots of some of the choppers in the rescue were Americans contracted by the US state department, a US Embassy source said…. "We fought for seven or eight minutes - one of my crewmen had a grenade launcher and I had a pistol - until the SAR [search and rescue helicopter] came in behind us, landed and picked us up in the middle of a very hot firefight." The rescue helicopter carried four US citizens and two Colombians, all armed with M-16s. Most of the SAR teams in Colombia are former members of the US special forces, the US source said. Last year, when the $1.3 billion (£900 million) aid package to Colombia was approved by Congress, several rules were imposed. One was that no more than 500 US military personnel could be stationed in Colombia at any time. Another was that they were not to become directly involved in fighting. "The department of defence will not step over the line that divides counter-narcotics from counter-insurgency," Maria Salazar, the deputy assistant secretary of defence for drug enforcement policy, told a US congressional subcommittee. However, private US companies, paid by the state department and staffed by former US special forces and pilots, face no such restrictions. US military personnel in Colombia conduct a variety of training and monitoring roles. Three US-trained and equipped anti-narcotics battalions have been created, while US navy specialists train Colombian marines, who patrol the rivers that are the only means of transporting much of the nation. Five radar and listening stations are manned by US personnel, and others are liaison officers at the Colombian Joint Intelligence Centre (JIC), which the US helped set up. According to the letter of the law, the rules regarding US involvement in the civil conflict have not been broken, as serving military personnel have not been caught in active combat roles. However, by providing intelligence on guerrilla movements and actions, the US is already taking an active role in the counter-insurgency war. In March 1999 the US government issued new guidelines that allow sharing of intelligence about guerrilla activity in Colombia’s southern drug-producing region, even if the information is not directly related to the fight against narcotics. The activities of private companies in the pay of the US are not covered under the rules imposed on military personnel. "This is what we call outsourcing a war," said one congressional aide in Washington, who asked not to be named. The company involved in last weekend’s engagement with guerrillas is called DynCorp. It has been contracted since 1997 by the US state department to provide pilots, trainers and maintenance workers for the aerial eradication programme. What had not been known was that they piloted helicopter gun ships that are used in an offensive capability when crop dusting aircraft came under fire. Three DynCorp pilots have been killed in operations, but one pilot said that at $90,000 a year tax free, the rewards were as high as the risks. Another company, hired by the US defence department on a $6 million a year contract, is Military Professional Resources Inc (MPRI), a Virginia-based military-consultant company run by retired US generals. Its 14-man team, holed up in an up-market hotel in Bogotá, refuses to speak to The Scotsman. Brian Sheridan, the senior Pentagon official who oversees the work of MPRI, said in congressional testimony in March last year that the firm’s role in Colombia was not sinister, just "a manpower issue", insisting the US southern command did not have the men to spare to give strategic and logistic advice to the Colombian army. "It’s very handy to have an outfit not part of the US armed forces, obviously," said the former US ambassador to Colombia, Myles Frechette. "If somebody gets killed or whatever, you can say it’s not a member of the armed forces." Despite massive military aid to Colombia, the US has insisted it is not getting itself into another Vietnam. But an MPRI spokesman, Ed Soyster, a retired US army lieutenant general and former director of the defence department’s defence intelligence agency, compared the need for secrecy in Colombia with the need for secrecy in Vietnam. "When I was in Vietnam, I wouldn’t want to tell you about my operation," he said. "If the enemy knows about it, he can counter it." Human rights groups say the use of private contractors in Colombia is a ploy to ensure actions are carried out that US troops under congressional restrictions cannot perform. They say "deniability" is the name of the game… *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. 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