Gentlemen: I have been receiving some emails about the arrest and deportation of Germar Rudolf, the revisionist publisher. As I know him well, I have some comments to make on the subject. Rudolf, or Scheerer (or whatever name he was using) came to the United States following his sentencing, by a German court, to 15 months in prison for publishing what they call "hate crimes." (He did a scientific study of the purported gas chamber at Auschwitz and found no residual traces of cyanide gas)

He then went to England where he set up a revisionist and anti-Jewish press and, when the Germans demanded his extradition to Germany to complete his sentence, fled to the United States and later, Mexico.

His appeals for asylum in the United States were rejected by the Immigration court as being without merit. The court stated that whether or not the German government practiced American-style free speech, the German law had been broken by Rudolf and his allegations that he would be subject to torture upon his return were groundless.

Had Rudolf simply come to America and persued a different route that precluded his setting up and extensively publicizing yet another anti-Jewish publishing  house, he doubtlessly would still be here.

He need not have abandoned his self-proclaimed mission but certainly could have found others with American citizenship to run matters for him.

I personally warned him, repeatedly, that if he did not stop advertising his books and writings so openly, he would certainly be recharged in Germany and that country would certainly demand his extradition from the United States.

This is exactly what happened and his blind reliance on the fact that he married and fathered a child was ill-advised. Permitting someone to remain in the United States if they have an American spouse is decided only on a case-by-case basis and is not automatic in application, something Rudolf could easily have ascertained (as I did) by making a telephone call to competent authority.

Now, Rudolf has been deported and will face not only his original sentence but will be tried additionally on charges that he, as a German citizen, has promulgated further "hate crimes."

One may certainly disagree with the German interpretation of political dissent but it remains a fact that as a German citizen, Rudolf was answerable to German laws and whether or not he could have published such things in America without prosecution is a moot point.

The real tragedy here is not Rudolf's languishing in a German jail for at least five years but in the disaster he caused in the life of his wife, her family and his infant child.

Germar was utterly obsessed with the first person singular and he never subordinated the messenger to whatever message he had to offer .

Pride certainly goeth before a fall and a haughty spirit before destruction.

Oscar Mertens, Bangor, ME

Historian Charged With Denying Holocaust: Faces 20 years in prison

November 17, 2005:
AP

VIENNA, Austria - British historian David Irving was arrested last week in southern Austria on a warrant accusing him of denying the Holocaust, the Interior Ministry said Thursday. Irving was arrested Nov. 11 in Styria province, said police Maj. Rudolf Golia, an Interior Ministry spokesman. He was transferred to a prison in Graz.

Irving was detained on a warrant issued in 1989 under Austrian laws that make Holocaust denial a crime, Golia said. The accusation stemmed from speeches Irving delivered that year in Vienna and in the southern town of Leoben.

Irving in the past has faced allegations of spreading anti-Semitic and racist ideas. He is the author of nearly 30 books, including "Hitler's War," which challenges the extent of the Holocaust.

He remained in custody Thursday, the Austria Press Agency said. Calls to the Graz court went unanswered.

If formally charged, tried and convicted on the charge, Irving could face up to 20 years in prison, said Otto Schneider of the public prosecutor's office.

But he said it was unclear whether there were sufficient legal grounds to continue holding Irving on such a charge so many years after the alleged offense was committed. A decision was expected by the end of next week on how to proceed, Schneider said.

Comment: An update on this by AFP indicates that Austrian authorities are now preparing to proceed legally against Irving, with the Austrian prosecutors asking for the maximum 20 year sentence if convicted by an Austrian court. Bailment is not considered an option because Irving, who is now in bankruptcy in England, is considered a flight risk.

US detains 83,000 foreigners in war on terror

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 (Xinhuanet) -- The United States has, at various times, detained more than 83,000 foreigners since the war on terror started in 2001, US media reported Wednesday.

Among them, some 82,400 have been jailed by the US military alone in Afghanistan and Iraq, exceeding the capacity of the Giants Stadium, the second largest football stadium in the United States which can hold 80,242.

An additional 700 detainees were sent to the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where some 500 remain now.

The majority of the detainees were freed shortly after initial questioning and presently some 14,500 remain in US custody, mostly in Iraq.

The massive detention of foreigners started in the fall of 2001 when the first CIA paramilitary officers touched down in Afghanistan and set up more than 20 facilities.

As of March, 108 detainees were known to have died in US custody and at least 26 deaths have been investigated as criminal homicides.

US Senate said last week that over 400 criminal investigations of abuses in these prisons have been conducted and 95 US military personnel have been charged and 75 have been convicted.

The detentions and abuses of foreigners have been widely criticized in the country and abroad.

However, the Bush administration keeps defending the practice of holding detainees, saying that it is a critical tool to stop the insurgency in Iraq, maintain stability in Afghanistan and ultimately, defend

The Plame plot thickens…

November 18, 2005
by Justin Raimondo

In the wake of the Scooter Libby indictment, and the collapse of support for the war – even in the Republican congressional caucus – the bad guys are desperately trying to make a comeback, and what a pathetic sight it is.

First off, we have Scooter Libby's lawyer now saying the revelation that Bob Woodward, the famous Washington Post reporter – and favored administration stenographer – was the first reporter to hear about Valerie Plame-Wilson's CIA affiliation somehow exonerates his client:

"William Jeffress Jr., one of Libby's lawyers, told the Post that Woodward's testimony raises questions about his client's indictment. 'Will Mr. Fitzgerald now say he was wrong to say on TV that Scooter Libby was the first official to give this information to a reporter?' Jeffress said.

"Added former Justice Department official Victoria Toensing of Fitzgerald: 'He has been investigating a very simple factual scenario and he has missed this crucial fact. It makes you cry out for asking, Well what else did he not know, what else did he not do?'"

Jeffress is full of it: Fitzgerald said no such thing, on TV or off. What he did say was that Libby "was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson." So Fitzgerald has nothing to apologize for – as if he, unlike Libby's cheesy legal team, would ever get into a down-and-dirty media flame-war. Dream on, Jeffress…

Aside from that, however, the Woodward revelation in no way addresses the charges against the vice president's chief of staff: if anything, they confirm the pattern of deception of which Libby's lies were a part. For if we now have a "senior administration official" telling a journalist – Woodward – about Plame, then this merely validates Fitzgerald's contention that the flow of information on Plame ran in a certain direction: from the inner sanctum inhabited by high government officials outward to the media. Fitzgerald's case against Libby still stands – as does the special prosecutor's most telling remark during his press conference, which today leaps out at us: "It's not over."

Indeed it isn't…

Toensing, too, has it all wrong: Fitzgerald has not been investigating "a very simple factual scenario" – as the Woodward revelation makes all too plain. Although I'm tempted – for the sheer dramatic impact – to conjure "a conspiracy so vast," I don't want to jump too far ahead of Fitzgerald. At this point, however, I think events are confirming what John Dean had to say about the prospect of yet more indictments to come: he said he would be "shocked" if they failed to materialize. These latest developments seem to presage them.

Why, after all, did this mysterious "senior administration official" come forward and alert Fitzgerald to this earlier conversation? In all likelihood, Official X didn't just come clean out of some notion of civic duty, but instead came under Fitz's merciless scrutiny and was "turned" under the threat of doing time in a cell right next to Scooter's.

Just as I predicted, this show trial is truly a show, with more plot twists than a beach-blanket page-turner, and a cast of characters worthy of a drama that includes elements of both a potboiler and a morality play: a hero whose virtue is visible enough to include him on the list of "Sexiest Men Alive," and a villain who writes novels about bestiality and looks like the liar he apparently is.

We have a Greek chorus – the Scooter Libby Fan Club, otherwise known as the War Party, hailing the neocon equivalent of Mumia Abu Jamal. Free Scooter – And All Political Prisoners! Scooter has even established a defense fund, and I wonder if there's any truth to the rumor that their first fundraiser will be a live benefit reading by Judy Miller and Bob Woodward of their forthcoming book: Journalism as Stenography: My Life as a Shill.

Speaking of shills, the really fun part of all this – aside from anticipating more indictments for Christmas – is the spectacle of the loudest, most obnoxious laptop bombardiers flailing about in defense of the war, just as the entire process by which the country was lied into Iraq is coming under intense public scrutiny. I get a particularly big kick out of Christopher Hitchens, perhaps the loudest and most obnoxious of them all, who is now reduced to slapping together screeds of rapidly shrinking length and credibility. Writing about current events must be, for him, a very painful procedure these days, and it shows.

Take, for example, his most recent effort, a Slate piece that tries to prove – well, it isn't quite clear. He starts out by disdaining the idea that we were lied into war, and that his friend and political ally, Ahmed "Hero in Error" Chalabi, had anything to do with it. But by the second sentence he is already drifting away from the task he sets himself, and takes out after easier prey: a lone demonstrator outside Chalabi's AEI talk claiming that Bush planned 9/11. Soft targets like this are a godsend, especially if you have a huge hangover and really don't feel much like writing.

Hitchens then takes on Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, cherry-picking isolated quotes from their Nov. 12 piece – but linking to it: now that's a first! Hitchens actually links to something outside Slate, for once, and in doing so fatally undermines his argument: for by going to the Washington Post article he refers to, and actually reading it, we can see that Hitchens' point is considerably blunted. He fails to cite the crucial point made by Pincus and Milbank, which is that the "official reports" cited by administration spokesman – Silberman-Robb, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence [.pdf], etc. – never delved into the manipulation of prewar intelligence:

"The only committee investigating the matter in Congress, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has not yet done its inquiry into whether officials mischaracterized intelligence by omitting caveats and dissenting opinions. And Judge Laurence H. Silberman, chairman of Bush's commission on weapons of mass destruction, said in releasing his report on March 31, 2005: 'Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policymakers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry.'"

Shorn of its decorative curlicues and rhetorical bombast, Hitchens' argument is reduced to the current neocon talking points: we all believed it, so it wasn't a lie. To those of us in the reality-based community, however, this argument makes absolutely no sense, and that's the problem with being an ideologue: an attempt to mold reality to fit ideological preconceptions is likely to baffle, rather than convince, the ordinary person. That's why the majority of Americans now believe the Bushies lied us into war – and why, with the upcoming trial of Libby (and, possibly, his co-conspirators) making new headlines practically every day, that majority is likely to increase.

The War Party has got to find that demoralizing, and the effects are seen in Hitchens' halfhearted efforts to buck up the faithful and hold high the banner. Halfway through his polemic, he remembers to defend Chalabi:

"It was, of course, the sinuous and dastardly forces of Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress who persuaded the entire Senate to take leave of its senses in 1998. I know at least one of its two or three staffers, who actually admits to having engaged in the plan. By the same alchemy and hypnotism, the INC was able to manipulate the combined intelligence services of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, as well as the CIA, the DIA, and the NSA, who between them employ perhaps 1.4 million people, and who in the American case dispose of an intelligence budget of $44 billion, with only a handful of Iraqi defectors and an operating budget of $320,000 per month. That's what you have to believe."

But if Chalabi is a "genius," as Hitchens has alleged – so formidably brilliant that he single-handedly broke the Iranians' internal code (before he told them the U.S. was reading their communications) – well, then, why not? Why couldn't this Machiavelli-Einstein hybrid fool the U.S. and its allies simply by focusing his enormous brain power on the problem?

Of course, he may have had a little help in this regard – perhaps from elements within the allied governments, but principally in Washington. After all, they called themselves "the cabal." All those little aspens, connected at the root, turning in the same direction – telling the same lies, covering up the same treason, and, hopefully, sharing an entire wing of the same prison in the end.

That's what I have to believe – that is, if I'm going to have faith that there's any concept of justice left in this country. Yes, we are afflicted with creeps like Hitchens, Woodward, Miller, and all the rest of the grinning, leering, grimacing monkey-demon minions of this administration, called out by their masters to defend the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West as it comes under attack. These courtiers of the Imperial City can make a lot of noise, but their chatter dies down, you'll notice, at the approach of a giant of Fitzgerald's stature and gravitas. They fear him, and rightly so: for he is the spirit of the old America, a country where everybody didn't do it: where backstabbing, lying, and betrayal of the country's secrets were crimes that got punished. Where the words "and justice for all" didn't exempt high government officials and their "journalist" marionettes.

The War Party would like nothing better than to forget that any of this is happening – the massive uncovering of a conspiracy to lie us into war, an unfolding story that makes daily headlines. What's pathetic – and rather fun – to watch is their fruitless attempts to divert us away from this edifying spectacle, complete with the outright denial of the more deluded neocons, such as Hitchens. What do you mean, avers Hitchens, that we didn't find those elusive "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq? But "of course" we did, he says:

"Hans Blix, the see-no-evil expert who had managed to certify Iraq and North Korea as kosher in his time, has said in print that he fully expected a coalition intervention to uncover hidden weaponry. And this, of course, it actually has done. We did not know and could not know, until after the invasion, of Saddam's plan to buy long-range missiles off the shelf from Pyongyang, or of the centrifuge components buried on the property of his chief scientist, Dr. Mahdi Obeidi."

Mahdi Obeidi is an Iraqi nuclear scientist who once presided over Iraq's gas centrifuge program for uranium enrichment. Detained by U.S. forces in 2003, he led American investigators to a rose garden in back of his house where they dug up "200 blueprints of gas centrifuge components, 180 documents describing their use, and samples of a few sensitive parts" – buried, in 1991, by order of Qusay Hussein. In spite of the best efforts to extract evidence from Obeidi to buttress the administration's case for war, however, he told his interrogators that Saddam ditched his nuclear program in 1991, precisely as the Iraqis had claimed all along – and exactly what the most trenchant critics of the war, including Scott Ritter, insisted was the case. Furthermore, Obeidi also told investigators he would have known about any revival of the effort. He also disabused them of the notion that the July 2001 tube shipment intercepted by the CIA was in any way related to nuclear weapons. The gas centrifuge designed by Obeidi specified tubes with a 145 mm diameter; the intercepted tubes had a diameter of 81 mm.

Like Obeidi, Hitchens is reduced to conjuring the "latent" danger posed by Saddam. Yet the world is full of potential threats – and a foreign policy targeting them all would have to mean perpetual war. That would make few people, including within the administration, very happy, with the possible exception of Dick Cheney.

Poor Hitchens. The transition from Trotskyite to Cheneyite has really sped up a decline triggered, perhaps, by prodigious quantities of alcohol. He's become like that lone protester outside the Chalabi talk carrying a sign saying Bush was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks: the advocate of a crackpot theory that doesn't even begin to withstand the most perfunctory critique. Worse, the "evidence" he cites proves the exact opposite of what he says it does. Now that is the mark of the truly deluded, of one who's quaffed so much of the neocon Kool-Aid that he not only cannot any longer distinguish truth from fiction, but has stopped caring about the difference.

Hitchens reminds me of a friend of mine who fell into a life of drug addiction, and who, after a long absence from my life, turned up late one evening in a disreputable dive – I just happened to be passing through – and announced to me that he had found the secret of all knowledge. What, I asked, could that possibly be? "Speed," he announced, with absolute certitude, and without the slightest indication that he was joking.

I felt sorry for him, but I don't feel sorry for Hitchens. Here is someone who has managed to get by on the strength of an aptitude for sophistry and a British accent, and has been given a platform from which to harangue us on why a war of aggression is really an act of "liberation." Here is a foreigner who is willing to fight to the last American in order to make the world safe for his beloved Kurds and to satisfy his ideological obsessions. He deserves the pathetic fate that's befallen him.

Hitchens really hasn't been the same since having his head handed to him by George Galloway, and there is a lesson in his public degeneration into a babbling idiot. What Harry Elmer Barnes called "court intellectuals" are always of the second- and third-rate sort.

The War Party is imploding, and not quietly, either. So, as I put it many months ago, when Fitzgerald was first appointed special prosecutor in the Plame case:

"Get out the dip and chips, pull up a chair – and let the show trial begin!"

Israel's latest black op - the most transparent yet?

Mathaba Net | November 15 2005

The reader of the mainstream media is confronted today by an awkward dilemma. Was the bombing of the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman, Jordan, on the evening of November 9, 2005, the work of a suicide bomber, as most reports maintain - or were the explosives actually placed in the ceiling above, as was reported by two sources, Reuters and Mary Fitzgerald, a former reporter for the Belfast Telegraph?

It is perhaps because the evidence so obviously favours the ceiling theory - a theory which is incompatible with the theory that the explosives had been concealed on the person of a suicide bomber - that for the very first time 'al-Qaeda' (to be more precise, a website claiming to represent al-Qaeda) has chimed in almost immediately with confirmation that suicide bombers had been responsible. Yes, al-Qaeda explains obligingly, the attacks on the three Amman hotels (including the Radisson) were carried out by Iraqi suicide bombers, including a husband-and-wife team. (SOURCE)

What seems to be happening here is that, in the face of mounting scepticism about the official explanations for recent bombings like those in London and Bali, more effort is being made to reinforce unconvincing official conclusions by means of revelations from the hitherto secretive al-Qaeda. Indeed, this increasingly garrulous organization has already released three communiques on the bombing in as many days - which makes three times as many as it released in relation to 9-11. Of course, there is nothing to information emanating from 'al-Qaeda' other than websites that could be being run by conceivably anyone. (That such websites are allowed to operate with impunity is clear evidence that they are not what they purport to be. In any case, who has actually seen the webpages in question? I haven't seen anywhere a single link to the website on which al-Qaeda supposedly issued its communiques.) But the alleged al-Qaeda websites are now in the convenient position of being able to confirm everything that the authorities have been saying. This would seem to be a godsend not for 'al-Qaeda' but for the authorities 'investigating' the atrocities, authorities who are no doubt under great pressure at the moment to reach politically acceptable conclusions.

Al-Qaeda's sudden co-operativeness in helping the investigation speed towards a predetermined conclusion is as deeply suspicious as its solicitude for the Israeli Jews staying at the Radisson, who were escorted to safety several hours before the attacks.* (Interestingly, the only Israeli citizen who remained behind was an Israeli Arab.) Who can seriously believe that attacks on three hotels - of which two (including the Radisson) are owned by Palestinians - in an Arab country that killed 'two high-ranking Palestinian security officials, a senior Palestinian banker and the commercial attache at the Palestinian embassy in Cairo' while Israeli Jews were allowed to escape could be anything other than an Israeli terror operation? Especially when the Israeli authorities who evacuated the Israeli hotel guests did not share their concerns with Jordanian or hotel security?

The fact that few (if any) Israeli Jews have been killed in any of the major terror incidents which have occurred in recent years - despite the fact that the alleged perpetrators are anti-Zionist - is indirect evidence that the bombings are actually being carried out by an Israeli agency, be it the Mossad or some other top secret entity charged with black ops of this nature. Similarly, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the 'al-Qaeda' websites currently being cited in news reports are anything other than undertakings of Israeli intelligence intended to help allay suspicions that the bombings were actually sophisticated operations involving explosives planted inside the hotels. What Israel wants us all to believe, of course, is that the bombings were carried out by suicidal Muslims because Israel wants us to believe that suicidal Muslims constitute the fundamental threat to western civilization at this time. Every major bombing which has taken place since September 11, 2001, has, with the exception of the Madrid train bombings of March 11, 2004, been attributed to Muslim suicide bombers.

Unfortunately, many of us have fallen for the hoax, proving what the Israelis probably suspect, which is that most of us are just stupid goyim. Within the space of a few short years millions of seemingly rational people have suddenly come to think of suicide bombing not as a strange and unusual aberration, but something which dozens of people scattered all over the world are willing to engage in at virtually the drop of a hat - provided, of course, that they are Muslims. In other words, thanks to the war on terror millions of minds have been 'zionised.'

To this still unzionised mind, the reasons behind Israel's faked suicide bombings is all too obvious. The Israeli-propelled war on terror aspires to foster identification with the sufferings of the Israeli people by replicating suicide bombing (which was previously an extremely localized phenomenon) at the global level. The more people all over the world who live in constant fear of suicide bombers, the more public opinion is likely to sympathise with the Israelis against the Palestinians.

This time, however, the Israelis have clearly overplayed their hand. Although the attacks were obviously staged in order to kill a number of Palestinian leaders, the Israelis could not resist masking the multiple assassination as suicide bombings. Without the suicide bomber scenario, it would be immediately apparent to the slowest imbecile that Israel had been behind the bombings. The Israelis decided that they could best conceal their hand in the assassinations by grafting a suicide bombing scenario on top. This way, it looks as though the Palestinian deaths were the accidental results of terror attacks which, we are supposed to assume, would have occurred whether or not the men had been present.

But, thanks to the revelations about the evacuated Israeli hotel guests and the early information that the bomb had been placed in the ceiling, the Israelis have been exposed in record time. You really don't need to be a seasoned investigator of false flag operations like Ralph Schoenman to figure this one out - Amman is just another Israeli black op. It's time we goyim got it.

* A possibility that deserves consideration is that this is a cover story, and that the Israelis who were evacuated from the Hotel a few hours before the bombing were the very intelligence operatives who had organized the bombings.

UPDATE: OPERATION CLEVER TWIST: Jordanian intelligence has recently been identified as extremely close to the CIA:

Jordan's General Intelligence Directorate has become the CIA's most important and effective counter-terrorism ally in the Middle East, a standing once held by the Mossad, the Los Angeles Times reported in its Friday editions.

The newspaper reported that Jordan and the U.S. have cooperated in the interrogation of suspected terrorists, the methods of which have been subject to widespread media criticism due to the alleged use of torture. ...

The Times also reported that in addition to the CIA's funding of a significant portion of the Hashemite Kingdom's intelligence budget, the agency runs technologically-trained intelligence officers in GID headquarters in Amman. ...

Jordan receives annual military and economic aid from the U.S. totalling [450 million USD]. Analysts believe the sum does not include the U.S. financing of Jordanian intelligence. (SOURCE)

It is perhaps on account of the GID's 'sophistication' and its closeness to the CIA that we now have an all-time first - a 'confession' from one of the two would-be Radisson hotel suicide bombers. Conveniently, 'the 35-year-old woman, who police identified as Sajida al-Rishawi' says she tried to detonate her suicide belt, but it failed. (SOURCE)

This 'confession' is a clever twist, as the woman's testimony provides the only evidence that suicide bombers were involved in the attacks. Unfortunately, the woman was not apprehended at the Radisson Hotel, so it's entirely possible that she was never even there and her confession is just a cock-and-bull story (if not the product of torture). It is certainly a mystery how Jordanian intelligence tracked her down so quickly. She says she left the Hotel with the other guests when they ran out (which is quick thinking on her part - it's also rather convenient that she wasn't herself injured when her 'husband' detonated his suicide belt), and returned to her home, which is, according to Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister Marwan Muasher, 'a furnished apartment in the middle-class Tlaa' Ali suburb in western Amman.' Despite the fact that they had nothing to go on other than their inability to find the body of a female suicide bomber at the crime scene (and they were only looking for a female suicide bomber because al-Qaeda's communiques had told them that there was supposed to have been one), Jordanian intelligence was somehow able to locate her quickly enough. It must have been easy for police to identify her when they found her on Sunday morning, though - she was allegedly still wearing her suicide belt! (SOURCE) Some people have a penchant for incriminating themselves, don't they?

Additionally unsatisfying is the woman's claim that her husband detonated his suicide belt from in one corner of the ballroom. The damage to the ballroom shown in numerous photographs is inconsistent with the claim that explosives were detonated in a corner of the room. The damage seen in the photographs is, in fact, consistent with the original police explanation of the bombing, which is that the explosives had been placed in the ceiling. I therefore remain unconvinced that Sajida Mubarak Atrous Rishawi (if that's her real name - she could be a GID operative) was ever present at the Radisson Hotel, let alone that she tried to detonate explosives from a corner of the Hotel ballroom.

Nor should we forget that al-Qaeda seems to be unusually forthcoming when it comes to helping Jordanian authorities pin this atrocity on them. If al-Qaeda's communiques hadn't come so soon after the attack, the woman's existence would never have been suspected and Jordanian authorities would never have even started looking for her. Once again, we find ourselves wondering why, with every alleged suicide attack, al-Qaeda seems to be supplying the authorities investigating the attacks with more and more useful information. We also find ourselves wondering if the real story behind the 'confession' is not the extraordinarily close relationship said to exist between the GID and the CIA.

The images of the aftermath of the bombings at the Hyatt and the Radisson completely contradict the official version of events.

The photo above shows damage at the Radisson hotel. The bomb has clearly blown the ceiling down as if it was placed in the roof of the building. This image does not support the notion of a bomb strapped to a suicide bombers chest.

Similarly, this image taken from the Hyatt bombing again shows the roof blown and the debris hanging down. Furthermore, there is no blood at the scene. This would obviously be evident if this was the work of a suicide bomber.

Afghan drug problem solved, praise the laudanum

November 16, 2005
By Ramtanu Maitra
Asia Times

Reports indicate the West is now working toward a "solution" to the opium explosion in Afghanistan, namely the licensing of legal opium production for medical purposes.

The formal proposal was floated in September by the Senlis Council, a French think tank on narcotics. The council's study was conducted in partnership with Kabul University as well as academic centers in Europe and North America, such as Ghent University, Lisbon University and the University of Toronto.

The proposal comes in the wake of a general admission by Washington, its adjunct in Kabul and the United Nations that eradication of drugs in Afghanistan cannot be accomplished by the warriors against terror.

Touching a sensitive chord, however, Afghanistan's Counter-Narcotics Minister Habibullah Qaderi questioned the timing of the Senlis report. "We don't want to confuse the Afghan people, because while the government on the one hand wants to control and stop cultivation, we are talking about licensing."

What Qaderi did not say was that the West, being unable to eradicate opium, is moving to repackage Afghanistan's uncontrollable scourge as a legalized and regulated industry, to be included along with elections among the "democratic successes" in that benighted land.

Scale of the problem

The massive annual growth in opium production coincided with the "liberation" of Afghanistan from the Taliban by US occupation forces in the winter of 2001. Having registered unprecedented growth in 2002, 2003 and 2004, the 2005 harvest showed a slight reduction. But if the numbers made public are correct, the reduction will not affect the drug users of Europe significantly.

In its Afghanistan Opium Survey 2005, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported that the area of opium cultivation in the country decreased by 21% from a record high of 131,000 hectares to 104,000 hectares. In other words, one out of five opium fields cultivated in 2004 was not replanted in 2005. This decline in cultivation was attributed to several factors: the farmers' choice to refrain from poppy cultivation, the government's eradication program, the ban on opium and law enforcement activities.

But according to UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa, despite the overall decline in cultivation, Afghanistan remains far and away the world's largest supplier of opium (87%). According to the UN survey, opium production in Afghanistan in 2005, by comparison with the production figures in 2004, dropped by only 2.4%. Favorable weather conditions resulted in a 22% higher yield. Cultivation also increased in some provinces. In 2005, the drug economy accounted for 52% of the country's gross domestic product.

If you can't beat it ...

At least a year before the Senlis Council stuck its neck out on behalf of the United States and NATO, hand-wringing in Washington over the West's inability to curb opium production in Afghanistan had begun in earnest.

After the record production of more than 4,200 tons of opium in 2004, not only officials serving the Bush administration - the Pentagon, in particular - but also behind-the-scenes policy directors lodged in various think tanks, began putting forward arguments against taking on the drug warlords.

For example, Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute (a non-profit public policy research foundation headquartered in Washington) and a former special assistant to Ronald Reagan, writing soon after the presidential elections in Afghanistan last fall, acknowledged that "controlling opium trafficking has not been the top US priority in Afghanistan".

Therefore, the opium explosion in Afghanistan during the US occupation should not be considered a US failure. Although the Defense Department is careful to appear to be cooperative, Bandow points out, US forces have largely ignored drug trafficking unrelated to enemy action. "Attempting to suppress the drug trade with more than rhetoric will make it even harder to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda," he said. "Yet Washington's most important goal today remains destroying transnational anti-US terrorist networks, led by al-Qaeda."

Soon after the Senlis Council came out with its study, a view similar to Bandow's was expressed by another Cato Institute academic and vice president for defense and foreign policy studies, Ted Galen Carpenter. In a recent article he argues that the US military must not become an enemy of Afghan farmers whose livelihood depends on growing opium poppy.

"If zealous American drug warriors alienate hundreds of thousands of Afghan farmers, the Karzai government's hold on power, which is none too secure now, could become even more precarious," he wrote. "Washington would then face the unpalatable choice of letting radical Islamists regain power or sending more US troops to suppress the insurgency."

Throwing an economic spin into his argument, Carpenter pointed out that for many Afghans involvement in the cultivation of opium poppy crops and other aspects of drug commerce is "the difference between modest prosperity and destitution. They will not look kindly on efforts to destroy their livelihood."

According to Carpenter, US efforts to eradicate Afghanistan's opium crop actually amount to beating plowshares into swords: such efforts drive Afghan farmers, who have so far helped in the "war against terror", straight into the arms and camps of anti-American terrorists.

Naivety or avoidance?

If Bandow and Carpenter could be considered apologists for burgeoning opium production in Afghanistan under the US and NATO's close watch, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's statements prior to her October 2005 visit to Kabul demonstrated that, indeed, Washington has nary a thought about the opium explosion in Afghanistan.

In her news conference en route to Kabul from Kyrgyzstan, Rice heaped praise on the US "success" in Afghanistan and congratulated the Karzai administration for bringing about "remarkable progress".

On the narcotics issue, however, all she could come up with was the following: "I'm going to have a meeting with the members of the cabinet who are responsible for the narcotics problem and to discuss with them how we might accelerate those efforts. We and the British - the British, of course, have the lead on this - [want] to help the Afghans to root out narcotics. If they can do that then I think they really have made a major step forward in stabilization - they will have made a major step forward in stabilization."

Several hard realities raise questions about Rice's words. To begin with, Rice was fully aware that the US Department of Defense had made it clear that they would not antagonize the warlords and thus forsake their friendly alliance by going after opium cultivation.

Secondly, Rice is fully aware of the lack of strength of the Hamid Karzai presidency. It has been observed again and again that the writ of the US-backed Karzai does not extend beyond Kabul. It is ridiculous to try to make others believe that a president, who has to depend for his personal security on a foreign country - the occupying forces, really - would be able to go on a campaign to eradicate opium, battling hundreds of powerful warlords and about 30% of all Afghan families.

Finally, opium is not domestic garbage. Unfortunately, it is valuable, indeed, almost as expensive as gold, if not more so in some countries of the West. Those who bring it into western Europe, and carry it further west, generate enough money to corrupt not only the security infrastructure but the entire political economy of Europe. To suggest that a weak president, without any real help from US and NATO forces, will be able to eradicate opium in Afghanistan is simply a cruel joke.

Moreover, while Carpenter concludes that terrorist and other anti-government forces are hand in glove with the opium growers and traffickers, and that the connection between drug trafficking and terrorism is a direct result of making drugs illegal and, therefore, extremely profitable, Rice chose to remain mum. During her talks with reporters, she did not bring up the close nexus between drugs and terrorism.

And along comes the Senlis Council

As Washington and London came to the conclusion that opium eradication in Afghanistan is neither useful nor of immediate importance, the Senlis Council conveniently trotted out its proposal and supporting study.

Prior to the feasibility study, funded by a dozen European social policy foundations, the council held a series of seminars to hone its arguments. Because the Blair government in the UK has been the loudest voice heard on eradication of opium poppy in Afghanistan, the council held one seminar, "The Opium Policy Challenge in Afghanistan: Current Responses and New Strategies," at the British House of Commons on July 20.

The seminar brought together British policymakers and senior officials responsible for UK reconstruction policies in Afghanistan, with representatives from United Kingdom-based policy centers and organizations, and academics engaged in research work on Afghanistan, according to news reports. At the seminar, Senlis Council Executive Director Emmanuel Reinert presented the "Feasibility Study on Opium Licensing in Afghanistan for the Production of Morphine and other Essential Medicines", ostensibly a ground-breaking project to consider the licensing of opium production in Afghanistan for medical uses.

In his opening remarks, Chris Mullin, a British MP who is chairman of the council, made clear Afghanistan's reconstruction has been threatened by the failure of current counter-narcotics policies and that there exists no simple solution to the drugs problem. Mullins told the audience to take a good look at the study.

In response to questions raised, Reinert explained the benefits the Afghan farmers would gain within the proposed legal and controllable framework. He also explained the importance of non-governmental organization involvement in achieving a successful and viable intervention, especially with regard to economic development, farming and health treatment.

Though Western countries have begun pushing the Senlis Council's concept as a viable proposition, it was greeted with opposition by Afghanistan. Afghanistan's Counter-Narcotics Minister Habibullah Qaderi stated plainly that the country's security system was still too weak to police the legal production of opium.

"Without an effective control mechanism, a lot of opium will still be refined into heroin for illicit markets in the West and elsewhere. We could not accept this," Qaderi said in a statement.

UNODC, careful not to antagonize the Western countries, said the proposal would offer little attraction to opium farmers because they would earn less selling their crop on the legal market than on the black market.

The fallacy

To sell the concept, Reinert points out that the plan is modeled on programs in India and Turkey, which have helped reduce illegal opium production through a strictly supervised licensing scheme backed by the US Congress. In addition, legal opium production programs are already in place in several other countries, including Australia, France and Japan. With India and Turkey these nations provide the bulk of the world's legal opium for medicine, notably morphine and codeine.

The salesman in Reinert allowed him to suppress the obvious. Neither in India nor Turkey, nor any of the other countries that produce legal opium, does opium make up 52% of the gross domestic product. None of these countries has ever produced 87% of world's opium annually. The fact of the matter is that apart from Turkey, which did have a problem concerning illegal production of opium poppy, no other country mentioned has had any opium-related problems. And none were ever under the control of drug warlords.

The fact of the matter is that the political system that has evolved in Afghanistan following the US invasion is extremely fragile, and verges on being a joke. What really has been strengthened in Afghanistan since 2001 is opium production. Afghanistan now has "pro-democracy" drug warlords who raise illegal opium by the hundreds of tons every year. But pro-democracy sentiments notwithstanding, they have so far remained illegitimate in the eyes of the world.

Now, along comes the Senlis Council to give legitimacy to what is otherwise a political embarrassment. In their study, the council recommends the government fast-track the establishment of a national authority to license opium producers and research an amnesty that would "integrate illegal actors into the opium licensing system".

UK tries to form coalition to fight in Afghanistan: British troops to target al-Qaida, Taliban and fill gap left by US withdrawal

http://www.sabawoon.com/news/miniheadlines.asp?dismode=article&artid=26398

November 15, 2005
The Guardian, UK

Britain is attempting to build a coalition to pursue counter-insurgency combat operations against al-Qaida and Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan after the withdrawal by the Bush administration of 4,000 US troops early next year.

Talks with Australia, Canada, New Zealand and several other countries are being held before a Nato meeting in Brussels on December 7. They follow the refusal of European allies, such as France and Germany, to allow their troops to become involved in counter-insurgency.

The discussions are among preparations for the deployment of 2,000 crack British troops backed by Apache attack helicopters to lawless Helmand province at the head of an expanded, British-led Nato force next spring. An additional 2,000 British troops are expected to be sent to Afghanistan next year bringing the total number to somewhere around 4,800. The British mission in the south represents a significant escalation of its overall involvement in Afghanistan. Military sources said it was potentially more hazardous - and could last longer - than Britain's postwar involvement in Iraq.

"The debate is not whether, but to what extent these troops will get into counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics," a military source said. "We are not talking war fighting. But there is potential for armed conflict in some areas. The reality is that there are warlords, drug traffickers, al-Qaida, al-Qaida wannabes and Taliban."

An officer said: "It could take longer to crack than Iraq. It could take 10 years."

Violence in Afghanistan is at its highest since the 2001 US-led invasion. Suicide bombers killed a German peacekeeper in Kabul yesterday. A British soldier died recently in a gun battle in Mazar-i-Sharif.

The source said talks were under way with other countries about contributions to Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) operations in Helmand. "Are they prepared to completely go war-fighting or do they want to do other things?

"The bits of the equation that have to be resolved are the overall size of the force package, where they will be and, depending on the Nato mood music and the realities on the ground, what their mandate will be."

Australia confirmed yesterday it was in talks about sending troops to southern Afghanistan. Fifty New Zealand SAS soldiers are understood to be serving in the south, at present under US command, after their tour of duty was extended. Canada has 1,500 troops in Afghanistan and offers to join the British-led force in the south have been received from the Netherlands, Denmark and Estonia.

Despite US pressure, France, Germany, Spain and Italy have refused to expand the mandate for their peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan to include "war on terror" combat operations. But their reluctance and the increased pressure on British forces is causing concern among MPs

Sir Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said: "Nato runs the risk of embarrassment if it cannot find sufficient troops of good quality for the mission. The government has claimed that everything will be all right on the night . . . this seems optimistic."

The Ministry of Defence said yesterday the aim of the mission "would be to help restore Afghanistan as a secure state and prevent it again becoming a haven for terrorists". In a Commons statement, Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister, said "no final decisions . . . had yet been made. But it was "sensible to begin British preparations for potential deployment".

Britain is also planning to send up to 2,000 additional troops to Kabul to bolster the Isaf peacekeeping operation, of which it will take command next spring. The deployments will raise British troops in Afghanistan to more than 4,000 compared with 8,500 in south-east Iraq.

The US will remove most of its troops in the south early next year and reduce troop levels in line with reductions in Iraq. The British troop build-up is expected to start in the new year.

Violence across Afghanistan has escalated in recent months despite US claims that democracy is taking root. Up to 1,500 people have been killed this year.

Antiwar momentum is building: let's put it to good use

November 16, 2005
by Justin Raimondo

The recent Senate vote to require regular reports from the White House detailing all the wonderful "progress" we're making over there was more reflective of a desire to cover their asses as election time approaches than it was of growing antiwar sentiment in the U.S. Congress. This, after all, is substantially the same group of fools who voted overwhelmingly to authorize the invasion of Iraq in the first place, and pretty much stood by and did nothing even as the majority of Americans turned against the war. What makes this a surprise, however, is that the competition between the two parties was limited, during the debate over the resolution, to who came up with the idea first.

Remember when almost no one dared oppose the war, at least in public, and news anchors were wearing American flags on their lapels as they breathlessly "reported" our glorious "victory"? The times, they sure are a' changin'!

The Republicans claimed authorship, but this fib was exposed when the Democrats held up the smoking gun: a transcript of their resolution hand-edited by the Republican leadership. (Gee, who knew Bill Frist dotted his i's with little hearts?)

The editing job was pretty perfunctory, and included two key points: (1) Instead of commencing 30 days after passage of the amendment, the reporting requirement would kick in 90 days later, and (2) The Democratic proposal required the president to come up with "a campaign plan with estimated dates for the phased redeployment of the United States Armed Forces from Iraq as each condition is met, with the understanding that unexpected contingencies may arise."

This last provision was simply struck from the GOP amendment, but the Democrats didn't make too big of a fuss. Sen. John Warner, co-sponsor with Frist of the Republican proposal, made some noises about how the above provision amounted to "cutting and running," but you'll notice that the word "withdrawal" was entirely missing from both amendments. We aren't withdrawing – we're "redeploying" American troops, and not necessarily back to the States, but perhaps to Syria or maybe Iran. Just one of those "unexpected contingencies," you know…

The practical effect of all this is negligible, legislative vaporware that may never get out of the product development stage. The House is unlikely to pass it, at least anytime soon, and even if a greatly watered-down version somehow makes it, the measure faces a certain presidential veto – Bush's first. He couldn't bring himself to veto a single humongous spending bill, but when it comes to his unlimited ability to make war, he'll defend that to the bitter end. This is what neoconservatism in power looks like: increasing big government at home, steadily escalating wars abroad. In short, from a libertarian perspective, we're on a fast track to Hell…

Our foreign policy of perpetual aggression and endless spending just isn't sustainable: The senators know it, too, and that's part of the reason they're delivering this mostly symbolic rebuke to Bush and the War Party. Think of a serial killer who goes on a murder spree. He can only keep it up for so long until he begins to slip and make mistakes. Exhausted by the sheer effort expended in so much mayhem, he is ready to be caught.

Speaking of getting caught, the timing of this senatorial rebellion is hardly coincidental. You have to ask yourself: what is so pressing about this matter that the Senate felt it necessary to show their defiance now? After all, we've been losing the war for well over a year, and this didn't just recently become obvious: the 2006 congressional elections, although a factor, are still far enough away so that what happens right now won't leave much of a lasting impression. The really big difference isn't anything that happened on the battlefields of Iraq, but what occurred in a Washington courtroom on Oct. 28, when a grand jury indicted I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on five charges of lying to investigators and obstructing an investigation into a conspiracy to divulge classified information.

Warner bellows that the Democrats want to "cut and run," but he and his fellow senators – not a few presidential aspirants among them – are running as fast as they can from the messy scandal about to explode like a giant paint balloon, spattering half of Washington. As everyone waits for Patrick J. Fitzgerald's other shoe to drop – perhaps on Karl Rove's neck, maybe on a few more members of the neocon coven in the vice president's office – "cutting and running" is perhaps too kind a gloss to put on it. They aren't just running away from the war they voted for and never publicly questioned until now – they're racing as fast as they can away from the core cadre of the War Party in this administration, i.e., the neoconservatives, who are now politically radioactive.

Polls show Americans not only think the Libby indictment is a big deal, they also believe that more administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, were involved. The coming election isn't that near, and that's precisely the problem for our lawmakers: the way things are going, campaign season is likely to open at the same time as Scooter Libby's trial, and that prospect is what accounts for Republican movement on this issue.

The rationale for war was discredited long ago: now, however, some of the principal rationalizers are being exposed as liars and worse. It's important to note, however, that the breaking point was reached not when the number of Americans killed reached the 2,000 mark, but when, in Washington, they began to smell the blood in the water.

As Ahmed Chalabi told Arianna Huffington when the two of them were chillin' over sushi in a chic Tribeca restaurant,

"Ultimately, we have no friendships – only interests."

"Interests" that boil down to the one and only interest in our nation's capital: the perpetual pursuit of power.

As far as I can tell, the sole U.S. senator to sincerely express the slightest intention of withdrawing a single American soldier from Iraq any time soon has been Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin. Feingold was the first to broach the idea of a timetable, and one of a minority of Senate Democrats who opposed the war when it really counted: during the 2002 vote authorizing the invasion. The rest of them, with the exception of Lincoln Chafee, of Rhode Island, an old-fashioned Republican of the more reflective sort, are reflexive warmongers. They abdicated their constitutional responsibility to check the rush to war, and are now seeking to place the blame elsewhere.

Look not to the Senate for a way out, but to the House, where a bipartisan movement to set a definite timetable for U.S. withdrawal has been percolating for months, ever since the "Homeward Bound" resolution requiring that we begin pulling ourselves out of the Iraqi quagmire, "no later than Oct. 1, 2006," was introduced in the House this summer. Co-sponsored by two Republicans – Walter B. Jones of North Carolina and Ron Paul of Texas – and two Democrats, Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii and Dennis Kucinich of Ohio – the "Homeward Bound" legislation expresses the real sentiments of the grassroots. The most recent polls show more than half the country wants to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within the next 12 months – including one in three of all Republicans surveyed.

The big antiwar demonstrations have their place: certainly the most recent march, organized by United for Peace and Justice, was very visible and effective. Now, however, it is time to mobilize all that energy around the mundane but even more vitally important task of campaigning for the passage of the "Homeward Bound" resolution. The wind is behind us: let's not lose our momentum. Now is the time to move on this issue.

It's vitally important that you pick up the phone – or, better yet, write a letter and send it via snail mail – and tell your congressional representatives to get with the program. Because the War Party never rests. They're already working on expanding the conflict to Syria – and, incredibly, to Iran.

See, they just happened to have found this laptop computer that has all the Iranian plans to build nukes conveniently stored in one very compact place – you know how these things just fall out of the sky. Like all those Iraqi "defectors" during the run-up to war with Saddam…

It's funny how that happened: we "found" the "smoking gun" just before a crucial meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which will decide whether to sanction Iran for violating anti-proliferation guidelines. Just as the Niger uranium forgeries turned up at precisely the moment when the Senate was examining the administration's evidence that Iraq was building nuclear weapons.

Of course, it's all pure coincidence – and if you don't think it was, then you're no doubt one of those tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorists. You believe in what Chalabi would call an "urban myth." But then again, he would say that, now wouldn't he?

The rising of the Senate against the American Caesar augurs ill for the War Party and provides the peace movement with an opportunity it cannot afford to pass up. We must launch a preemptive strike – or else face renewed conflict and the prospect of a regional conflagration.

Faster, please…

A False Sense of Security:Why It Doesn't Make SenseTo Stock Up on Tamiflu

November 15, 2005
by Tara Parker-Pope
Wall Street Journal

Should we all be stocking up on flu drugs? That is the question nagging everyone from travelers to stay-at-home moms as world health officials warn of a potential avian-flu pandemic.

The antiviral drugs Tamiflu, from drug maker Roche Holding AG, and Relenza, from GlaxoSmithKline PLC, may offer some of the best protection against an outbreak of the potentially deadly H5N1 virus. But while the drugs may play an important role in combating a global epidemic, they are likely to be far less effective in the hands of individuals.

The H5N1 virus has run rampant among birds in Asia, and it is known to have killed 64 people in the past eight years. Worries the virus may change and become contagious among humans have prompted several countries to begin stockpiling the flu drugs. But the U.S. stockpile is only 2.3 million doses, a fraction of the amount that would be needed should a flu pandemic strike. The World Health Organization has ordered a supply of the drugs to use in the area where the flu hits first, most likely in Asia. Several European countries have bigger stockpiles, but drug-company officials say all the government orders won't be filled until 2007.

Although public-health officials have cautioned against individual stockpiling, consumers are still vying to get the drugs. Sales of the flu drugs have surged, and doctors say they are regularly turning down requests from patients who want to stock up. Earlier this month Virgin Atlantic Chairman Richard Branson said he purchased 10,000 courses of Tamiflu for employees, many of whom regularly travel to Asia, to use in the event of an outbreak.

The drugs require a prescription, but they are readily available from various online drug sellers, who typically skirt prescription rules and charge inflated prices. One Web site is now selling a course of Tamiflu (10 tablets) for $190 -- more than double the regular price. But legitimate sellers like drugstore.com no longer have supplies of Tamiflu or Relenza.

Tamiflu and Relenza work by blocking a protein present in every type of flu, neuraminidase (the N in H5N1). If taken within 48 hours after symptoms appear, the drugs have been shown to limit the spread of flu virus in the body, reducing the severity of symptoms and the length of illness. The drug is highly effective if taken within 12 hours of the first symptoms: In one study, those patients got better in about a day, compared with three days for patients who took the drug later and 4.3 days for patients who didn't take any antiviral drug. In addition, Tamiflu and Relenza are 70% to 90% effective in keeping family members of a sick patient from getting sick themselves.

Because we don't yet have a vaccine for H5N1, the thinking is that a human outbreak might be controlled by blanketing villages or communities where outbreaks occur with the neuraminidase-inhibiting drugs. That would help reduce the severity of the illness among flu victims, protect healthy people and prevent the disease from spreading outside the community.

But there are several reasons why it is impractical for individuals to stock up on flu drugs. First, we don't yet know what an adequate dose is. While 10 pills of Tamiflu -- two pills a day for five days -- is typically enough to battle regular flu, rodent studies suggest we might need more than that to battle H5N1. In August, the Journal of Infectious Diseases reported that the standard five-day dose protected only 50% of mice infected with H5N1. Eight days of treatment boosted survival to 80%.

In addition, the flu drugs protect you only as long as you are taking them. If you are the only one in your neighborhood taking Tamiflu during an outbreak, it isn't going to do you much good because you will be as vulnerable as everyone else the moment you stop taking the drug.

"You can't keep on using Tamiflu forever," says Suresh Mittal, a virology professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. "It's not a vaccine. As soon as someone stops the drug, they are equally capable of getting the infection."

In September, a New England Journal of Medicine article noted that seasonal flu prevention requires at least six weeks of treatment -- that is 84 pills or about $1,600 of Tamiflu based on current prices. "Are you just going to start taking it now and take it until when?'' says James Campbell, a University of Maryland assistant professor studying an avian-flu vaccine. "It's not worth stocking up.''

In addition, there are some reports that bird flu is showing resistance to Tamiflu, and the problem likely will become worse if people start taking the drug without medical supervision. Even regular flu has shown some resistance to the drugs, particularly in children. In one recent Japanese study, nearly 20% of kids studied developed a drug-resistant flu.

While stocking up on flu drugs isn't a practical way to prepare for a flu epidemic, there are things you can do. Doctors say you should start getting into the habit of better hygiene: Wash hands often, particularly after touching public handrails. Keep hands away from the face and mouth.

And if bird flu does come to your city, chances are quarantines will be an important way to curb the spread of the disease. As a result, it might make more sense to stock your pantry with nonperishable food items and other supplies than to stock the medicine cabinet with Tamiflu.

That is what Heidi Hansen of Oshkosh, Wisc., decided to do after learning it wasn't practical to try to obtain Tamiflu for her family of four. She has stocked up on food, water-purification tablets, blankets and other items she might need in an emergency. "It could be for an ice storm or it could be because of an avian-flu outbreak that quarantines everyone," says Ms. Hansen. "We're prepared for just about anything."

• E-mail me at healthjournal@wsj.com.

Comment: Tamiflu really doesn’t work, except in a few cases, but because high level Bush Administration people have a financial interest in the company that produces it, we can predict that a pious and helpful government will buy trains full of it and you can  believe that more billions of taxpayer’s money will be stuffed into the producer’s pockets a la FEMA’s outrageous and on-going  frauds and  swindles.