Crashed C-17: that'll buff right out, sir!

This isn’t the first time this kind of incident has happened at Bagram.  In October a P-3 Orion crashed after overshooting the runway, and the Navy quickly relieved the Commander (who was piloting the plane) of his post.  Only a week or so before this latest incident, the overshoot of a C-17 at Bagram resulted in minor damage and caused only limited disruption — but in 2005, another C-17 (tail #01-0196) was very nearly written-off after overshooting the runway, causing extensive damage (see below).

C-17 at Bagram in 2005: another fixer-upper

The 2005 crash resulted in a fairly remarkable recovery and restoration.  The plane was very nearly considered for a writeoff, however it was made (barely) airworthy by Boeing technicians on the airfield and then hopscotched back to Long Beach for an extensive reconditioning.  It has been flying again since the summer of 2006.

Bagram, an ex-soviet base built during that country’s (understatement) expedition in Afghanistan, is a forward operating airfield run by the US Army in a rather hotly-contested area of the country.  This means that it primarily supports A-10 attack aicraft as well as the Army’s usual complement of AH-64, UH-60, and CH-47 helicopters.  In 2007 an ambitious suicide bombing attack against the Bagram airfield claimed 23 dead and might have killed Dick Cheney while he was on a special morale-depleting visit.  That said, a town has now built up around the airfield and the base itself is considered relatively secure.

A number of other pilots have criticized aircrews of the C-17 and other non-attack aircraft of “flying hard” and using “combat zone” landing techniques when coming into Bagram.  This means landing hard, low, and fast and would certainly explain many of the overshoots.  Whatever the cause, in order to mitigate the overshoots and to make the field more usable by larger aircraft, the runway was extended in 2006 after the 2005 C-17 overshoot (C-17s can land in as little as 3,500 feet, and after the 2006 lengthening Bagram’s main (and only usable) runway is 11,000 feet long).  However, the overshoots have persisted.

The cautionary note on Bagram’s pilot’s briefing is pretty benign (for a combat airfield):

Ctl explosions and de-mining ops in vcnty of arpt, ATC will advise. Acft opr blw FL210 may experience a loss of rdo and/or radar ctc with Bagram ATC at dist greater than 30 NM. MPN-25 (ASR/PAR) PMI Mon-Fri 1930-2130Z. Hi potential for hydroplanning when rwy sfc is wet. Rwy in advanced state of decay, increased possibility of FOD. Avoid ovft 1/2 mile NE dep end Rwy 03, burn pit will cause inadvertent flare dispersal. tkof obstacle rwy 03 4900′ MSL ant , 599′ fr DER, 510′ leftof cntrln. Lit twr, 120′ AGL, Rwy 03 apch end 1,250 ft E of cntrln. Lit twr, 120′ AGL, 1,250 ‘ E of cntrln midfield Rwy 03/21. Poss 1/2 rwy width clsd for const, ctc App for status. Twy H btn twys B and E is 44 ft wide. Acft use inboard eng only to reduce FOD.

It goes on to warn that if the airfield is under attack, you should stay above 25,000 feet; and avoid flying below 1000 feet West of the airfield or you could get shot down by US air defenses.  :)   That said, though, for a C-17 to come in to Bagram these days doesn’t seem to be particularly challenging, unless you fly over the burn pit and your anti-SAM flares go off from the heat.  Baghdad’s briefing is a little more frightening.

Concerningly, the peanut gallery seems to think that this particular air crew failed to follow their checklist in the heat of .. erm .. battle and essentially forgot to deploy the landing gear.  It will take some time in order to figure that out of course, but C-17s are outfitted with cockpit voice recorders and if the pilots have anything to hide, news will come out soon enough.  Others have pointed out that hot-dogging it into Bagram is becoming a bit too commonplace.

The briefing above does contain a bit of a nugget, though:  “use inboard eng only to reduce FOD”.  In other words, pilots are instructed to run outboard engines at idle in order to prevent them from sucking in debris from the outer edges of the runway and adjacent desert (thought this might apply only to taxiing).  As Global Security points out, the thrust reversers are an integral part of the C-17’s ability to land in short distances –and if pilots are coming in hot but only using inboard thrust reversers to slow down upon landing, they’ve got 50% less thrust to use in braking.  That’s a problem.  Maybe our most recent celebrity C-17 crew just figured the easiest way to slow down in a short distance was to retract the landing gear.

In the meantime, Canada now has 4 C-17s, designated the CC-177.  If one of ours were to crash at Kandahar while the pilots were playing “Top Gun” the consequences would be disastrous to the Canadian military’s mobility, and to its budget.  Both of the badly damaged C-17s hail from Charleston, South Carolina.  Let’s hope that if the “hot-dogging” allegations have any merit, that our guys are a little more Formula One, and a little less NASCAR.

UPDATE: Welcome trolls from Charleston!  Your comments will be approved (see below)…

UPDATE 2/22: New photos popped up last week from the night of the crash… some interesting details were revealed.

“You want to make sure people understand that when they see civilian suffering there, it’s in the context of a terrorist attack that caused enormous suffering in the United States.”

Isaacson later claimed that he was buckling under pressure from CNN’s corporate interests, which exclaimed that the news was “too negative”. Failing to understand his own irony, he also later stated that he didn’t want CNN to be used “as a propaganda platform.” In actual context, the number of deaths occurring on September 11th pales by comparison to those civilians who’ve paid the ultimate price in Afghanistan, to say nothing of Iraq (which now accounts for as many as 70,000 civilian deaths).

Much more disturbing, the mainstream US Media bought and then massively resold the administration’s link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda without any hard evidence and without any further in-depth investigation. While even reporters, editors, and producers themselves were disinclined to believe the US Administration’s line they reported it breathlessly regardless of their concerns. Bushists and their army then descended upon the media to repeat the phrase “but we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud” which was an obvious manipulation of the public’s fear of a bigger, badder 9/11 — they were given a virtually infinite quantity of air time as a podium to sell the war, and very little in the way of counterpoint. In the history of mankind, there has rarely been such an abject failure of the Fourth Estate.

But today I’m not writing to indict the Bushists. Of far greater concern to me are the millions of born-again Hawks who channeled the anger, pain, and shock from the 9/11 attack into a seething, raging vengeance. Insodoing they allowed themselves to be manipulated by the dubious aims of an administration bent on war and naively seeking U.S. dominance of the Middle East (as though that is even a feasible goal).

Many of these faux-hawks (I’m attempting to hijack the phrase for comedic effect here) are now, with the benefit of hindsight, claiming that they were “lied to” and “manipulated”, as though that warrants immediate exoneration. This is the problem.

Why was I able to form an opinion, amid the froth of propaganda following 9/11 and leading up to the wars, that there was no link between Al Qaeda and Saddam, that there was likely no nuclear program in Iraq, and that there was no real justifiable reason to invade Iraq? Am I smarter than everyone else? Surely not.

The answer is simple. While I watched CNN and occasionally Faux News, I also read other articles, such as this one from Knight-Ridder. I’d also read a few books on Middle-Eastern and specifically Iraqi recent history to understand the longer-term context, and I did a hell of a lot of Googling. I read newspapers from around the world, I read and watched opposing viewpoints, and I discussed the issue with friends. I read the back pages of the NY Times and Washington Post, to where most of the cautionary reporting was relegated. In essence, I sought out perspective, and through no matter of luck I found it, and it turns out to have been the correct one.

This is the job of every citizen of a democracy — I would hazard to say every citizen of the world. I cannot forgive those who merely lapped up that which was spoon-fed to them, who were entirely governed by their emotions, and who abandoned their responsibility as citizens and voters by failing to protest — loudly — the march to war. Through inaction, and this is at times the worst crime in a civilized society, they permitted a culture which has survived for thousands of years in the birthplace of humanity to endure its most trying disparagement.

A hockey coach of mine once said that the hardest-working player on the ice should always the guy who just screwed up. That rule also applies here. If you succumbed to the rhetoric of the Bush sycophants and joined the march (to send other people) to war only to realize your mistake later, you owe more to your fellow man than to simply claim you were lied to. You need to, at last, take action to stop the injustice in which you were complicit.

Paint a sign, write a blog post, march in a parade, or simply raise the quality of your discourse among friend. Do anything to combat this blunder and make up to your fellow patriots and world citizens alike. No President or Congress can instigate a war without the support of the population. So whose fault is the current Iraqi debacle?

Well, maybe it’s yours.

-Ian.

Sometimes I can’t believe what I read..

-Ian.

——— http://www.msnbc.com/news/944890.asp?0cl=cR&cp1=1

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 28 —  Over the past six weeks a small but intense war has been conducted in the mud-hut villages and lush palm groves along the Tigris River valley, fought with far different methods than those used in the campaign that toppled President Saddam Hussein.

AS IRAQI FIGHTERS launched guerrilla strikes, the U.S. Army adopted a more nimble approach against unseen adversaries, and found new ways to gather intelligence about them, according to dozens of soldiers and officers interviewed over the last week.        Thousands of suspected Iraqi fighters were detained over the six-week period, many temporarily, in hundreds of U.S. military raids, most of them conducted in the dead of night. In the expansive region north of Baghdad patrolled by the 4th Infantry Division, more than 300 Iraqi fighters were killed in combat operation, the military officials said. In the same period, U.S. forces in all of Iraq have suffered 39 combat deaths. The continuing casualties — such as the four soldiers killed Saturday — are the direct result of the intensified U.S. offensive, the military officials added.        Despite their losses, Army officers and soldiers asserted that they are making solid gains in this region, where most of the fighting has taken place and where about half the 150,000 U.S. troops in the country are posted.        At the beginning of June, before the U.S. offensives began, the reward for killing an American soldier was about $300, an Army officer said. Now, he said, street youths are being offered as much as $5,000 — and are being told that if they refuse, their families will be killed, a development the officer described as a sign of reluctance among once-eager youths to take part in the strikes.

       At the same time, the frequency of attacks has declined in the area northwest of Baghdad dominated by Iraq’s Sunni minority, long a base of support for Hussein. In this triangle-shaped region — delineated by Baghdad, Tikrit to the north and the towns of Fallujah and Ramadi to the west — attacks on U.S. forces have dropped by half since mid-June, military officers reported.        That decrease is leading senior commanders here to debate whether the war is nearly over. Some say the resistance by members of Hussein’s Baath Party is nearly broken. But other senior officers are bracing for a new phase in which they fear that Baathist die-hards, with no alternative left, will shift from attacking the U.S. military to bombing American civilians and Iraqis who work with them.        In addition, there is general agreement among Army leaders here that in recent weeks both the quality and quantity of intelligence being offered by Iraqis has greatly improved, leading to such operations as the one last Tuesday in Mosul that killed Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay.        Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: “If you want your family released, turn yourself in.” Such tactics are justified, he said, because, “It’s an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info.” They would have been released in due course, he added later.

       The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered.         THE U.S. OFFENSIVE        In the weeks after President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq on May 1, there were growing signs of resistance in the Sunni triangle, where many former Baath Party operatives, intelligence officers, and Special Republican Guard members were still actively fighting the U.S. military.        Rocket-propelled grenade attacks on U.S. vehicles began in earnest near the end of the month. On May 30, a sophisticated three-point ambush was launched against U.S. troops patrolling in the town of Bayji, just north of Tikrit. As U.S. troops evaded one line of fire, they were attacked by the next. When troops fired back, the Iraqis continued to fight instead of running.        On June 7, a patrol of U.S. military police drove into the town of Thuluya, on a big bend in the Tigris River southeast of Tikrit. Iraqis there told them to leave, and warned that if they came back, they would be killed, said a U.S. commander. It was then that “we started to kick down doors,” recalled a senior Central Command official.        Instead of leaving, at 2 a.m. the next morning, hundreds of U.S. troops cordoned off Thuluya and hundreds more conducted searches throughout the town. F-15 fighters and Apache helicopters whirred overhead, ready to launch missiles on ground commanders’ call. U.S. military speedboats patrolled the Tigris River, cutting off an escape route. The aggressive operation set the tone for the new phase of the war.

       Since then, the Army has sought to keep up an unrelenting pace. “The reality is that in this company, we’ve been doing raids and cordon searches nearly every day” since early June, said Capt. Brian Healey, commander of an infantry company based near Baqubah, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad. Over the past six weeks, he said, sitting on a cot in an old Iraqi military base, his unit alone has detained nearly 100 people.        “I figure you can either sit barricaded in your base camp, or take the fight to the enemy,” said Lt. Col. Larry “Pepper” Jackson, commander of an Army outpost on the outskirts of, which is still described as hostile by U.S. military intelligence analysts. “Our key to success is staying on the offense. But you don’t do it recklessly, because then you’d lose the people.”        He said he has two patrols on the streets of Bayji at any given time. His troops are still attacked, but as a result of the new tactics, “It is a lot quieter — about half as much contact as in May.”        Three major U.S. operations unfolded over the past two months. In the first one in June, Peninsula Strike, U.S. commanders learned that much of the opposition was coming from Baath Party operatives and their allies in the old Iraqi intelligence services. Desert Scorpion, aimed at cutting off escape routes for fugitive Iraqi leaders, came in late June. It began with 56 simultaneous large-scale raids across central Iraq and brought in a hoard of intelligence. Among those netted was Abid Hamid Mahmud, Hussein’s trusted aide. “That was a big event,” recalled a senior Army official. “He has revealed a lot. He knew where all the safe houses and ratlines were.” Ratlines is an Army term for escape routes.        The third major operation, dubbed Soda Mountain, was the first expressly preemptive effort. Concerned about the threat of an offensive tied to July 17, the 35th anniversary of the day Hussein’s Baath Party took power, U.S. troops rounded up 600 party operatives. “We were aggressive and out there, looking to preclude attacks,” the official said. For example, for six days leading up to the holiday, every car leaving Bayji — a town of 30,000 sitting astride Iraq’s major north-south highway — was stopped at a checkpoint, and many were searched.                U.S. officials say they began to see a significant payoff from the series of operations early this month, when the number of attacks began to decline and Iraqis began to provide more information about the resistance. “When you have one operation after another, there is a cumulative effect,” the Army official said. “The effect of all these operations was that walk-in humint” — human intelligence — doubled from early June to mid-July. What’s more, he said, “it was very good quality.”        Tips began paying off so quickly that officials would launch one raid before another was completed, allowing troops to catch some targets off guard because they didn’t know that fellow resistance fighters had been apprehended. Iraqi resistance fighters in the Sunni triangle at first tried to attack U.S. forces directly with AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. While some killed U.S. troops, many attempts were ineffective. So in recent weeks, military officers said, Iraqi fighters have turned to other weapons.        “They’ve gone to standoff weapons — mines and mortars, and IEDs” — improvised explosive devices, or bombs — said Capt. John Taylor, the intelligence officer for the base near Bayji.        Last Wednesday, a tank from the base hit an antitank mine for the first time since its unit came to Iraq in April. Lt. Erik Aadland, a former resident of Springfield, Va., was standing in the turret of his tank as it was returning to base after a patrol through Bayji. With the tank just a stone’s throw from the front gate, the mine exploded. “Everything went red,” he recalled. “Then we were covered in black smoke.” Aadland and his crew dismounted and stared at the damage: The right track was blown off, the fender above it twisted upward and three armored panels weighing a total of about 1,100 pounds had been hurled about 90 feet away.

       Iraqi fighters have adjusted their tactics in other ways. Upon learning that their homes were being targeted for raids, Baath Party operatives often moved their weapons, cash and documents into the homes of neighbors, military officials said. In turn, U.S. forces expanded the scope of their raids. “The past six weeks, our patrols have gotten more aggressive, much more frequent,” said Healey, the infantry company commander. “Instead of doing one house, for example, we’ll do a whole street.”        Likewise, Iraqi fighters learned the U.S. military is most comfortable operating at night, when it stands to gain the most from its technical advantages, such as night-vision goggles. Some fighters started going back to their homes in midday, and even holding meetings then, U.S. military officials said.        But in military operations, for every action there is a reaction. Hogg, the 2nd Brigade commander, noted this as he sat in a Humvee on Wednesday afternoon, clenching the butt of a Dominican cigar in his teeth. “The knuckleheads kind of figured out that we like to operate at night, so they started operating during the day, so we starting hitting them during the day,” he said as he waited for one of his battalions to launch a daylight raid. “It’s harder, because of the crowds, but it’s also effective.”        Underscoring the intense nature of the combat, Hogg’s brigade, after weeks of being pestered by enemy mortars, has begun responding with heavy artillery, and so far this month has fired more than 60 high-explosive 155 mm shells.        Some Army units have modified their equipment to help them adjust to urban warfare. At least two battalions in the 4th Infantry Division have mounted .50 caliber heavy machine guns on the back of the pickup-truck version of their Humvees, vehicles sometimes used to carry infantry troops to raids. “Gun-vees,” which resembles the “technicals” used by Somali fighters, are especially useful in battling guerrilla fighters in alleys and other tight urban spaces where tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles cannot maneuver.        The modified vehicle also provides a helpful element of surprise, said Jackson, the U.S. commander near Bayji. “A Humvee can sneak up for a raid,” he said. “A tank you can hear a mile away.”        After the fighting is over, U.S. military officials say, it becomes important to repair the damage — a door smashed, a wall breached, an irrigation culvert flattened by a 70-ton M1 Abrams tank. Every U.S. brigade commander in Iraq has a “Commander’s Emergency Repair Fund” of $200,000 that is replenished as he spends it. Over the past six weeks of the U.S. offensive, commanders across Iraq dispensed $13 million to rebuild schools, clinics, water treatment plans and police stations, said Army Col. David MacEwen, who helps coordinate the civic works.

       “During Peninsula Strike, we worked very hard for every combat action to have a ‘carrot’ that followed,” MacEwen said. “We’d do a cordon and search in one area, and then make sure the next day that LPG [cooking gas] was available, or that a pump at a water plant was working.”        The efforts aren’t just aimed at winning hearts and minds, but also at gaining intelligence. “When you’re out doing the civil affairs operations, you get a lot of people coming up and giving you good information,” said Maj. David Vacchi, the operations officer for a battalion operating just northeast of Baghdad.

       Senior U.S. commanders here are so confident about their recent successes that they have begun debating whether victory is in sight. “I think we’re at the hump” now, a senior Central Command official said. “I think we could be over the hump fairly quickly” — possibly within a couple of months, he added.        Hogg, whose troops are still engaged in combat every day, agreed. “I think we’re fixing to turn the corner,” he said Thursday. “I think the operations over the next couple of weeks will get us there.”                 Staff researcher Robert Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.                 © 2003 The Washington Post Company

The victims of Ulster’s new bigotry David McKittrick on a disturbing trend in Northern Ireland By Features Editor email:  featureseditor [at] belfasttelegraph.co [dot] uk

PAUL, one of a growing number of Africans in Belfast, was so shocked to know there was a bomb at his house he cannot remember whether it was his wife or police who told him they had to leave.

They grabbed their two sons and were hurried to safety by police, leaving the Army to deal with the pipe bomb beside their oil tank.

Paul is from the Sudan; his sons, who are twins, were nine weeks old when the bombers came. He talked of that night as though it were a dream.

“I was in a deep sleep, then they are telling me, ‘There’s a bomb at your house’. We were in the police station about four hours, then we went to our cousin’s place; but she was also being attacked that night.

“We were just so scared, so scared. In Sudan I lost my family. My family was killed in a house, like the way they were going to kill me.”

He and his wife are more confused and bewildered than angry.

He asked: “What do you get by blowing up folk who are black? What do you get by blowing up nine-week-old kids? What are you going to get? Do you go home and drink and laugh?”

For centuries sectarianism has caused strife in Northern Ireland. The violence has diminished and the weekend’s traditional Orange Order parades passed off with little trouble. But while religious antagonism is on the wane, racial violence is growing. Attacks have been made on Africans, Muslims, Chinese, Portuguese and Filipinos.

In one attack last weekend a gang of up to 10 men with baseball bats and iron bars attacked a Muslim family’s home in Co Armagh, shouting: “We are warning you to get out.”

Plans to build a mosque in the district for the 300 Muslims there have been criticised in racist leaflets. Similar leaflets have been circulated where Paul lived, in the loyalist Village district of south Belfast.

Most of the more systematic assaults have been in hardline Protestant areas, which tend to be tough and suspicious of any outsiders.

The UDA has denied involvement, but the use of pipe bombs means the organisation is under suspicion.

Some elements of loyalist groups have always had a certain crossover with white supremacist groups in Britain, but mostly organisations such as the UDA concentrate on sectarianism, not racism.

One nationalist politician blamed the attacks on “loyalist Nazis”.

Many members of ethnic minorities say Northern Ireland is generally welcoming, one prominent Indian saying: “From the Indian community point of view we have had a very happy home here.”

Professor James Uhomoibhi, a Belfast university lecturer and chairman of the Northern Ireland African Culture Centre, agreed. “We believe the attackers are just individuals acting in their own selfish interest, because we do feel welcomed by all sections of the community.

“Africans from here are good ambassadors; they go and tell people back in Africa and elsewhere that the bad image presented of Northern Ireland is the wrong image, that it is an open society, filled with warm, receptive people. We have experienced peace here, and we want to contribute to peace, happiness and co-existence.”

But Donegall Avenue, where Paul and his family lived, is not a place of co-existence.

It is a grotty, run-down street, with some of the cheapest homes in Belfast. Two-bedroom houses go for about £20,000.

Parts of the street are festooned with Ulster flags and Union Jacks, while anti-Catholic and anti-black slogans have been scrawled on some of the many boarded-up homes. A crude swastika has been daubed on one wall.

Paul said: “People were not friendly. When we were walking along the street they were driving their cars up and down shouting at you, calling you names, black bastard, nigger.”

Yet even in Donegall Avenue there was evidence that racist activity is confined to a minority. An Asian youth who was walking along the street, putting flyers through letterboxes advertising a local tandoori takeaway, walked unmolested through a group of five boisterous youths.

A local political activist insisted: “The community is not riven with racial problems. My impression is that it’s a tiny minority, but it doesn’t take many to cause a problem.”

Dawn Purvis, who works with loyalist paramilitants, was more blunt. “They’re sick people.

“These attacks are being committed by a few bigoted, racist thugs. They may masquerade as loyalists but have no part of principled loyalism.”

Professor Uhomoibhi had one novel theory to explain the increasing problem.

“The rise in attacks may be due to the peace process, because when you are not fighting those you have been fighting you look for an

The New York Times June 29, 2003 Online Dating Sheds Its Stigma as Losers.com By AMY HARMON

Of the 120 men she traded messages with online in her first four months of Internet dating, Kristen Costello, 33, talked to 20 on the telephone at least once and met 11 in person. Of those, Ms. Costello dated four several times before realizing she had not found “the one.”

It is one of the first lessons learned by many in the swelling ranks of subscribers to Internet dating sites: soul mates are harder to come by than dinner and a movie. But like a growing number of single adults, Ms. Costello, a fourth-grade teacher in Florham Park, N.J., remains convinced that the chances of finding her life partner are better online than off.

“The difference is there’s a huge number of people to draw from,” said Ms. Costello, who is getting divorced and tried Kiss.com on the advice of a friend who met her current boyfriend through the site. “I just haven’t found the right one.”

Online dating, once viewed as a refuge for the socially inept and as a faintly disrespectable way to meet other people, is rapidly becoming a fixture of single life for adults of all ages, backgrounds and interests. More than 45 million Americans visited online dating sites last month, up from about 35 million at the end of 2002, according to comScore Media Metrix, a Web tracking service. Spending by subscribers on Web dating sites has soared, rising to a projected $100 million or more a quarter this year from under $10 million a quarter at the beginning of 2001, according to the Online Publishers Association.

And despite the Web’s reputation as a meeting ground for casual sex, a majority of the leading sites’ paying subscribers now say that what they are looking for is a relationship.

Stories of deception persist. Many online daters turn out to be married, and it is taken for granted that everybody lies a little. But they are more often trumped by a pervasive dissatisfaction with singles bars, dates set up by friends and other accepted ways of meeting prospective mates.

“My brother told me to join a canoeing club or something stupid like that,” said Dan Eddy, 28, who met his fiancée, Sherry Sivik, 27, of North Ridgeville, Ohio, on Match.com.

Ms. Sivik sent an e-mail message to Mr. Eddy when she saw a picture of him with a shaved head. She refused to meet him for weeks, afraid he would be “some kind of lunatic.” But after hearing that Mr. Eddy drove a Jeep, Ms. Sivik’s friends, who had a long-running joke about trying to find her a bald guy with a Jeep, knew it was all over.

As word spreads of successful matches, the stigma of advertising for a romantic partner online rather than waiting for friends and fate to conjure one is fading. “I really don’t think there’s anyone under 35 who would think twice about it,” said Sascha Segan, 29, who has persuaded several friends to try online dating since meeting his fiancée, Leontine Greenberg, on Nerve.com.

Not prepared to cede the potential of a better love life to youth, older singles are also logging on to dating sites in growing numbers.

“We’re at a time of life where nothing’s structured where you can mingle,” said Judith Carrington, a public relations executive who lists herself on Match.com as in her late-50’s. “And as you get older it’s hard to find a deep bond with people because you’ve had rich lives and you haven’t lived them together.”

After a few unremarkable dates, Ms. Carrington, whose husband died several years ago, said she recently had dinner with an investment adviser she met through the service and felt drawn to him because of a shared experience with a family member’s mental illness.

“Just to have someone in the running is nice,” she said.

As it did for book buying and auctioning used toys, the Internet reduces the transaction costs of meeting romantic prospects. With pictures, long essays, sometimes even videos — and a cut-to-the-chase etiquette that encourages pointed questions in e-mail messages — singles say they can learn far more about potential partners online than they can by sizing them up across a crowded room or wringing information from a friend.

“The traditional institutionalized means for getting people together are not working as well as they did previously,” said Norval Glenn, a sociology professor at the University of Texas. “There’s a need for something new and the Internet is filling that need.”

Two or three decades ago, most American couples met in high school or college, Professor Glenn said. But as more people choose to marry later in life, few social institutions have arisen to replace the role that local communities, families and schools once played.

Internet dating may finally be stepping into that breach.

“The Internet gives the impression, and it may or may not be truthful, that you can find someone who is more specifically tailored to your desires,” said David M. Buss, author of “The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating” (Revised edition, Basic Books, 2003). “So perhaps the sense that you don’t have to settle as much will bear out in more solid bonds.”

Along with large dating sites like Match.com, which boasts nearly 800,000 subscribers who pay $24.95 a month each, and 8 million separate profiles, numerous dating sites now exist for every imaginable group of people. Generally, there is no charge for posting a profile on a Web dating site, but to contact a prospective date, most sites require users to pay a subscription fee.

Lativish Gardner, 24, a Web designer in Valdosta, Ga., switched from Yahoo Personals to BlackPlanetLove.com last month, for instance, to better focus his search.

“I’m a black man and I’m using Black Planet to find a black queen,” said Mr. Gardner, who flew to Houston recently to meet a woman he found on the new site.

Web sites like TONY.com (Time Out New York), Nerve.com and Boston.com offer online dating services by pooling a collection of profiles submitted by their younger, more urban subscribers, through a template provided by their New York-based company, Spring Street Networks. In addition to the fundamentals, subscribers are asked to complete sentences like, “In my bedroom you’ll find,” and to cite their most humbling moment.

Greg Bush, 34, an emergency room doctor in Huntington Beach, Calif., swears by Eharmony, one of several sites that profess to take a more scientific approach to the matchmaking process. Prospective subscribers to Eharmony, founded by a psychologist, fill out a long questionnaire, and the service says they are rejected if it appears a match for them cannot be found.

“She’s gorgeous,” said Mr. Bush of the woman the service set him up with, a pharmaceutical representative he said he planned to propose to soon. “She’s the kind of girl I’d look at all night but never go up and talk to because I’d be too intimidated.”

The first trick to online dating is to narrow the search without inadvertently ruling out a perfect match. Helen Gaitanis, 35, of Los Angeles searches only for white men aged 33 to 43 who are at least 5-foot-9. She refrains from filtering out brown eyes, despite her strong preference for blue. Typically 600 profiles of men within 25 miles of her zip code show up in her Match results, Ms. Gaitanis said.

“You can kind of get a feel: Are they dorky, are they going to be a slick cheeseball party guy?” Ms. Gaitanis said. “I look at my profile and I think sometimes it’s more intense than others. It’s not as flirty or playful. But it says who I am.”

Indeed, for women, who have long been taught to search for a mate while scrupulously pretending not to, social historians say online dating may be making it more acceptable to openly signal what they are looking for.

But gender rules still apply. Men say women rarely send the first e-mail note. And like many women, Ms. Gaitanis found that when she did send an e-mail message to a man, he almost never responded. Instead, she is concentrating on refining her profile and updating it often enough that it does not get lost in search results, as profiles are generally ranked in order of the latest updated. She has also seized on Match’s new “wink” feature, which allows subscribers to indicate interest in someone’s profile simply by clicking a button, which sends them a prewritten message.

“It’s like saying, `Hey, look at me, what do you think?’ ” said Ms. Gaitanis, who received 6 winks back out of the first 10 she sent. “They can respond or not and at least you didn’t spend any time writing an e-mail.”

There are still plenty of holdouts. Ms. Gaitanis’s brother, John, 28, told her that online dating was “strictly for losers.”

And even those who embrace online dating acknowledge a major flaw: the frequent disconnect between who people say they are online and what they are really like. In one recent example, the Army said it was investigating accusations that a colonel, who is already married, duped dozens of women on tallpersonals.com into believing that he would be marrying them.

Most online dating deception is of the run-of-the-mill variety.

“It’s amazing how all women say they’re slender when a lot of them are overweight,” said one 79-year-old Manhattan man who lists himself as 69 on his Match.com profile.

A Culver City, Calif., woman who lists the adjacent, more upscale Santa Monica as her residence, said, “I swear every time they put 5-10 you have to deduct 3 inches.”

But what is most persistently frustrating, veteran online daters say, is not so much the obvious lies as the difficulty in judging physical chemistry through virtual communication.

“Certain things look really good on paper,” said Rebecca Hammond, a computer consultant in Manhattan who has met several boyfriends through Nerve.com. “Then in real life it’s a completely different story.”

After enough of such encounters, many online daters burn out.

Those who do find partners say they are often plagued by the insidious sense that they might find someone better — if only they paged through a few hundred more profiles.

“If you get unsolicited e-mails coming in it’s hard not to look,” said David Kleinbard, a researcher for a credit ratings agency in New York who has dated several women from JDate, a Jewish online dating service. “And if the person’s cute it’s hard not to give it some thought.”

But for Jonathan Gerstel, 40, a university fund-raiser who was looking for a Jewish woman in Durham, N.C., with a kind disposition and at least shoulder-length hair, JDate proved the perfect tool.

Amid the 20 matches he found Marta King, 38, an actress and teacher looking for a Jewish man who knew what he wanted in life, made at least as much money as she did, and liked to dance, or was at least willing to try. If the process lacked a certain romantic sweep that Ms. King once imagined, she said she had come to prefer reality.

“I just don’t think it matters how you meet,” Ms. King said.

Just this month, the two reached an online dating milestone: They removed their profiles from the JDate site.

Halliburton: All In The Family* April 27, 2003

After dropping more than 28,000 bombs on Iraq, the United States has now begun the business of rebuilding the country.

And it promises to be quite a business. With at least $60 billion to be spent over the next three years, the Iraqi people won’t be the only ones benefiting. The companies that land the biggest contracts to do the work will cash in big-time.

Given all the taxpayer money involved, you might think the process for awarding those contracts would be open and competitive. Well, so far, it has been none of the above. And the early winners in the sweepstakes to rebuild Iraq have one thing in common: lots of very close friends in very high places, *correspondent Steve Kroft* reports.

One is Halliburton, the Houston-based energy services and construction giant whose former CEO, Dick Cheney, is now vice president of the United States.

Even before the first shots were fired in Iraq, the Pentagon had secretly awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root a two-year, no-bid contract to put out oil well fires and to handle other unspecified duties involving war damage to the country’s petroleum industry. It is worth up to $7 billion.

But Robert Andersen, chief counsel for the Army Corps of Engineers, says that oil field damage was much less than anticipated and Halliburton will end up collecting only a small fraction of that $7 billion. But he can’t say how small a fraction or exactly what the contract covers because the mission and the contract are considered classified information.

Under normal circumstances, the Army Corps of Engineers would have been required to put the oil fire contract out for competitive bidding. But in times of emergency, when national security is involved, the government is allowed to bypass normal procedures and award contracts to a single company, without competition.

And that’s exactly what happened with Halliburton.

“We are the only company in the United States that had the kind of systems in place, people in place, contracts in place, to do that kind of thing,” says Chuck Dominy, Halliburton’s vice president for government affairs and its chief lobbyist on Capitol Hill.

He says the Pentagon came to Halliburton because the company already had an existing contract with the Army to provide logistical support to U.S. troops all over the world.

“Let me put a face on Halliburton. It’s one of the world’s largest energy services companies, and it has a strong engineering and construction arm that goes with that” says Dominy.

“You’ll find us in 120 countries. We’ve got 83,000 people on our payroll, and we’re involved in a ton of different things for a lot of wonderful clients worldwide.”

“They had assets prepositioned,” says Anderson. “They had capability to reach out and get sub-contractors to do the various types of work that might be required in a hostile situation.”

“The procurement of this particular contract was done by career civil servants, and I know that it’s a perception that those at the very highest levels of the administration, Democrat and Republican, get involved in procurement issues. It can happen. But for the very most part, the procurement system is designed to keep those judgments with the career public servants.”

But is political influence not unknown in the process? In this particular case, Anderson says, it was legally justified and prudent.

But not everyone thought it was prudent. Bob Grace is president of GSM Consulting, a small company in Amarillo, Texas, that has fought oil well fires all over the world. Grace worked for the Kuwait government after the first Gulf War and was in charge of firefighting strategy for the huge Bergan Oil Field, which had more than 300 fires. Last September, when it looked like there might be another Gulf war and more oil well fires, he and a lot of his friends in the industry began contacting the Pentagon and their congressmen.

“All we were trying to find out was, who do we present our credentials to,” says Grace. “We just want to be able to go to somebody and say, ‘Hey, here’s who we are, and here’s what we’ve done, and here’s what we do.’”

“They basically told us that there wasn’t going to be any oil well fires.” Grace showed /*60 Minutes */a letter from the Department of Defense saying: “The department is aware of a broad range of well firefighting capabilities and techniques available. However, we believe it is too early to speculate what might happen in the event that war breaks out in the region.”

It was dated Dec. 30, 2002, more than a month after the Army Corps of Engineers began talking to Halliburton about putting out oil well fires in Iraq.

“You just feel like you’re beating your head against the wall,” says Grace. However, Andersen says the Pentagon had a very good reason for putting out that message.

“The mission at that time was classified, and what we were doing to assess the possible damage and to prepare for it was classified,” says Andersen. “Communications with the public had to be made with that in mind.”

“I can accept confidentiality in terms of war plans and all that. But to have secrecy about Saddam Hussein blowing up oil wells, to me, is stupid,” says Grace. “I mean the guy’s blown up a thousand of them. So why would that be a revelation to anybody?”

But Grace says the whole point of competitive bidding is to save the taxpayers money. He believes they are getting a raw deal. “From what I’ve read in the papers, they’re charging $50,000 a day for a five-man team. I know there are guys that are equally as well-qualified as the guys that are over there that’ll do it for half that.”

Grace and his friends are no match for Halliburton when it comes to landing government business. Last year alone, Halliburton and its Brown & Root subsidiary delivered $1.3 billion worth of services to the U.S. government. Much of it was for work the U.S. military used to do itself.

“You help build base camps. You provide goods, laundry, power, sewage, all the kinds of things that keep an army in place in a field operation,” says Dominy.

“Young soldiers have said to me, ‘If I go to war, I want to go to war with Brown & Root.’”

And they have, in places like Afghanistan, Rwanda, Somalia, Kosovo and now Iraq.

“It’s a sweetheart contract,” says Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center For Public Integrity, a non-profit organization that investigates corruption and abuse of power by government and corporations. “There’s no other word for it.”

Lewis says the trend towards privatizing the military began during the first Bush administration when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense. In 1992, the Pentagon, under Cheney, commissioned the Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root to do a classified study on whether it was a good idea to have private contractors do more of the military’s work.

“Of course, they said it’s a terrific idea, and over the next eight years, Kellogg, Brown & Root and another company got 2,700 contracts worth billions of dollars,” says Lewis.

“So they helped to design the architecture for privatizing a lot of what happens today in the Pentagon when we have military engagements. And two years later, when he leaves the department of defense, Cheney is CEO of Halliburton. Thank you very much. It’s a nice arrangement for all concerned.”

During the five years that Cheney was at Halliburton, the company nearly doubled the value of its federal contracts, and the vice president became a very rich man.

Lewis is not saying that Cheney did anything illegal. But he doesn’t believe for a minute that this was all just a coincidence.

“Why would a defense secretary, former chief of staff to a president, and former member of congress with no business experience ever in his life, not for a day, why would he become the CEO of a multibillion dollar oil services company,” asks Lewis

“Well, it could be related to government contracts. He was brought in to raise their government contract profile. And he did. And they ended up with billions of dollars in new contracts because they had a former defense secretary at the helm.”

Cheney, Lewis says, may be an honorable and brilliant man, but “as George Washington Plunkett once said, ‘I saw my … seen my opportunities and I took them.”

Both Halliburton and the Pentagon believe Lewis is insulting not only the vice president but thousands of professional civil servants who evaluate and award defense contracts based strictly on merit.

But does the fact that Cheney used to run Halliburton have any effect at all on the company getting government contracts?

“Zero,” says Dominy. “I will guarantee you that. Absolutely zero impact.”

“In fact, I wish I could embed [critics] in the department of defense contracting system for a week or so. Once they’d done that, they’d have religion just like I do, about how the system cannot be influenced.” Dominy has been with Halliburton for seven years. Before that, he was former three-star Army general. One of his last military assignments was as a commander at the Army Corps of Engineers.

And now, the Army Corps of Engineers is also the government agency that awards contracts to companies like Halliburton.

Asked if his expertise in that area had anything to do with his employment at Halliburton, Dominy replies, “None.”

But Lewis isn’t surprised at all.

“Of course, he’s from the Army Corps. And of course, he’s a general,” says Lewis. “I’m sure he and no one else at Halliburton sees the slightest thing that might look strange about that, or a little cozy maybe.”

Lewis says the best example of these cozy relationships is the defense policy board, a group of high-powered civilians who advise the secretary of defense on major policy issues – like whether or not to invade Iraq. Its 30 members are a Who’s Who of former senior government and military officials.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but as the Center For Public Integrity recently discovered, nine of them have ties to corporations and private companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts. And that’s just in the last two years.

“This is not about the revolving door, people going in and out,” says Lewis. “There is no door. There’s no wall. I can’t tell where one stops and the other starts. I’m dead serious.”

“They have classified clearances, they go to classified meetings and they’re with companies getting billions of dollars in classified contracts. And their disclosures about their activities are classified. Well, isn’t that what they did when they were inside the government? What’s the difference, except they’re in the private sector.”

Richard Perle resigned as chairman of the defense policy board last month after it was disclosed that he had financial ties to several companies doing business with the Pentagon.

But Perle still sits on the board, along with former CIA director James Woolsey, who works for the consulting firm of Booz, Allen, Hamilton. The firm did nearly $700 million dollars in business with the Pentagon last year.

Another board member, retired four-star general Jack Sheehan, is now a senior vice president at the Bechtel corporation, which just won a $680 million contract to rebuild the infrastructure in Iraq.

That contract was awarded by the State Department, which used to be run by George Schultz, who sits on Bechtel’s board of directors.

“I’m not saying that it’s illegal. These guys wrote the laws. They set up the system for themselves. Of course it’s legal,” says Lewis.

“It just looks like hell. It looks like you have folks feeding at the trough. And they may be doing it in red white and blue and we may be all singing the “Star Spangled Banner,” but they’re doing quite well.”

© MMIII, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Exclusive: ‘Terrified of Saddam Hussein’ Essam Al-Ghalib, Arab News War Correspondent

UMM QASR/BASRA, 30 March 2003 — Four days ago my friend, Mohammed Al-Deleami and I were invited by Abdul Rahman Almotawa, a journalist at our sister publication Asharq Al-Awsat, to accompany him on a trip organized by the Kuwaiti Ministry of Information to report on the humanitarian relief effort at Safwan, an Iraqi town at the Kuwaiti border.

I jumped at the opportunity to get past the Kuwaiti Army checkpoint at Mutla’, which was the biggest obstacle keeping me from entering Iraq. As we raced to catch up to the convoy heading out of Kuwait, I told Almotawa that if the opportunity presented itself for us to break away from the ministry’s convoy once we got into Iraq, that we should, as such an opportunity may not present itself again.

When Mohammed and I left our hotel, we had no idea that that would be exactly what happened. We were ill-prepared for we had nothing but our gas masks, which we carried everywhere, the clothes on our backs, my cameras, a satellite phone, a Kuwaiti mobile and laptop.

After 75 minutes of driving in a manner likely to get me arrested in most countries, we were able to catch up to the convoy as it passed through the dreaded checkpoint at Mutla’, where we had been turned back several times in the days before.

When we finally made it to Safwan, Iraq, what we saw was utter chaos. Iraqi men, women and children were playing it up for the TV cameras, chanting: “With our blood, with our souls, we will die for you Saddam.”

I took a young Iraqi man, 19, away from the cameras and asked him why they were all chanting that particular slogan, especially when humanitarian aid trucks marked with the insignia of the Kuwaiti Red Crescent Society, were distributing some much-needed food.

His answer shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.

He said: “There are people from Baath here reporting everything that goes on. There are cameras here recording our faces. If the Americans were to withdraw and everything were to return to the way it was before, we want to make sure that we survive the massacre that would follow as Baath go house to house killing anyone who voiced opposition to Saddam. In public, we always pledge our allegiance to Saddam, but in our hearts we feel something else.”

Different versions of that very quote, but with a common theme, I would come to hear several times over the next three days I spent in Iraq.

The people of Iraq are terrified of Saddam Hussein.

I broke away from the hundreds of people literally climbing over one another and fighting to get a box of the rations being distributed. What ended up happening is that the weak and the elderly who needed the food most were getting nothing, whereas the young and fit were getting up to six boxes each.

I broke away from this disgusting scene and wandered into the desert to take some pictures of the elderly and young children picking through the heaps of trash, having given up on getting any of the rations, searching for food. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a British Army convoy driving through Safwan heading north being followed by one, then two, then three SUV’s marked “TV”.

I ran back to Arab News’ SUV and yelled at Abdul Rahman and Mohammed to get in. Of course, they asked why I was screaming at them like a mad man. I explained that the opportunity to get into Iraq was driving away from us.

I turned to Abdul Rahman and said: “Decide right now. Are you in or not?”

He thought of his wife and children and how volatile and unpredictable the situation in Iraq and working with me could be, and opted to stay.

My friend, Mohammed Al-Deleami, jumped right in without hesitation.

We caught up to the convoy of TV crews and army vehicles and just drove behind them. Within minutes we were on an Iraqi freeway, with signs directing us to Umm Qasr, Basra and Baghdad.

I was ecstatic. We were in Iraq.

I turned up the music and started dancing in my seat as I looked in the rear-view mirror for pursuing ministry vehicles, but could see none.

The TV vehicles broke away from the army convoy and started following the signs for Umm Qasr. Once we got to Umm Qasr, I really started to worry for the simple fact that we had absolutely nothing. I looked at the TV crews in front of me. They were a mountaineering and camping superstore on wheels. They had cookers, boxes of food, sleeping bags, tents, generators, warm clothing, flashlights, bulletproof vests, jerry-cans full of petrol, virtually everything they needed to live in the desert for weeks.

As we drove along the freeway approaching Umm Qasr, we could see several burned out Iraqi civilian and military trucks. There were people walking along the side of the road waving at us, some motioning with their hands for us to stop and some made gestures indicating they needed food and water. Being Muslims, Mohammed and I wanted so much to help them; but we had no food or water.

As I slowed down to speak to some of these children, my Kuwaiti mobile rang. It was my editor in chief, Khaled Al-Maeena. He couldn’t believe I was in Umm Qasr. I handed my phone over to a young Iraqi boy aged maybe nine, and asked him to yell into it where we were. He yelled, “Umm Qasr,” then asked me again for food and water.

I told him we would be camping in Umm Qasr and that if he found us I would get him some food and water from the other crews in our convoy. My editor was thrilled.

We decided to make camp in front of what used to be a hotel and rest stop just off the freeway, which was occupied by a Scottish brigade of the British Army. We spoke to the brigade commander in charge and he explained that Umm Qasr was relatively safe but had been encountering pockets of resistance from various individuals belonging to the Baath party.

He said that we were not allowed to stay in the camp as we were not “embedded” with the British troops, but we were welcome to set up camp a few yards outside the fence of the “hotel”. He promised that if we were in any danger, his troops would immediately come to the rescue.

Once in Umm Qasr, Mohammed and I made our way around to the TV crews that were there and introduced ourselves. We struck up an unspoken deal where I would provide them with English/Arabic translation for their interviews with the Iraqis and they would provide Mohammed and I with food, water and warm clothing to help sustain us.

As night fell, we set up camp, ate and tried to go to sleep. As we started to dose off, a loud explosion went off very near to us, and a lighting flare shot up into the sky bathing the area in a yellow-orange light. Apart from the bright light, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

An hour later, several more explosions followed by flares lit up the area. One kilometer away, Mohammed spotted several people on foot running around with what appeared to be rifles. We were starting to get really worried, because we didn’t know what was going on. In the far distance we could see the occasional flash of a light and a loud bang. We assumed it was the battle for Basra.

(Part II tomorrow)

Oil politics will dominate the news for the next few years as developing nations like Iraq, Somalia and Nigeria continue to attempt to resist Western domination and exploitation of their resources. With widening perception throughout the world that the war in Iraq is almost entirely about oil, such peoples are now realizing what it is that gets our attention. The West’s addiction to fossil fuels may ultimately be our downfall, forcing America to extend her empire with further attempts at military conquest until it is stretched too thin..

For now, the rats are leaving the sinking ship in Nigeria.

As Bush said, we are not at war with Islam. But by the time the decade is out, they might well be at war with us.

-Ian.

—– http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/23/international/africa/23NIGE.html

French Oil Company Shuts Down in Turbulent Nigerian Delta By REUTERS

WARRI, Nigeria, March 22 — The French company TotalFinaElf shut its oil production facilities in Nigeria’s western delta and evacuated workers today because of spiraling tribal unrest in the area, company officials said.

“We decided to shut our production and evacuate the area because of the deteriorating situation,” a company official said in Lagos.

In the same region, other workers were stranded in a major ChevronTexaco oil export terminal as angry villagers prevented them from leaving, industry sources said.

The leaders of the Ijaw ethnic group, which has been clashing with the army since Thursday, raised estimates of their death toll from 14 to 58, all killed, they said, in army raids on villages.

At least 55 others have died, including 10 soldiers, in the political and ethnic violence, tribal leaders and security sources said.

A helicopter was seen landing in the oil city of Warri, bringing the first group of workers fleeing fighting in oil fields around the Escravos export terminal. The group was accompanied by armed soldiers.

Company officials said the helicopters were ferrying workers from the Opumami tank farm, the French oil company’s most important facility in the Obodo district, where it produces 7,500 barrels of crude a day.

But there was no immediate official confirmation that militants had set fire to part of the tank farm.

“We are still getting reports from the area,” the Lagos-based official said.

A surge in ethnic conflict in the Nigerian delta has forced Shell and ChevronTexaco to shut down their oil operations. The two companies, which have declared force majeure on some export commitments, say they were losing 315,000 barrels a day of crude, or 16 percent of Nigeria’s output.

The Niger delta, which accounts for most of Nigeria’s crude output of two million barrels per day, has been on the boil for years, with oil multinationals getting caught in a deadly struggle for oil benefits by local ethnic groups.

The latest flare-up pits ethnic Itsekiri against the Ijaw, who are leading a campaign in the delta for a greater share of Nigeria’s oil wealth. The increasingly violent campaign has added to nationwide political unrest threatening elections next month.

Scores of people, including 10 soldiers quelling unrest, have been killed in the last week alone.

Nationwide, well over 10,000 people have died in ethnic, religious and political violence since President Olusegun Obasanjo’s election in 1999 ended 15 years of military dictatorship.

The unrest is raising fears over a series of elections, including a presidential vote on April 19. Disruption to key oil exports could add economic hardship to the political crisis.

A source at an oil contracting company in Warri said villagers were preventing her company’s employees from leaving ChevronTexaco’s Escravos export terminal.

“Our staff are stuck there,” she said. “They said they have no way of getting out from there. They said they are just living by God’s will.” She added that Ijaw youths were shouting threats at those behind the terminal’s fences.

“They came toward them, shouting that they will kill them because Chevron has invited the police to fight them,” she said.

ChevronTexaco denied requesting any action by the police or the army. A company spokesman, Sola Omole, said in Lagos that there was an “uneasy calm” around the terminal.

Retailers Put All Their Grenades in One Basket Full Metal Bonnet by Erik Baard March 4th, 2003 1:00 PM

“A lighthearted and fun gift,” says one merchant.

While Pentagon war planners may be gunning for an attack on Iraq by mid March, heavily armed soldiers have already quietly seized a strategic position: your Easter basket. National retailers like Kmart and Walgreens have stocked their shelves with baskets in which the traditional chocolate rabbit centerpiece has been displaced by plastic military action figures and their make-believe lethal paraphernalia. Tri-state Rite Aid, Genovese, and Wal-Mart stores promise their martial Easter baskets will arrive soon.

At the Astor Place Kmart, the encampment is on display just inside the main entrance. A camouflaged sandy-haired soldier with an American-flag arm patch stands alert in a teal, pink, and yellow basket beneath a pretty green-and-purple bow. Within a doll-arm’s reach are a machine gun, rifle, hand grenade, large knife, pistol, and round of ammunition. In the next basket a buzz-cut blond with a snazzy dress uniform hawks over homeland security, an American eagle shield on his arm, and a machine gun, pistol, Bowie knife, two grenades, truncheon, and handcuffs at the ready.

One must hunt a little harder to find the Easter sniper at Walgreens, but what lies in wait among the bunnies and chicks there is perhaps even more surreal. The Super Wrriors (sic) Battle Set and Placekeepers (sic) Military Men Play Set bristle with toy assault rifles and machine guns, tanks, troop transports, bomber planes, commanded by armored men with shaved heads and sunglasses. The assortment also includes a space-age ray gun and other imaginary hardware for orbital combat. Packets of jellybeans are tossed in as if an afterthought, nestled in the cellophane underbrush like anti-personnel mines.

Not surprisingly, the merger of religious observance and jingoistic lust sparked the ire of Christian leaders. Bishop George Packard, who oversees spiritual care for Episcopalian members of the armed services, worries about practical issues. He’s concerned about creating a backlash against the military, and questions the message sent to Muslims by the melding of a Christian holiday with images of war.

The products themselves, Packard says, are “really, really bizarre. It’s a crass embrace of the far end of a range of options for parents to provide their kids. Easter baskets have been deteriorating for a long time, but they’ve really gone over the edge. I am so disturbed, I am so confounded by this bad taste.”

Other Christian groups agree. Dr. Richard Land, president of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention commission on ethics and religious liberty, says, “Well, of course, it certainly would be a jarring note for the celebration of Easter. I certainly wouldn’t buy one for my children, when my children were small.”

The religious leaders noted that the eggs, bunnies, and chicks so intimately associated with the holiday are also unrelated to the narrative of Jesus. They are instead the trappings of Ostara (also known as Eostra), a Teutonic goddess of spring, fertility, and the dawn, who also lends her name to estrogen and the East.

But guns would seem to be at odds with that convergent pagan and Christian spirit of renewal. The juxtaposition is an affront to some soldiers, too. “I call that, myself, a pretty stupid insult and a slap at a religious observance,” says Bruce Zielsdorf, who served 23 years in the air force and is now a spokesperson for the army in New York City. “First they commercialize one of the holiest days of the Christian calendar, and now this? It sounds like some vendor threw some stuff up on a shelf to see what would sell. I can assure you that we were not consulted on any decision to make any such Easter baskets.”

Retailers went on the defensive. “There was no intention on our part to offer up a violent Easter basket. We’re very conscious of what will and what will not offend our customers. It was meant to be a lighthearted and fun gift,” says Kmart spokesperson Abigail Jacobs. “It’s in my opinion a harmless toy included in an Easter basket.”

The reaction to a Voice query at Walgreens contrasted sharply, with company representatives retreating instead of digging in. “Going forward next year, we don’t plan to have Easter baskets with toy soldiers or a military theme. The thinking on these Easter baskets was more toy-related and we didn’t really think about it otherwise,” says Walgreens spokesperson Carol Hively. “We apologize to anybody who is offended or felt that this was inappropriate.”

That’s not enough for Bishop Packard. “Well, isn’t that nice? What about this season? This is when it really counts,” he says. “Kids are eavesdropping on the talk of war and get enveloped in its trauma.”

The armored baskets are only the latest combat-themed toy to hit the shelves. Hasbro’s G.I. Joe is a perennial favorite that’s surged 46 percent amid the war fever, and new ones like Tora Bora “Ted” are still being rolled out by other companies. In the current climate, the plastic soldiers allow children to “role-play out their feelings about war,” says toy industry analyst Reyne Rice of the NPD Group.

Easter provides a way for makers of generic troops to capitalize on the trend. Unlike superhero dolls, war toys don’t come with costly trademarks attached. That lowers the bar to entry for small manufacturers, today typically Chinese. That industry has followed confectioners to transform Easter into the second-largest selling season, Rice says. “Maybe they are trying to promote products in another way, to draw attention to them. Obviously this isn’t the kind of attention they intended,” she says. Kmart’s basket supplier, Megatoys, didn’t return calls.

Most toy-filled baskets contain items like sandbox goodies and cuddly dolls, and this isn’t the first time the toy soldiers have made an appearance. This year, though, the action figures seem to have more prominent shelf positions at the two downtown Kmart and Walgreens stores. Hively says they were particularly strong sellers. Walgreens’ supplier, Wondertreats, justifies its product as the result of careful market analysis. “We don’t determine the mix [of toys]. It’s determined by what the consumers want. We talk to kids and watch kids in stores,” explains Greg Hall, owner of Wondertreats. “They’re exposed to the violence and blood that sells newspapers. We don’t create that, we’re just responding to what customers want.”

Such toys are, however, a frequent focus of children’s advocacy groups like the Lion & Lamb Project, which during the Christmas season highlighted another toy, the Military Forward Command Post, made by Ever Sparkle Industrial, that seemed to cross culture lines in an unsettling way. The Web site for Kay-Bee Toy Stores describes it as “a lifelike replica of a real battlefield headquarter. . . . Two-tiered and loaded with realistic weapons, accessories, furniture and equipment, this set is ready for action.” This “battle-worn playset,” also carried for the holiday season by Kmart, Toys “R” Us and Amazon.com, looks like a dollhouse but has been gutted, torched, and bullet-pocked. A similar toy offered by Hobbylinc.com features a bombed-out farmhouse.

“Parents say, ‘Oh, kids know it’s fantasy,’ and then they want to tell their kids to believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny,” observes Lion & Lamb director Daphne White. “You can’t have it both ways. To market war as something fun and to play around with is sending them a very dangerous message.”

Livewire: Blogs May Pierce the Fogs of War Sun Dec 8, 3:06 PM ET Add Technology – Reuters Internet Report to My Yahoo!

By Adam Pasick

NEW YORK (Reuters) – CNN owned the story of the first Gulf War (news – web sites) — blogs and the Internet may carry the day if there is a sequel.

Just as the 1991 conflict was the testing ground for 24-hour cable channels like CNN more than 10 years ago, a second conflict there may serve as a trial by fire for the news and commentary sites known as blogs.

Blogs — short for Web logs — are pithy, opinionated collections of links to other news coverage, accompanied by the author’s commentary. Since a blog can be created by anyone with an Internet connection, however, readers should take what is written there with a grain of salt.

A war in Iraq could be a blog watershed. Just as CNN made its reputation with live coverage from Baghdad, blogs may be uniquely suited to help cut through the fog of war by showcasing diverse accounts and opinions.

“The chief role of bloggers, judging by the Afghan war, is to draw together obscure reporting that didn’t make the mainstream, and also to second-guess dumb news analysis, pointing out what people said that was wrong,” said Glenn Reynolds, whose Instapundit blog (http://www.instapundit.com) is one of the most well-established and widely-read.

Blog creators are usually candid about their ideological leanings. But it is ultimately up to readers to decide which blogs are worthy of trust.

“It’s based on their track record more than anything else,” said Reynolds.

Some media experts, however, doubt that blogs will be able to get the access necessary to actually break stories or be at the front line of coverage.

“The military is going to say … you could be anybody — you could be Al Qaeda for all we know — and your promise to abide by our ground rules isn’t worth the virtual paper it’s printed on,” said Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota. “The bloggers’ role is probably going to be more of what we call the second-day story.”

In some cases, soldiers have created their own blogs to share news with friends and family, although obviously there are restrictions about what information they can disclose.

One blog created by soldiers in Afghanistan (news – web sites), initially located at www.172med.org, had to relocate after being swamped with readers from all over the world. Now located at logwarrior.com (http://www.logwarrior.com), the site tells the story of day-to-day life for the soldiers, including subjects such as their Thanksgiving dinners and shopping expeditions into nearby towns.

The U.S. Army has its own Afghanistan blog (http://www.americasarmy.com/archives/afghanistan_weblog/bomb.p hp), part of its “America’s Army” public relations effort designed to entice potential recruits, which also includes a video game.

The language on the Army blog is dramatic, to say the least: “WAAABOOOOM!!! A flash of light followed by a concussion of air shook the RPG fence in front of me and the safe house windows behind me.”

If there is war in Iraq, don’t expect to see bloggers parachuting into Baghdad — although there is already at least one blogger on the ground there, who publishes his descriptions of daily life in Iraq at Where_Is_Raed? (http://where_is_raed.blogspot.com/).

In criticizing the British dossier of alleged human rights abuses by the Iraqi government released this week, he wrote, “Thank you for your keen interest in the human rights situation in my country, thank you turning a blind eye for thirty years … thank you for not minding the development of chemical weapons by a nut case when you knew he was a nut case.”

War-related information online doesn’t stop with bloggers. GlobalSecurity.org (http://www.globalsecurity.org) offers high-grade pictures of military bases, presidential palaces and other sites of interest inside Iraq, which it says are obtained from commercial imaging satellites.

And for-profit intelligence-gathering companies, including Jane’s (http://www.janes.com) and Stratfor (http://www.stratfor.com), provide detailed military analysis and security briefings, with more details available to subscribers.

Bloggers, in addition to drawing on the vast news resources online, can also get news from readers.

“In early November I was getting e-mail from people on the front (in Afghanistan), and you’ll probably see bloggers getting e-mail” if there is war in Iraq, said Reynolds.

Other bloggers, especially journalists and ex-military personnel with reliable contacts, can break news on their own. Fred Pruitt, who runs Rantburg (http://www.rantburg.com/), a blog devoted to news in the Middle East and Africa, worked for a U.S. intelligence agency according to his bio. “He gets stuff before anyone else,” Reynolds said.

The site reported on Dec. 2 that “Shia militiamen opposed to Saddam Hussein (news – web sites) have begun deploying around strategic towns in the south of Iraq and are disrupting communications and military supply routes, it was claimed yesterday.”

Other sites of note that concentrate on the Middle East include Little Green Footballs (http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/weblog.php), by Charles Johnson and a blog run by Australian journalist Tim Blair (http://timblair.blogspot.com/).

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