Guam: What the Pentagon Forgets It Already Has

Looking for Friendly Overseas Base, Pentagon Finds It Already Has One

April 7, 2004
New York Times
By JAMES BROOKE

ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam - Washed by a southwesterly Pacific breeze, a line of B-52 Stratofortress bombers stand parked on the hot tarmac here, their tails stenciled with "MT," a reminder that they flew here recently from the snows of Minot, N.D.

Away for more than a decade, the B-52's, the United States' largest bombers, are back in Guam, part of a wide-ranging drive by the Pentagon to make this island, an American territory, a "power projection hub" on the edge of Asia.

"We are openly talking about putting a fighter wing there, a tanker squadron there, a Global Hawk group there," Gen. William J. Begert, Pacific Air Forces commander, said by telephone from Hawaii, almost 4,000 miles east of here. The Global Hawk is an unmanned surveillance plane.

"Guam, first of all, is U.S. territory," General Begert said. "I don't need overflight rights. I don't need landing rights. I always have permission to go to Guam. It might as well be California or New Jersey."

Next year, Washington is to decide on a new round of base closings, the first in a decade. Opening the debate, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld reported to Congress on March 23 that the military had 24 percent more base capacity than it needed.

Judging by Mr. Rumsfeld's comments after his trip here last November, Guam will be a winner in the base-closing process. This volcanic, 209-square-mile island, with a population of about 160,000, fits the Pentagon's new strategy of creating "lily pads" to allow for the rapid deployment of military muscle.

"Rumsfeld keeps saying, `What about Guam? Let's build up Guam,' " said an American diplomat in Tokyo, where the defense secretary stopped after visiting here.

The Navy loss its base at Subic Bay, the Philippines, in 1992 after the Philippine Senate refused to extend the lease, and American memories of that remain sharp. The diplomat added, "We don't want to be somewhere where they don't want us, where they can throw us out."

At the naval station here, Rear Adm. Arthur J. Johnson, the commander, said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had raised Guam's strategic value as the Pentagon realized the usefulness of an all-American outpost in Asia. "We invested huge amounts of money in facilities we could not use when we needed them, for example, Saudi Arabia," Admiral Johnson said. "Places where the U.S. is autonomous have come greatly to the fore."

Military officials here declined to discuss how Guam would fit into an American response to the rapid rise of China. But by moving ships and submarines to Guam, the Pentagon cuts "the tyranny of distance," trimming five days off a Pacific crossing from Hawaii, said Richard Halloran, a military analyst based in Hawaii.

"A lot of these moves are intended to deter China," Mr. Halloran, a freelance military writer, said from Honolulu, where the United States Pacific Command is based. "You are not threatening China, not in any way jeopardizing their security. On the other hand, if China becomes belligerent, you are in position to do something about it, particularly with the submarines and an aircraft carrier."

Carl Peterson, a businessman on Guam, said of Washington's low-key military buildup here: "It just sort of happens. Why disclose it? Why tell the Chinese what you are going to do before you do it?"

Later this year, a new nuclear-powered attack submarine is to arrive here, the third to make Guam its home port since 2002. While Washington debates whether a carrier should come here or to Hawaii, Guam's outer harbor is being dredged and World War II-era wharves are to be repaired for more efficient munitions handling.

["Guam's geo-strategic importance cannot be overstated," Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, the senior military officer in the Pacific, with 300,000 soldiers, sailors and marines under his command, said on March 31 in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. "Both Navy and Air Force facilities will continue to figure prominently in Guam's increasing role as a power projection hub."]

Across the naval station here, new housing is being built, part of a near- doubling of military spending on the island from levels of a decade ago.

"Guam is no longer the trailer park of the Pacific," Admiral Johnson said of the new military investment. "Guam has emerged from backwater status to the center of the radar screen. This is rapidly becoming a focus for logistics, for strategic planning."

Washington's investment in Guam is most easily seen from the catwalk of Andersen's 13-story air traffic control tower.

Down below, work is under way on an air-conditioned, typhoon-resistant hangar for B-1 bombers, a huge war reserve material warehouse, a new base exchange shopping center, a new fitness and health center and a new base security center. Out of sight, new underground pipes are delivering aviation fuel directly to parking pads for jets, and the first of 60 munitions storage "igloos" are being built. To foil terrorists, workers are drilling water wells on base and burying power lines off base.

"This is by far the largest amount of construction I have seen at any Air Force base in my years in the service," said Capt. David Vandenburg, a 29-year-old Oklahoman who is chief of base development.

Captain Vandenburg's commander, Col. Paul K. White, said that when he was assigned here a year ago he was leery of Guam because of its sleepy reputation. "But this is a very exciting time to be here," he continued. "If bases are closed, the units will have to go somewhere."

Of the Pentagon's new appreciation for Guam, Mr. Peterson said: "Rumsfeld is high on Guam; he was heard asking, `How are we going to do Guam?' They are not showing their hand. But through innuendo and comments that we pick up on, everybody is suggesting there is going to be so much going on here."

While apartments, fitness centers and military support offices are not glamorous, they are essential for increasing what Capt. David M. Boone, a Navy Seabee, calls Guam's "surge capacity." In a military emergency, the island could quickly swell with planes, submarines, and ships.

"The real trick for me is to figure out how many people are going to be living here 10 years from now," said Captain Boone, who has command of military construction on Guam. "It is a moving target."

Guam has been a supply base since Spanish galleons from Manila stopped here to pick up fresh water and food before crossing the Pacific to Acapulco, Mexico. In the late 19th century, the island was a Spanish coaling station; the United States gained control in 1898 after the Spanish-American War. In recent decades, Air Force pilots dubbed Guam "the world's largest gas station."

But it is increasingly being used for military training. The Marines have rented typhoon-damaged structures for urban warfare exercises. Rural warfare training has been conducted in the southern jungles, forests so thick that one holdout Japanese soldier from World War II was captured only in 1972.

About 150 miles north of here, a small island serves as a bombing range. There is also the wide-open sea and the sky above it, with no one to complain about sonic booms.

"In Minot, the nearest bombing range is in Utah, a two-and-a-half hour flight," said Lt. Col. Robert Hyde, a 37-year-old Mississippian who commands the base's new unit of six B-52's. Referring to his training here with the Navy, Colonel Hyde said, "In North Dakota, obviously, you can't work easily with a carrier battle group."

During the Christmas 1972 bombing of North Vietnam, more than 150 B-52's flew from here. On a recent morning, bulldozers and pavers were upgrading the acres of tarmac that make Andersen comparable to a major international airport.

In this treeless landscape, even B-52's look small. In the shade of one the planes' huge, drooping wings, Master Sgt. Ralph Gillikan, a mechanic last stationed at the North Dakota base, surveyed the surrounding sea of concrete and said, "The parking here is good."

More on the Move from Okinawa to Guam

Move to Guam could cost Marine Corps extra $465M a year
By David Allen, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Friday, March 16, 2007

CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — The move of some 8,000 Marines and their families from Okinawa to Guam by 2014 is expected to cost the Marine Corps an extra $465 million annually.

However, a recent inspector general’s report concluded that the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps are not prepared for the increased annual costs resulting from the planned changes to the force structure in the Pacific.

The 14-page report, released Monday, is the culmination of a yearlong audit and interviews with military officials. It states the Marine Corps is the only branch so far to estimate how much it will cost yearly to move assets to Guam from Okinawa. However, the corps has not included the cost in its budget projections.

“The source of funds for the additional requirements (has) not been resolved between Headquarters, Marine Corps and the Department of the Navy,” the report states.

The Navy and Air Force also will incur additional annual costs by moving assets to Guam, but the services have not determined what they are, the report adds.

“If DOD and the Services do not include the projected increased annual funding requirements in the next Program Objective Memorandums for DFY 2009,” the report read, “the quality of life for servicemembers and their dependents and the readiness of U.S. forces in USPACOM may be adversely affected.”

The United States has reached agreements with Japan and South Korea for a major restructuring of U.S. forces in the Pacific. A reduction of some 12,500 U.S. Forces Korea personnel is expected to be complete by the end of 2008.

The United States and Japan agreed last May to replace Marine Corps Air Station Futenma with a new airfield on Camp Schwab and to close several other Marines bases on Okinawa. That would result in the move of 8,000 Marines and about 9,000 family members to Guam, with Japan picking up about $6 billion of the estimated $10.3 billion cost.

To help cover that cost, Japan officials are considering reducing host-nation support for U.S. forces remaining in Japan. Japan now pays about $3.03 billion a year to maintain U.S. forces and is expected to pay that much until 2008.

“DOD must recognize and plan for a possible substantial increase in funding requirements to support forces remaining in Japan if Japan reduces its host nation support,” the IG report states.

Besides the Marines, the Air Force plans to relocate about 3,500 servicemembers, civilian employees and their families to Guam from various locations, but has not estimated the increased budget requirements for the move, according to the report. Also, the Navy, which closed many facilities on Guam in 1993, will need an increase in funds to “refurbish and adequately maintain facilities” for the influx of Marines and airmen.

Guam Officials Want a Say In Marines' Move

Guam officials want a say in Marines' move from Okinawa
By David Allen, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Saturday, July 15, 2006


NAHA, Okinawa — The chief thing Guam officials are taking home with them after a four-day trip to Okinawa is a need to ensure they have a say in the process of moving some 8,000 Marines and their dependents from Okinawa to their island over the next eight years.

B.J. Cruz, a senator in Guam’s legislature, said at a news conference Thursday that he learned Okinawa leaders have managed to get concessions from the Japanese government “for certain infrastructures.”

“Guam is not in a similar position,” he said, explaining that the master plan for the use of Guam, to be sent to Pacific Command Adm. William J. Fallon, was prepared without local input.

PACOM officials have acknowledged the initial plan did not include local input but say that will come in the next phase of planning.

Cruz, however, said that “there is no assurance that our concerns and our recommendations are going to be implemented.”

He was one of nine Guam officials Japanese Diet member Mikio Shimoji of Naha invited to Okinawa. They visited communities that host U.S. military bases and industries, Battle of Okinawa museums and peace memorials, schools and business districts developed on former base land.

They also got a look at how local communities cope with the large U.S. military presence.

Cruz said Guam officials needed to be careful Marines do not come to their island to the detriment of Guam residents.

“There is only one freshwater lake and the military owns that lake … they sell that water to the local community,” he said. “Since they sell that water to the local community, they can also turn it off. Three of us live in villages where over the last two months we’ve been without water for almost 30 days.”

Cruz said he will press the U.S. government to provide adequate infrastructure for the island’s civilians as well as the military.

Lt. Gov. Kaleo Moylan, who led the Guam delegation, said the trip was to ensure a smooth transition of Marines to Guam. Moylan, who is running against Gov. Felix Camacho for this fall’s Republican gubernatorial nomination, said Okinawa and Guam had parallel post-World War II histories.

“You had military bases placed here without the consent of the local population,” he said. “Guam had a similar experience. Now that we are in the process of realignment … the voices of the people of Guam need to be heard.”

Guam Legislature Vice Speaker Joanne Brown said she “hoped that Guam can minimize the adverse experiences that people of Okinawa encountered” with such a large military presence.

“We’re very concerned about the social impact this will have on our people,” she said. “It’s going to be very, very critical in the next few months and certainly in the next few years for us to ensure that the leadership of Guam … be very, very aggressive.”

She said Guam officials need to be just as aggressive with the U.S. government as Okinawa officials are with Tokyo.

“The federal government has a responsibility to make sure the military buildup does not adversely affect our people,” she said.

Chiyomi Sumida contributed to this report.

Close U.S. Overseas Military Bases

Published on Monday, March 12, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
A New Network Forms to Close U.S. Overseas Military Bases
by Medea Benjamin

In a new surge of energy for the global struggle against militarism, some 400 activists from 40 countries came together in Ecuador from March 5-9 to form a network to fight against foreign military bases. The conference began in Quito, then participants traveled in an 8-bus caravan across the country, culminating in a spirited protest at the city of Manta, site of a U.S. base.

While a few other countries such as England, Russia, China, Italy and France have bases outside their territory, the United States is responsible for 95% of foreign bases. According to U.S. government figures, the U.S. military maintains some 737 bases in 130 countries, although many estimate the true number to be over 1,000.

A network of local groups fighting the huge U.S. military complex is indeed an “asymmetrical struggle,” but communities have been trying for decades to close U.S. military bases on their soil. Their concerns range from the destruction of the environment, the confiscation of farmlands, the abuse of women, the repression of local struggles, the control of resources and a broader concern about military and economic domination.

The Ecuadorian groups who agreed the host the international meeting had been fighting against a U.S. base in the town of Manta. The U.S. and Ecuadorian governments had signed a base agreement in 1999, renewable after 10 years. The purpose of the base was supposed to be drug interdiction, but instead it has provided logistical support for the counterinsurgency war in Colombia, placing Ecuador in a dangerous position of interfering in the internal affairs of its neighbor. The base has also affected the livelihoods of local fishermen and farmers and brought an increase in sex workers, while the promised surge in economic development has not materialized.

During Ecuador’s presidential race in November 2006, candidate Rafael Correa criticized the base and after winning the election he quipped, “We can negotiate with the U.S. about a base in Manta, if they let us put a military base in Miami.” His comment displayed the stunning hypocrisy of the U.S. government, a government that would never deign to have a foreign base on its soil but expects over 100 countries to host U.S. bases.

In a great boost to the newly-formed network to close foreign bases, President Correa sent high-level representatives to the conference to express support, and he himself, together with the Ministers of Defense and Foreign Relations, met with delegates from the network to express their commitment to closing the Manta base when it comes up for renewal in 2009.

But the Ecuadorian government’s courageous stand is unfortunately not echoed in most countries, where anti-bases activists usually find themselves fighting against both the U.S. bases and their government’s collusion.

Indigenous representatives attending the conference talked about the destruction of indigenous lands to make way for bases. In the island of Diego Garcia, the indigenous Chagossian people have been driven off their lands, as have the Chamorros from Guam and the Inuit from Greenland. Kyle Kajihiro, director of the organization Area Hawaii, explained that the U.S. military occupies vast areas of Hawaiian territory, territory which was once public land used for indigenous reserves, agricultural production, schools and public parks.

The delegation from Okinawa, Japan, has been trying to dismantle the U.S. bases for the past 50 years. One of their main complaints has been the violence against women. Suzuyo Takazato, the director of Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence, has compiled a chilling chronology of sexual abuse against Okinawan women by U.S. soldiers, including the rape of a nine-month old baby and a six-year-old girl. “We publish these horrible crimes to break the silence and impunity of U.S. soldiers who, according to the base treaty, cannot be judged in Okinawa.” Even when groups are not successful in closing the bases, at least they are pushing for U.S. soldiers to be subject to the laws of the host country.

The representative from Guam talked about the environmental devastation—the dumping of PCBs, Agent Orange, DDT, heavy metals and munitions, as well as fallout from the detonation of 168 nuclear bombs in the North western Pacific between 1946 and 1958, leading to high rates of radiation-linked cancers on his island. Activists who have been successful in closing bases warned that it is critical to force the U.S. to clean up before leaving. The Filipinos who won the closure of the Subic and Clark bases in 1992 after years of popular pressure are still fighting to force the U.S. military to clean the site and compensate the affected population.

One of the most compelling success stories came from Vieques, Puerto Rico, where a U.S. base was installed in 1948 in this island paradise of lagoons and sand beaches. The military used the base to build, store and test bombs and chemical substances, like cancer-causing Agent Orange. For decades the local people, especially the fisherman, protested the base, but the anti-base struggle was catalyzed in 1999 when a bomb killed a local civilian, David, Sanes. Activist Nilda Medina spoke with great passion about how they set up permanent protest camps, thousands performed acts of civil disobedience, and others went on hunger strikes. After residents occupied the test area for 13 months, the Navy finally agreed to close the base in May 1, 2003. Now the local people, as in so many other sites, are fighting to clean up the land and treat those who have been exposed to harmful chemicals.” We’re so proud of what we accomplished and want to tell our story to encourage others,” said Nilda Medina. “We understand that this is part of a worldwide struggle against the militarization of our planet.”

Post-9/11, this militarization has become even more entrenched as part of the “war on terror.” Representatives from Cuba at the conference complained bitterly about the use of the Guantanamo base as a center for illegal detention and abuse of prisoners. Activists from Japan, Turkey, Italy and Germany said their countries had been used to facilitate the invasions and ongoing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Delegates from Germany said they have 81 U.S. bases, more than anywhere in the world, and that Germany had became a central rotation point for U.S. soldiers on their way to and from Iraq. They complained that the use of U.S. bases as a launching pad for hostile military operations makes their country vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

This is why over 100,000 people came out for a demonstration in February 2007 in the Italian town of Vicenza against a proposed new military base. “We don’t want the noise, the pollution, the taxing of our infrastructure,” said local organized Cinzia Bottene. “But most of all, we don’t want to be accomplices to Bush’s war and a target for reprisals.”

Many U.S. groups sent representatives to the conference, including the Fellowship of Reconciliation, AFSC, United for Peace and Justice, Southwest Workers Union, WILPF, Global Exchange, CODEPINK and the Marin Interfaith Task Force. U.S. delegates said that the bases did not make them more secure; just the contrary. “One of the reasons the U.S. was attacked on September 11 was because of U.S. foreign bases in Saudi Arabia,” explained Joe Gerson of AFSC. “But while the U.S. military has since abandoned the bases in Saudi Arabia, it has replaced them with even more bases throughout the region, creating more animosity towards Americans.” The U.S. delegates made it clear that the network to close U.S. foreign bases was in line with the efforts of the U.S. peace movement, which would like to see our military used for defensive, not offensive purposes. U.S. delegates also emphasized how the billions of dollars now being spent to maintain this empire of bases would be better invested in people’s needs for health, education and housing.

The new global network will help local groups share experiences, learn from one another, and provide support for the local efforts. It will conduct research, maintain a global website (no-bases.org), publish an e-newsletter, and convoke regular international meetings to assess progress.

Luis Angel Saavedra, head of one of the Ecuadorian organizations sponsoring the conference, was thrilled with the outcome. “We’ve been working against the base in Manta for the past seven years, and this conference feels like the culmination of this entire campaign,” he said. “It will strengthen President Correa’s position to close the base. Our people are better educated after all the publicity we’ve received. And we now have a network to exchange strategies and experiences with people all over the world. I’d call that a great success.”

Medea Benjamin is cofounder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace. To learn more about the Network to Abolish Foreign Military Bases, go to www.no-bases.org.

Basing panel recommends against moving Marines from Okinawa to Guam
By Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Wednesday, May 11, 2005

WASHINGTON — The future of the Pacific fighting force hinges on keeping Marines in Okinawa and abandoning proposals to move them to Guam, say members of the Overseas Basing Commission.

“Okinawa is the strategic linchpin in the Pacific region,” Commissioner James Thomson, CEO of the Rand Corp., said at a news conference Monday unveiling the group’s report on the future of overseas military facilities.

The report had leaked out on Friday, much of it reported in Sunday editions of Stars and Stripes.

“This is a matter ultimately of distance, how close one can be to the area of potential threat, either ones we already know about or ones that can emerge. The location of Okinawa from the point of covering those threats is much better than Guam. It’s closer.”

The commission has recommended that the Defense Department slow down the return of foreign-based troops to the United States, and specifically that most Marines currently on Okinawa remain there.

The report does recommend that the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station be relocated, either to Kadena Air Base or Marines Corps Air Station Iwakuni.

For the past two years, defense officials have discussed the possibility of relocating Marines off Okinawa, with rumors including moves to Guam, the Philippines or Hawaii.

Commissioner Anthony Less, a retired vice admiral who once commanded the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, said the facilities at Kadena offer enough space for the Futenma Marines to carry out their missions, so moving them away from the potential threats in the region would not be beneficial.

The report says that critical infrastructure and quality-of-life programs might not be available to units returning to domestic bases if defense officials keep up the current pace of the project, and urged the process be slowed until after full force and facilities assessments are finished later this year.

No More Foreign Bases

Declaration: International Conference for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases, March 5 to 9, 2007

Quito and Manta, Ecuador

We come together from 40 countries as grassroots activists from groups that promote women’s rights, indigenous sovereignty, environmental justice, human rights, and social justice. We come from social movements, peace movements, faith-based organizations, youth organizations, trade unions, and indigenous communities. We come from local, national, and international formations.

United by our struggle for justice, peace, self-determination of peoples and ecological sustainability, we have founded a network animated by the principles of solidarity, equality, openness, and respect for diversity.

Foreign military bases and all other infrastructure used for wars of aggression violate human rights; oppress all people, particularly indigenous peoples, African descendants, women and children; and destroy communities and the environment. They exact immeasurable consequences on the spiritual and psychological wellbeing of humankind. They are instruments of war that entrench militarization, colonialism, imperial policy, patriarchy, and racism. The United States-led illegal invasions and ongoing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan were launched from and enabled by such bases. We call for the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from these lands and reject any planned attack against Iran.

We denounce the primary responsibility of the U.S. in the proliferation of foreign military bases, as well as the role of NATO, the European Union and other countries that have or host foreign military bases.

We call for the total abolition of all foreign military bases and all other infrastructure used for wars of aggression, including military operations, maneuvers, trainings, exercises, agreements, weapons in space, military laboratories and other forms of military interventions.

We demand an end to both the construction of new bases and the reinforcement of existing bases; an end to and cleanup of environmental contamination; an end to legal immunity and other privileges of foreign military personnel. We demand integral restauration and full and just compensation for social and environmental damages caused by these bases.

Our first act as an international network is to strengthen Ecuador’s commitment to terminate the agreement that permits the U.S. military to use the base in Manta beyond 2009. We commit to remain vigilant to ensure this victory.

We support and stand in solidarity with those who struggle for the abolition of all foreign military bases worldwide.

Foreign Military Bases Out Now!

Manta Si! Bases No!

The US role in Guam's Environmental Problems

How much of Ordot's environmental problem comes from U.S. government?
By Luis Szyfres
3 Feb, 2007
Pacific Daily News

Dorado Landfill (the Ordot dump) started out as a dumping ground for the U.S naval forces in the 1940s. During the 1950s, the landfill was transferred from the Navy to the government of Guam and has served as the island's only municipal waste disposal site ever since.

A study by the EPA (Dorado Landfill Leachate Streams, 1980-1998) identified 17 toxic chemicals in the Ordot dump. All of them belong to the EPA's 2002 list of "Priority Toxic Pollutants," including: arsenic; lead; aluminum; barium; antimony; cadmium; chromium; manganese; pesticides; PCBs; toluene; ethylbenzene; xylenes, zinc and cyanide.

In the landfills at Andersen Air Force Base, the studies of shallow subsurface soil and groundwater from downgradient wells found all the same 17 "Priority Toxic Pollutants."

How has the federal government performed the cleanup of its dumpsites on Guam? Throwing the toxic chemicals in dumpsites, or burning them with napalm? Giving the dumpsites to the private citizens or the local government? All these toxic chemicals (were) stored in federal facilities in Guam since the 1950s, and are present to this day in very high concentrations, above the accepted standards of the EPA. The irony is that it is precisely the EPA that has the mission of setting up the regulations,
and if any toxic chemical is above the concentrations stipulated in the regulations, they have to enforce the law -- but they never enforced anything with federal government landfills.

These toxic chemicals enter the bloodstream and may affect any organ or system in the body. Some examples of the most common diseases associated with these chemicals include: cancer; Parkinson's; multiple sclerosis; Alzheimer's; amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; renal dysfunction; cardiovascular disease; liver dysfunction; deafness; blindness; epilepsy; seizures; attention deficit disorder; emotional instability; depression; learning disabilities; arthritis; joint pain; anemia; hypothyroidism;
stillbirths; infertility; immune suppression; and dementia.

The federal government states that the situation represents a "great and immediate health threat to the people of the island."

U.S. Assistant Attorney Mikel W. Schwab described the government Guam's performance as "unacceptable and a chronic failure." He said that despite the involvement of several government agencies, nobody was paying attention to the great and immediate health threat to the people of the island. The local government's institutional failure and lack of leadership mean resources are being wasted," Schwab said (in the Dec. 21 Marianas Variety.)

It is obvious that the families of Guam do not put in the garbage cyanide, arsenic, lead, barium, cadmium, ethylbenzene and many other very toxic chemicals.

We can only say that, superimposed upon the toxic chemicals from the federal government, the people of Guam discard waste derived from residential and commercial activities.

The most important question: Does it make any sense to clean up only one of 25 dumpsites with toxic chemicals?

The EPA Superfund list of landfills in Guam that need cleanup includes 25 sites, but some sites have numerous landfills: i.e. Andersen Air Force Base has 39 landfills. Thus, in a small island, 30 miles long and 8 miles wide, we have about 100 dumpsites with toxic chemicals.

The toxic chemicals from the dumpsites will disperse throughout the entire island of Guam due to evaporation, rains, infiltration and typhoons.

The study of the EPA in the Andersen Air Force Base dumpsites in Urunao, Guam, states: "Surface soil samples were not analyzed for volatile organic compounds because geological and meteorological conditions on Guam induce volatilization and infiltration.

For example, with lead:

Airborne dust and dirt with lead may travel long distances, spreading the contamination when it falls from the air (to the) soil and groundwater.

Lead may remain stuck to soil particles or sediment in water for many years, or be moved by the rainwater, spreading to rivers, lakes and streams.

The levels of lead may build up in plants and animals from areas where air, water or soil are contaminated with lead.

People are exposed to lead by breathing air, drinking water, eating foods or swallowing dust that contains lead.

Two Chamorros Killed in the Horn of Africa

National Guard confirms two killed, one injured in Horn of Africa
by Jason Salas, KUAM News
Tuesday, March 06, 2007

The Guam Army National Guard has confirmed that two soldiers were killed in the Horn of Africa, with another being injured in an accident involving a military vehicle. Specialist Gregory Fejeran, Specialist Christopher Fernandez and Sergeant Robert Balajadia were in a military SUV that rolled over; Fejeran and Fernandez were killed in the incident while Balajadia sustained injuries.

SGT Balajadia was reportedly listed as being in stable condition and was medically evacuated to Landstuhl Military Hospital in Germany. The military confirmed that the accident was not the result of hostile action. The soldiers are part of Team Charlie, 1st Battalion, 294th Infantry, currently deployed to the Horn of Africa in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Major General Donald Goldhorn, Adjutant General of the Guam National Guard, expressed his condolences to the families of the deceased soldiers. He also offered his prayers to SGT Balajadia and to his family for a speedy recovery. The deaths of Fejeran and Fernandez are the 17th and 18th from Micronesia since 2003, respectively, due to the conflict in the Middle East.

World's Largest Anti-Terrorism Exercise on Guam

US to stage world's largest anti-terrorism exercise on Guam
Yahoo News
Mon Feb 19, 3:21 AM ET

The world's biggest anti-terrorism exercise will be held this year on Guam, underscoring the Pacific island's growing importance to Washington.

Exercise TopOff4 is part of a series of large-scale manoeuvres established to strengthen the United States' ability to respond to terrorist attacks involving weapons of mass destruction.

US Coast Guard commander in Guam, William Marhoffer, said the TopOff4 exercise would be bigger than last year's Valiant Shield war games, in which the US mobilised 30 ships, 280 aircraft and 22,000 military personnel.

"It will be bigger in some ways. Valiant Shield was a military exercise. It was a show of force. It was the first time we had three carrier strike groups in combined operations in the Pacific since the Vietnam War.

"Top Officials (TopOff4) is a domestic counter-terrorism exercise ... it involves the intelligence communities, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Department of Defense, the US Coast Guard."

The exercise is expected to centre around a maritime terrorist attack.
US Vice President Dick Cheney is to visit Guam later this week.

"This exercise highlights Guam's strategic value and will show the world that we are prepared to defend our island and our nation from any threat of terrorism," Governor Felix Comacho said in his State of the Island address.

Guam and neighbouring US territories including the Northern Mariana Islands are considered by the US as strategic locations in the Asia-Pacific region.

Guam is home to one of the largest US military naval bases in the region and 8,000 marines will soon be relocated there from Japan.

The island, with a population of 170,000, is banking on the US military buildup to bail it out of its economic woes.

The US and Japan are spending 15 billion dollars on the relocation of the marines from Japan, which is expected to further boost Washington's military strength in the Asia-Pacific.

Japan PM Denies Sex Slavery in WWII

Japan's PM: No coercion in sex slavery
Official’s statement rejects government’s landmark 1993 acknowledgement
By Tim Sullivan
The Associated Press
Updated: 8:25 a.m. PT March 1, 2007

TOKYO - Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday there was no evidence Japan coerced Asian women into working as sex slaves during World War II, backtracking from a landmark 1993 statement in which the government acknowledged that it set up and ran brothels for its troops.

Abe’s comments to reporters came as a group of ruling party lawmakers urged the government to revise the so-called Kono Statement, which states that Japan’s wartime military sometimes recruited women to work in the brothels with coercion.

“The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion,” Abe said. “We have to take it from there.”

Historians say that up to 200,000 women, mainly from Korea and China, were forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers in brothels run by the military government as so-called “comfort women” during the war.

Japanese leaders have repeatedly apologized, including former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who said in 2001 that he felt sincere remorse over the comfort women’s “immeasurable and painful experiences.”

Abe’s comments were likely to provoke a strong reaction from South Korea and China.

‘Respecting the historical truth’
Earlier Thursday in Seoul, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun urged Japan to be more sincere in addressing its colonial past as dozens of people rallied outside the Japanese Embassy, lining up dead dogs’ heads on the ground. The demonstration marked the anniversary of a March 1, 1919, uprising against Japanese colonial rule, which still stirs up deep-rooted bitterness among Koreans.

Each of the dogs had a knife placed in its mouth on pieces of paper with the names of Koreans who allegedly collaborated with Japan during its 1910-45 colonial rule. Protest organizers said the animals had been slaughtered at a restaurant, as dogs are regularly consumed as food in Korea.

In a nationally televised address, Roh said Japan “needs to, above all, show an attitude of respecting the historical truth and acts that support this.”

“Instead of trying to beautify or justify its past wrongdoing, (Japan) should show sincerity that is in line with its conscience,” he said.

Roh also referred to recent hearings with sex slave victims in the U.S. Congress.


“The testimony reiterated a message that no matter how hard the Japanese try to cover the whole sky with their hand, there is no way that the international community would condone the atrocities committed during Japanese colonial rule,” he said.

Roh’s office said late Thursday that it did not immediately have a direct response to the Japanese leader’s remarks. In Beijing, calls to the Chinese Foreign Ministry seeking comment on the remarks were not immediately returned.

Several members of the U.S. House of Representatives have drafted a nonbinding resolution calling for Abe to “formally acknowledge, apologize and accept historical responsibility” for using “comfort women” during the war.

Attacked by right-wing nationalists
Supporters want an apology similar to the one the U.S. government gave to Japanese-Americans forced into internment camps during World War II. That apology was approved by Congress and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1988.

Japan objects to the resolution, which has led to unease in an otherwise strong U.S.-Japanese relationship.

The Kono Statement was issued in 1993 by then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono after incriminating defense documents were discovered showing the military had worked with independent contractors during the war to procure women for the brothels.

The statement has been attacked by right-wing nationalists in Japan, who argue the sex slaves worked willingly for the contractors and were not coerced into servitude by the military.

Despite the official acknowledgment, Japan has rejected most compensation claims by former sex slaves, saying such claims were settled by postwar treaties. Instead, a private fund created in 1995 by the Japanese government but funded by private donations has provided a way for Japan to compensate former sex slaves without offering official government compensation. Many comfort women have rejected the fund.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10625961/page/2/

Military Power vs. People Power in Asia

FPIF Policy Report

People Power vs. Military Power in East Asia
John Feffer, IRC February 13, 2007
Editor: Chuck Hosking

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3990
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

People power does not just trouble the sleep of dictators. It can also introduce an element of unpredictability and uncertainty into the security debate in pluralist societies. People, to put it bluntly, can be a problem for the military because civilians frequently come between a military and its objectives.

"In the short term, making governments more accountable to people introduces new uncertainties and limits into diplomacy," Kent Caldor has written about Northeast Asia. Calder's point was that transitional democracies are not ready to open national security to public debate. But the people power quandary perhaps even more profoundly affects Washington. Other nation's democracies sound good on paper and in principle but are risky business in practice. Having frequently forged comfortable military relationships with reliably authoritarian
administrations such as Park Chung Hee's in South Korea, Chiang Kai-shek's in Taiwan, the United States has recently discovered that democratic movements in East Asia can pose an unpredictable and worrisome challenge to U.S. security objectives. Indeed, the transformation of U.S. doctrine and force posture in East Asia results not just from technological changes and the identification of new threats but also from the impact of democratic movements within the countries of our allies.

At the same time, people power influences decision-making in dictatorships. In North Korea, for instance, citizens do not communicate their views in any meaningful way through elections. Yet they are still actors in an important political sense. The leadership in Pyongyang relies on people power - not in the sense of an anti-government movement but as an expression of nationalist sentiment - to achieve some measure of legitimacy for its policies. In this sense, people power and democracy are not interchangeable concepts.

In short, people power is viewed neither wholly negatively by putatively totalitarian regimes nor wholly positively by putatively democratic regimes. The notion that democracy and military security mutually reinforce one another both underestimates the staying power of systems like North Korea and China where democracy is anemic and overestimates the strength of military alliances between more robustly democratic states. This misreading of the relationship between people power and military power significantly distorts the understanding of three major shifts in security doctrine in the United States, North Korea, and South Korea. Conventionally interpreted as responses to geopolitical realities
and technological advances, these transformations in thinking also strongly reflect the influence of the grassroots.

The failure to connect people power to these evolving shifts in doctrine has profound policy implications for the United States. By misjudging popular support for hard-line stances in authoritarian states and by glossing over grassroots challenges to U.S. security strategies in more democratic countries, Washington continues to risk clashing with its regional adversaries and, ultimately, losing influence with its regional allies.


Strategic Flexibility

According to conventional wisdom, the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and the development of the concept of "strategic flexibility" were chiefly responses to advances in technology (primarily computers and communications) and the application of market principles to military management. The end of the Cold War, the subsequent attacks of September 11, and an altered security environment further accelerated these shifts in doctrine and force structure. The latest war-fighting gurus view fixed military bases with lumbering tanks and static defenses as comparatively low-tech and incapable of addressing rapidly emerging
conflicts and threats. U.S. forces, they argue, should be flexible enough to respond to North Korean missiles, Islamic fundamentalism in Indonesia, or a cross-straits confrontation in Taiwan.

But a case can be made that the RMA and strategic flexibility are also responses to NIMBY (not in my back yard) and democratic movements. Fixed bases were an easy target, not only for the enemy but also for popular discontent, starting in the Philippines and spreading to Okinawa, Tokyo, and Seoul (not to mention other parts of the world such as Vieques). The U.S. security umbrella was generally popular among allied leaders, but the actual U.S. security footprint was another matter.

In the Republic of Korea (ROK), popular anger against U.S. forces came to world attention in 2002, when tens of thousands of South Korean citizens demonstrated in the streets after the deaths of two schoolchildren run over by U.S. military armored vehicles. But this was not the first time that popular movements tried to effect change in the U.S.-ROK alliance. Earlier there were protests over the Status of Forces Agreement. Adding its voice, the "Reclaiming Our Land" movement targeted U.S. bases, as did organizing around prostitution. And the environmental movement campaigned against the toxic byproducts of the U.S. military presence. Nor has resistance dissipated with the planned reduction of
U.S. troops. South Korean movements continue to challenge U.S. plans to expand military facilities in Pyongtaek.

It is also important to acknowledge the influence that the inter-Korean summit of June 2000 had on the transformation of security perspectives. Kim Dae Jung's engagement policy, itself a response to and an incorporation of popular efforts at North-South reconciliation, changed the strategic nature of the demilitarized zone (DMZ). The cross-border tourism projects, the efforts to reconnect the north-south train line, and the industrial park at Kaesong all challenged military planning and even the notion of an infantry tripwire. South Korea's more conciliatory policy toward North Korea, which began to diverge from Washington's hard line after 2001, has made Seoul a less reliable U.S. ally. For instance, reportedly apprehensive that Seoul would transfer advanced technology to Pyongyang, the United States cancelled the sale of four Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft to South Korea in July.

Roh Moo-Hyun's more participatory style of government has also had an effect on security issues beyond the reunification question. It actively brought representatives of people power movements-of civil society-into government and raised expectations that the new administration would be more responsive to concerns percolating up from below. Due in part to this responsiveness, South Korea only begrudgingly sent troops to Iraq, has refused to join either the missile defense alliance or the Proliferation Security Initiative, and has looked askance at the whole notion of strategic flexibility for fear that it might draw Seoul into a conflict with Beijing.

Democratic movements profoundly informed South Korea's new strategic posture. They also provoked both a long-term reappraisal of U.S. strategic objectives and, in 2003, a specific response by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to accelerate the process of U.S. troop reductions in South Korea and the transfer of wartime operational control to Seoul.

Washington's concept of strategic flexibility, in other words, is not only useful for fighting an unpredictable enemy but also for dealing with an unpredictable ally. With Manila, the United States negotiated a Visiting Forces Agreement that not only sidestepped many NIMBY issues but also accorded U.S. forces much greater potential access throughout the Philippines to carry out a rather vaguely defined range of activities. With Seoul, Washington is negotiating a deal to reduce its costs and its overall footprint (though not its firepower). It will also reduce U.S. dependency on South Korean support for strategic flexibility.

Strategic flexibility has allowed Washington to count less on a South Korea, perceived to be unreliable and to shift its security focus to Japan, a more dependable supporter of U.S. positions in the region and elsewhere. If Japan proves unreliable in the future, because of heightened NIMBYism or a nationalist backlash against the security partnership with the United States, strategic flexibility will allow Washington to negotiate a better deal with someone else. And indeed, with popular sentiment still running against U.S. bases in Okinawa and on the mainland, Washington has been forced to draw some forces back to
Guam. Meanwhile, activists in Guam have already begun to protest the relocation of half the U.S. Marines Corps contingent currently based in Okinawa.

South Korea, even under authoritarianism, was not always predictably subservient to U.S. military objectives. Park Chung-Hee was notoriously resistant to the troop reductions that President Carter proposed in the late 1970s. But in general, an authoritarian South Korea was more predictably anti-communist, pro-United States, favorably inclined toward Japan, and suspicious of China than a democratic South Korea. The same can be said about a quiescent Okinawa, an authoritarian Taiwan, and the Marcos-era Philippines. Close U.S. relations with yesteryear's East Asian dictators required a certain flexibility in stated principles. Today, close relations with their democratic successors require flexibility in strategic posture.


Military-First Doctrine

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is no fan of democratic movements. If the rumors of military coups are correct, he is even worried about popular uprisings within the North Korean military. Polls of North Koreans, if they existed, might strengthen Kim's hand by revealing a fierce determination to defend the homeland, a preference for an "iron fist" to insure domestic stability, and even a nationalist pride in their country's entry into the nuclear club. But popular discontent over budget priorities and disapproval of the leadership's decisions over the last decade-not to mention widespread human rights abuses-would likely
undermine his political position. There is no sign that the North Korean government plans to introduce even the modest political reforms adopted by its putative ally China. There is also no tradition of democracy in North Korea to which a dissident or opposition movement might appeal.

In the mid-1990s, Kim Jong Il introduced the "military first" doctrine to consolidate his own political position and mobilize the country against threats both external and internal. In 2003, the doctrine officially became an ideology. At one level, the leadership's emphasis on the military is a pragmatic political decision. Because of its sheer size, the military substitutes for any representative political body. There are practically no civilians in North Korea: there are only future soldiers, current soldiers, veterans, and families of soldiers. The military is the only truly functioning institution in the society, not only in terms of protecting borders and preparing for the much-touted foreign attack, but also in maintaining infrastructure and keeping the
extraction industries running.

By putting the military first, the North Korean leadership is responding to a perceived foreign threat from the outside and strengthening the regime's hold on power. But it is also appealing to the country's most representative institution. In this sense, the military-first doctrine is a populist platform. Pyongyang's October nuclear test can be interpreted-in addition to its deterrent and "bargaining chip" purposes-as an attempt to stimulate nationalist pride and provide some measure of compensation for the economic adversity of the past decade, revealing that popular sentiment is not irrelevant to North Korean policymaking. North Koreans make their voices heard not through the ballot box or demonstrations but rather through their membership in military institutions and their capacity to respond to nationalist appeals.

Such informal political participation should not be construed as either pro-government or anti-government. It is very difficult to know the true feelings of North Koreans. But it would be a mistake for outside governments to assume an unbridgeable gulf between the people and the state. A mass organization like the army and mass ideologies like nationalism mediate between the two. It's certainly not democracy. But even states that aspire to totalitarian control must factor people power into their political calculus beyond merely its potential threat to regime stability.


Strategic Redeployment?

When evaluating the political situation on the Korean Peninsula, particularly as it relates to security issues, it is routine to discuss the personal quirks of the leaders (Kim Jong Il, Roh Moo-Hyun, George Bush) or the characteristics of their coteries (the revolutionary generation in North Korea, the 386 generation of 40-something activists in South Korea, the neoconservative generation in the United States). Yet it may well be the clout of popular movements - or the threat of them - that will prove most influential in determining the future security environment on the peninsula.

Behind the headlines, popular mobilization has profoundly influenced three key doctrinal shifts: the military-first approach in North Korea, a more independent security policy in South Korea, and strategic flexibility in the United States. Leaders in both democratic and nondemocratic countries have kept watchful eyes on people power when formulating security policy, both in terms of mobilizing support (through nationalist or populist appeals) and avoiding negative responses (such as NIMBY).

The future of these doctrinal shifts remains unclear. Should the current tensions around the nuclear conflict subside, North Korea might conceivably switch its military-first doctrine to the competing concept of kangsong taeguk (strong and prosperous nation) and reallocate precious resources to economic modernization. If market reforms don't benefit a large enough portion of the population, however, the country will face a pre-revolutionary predicament of rising and unmet expectations. Only if the military is fully behind these changes, in the sense of implementing them as well as benefiting from them, will the regime avoid collapse. As in Cuba, however, Washington's policy of unmitigated pressure allows Pyongyang to retain a measure of popular support through relentless, nationalist invocations of an external threat.

In South Korea, the character of Roh Moo-Hyun's more independent foreign policy is often ascribed to a narrow party agenda rather than reflecting more significant changes in how South Koreans view their country's role in the region. China has become a much more important economic partner and diplomatic player in the region, and South Koreans are rapidly waking up to this reality (conflicts over the Koguryo historical dispute notwithstanding). U.S. force reductions in Korea, and what will inevitably be a widening conflict over military purchasing and interoperability, will only distance Seoul further from Washington. Even the conservatives, should they win the 2007 presidential election in South Korea, will likely continue Roh's more independent military and foreign policy, partly in response to the pressures of popular sentiment and partly because of geopolitical realities such as China's economic might.

The biggest question mark remains the future of Washington's policy of strategic flexibility. Technological change and new threat perceptions suggest that this doctrinal shift will be with us for some time. But as a response to democratic movements on the ground, strategic flexibility might prove self-defeating. Shifting security emphasis from one ally to another depending on the amplitude of protests around U.S. basing, military policies, or out-of-area operations may not prove sustainable. In the grand scheme, with the focus of U.S. geostrategy still on the Middle East and a period of military belt-tightening likely to return to Washington, strategic flexibility may simply become a cover for U.S. disengagement--strategic redeployment--not just from South Korea but from the region as a whole.

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John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus and the director of global affairs at the International Relations Center.

Cheney Greeted by 2000 in Guam

Cheney greeted by 2,000 on Guam
The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Feb 22, 2007 6:09:57 EST

ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam — Vice President Dick Cheney returned to U.S. territory Thursday on his way from Japan to Australia, meeting with U.S. troops and local officials who support a buildup of forces on this isolated American island.

Cheney’s brief stopover — he spent about an hour on Guam — attracted 2,000 troops and residents to hear a brief speech. The visit also brought complaints from the neighboring U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands, where residents awaited the remains of the latest Iraq war victim.

The vice president stayed on Andersen Air Force Base, speaking in a hangar to mostly Air Force and Navy personnel.

He discussed the strategic importance of Guam, 3,700 miles southwest of Hawaii, in protecting U.S. interests in the region.

Cheney said Pacific sea lanes must be kept open to commerce and closed to terrorists and stressed the need to keep fighting in Iraq.

“In the years ahead, more personnel will be stationed here, along with the job of maintaining a first-rate forward operating base,” he said.

Cheney also said terrorists know they cannot win in a standup fight.

“The only way they can win is if we lose our nerve and abandon our mission,” he said. “So they continue committing acts of random war, believing they can intimidate the civilized world and break the will of the American people.”

In a brief visit to Japan, Cheney also reaffirmed the Bush administration’s commitment to the war in Iraq.

He told troops at a U.S. naval base near Tokyo that America would not relent in Iraq.

“We want to complete the mission, we want to get it done right, and then we want to come home, with honor,” he said. “The American people will not support a policy of retreat.”

Cheney said his visit to Japan was a gesture of appreciation for Tokyo, which has been one of Washington’s most valuable allies in the war on terror by offering non-combat troops to assist U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Guam Gov. Felix Camacho and the territory’s delegate to Congress, Madeleine Bordallo, met with Cheney at Andersen.

Camacho has been leading local support for plans to relocate 8,000 U.S. Marines from Japan to Guam, viewing it as a boon for the island’s economy.

Debbie Quinata of the indigenous group Nasion Chamuro said her group wants Cheney to know of its strong opposition to the decision.

The group has been pushing for reparations for harm from toxic chemicals and radiation on Pacific islands as a result of war and war games. However, a petition campaign by the group to stop the planned deployment from Japan has gathered only 400 signatures.

The group is particularly concerned about the presence of B-2 bombers, joint military exercises in waters near Guam, and the greater naval presence, including the potential for more nuclear submarines and other warships in Pacific waters.

“We believe that increased militarization will put our families, friends and relatives who are living on Guam in harm’s way rather than provide safety and stability,” the group said in a statement prior to Cheney’s visit.

In the nearby Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, where family members of Army Cpl. Leroy Camacho, 27, of Kagman village, were awaiting arrival of his remains, officials said they were disappointed that Cheney did not visit their territory. Leroy Camacho was killed by an explosion in Iraq on Feb. 9 — the fifth island soldier to die in Iraq.

Camacho’s sister, Juanette Camacho, had urged that Cheney visit Saipan, pointing out that the territory has suffered more Iraq war casualties than Guam.

Gubernatorial Press Secretary Charles Reyes said officials in Saipan were not invited to join the Guam officials meeting the vice president.

New US Bases in Australia

Media Release Australia
Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition
Thursday, 15 February 2007
--------------

New US War Base Condemned


“We are appalled by the announcement that the Federal Government has secretly agreed to set up a new United States base at Geraldton in WA,” Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition National Coordinator Denis Doherty said this morning.

“We are sure Australians do not want to supply intelligence and communications for more Bush administration invasions or to host bases which spy on our neighbours and training areas for Australian soldiers to practice fighting under US command.

“The Federal Government has dropped all pretence about ‘joint facilities’ and is calling the new base, the first of several planned facilities, a United States military base.

“Defence Minister Nelson’s claim that the government will have full knowledge of all activities at the base is unbelievable,” Mr. Doherty said.

“We already have over 40 US military facilities in Australia. We cannot afford more. This is a case where less is best!

“US bases make Australia a target for nuclear and terrorist attacks,” Mr. Doherty said.

“They increase the US hold on Australian foreign policy. They undermine Australia’s security and add even more to the already out of control Australian military budget which is running at $55 million every day.

“In the most recent budget the military got more money than education.

“These bases do not make Australia safer but they make us poorer,” Mr. Doherty said.

“Around the world, US bases have become the centre of major social problems. Australia is no different. An Anglican Church report from Hobart details frequent sexual assaults on young men and women by US service people. US MPs assaulted Aborigines in Ipswich during 1997 war games and two US servicemen were tried for rape in Darwin in February 2004.

“There are also major dangers to our environment of pollution from repairs and maintenance programs and from weapons firing.

“The Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition condemns this outrageous agreement and vows to fight it in every way we can,” he said.

“Our Coalition and other groups are preparing for a major campaign against another new US base at Shoalwater Bay in Queensland. In June this year there will be protests against the huge joint military exercise called “Talisman Sabre 07’.

“We call on the Government to rescind this agreement and hold a public enquiry into the US military presence in Australia,” Mr Doherty said.

US Deploys Stealth Fighters to Okinawa

Friday, February 16, 2007 · Last updated 10:19 p.m. PT

U.S. deploys stealth fighters to Okinawa

By ERIC TALMADGE
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

TOKYO -- The U.S. took its newest and most expensive stealth fighter on the road Saturday, deploying the F-22 to an air base on the southern Japan island of Okinawa for its first overseas mission.

The first two of a dozen F-22s roared into the Okinawa skies from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia for a three-to-four month deployment to show "the flexibility that U.S. forces have to meet our ongoing commitments and security obligations throughout the Pacific," the U.S. military said in a statement.

Bringing the jets to Japan is a way of showing off the fighter's strengths in a region with a complex security balance that is being challenged by the rapid growth of Chinese and North Korean military power.

"It's a very formidable asset," said Lt. Gen. Bruce Wright, commander of the U.S. forces in Japan. Wright added that it is important for the F-22 pilots from
Langley to get the experience of flying abroad and training with the Japanese.

Though Wright, speaking to reporters in Tokyo before the arrival, said there are no plans to regularly bring F-22s to Japan after the current mission ends, F-22 fighters are scheduled to be deployed in Alaska and possibly Hawaii, which would give a significant boost to the Air Force's fire power in the Pacific.

The U.S. is not alone in boosting its air capabilities in Asia.

The arrival of the planes - the rest were scheduled to arrive Sunday - comes less than two months after China unveiled its J-10 fighter, which is believed to be one
of the most advanced used by any air force in the world today, though it is not seen as a serious technological rival to the F-22.

The Tide is Rising

Disappearing world: Global warming claims tropical island
For the first time, an inhabited island has disappeared beneath rising seas. Environment Editor Geoffrey Lean reports
Published: 24 December 2006

Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.

As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities.

Eight years ago, as exclusively reported in The Independent on Sunday, the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.

It has been officially recorded in a six-year study of the Sunderbans by researchers at Calcutta's Jadavpur University. So remote is the island that the researchers first learned of its submergence, and that of an uninhabited neighbouring island, Suparibhanga, when they saw they had vanished from satellite pictures.

Two-thirds of nearby populated island Ghoramara has also been permanently inundated. Dr Sugata Hazra, director of the university's School of Oceanographic Studies, says "it is only a matter of some years" before it is swallowed up too. Dr Hazra says there are now a dozen "vanishing islands" in India's part of the delta. The area's 400 tigers are also in danger.

Until now the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea were expected to be the first populated ones to disappear, in about eight years' time, but Lohachara has beaten them to the dubious distinction.

Human cost of global warming: Rising seas will soon make 70,000 people homeless

Refugees from the vanished Lohachara island and the disappearing Ghoramara island have fled to Sagar, but this island has already lost 7,500 acres of land to the sea. In all, a dozen islands, home to 70,000 people, are in danger of being submerged by the rising seas.

Hickam Gets a Look at Raptors

Posted on: Friday, February 9, 2007
Hickam gets a look at stealthy Raptors

By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer

HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE- The stealthy F-22A Raptor this week made its first stop in Hawai'i, appearing small on radar but creating a big buzz as the Air Force moves ahead with plans to base 20 of the fighter aircraft at Hickam starting in late 2010.

Six of the sleek gray jets arrived Wednesday from Virginia, and six more landed yesterday en route to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, on what is the first deployment for the Raptors outside the United States.

"It's very important that we send it to Japan because of our strategic alliance that we have with Japan," said Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Remington, Pacific Air Forces director of air space and cyberspace operations.

The Raptors can reach supersonic speed without afterburners, are highly maneuverable and "it's basically invisible to radars," Remington said.

The Hawai'i Air National Guard will be the first Guard unit to "own" the Air Force's most advanced weapons system, while the active duty Air Force at Hickam will be an associate unit and also fly and maintain the aircraft.

"We're excited, obviously," said Air Guard Lt. Col. Chris "Frenchy" Faurot, 40, who will be flying the jets. "When the announcement was made back in March of last year, everyone was walking around with a grin on their face."

The Hawai'i basing is part of what Gen. Paul Hester, commander of Pacific Air Forces, calls the "strategic triangle" of Hawai'i, Alaska and Guam,” bases
from which the Air Force can rapidly deploy forces throughout Asia and the
Pacific.

TO ALASKA IN AUGUST

In August, the Air Force will locate an F-22 squadron in Alaska, and add another squadron in 2008. The third of three squadrons will arrive in Hawai'i starting in late 2010.

The aircraft, whose angular shape and internal weapons bays contribute to a radar signature the size of a bird, is one of the costliest fighters ever at more than $339 million a copy, including research, development and testing.

In the fighters' first major exercise, Northern Edge, in June in Alaska, the Raptors from Langley Air Force Base that are now passing through Hickam "downed" 144 other jets.

"We didn't lose a Raptor, not one," said Lt. Col. Wade Tolliver, commander of the 27th Fighter Squadron at Langley. "That's pretty incredible numbers."

The jets will leave today for Japan and will stay there as long as four months. The Pacific Air Forces' Remington said the F-22s replaced F-15C aircraft at Langley and it happened to be the unit's turn in the rotation of aircraft for the "theater security" deployment.

The Raptors also will be replacing F-15 Eagles at Hickam. The Air Guard aircraft, in addition to having an air defense role for Hawai'i, deployed to Saudi Arabia in 2000 and conducted combat missions over southern Iraq.

A LITTLE NOISIER

In the 1990s there were two other deployments to the region. The air defense mission has seen a succession of aircraft since 1956, meanwhile, with the F-86, F-102, F-4 and most recently, the F-15, the Air Guard said.

Faurot, a Damien High graduate who now flies the F-15, said the Raptor brings greater capabilities, but the public won't notice much of a difference.

"It's a more powerful aircraft, it's faster, it's louder, so there may be a little increase in noise," he said. "However, that will be for a shorter duration because we get out of the airspace and we get out of the public view, if you will, a lot faster than we do with the F-15s."

Once the aircraft gets to cruise mode at 30,000 to 40,000 feet, it also gets somewhat more economical.

"It's actually pretty much sipping gas, so once you get it up there, it's a pretty efficient machine and we're still going supersonic," Faurot said.

C-17 WORK ONGOING

An environmental impact study is expected to be done in July. Brig. Gen. Peter Pawling, who commands the 154th Wing of the Hawai'i Air National Guard, said work still is being done for eight C-17 cargo carriers that are now based at Hickam” including a giant hangar now being built.

But Pawling said he estimates $155 million in construction will be needed for the Raptors for facilities like hangars and maintenance buildings.

Those who saw the Raptor up close yesterday, including about 60 University of Hawai'i Air Force ROTC cadets, were pretty impressed. An inert AIM-9 missile was affixed to a side bay.

"I think it's awesome," said Ira Mindoro, 20, a UH student from Pearl City. "It provides another way to motivate someone young like myself to become a pilot."

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.

Military Build-up Won't Strain Guam's Utilities

Buildup won't strain utilities
Bice: Guam has chance to add capacity
By Gaynor Dumat-ol Daleno
Pacific Daily News
gdumat-ol@guampdn.com

The U.S. military's multibillion-dollar buildup will not strain the island's power, waste-disposal and water plants, the official who oversees the expansion said yesterday.

What the buildup can present is an opportunity to add capacity to the island's utilities infrastructure, said retired Marine Maj. Gen. David Bice, executive director of the Joint Guam Program Office. The office is in charge of planning, managing and overseeing buildup-related projects.

"We have the opportunity to add to (the utilities capacity) in all the areas," Bice said.

"In fact, we don't want to add the burden on the (existing local utilities plants). What we will see is an addition to the Guam utilities," Bice added.

Japan delegation
Bice also confirmed yesterday that a high-level delegation from the Japan Diet is visiting Guam in connection with the Japanese government's part in the buildup.
The Japanese government will help pay for the relocation of members of the U.S. Marines and their families from Okinawa -- altogether a jump in Guam's population by about 16,000.

Under a U.S.-Japan agreement, Japan will pay 60 percent of the $10 billion to $14 billion cost of the relocation, Bice said.

In Japan, wire reports state that U.S. Ambassador to Japan J. Thomas Shieffer and Deputy Commander of Pacific Command Lt. Gen. Daniel Leaf are hosting the Japanese Diet delegation's two-day Guam visit, which starts today.

The delegation, Bice said, is visiting "to see what's going on, what the assessment is, see where the Japanese money is proposed to be spent, and make their own determination (whether it's) a wise investment for the Japanese people."


Assistance sought
In anticipation of increased use of power, water and wastewater services related to the military buildup, Guam's locally elected officials have said they would ask the federal government for financial assistance to upgrade local utilities plants.
"The way this is gonna work," said Bice of the utilities-related funds for the buildup, is that the Special Purpose Entity -- established in the U.S.-Japan agreement -- "would provide equity investment for a business partner to come in and potentially provide" power, water and waste-management services.

The services that the business partner might provide could include building a power plant and adding to utility distribution and delivery lines, Bice said.

Another option, Bice said, may involve entering into a partnership with the Guam Power Authority.

The U.S. has held technical talks with Japanese government officials and Guam public utilities officials, Bice said.


Preliminary report
Engineers are completing their studies, and there will be a meeting in Washington, D.C., next week about Guam infrastructure issues, Bice said.
A preliminary report is expected around April, he said, that would assess the capabilities of Guam's power and water agencies.

"From that, we will look at our options," he added.

But what's clear, Bice emphasized, is that the military receives "good, reliable" utility services.

"It is a mission-readiness requirement," he said.

2/3/07

Adam Emul Killed in Iraq

Cpl. Adam Emul, who sister says wanted to serve, is killed in Iraq at age 19
By Brian Alexander
Seattle Times
2/2/07

Lance Cpl. Adam Emul was a quiet and very independent teen, yet it still surprised his family when he came home from school one day and said he had signed up for the armed services.

"He was proud; it was something that he wanted to do," his sister, Maryann Mendiola, said Thursday. "We didn't like his decision at the time, but he just kept telling us that it was something that he wanted to do."

Cpl. Emul died in Iraq on Monday during operations in the Al Anbar province, the Department of Defense announced Thursday. Though the department didn't release the details of his death, his sister said he was hit by a bomb's explosion while on foot patrol.

Cpl. Emul, 19, graduated in 2005 from Hudson's Bay High School in Vancouver, Clark County, and went into basic training, his sister said.

He then went on to more advanced training and was only reunited with his family for about a month before he shipped out for Iraq in September.

Cpl. Emul was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force in Twentynine Palms, Calif., according to the Department of Defense.

Cpl. Emul moved to Vancouver from Saipan in 2003 with his sister, her family and his mother, Mendiola said.

"Me and my husband, we have kids of our own, and we wanted to expose our kids to what was outside of the islands. And we wanted Adam to be part of that," Mendiola said. "Living here is way, way different from living back home. Adam pretty much adjusted real well and made friends real fast."

Cpl. Emul loved playing basketball, listening to music and doing "other teenager things," his sister said. "He was still young."

While he was in Iraq, the family kept in touch mainly via e-mail and Cpl. Emul's MySpace page. He would ask for the family to send things, particularly chocolate, for himself, and big bags of candy for the kids in Iraq he met on patrol, Mendiola said.

Mendiola expected her brother to come home in March — he was looking forward to taking a vacation to Saipan to visit family and friends who still live there, she said.

"We just saw how happy he was, and we just supported him from there. But we constantly told him: 'Please be careful,' " Mendiola said. "He was always assuring us not to worry about him, and things were going fine."

In addition to Mendiola, Cpl. Emul is survived by four brothers and sisters: Frankie Quitugua, of Saipan; Clarissa Mendiola, of Vancouver; Mindy Quitugua, of Vancouver; and Christopher Quitugua of Saipan. His parents are Angelica Quitugua, of Vancouver, and Wayne Emul of Saipan. He was preceded in death by a brother, Roger Mendiola.

Japan's minister ignores US demand to end criticism
Peter Alford,Tokyo correspondent
January 29, 2007

THE US Government has drawn a line in the sand over criticism from Japan's Defence Minister Fumio Kyuma, but the outspoken Mr Kyuma has immediately stepped across it. The Kyodo news agency reported yesterday the head of the State Department's Japanese affairs office, James Zumwalt, had lodged a protest about Mr Kyuma's comments critical of the US's Iraq campaign on Wednesday and last month.

Mr Zumwalt warned officials from Japan's Washington embassy that further provocative remarks would make it "difficult" to arrange security talks between Mr Kyuma, Foreign Minister Taro Aso, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and new Defence Secretary Robert Gates. Strongly pro-American Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pressing for fresh "two-plus-two" talks on bilateral security issues and is understood to have told the 66-year-old national security veteran on Friday to watch his words.

But 66-year-old Mr Kyuma was at it again on Saturday, saying the US "doesn't understand" the importance of local negotiations to resolve the problem of relocating a military airbase on Okinawa.

"We've been telling them, 'Please don't say things that are too cocky, we are talking to the (Okinawa) governor, so please wait for a while'," he said in a public speech referring to an argument about shifting a US Marines airbase from crowded Ginowan City to Nago.

Given American frustration at Japan's foot-dragging before the national Government agreed to the relocation last year and the protracted negotiations since with Okinawa's Government, Mr Kyuma's chiding is likely to infuriate the US administration.

The remarks followed his meeting on Friday with Mr Abe, after which he promised to take more care.

He offended the Americans by saying on Wednesday -- at virtually the same moment as President George W. Bush's State of the Union address -- that the President's decision to invade Iraq was wrong.

In December, Mr Kyuma criticised Japan's support for US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and claimed then prime minister Junichiro Koizumi had acted without government authority in sending a non-combatant contingent to southern Iraq.

Mr Kyuma's comments on Friday made clear that he continues to hold views critical of the US, though he suggested the strength of his remarks was unnecessarily amplified by English-language media translations.

"If they were taken (as criticism) I think I should be more careful how I say things," he told reporters. "Even if they were my thoughts, I think perhaps it might be better not to say them."

Mr Kyuma is one of many headaches the new PM created for himself by appointing perhaps the least impressive cabinet in years. He is actually one of the most popular of Mr Abe's team.

Possibly reflecting that Mr Kyuma's dim view of American military policy is widely held in his Liberal Democratic Party, though usually carefully repressed, Mr Abe has not publicly repudiated the Defence Minister's comments.

Despite Environmental Protests, Air Force to Proceed

Air Force to proceed with strike force plan
By Mar-Vic Cagurangan
Variety News Staff
http://www.mvariety.com

DESPITE the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's dissatisfaction with the U.S. Air Force's preliminary environmental impact study, or EIS, the Pentagon has decided to proceed with its plan to base permanent tankers on Guam to support the Air Strike mission at Andersen Air Force Base.

The Air Force says it will implement its existing environmental protection measures for Andersen and just reevaluate them in the future as the mission goes along.
In the Record of Decision dated Jan. 12, Air Force Deputy Assistant Fred W. Kuhn said "the decision takes into account the direct, indirect and cumulative impacts from the alternative."

"The Air Force, when balancing the essential considerations of national policy, the selection standards and other matters, chose Andersen AFB and did not carry the other six installations considered forward for detailed analysis in the EIS," Kuhn said.

The Air Force has identified Andersen Air Force Base as the site best suited to host the air strike force compared to Iwo Jima, Japan, Saipan, Diego Garcia, Wake Island and Hawaii, which were initially considered as alternative locations for the mission.

"From Guam, combat aircraft are within easy striking range of the region's likely potential hot spots, yet far enough from an adversary's missile launch sites to limit the likely effects of such strikes," stated the Record of Decision, which contains the final EIS.

Last year, the USEPA urged the Air Force to conduct a more substantial environmental analysis and address other "reasonable and foreseeable" issues before proceeding with its plan to build up an Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance and Strike, or Strike Force, at Andersen.

The Air Force published its draft preliminary EIS before the Pentagon's release of the Guam Integrated Military Development Plan in July 2006.

"The Air Force recognizes that future actions are planned for Guam," Kuhn said. "However, the Air Force cannot reasonably speculate on preliminary proposals that are still under development and that are not presently capable of meaningful analysis."

He said details contained in the Guam Integrated Military Development Plan are "currently undefined, speculative and not conducive to an informative environmental analysis."

The Air Force says additional planning to modify the EIS will take two more years to complete. Kuhn said the Air Force is not inclined to wait that long, noting the unavailability of information needed to assess the cumulative impacts on Guam environment.

"The Air Force does not consider the unavailable information regarding potential relocation of Marines to Guam to be relevant to any significant environmental impacts or essential to any reasoned choice among alternatives for ISR/Strike bed down and operations," Kuhn said.

"Furthermore," he added, "even if such information were relevant to significant adverse impacts or essential to a choice among alternatives, the Air Force considers the cost of a two-year delay to obtain that information for this EIS to be exorbitant and inconsistent with the Air Force's responsibilities to the Department of Defense mission."

Kuhn, however, said the Air Force will put in place several conservation measures and mitigations to protect Guam's natural resources and habitat for endangered local species, including the Mariana fruit bats, kingfishers and crows. The Air Force also says it will strictly implement a solid waste management system on base.
These measures, Kuhn said, "could be reexamined and reevaluated in any future environmental impact analysis for potential future federal actions on Guam."

The Pentagon is planning to deploy 12 KC-135 tanker aircraft and four Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles and personnel to Andersen Air Force Base on a permanent basis. As many as 40 fighter planes such as the F-22 and the F-15E and six bomber aircraft will be rotated from bases in the 50 states. The mission will be deployed in four phases over a period of 16 years.

Air Force officials expect the Andersen population to increase by 3,000.
The ISR/Strike's mission, according to the Pentagon, is "to achieve pre-engagement battle space awareness, locate and identify critical adversary movement, achieve assured success through air dominance, and deliver decisive effects via persistent and precise application of air and space power."

Guam Hosting International Terrorism Exercise

Guam hosting international terrorism exercise
by Sabrina Salas Matanane, KUAM News
Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Planning continues in the meantime for TOPOFF 4, scheduled to take place on Guam in October. TOPOFF 4 is U.S. Department of Homeland Security's most comprehensive terrorism response exercise. It's an honor bestowed to only a select few homeland security offices once every two years, and Guam was selected for the location of the exercise this year.

Former Guam homeland security advisor Senator Frank Blas, Jr. says he's still actively involved in the planning process, telling KUAM News, "Preliminarily, there are a number of countries that are going to be involved not only as participants, but observers. I do know that there is interest from Canada and Mexico, from the Southeast Asian countries, the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, Korea as well as Australia, New Zealand; as well there's interest from European nations. Great Britain was involved last TOPOFF, they want to be involved with this one as well. There's a lot of interest from those nations to participate in these exercise, and it also involves the people on island and those to arrive to assist in this homeland security effort."

Senator Blas (R) who has oversight over homeland security issues, says upwards of 600 people could be on Guam to participate in the exercise. TOPOFF 4 is expected to be the culmination of a two-year cycle of seminars, planning events, and exercises. Guam participants for the exercise will include federal, state, local, private sector agencies and organizations, as well as volunteer groups.

Beholden Justice

BEHOLDEN JUSTICE

Written by Patricio P. Diaz/MindaNews
Friday, 19 January 2007

GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews/18 Jan) -- Just very recently, an American soldier in South Korea raped a Korean woman – a 23-year-old raping a 67-year-old. Hours after South Korean police had arrested the soldier, Maj. Gen. John Morgan, acting commander of the 8th Army, issued an apology.He said: “I deeply regret and personally apologize for this terrible incident that has resulted in grave injury to a Korean civilian. This vicious act is an affront to all soldiers.” According to the AFP report, some 29,000 US troops are stationed in South Korea.

In Okinawa, Japan, the base of the US Marines in the Pacific, Japanese authorities take custody of American soldiers who rape Japanese women and try them in Japanese courts. In reported incidents in the past, Japanese authorities frustrated the Americans in their bid to take custody of their soldiers.

The recent incident in South Korea, as well as those in Okinawa, highlights the Smith rape case – the contrast in the dispensation of justice. Marine Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith is from the Okinawa US military base.

To highlight more the contrast, had Smith raped an American woman – white, black or immigrant -- in his homeland, within months, not a year, he would have been in jail and be there while awaiting his appeal.

Beholden Justice

Smith basks in the comfort of what may be called “beholden justice” in the Philippines engendered by the US arm-twisting diplomacy and double-standard view of the court – one standard for the US and another for the Philippine, notwithstanding that the Philippine court system is modeled after that of the US.

Under US court rules and procedures, judicial proceedings end with the sentencing. The convicted goes to jail while awaiting the results of his or her appeal. That, too, was the ruling of Judge Benjamin Pozon which was sustained by the Court of Appeals.

But Washington did not respect that. Through its embassy, it insisted that “judicial proceedings” as provided in the Visiting Forces Agreement end when the appeal ends. Malacañang supported that line and Smith’s petition at the CA that he be put under the custody of the US Embassy.

To give muscle to the US position, the Pacific Command chief announced the cancellation of the joint US-RP military exercises in February – the Balikatan. Alarmed that other US military and economic assistances might be cut, too, Malacañang agreed to transfer Smith from the Makati jail to the US embassy.

The CA decision, penned by Justice Apolinario Bruselas Jr., in upholding Pozon’s ruling, was hailed as a “roaring lion” but decried as “a roar ending in a whimper” when it dismissed Smith’s petition as moot without ordering his return to Makati jail. Bruselas must have felt beholden to Malacañang.

In the Philippines, it is not uncommon to see components of the pillars of justice, including judges of courts, beholden to the President and those closely associated with Malacañang. Examples are legions. That Bruselas has been seen by many as having lost nerve is understandable.

Respect for the Court

That Malacañang did not respect the court in the Smith case is deplorable. Just as deplorable is Washington’s disrespect for the Philippine court.

Court decisions in the US are questioned. However, Americans bow to these decisions until they are reconsidered after having been reviewed by the courts themselves – from the lowest to the highest.

Americans know that their courts are not beholden to their president. In two landmark cases recently, President George W. Bush was virtually chastised by the US Supreme Court and a US district judge.

In an earlier case, the US Supreme Court voided the military courts Bush had ordered created to try the foreign terrorism detainees at Guantamano Bay Naval Base prison. In giving the order, Bush believed that he did not violate the US Constitution and the Geneva Conventions.

Following the Court’s ruling, Bush asked Congress to pass a law authorizing the creation of the military tribunals. Under the doctrine of check-and-balance, the Supreme Court will scrutinize the law for its conformity with the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions if questioned.

In another case, US District Judge Anne Digs Taylor, an African-American, ruled “that President Bush’s secret eavesdropping program to track terrorists is unconstitutional and ordered it to cease immediately” – rejecting the president’s “claim that he had the inherent power to authorize the program”.

In what amounted as a rebuke, the judge said: “There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution” – actually meaning that what’s provided in the Constitution may not be interpreted just by the Executive but must be spelled out by Congress in an enabling law.

The ruling was questioned immediately by the Department of Justice and the conservatives. Whatever the outcome of the appeals, which could go up to the US Supreme Court, will not dilute the high respect of the court by the Americans starting from the president.

Sad Reality

Why can’t the American authorities respect the Philippine court ruling in the Smith rape case? Had that been an American court ruling, Smith would have directly gone to jail. Why the double standard?

Why did the US military apologize to the South Koreans and called the act of its soldier “an affront to all soldiers”? The Marine commander in Okinawa did not find the Filipinos deserving of an apology and the act of Smith as an affront to the Marine Corps.

Why were the Marines in Okinawa arrested for raping Japanese women held by Japanese authorities in Japanese jails? The Japanese, unlike the Filipinos, must not be beholden to the Americans.

Why? Why? Why? Is it because the Americans respect the South Koreans and Japanese as sovereign in “words and deeds” while the Filipinos are sovereign only in “words” but colonials in “deeds”? That the South Koreans and Japanese assert their sovereignty while we don’t?

Look at the VFA. To us, it’s a law – a treaty ratified by our Senate. Do the Americans regard it their law? It was not ratified by the US Senate. The US Constitution provides that the president can make treaties with the concurrence of two-thirds of the Senate and these treaties “shall be the supreme Law of the Land”.

The demeaning Smith case, an icon of “beholden justice”, highlighted by a similar case in South Korea and several others in Japan for their different treatment by US authorities, exposes the sad reality of the Filipino-American relations that Malacañang treasures and wants to protect at all costs.

U.S. Submarine Collides with Japanese Ship

U.S. Submarine Collides With Japanese Ship
AP
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TOKYO (Jan. 9) - A U.S. nuclear-powered submarine collided with a Japanese oil tanker in the Straits of Hormuz, through which 40 percent of the world's oil supplies travel, officials said.

No one was hurt in the accident that happened Monday night in the 34-mile wide straits, which are bordered by Iran and Oman and serve as the entrance to the Persian Gulf.

Damage to the fast-attack USS Newport News submarine and the supertanker was light and there was no resulting spill of oil or leakage of nuclear fuel, officials from the U.S. Navy and the Japanese government said.

Both ships remained able to navigate, Navy officials said.

The bow of the submarine was traveling submerged when it hit the stern of the supertanker Mogamigawa as the vessels were passing through the Straits, causing minor damage to the Japanese vessel, the U.S. Navy and Japan's Foreign Ministry said. The Japanese government said it was informed of the crash by the Navy and the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo.

The tanker, operated by Japanese shipping company Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha Ltd., was able to continue to a nearby port in the United Arab Emirates, the statement said.

Commander Kevin Aandahl of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet in Bahrain confirmed there had been a crash and that there were no injuries aboard either ship. Aandahl said the submarine had surfaced and its crew was evaluating damage.

The Navy said the sub's nuclear propulsion plant was undamaged. The Newport News is based in Norfolk, Va., and is part of a U.S.-led multinational task force patrolling the Persian Gulf and nearby seas. It has a crew of 127.

The Mogamigawa was traveling from the Gulf to Singapore and was carrying a crew of eight Japanese and 16 Filipinos. It is expected to arrive in the port of Khor Fakkan later Tuesday, company spokeswoman said on condition of anonymity, citing protocol.

She said crew members reported a sudden large bang and shaking just before the collision, but no other details were immediately available.

The Japanese government has asked the U.S. side to investigate. Aandahl said a Navy investigation would begin shortly.

In February 2001, a U.S. Navy submarine rammed into a Japanese fishing vessel in waters off Hawaii, killing nine people. The American captain's delay in apologizing for the crash triggered protests by the victims' families.

U.S. naval vessels have been involved in previous collisions with commercial ships in the busy shipping lanes around the Persian Gulf. In September 2005, the U.S. nuclear submarine Philadelphia collided with a Turkish cargo ship in the Gulf, causing no injuries.

In July 2004, the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy collided with a dhow in the Gulf, leaving no survivors on the traditional Arab sailing boat. The Navy relieved the Kennedy's commander, Capt. Stephen B. Squires, after the incident.

Fleets of U.S. and allied navy vessels patrol the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea and western Indian Ocean, attempting to block smuggling of weapons to Iraq and Somalia, nuclear components to Iran, as well as the movement of drug shipments and terrorists.

U.S. and coalition ships started patrolling the coast of Somalia in recent weeks in a bid to capture any al-Qaida suspects fleeing Ethiopia's December invasion.
-----
Associated Press writers Hans Greimel in Tokyo and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.

Why Guam? Because The Military Can't Go to the PI

Monday, January 8, 2007
More Marines bound for O'ahu, Guam
By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer
----------
The Marine presence on O'ahu could grow by about 1,000 as the service
reshuffles its forces in the Pacific and moves forward with plans to relocate 8,300
Marines from Okinawa to Guam by about 2014, Lt. Gen. John Goodman said.

The top Marine commander in the Pacific offered a straightforward explanation
for the move to Guam, which is precipitated by growing tensions and a
shortage of space on Okinawa.

"Why Guam? The answer is because I can't go to the Philippines," Goodman said
at a Chamber of Commerce of Hawai'i military partnership conference last
week.

"If our alliance with the Philippines would allow us to go there, I would
move 8,000 Marines right now to Manila Bay," Goodman said.

In 1991, the Philippine Senate voted to reject a treaty allowing U.S. bases
in the country, but the government continues to welcome U.S. military aid and
training.

Strategically, Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan also would be preferable for
the basing, but since such moves are not possible, Guam is as close as Goodman
can get to potential hot spots.

"I can take off from Guam in my helicopters or Okinawa with Marines on board
and I can be in the fight fast â within hours," the three-star general said.

Service commanders also emphasized the importance of Hawai'i as the Pacific
increasingly becomes a center of gravity for economic production, potential
terrorism, and military buildup by countries such as China.

At the same time, the United States is taking forces from Europe and South
Korea and pulling them back to the Mainland.

Lt. Gen. John M. Brown III, who heads U.S. Army, Pacific, at Fort Shafter,
said 85 percent of the Army will be based in the continental United States in
the next few years. Forces that are forward-based, like those in Hawai'i, become
critical to national military strategy, Brown said.

"Those forces have to be early and initial entry forces that can respond to
the combatant commander's requirements immediately while that big portion in
the Army back in the continental U.S. moves forward," Brown said.

The Army's Stryker brigade is a fast-strike unit that is designed to be
deployed within days.

Hawai'i also remains a command and control nerve center.

O'AHU MARINES

Goodman said Hawai'i's contingent of about 6,500 Marines could grow by 800 to
1,000 as part of possible command and control changes at Kane'ohe Bay.

Adm. Gary Roughead, who commands U.S. Pacific Fleet from Pearl Harbor, noted
that exercise Valiant Shield off Guam in June brought together three aircraft
carriers, more than 300 aircraft and other forces in the biggest U.S. Navy and
Air Force presence in the western Pacific since the Vietnam War.

The exercise was commanded from the Navy's Makalapa headquarters and Kenney
Headquarters at Hickam Air Force Base.

"But Hawai'i really enables it all from the Navy perspective," Roughead said.
"We do have the tyranny of distance, but with today's technology, we're now
commanding our forces in ways that were unheard of 10 to 15 years ago."

The Navy presence in the region is only going to grow with defense planning
expected to tip the balance of attack submarines from a 50/50 split in the
Pacific and Atlantic to 60 percent in the Pacific, Roughead said.

IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN

Some 22,000 Marines from Marine Forces Pacific drawn from California,
Hawai'i, Arizona, Okinawa and Mainland Japan are in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that
number probably will go up by another 3,000 to 4,000 over the course of the year
if anticipated orders are received, Goodman said.

Brown said excluding a troop level change expected to be made by the
president, 25,000 U.S. Army, Pacific, soldiers are expected to serve in Iraq and
Afghanistan this fiscal year, and in fiscal 2008 another 25,000 will be prepared to
deploy if called upon.

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.