2 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, March 24, 2004 N ATION/ WORLD Panel: Diplomacy failed before 9-11 NEWS IN BRIEF A HE U~ ~ mmmADLawINm m WASHINGTON (AP) - Clinton and Bush administration officials engaged in fruitless diplo- matic efforts instead of military action to try to get Osama bin Laden out of Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal panel said yesterday. Top offi- cials countered that the terror operation would have occurred even if the United States had been able to kill the al-Qaida leader. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secre- tary of State Colin Powell, in a strong defense of pre- Sept. 11 actions that have become a major campaign issue, told the federal commission reviewing the attacks that the plot was well under way when the Bush administration took office in January 2001. "Killing bin Laden would not have removed al- Qaida's sanctuary in Afghanistan," Rumsfeld said. "Moreover, the sleeper cells that flew the aircraft into the World Trade towers and the Pentagon were already in the United States months before the attack." Powell said that even if U.S. forces had invaded Afghanistan, killed bin Laden and neutralized al- Qaida, "I have no reason to believe that would have caused them to abort their plans." Separately, President Bush said Monday that he would have acted more quickly before Sept. 11 "had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on Sept. 11 ." The testimony by Rumsfeld and Powell came against the backdrop of counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke's claim that top Bush administration officials had ignored bin Laden and the threat of the al-Qaida terror network while focusing on Iraq's Sad- dam Hussein. Powell did not mention Clarke, but said, "President Bush and his entire national security team under- stood that terrorism had to be among our highest pri- orities and it was." Yet, not until the day before the attacks did U.S. officials settle on a strategy to overthrow the Taliban Afghan government in case a final diplomatic push failed. That strategy was expected to take three years, the commission said. The commission report said U.S. officials, in both the Clinton and Bush administrations, feared a failed attempt on bin Laden could kill innocents and would only boost bin Laden's prestige. And the American public and Congress would have opposed any large- scale military operations before the September 2001 attacks, the report said. In the end, it said, pursuing diplomacy over mili- tary action allowed bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders to elude capture. The panel investigating Sept. 11, formally the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, is holding two days of hearings with top-level Bush and Clinton administration officials. The aim is to question them on their efforts to stop bin Laden in the years leading up to Sept. 11. The commission's staff has spent months inter- viewing Clinton and Bush administration officials and poring over documents. Its preliminary findings, included in two statements issued Monday, will be considered by the 10-member panel, which plans to issue a final report this summer. OAZ CITY, Gaza Strip Israel thlreatenls to kill all leaders of Hamas Israel threatened to kill the entire leadership of the Islamic militant group Hamas after assassinating its founder and hinted yesterday that Yasser Arafat could wind up on the hit list in the future. The accelerated strikes at Hamas are part of an attempt to score a decisive victo- ry ahead of an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Israel does not want to be seen as being driven out of the strip by militants, who already are claiming victory. The tough talk came on the same day Hamas hard-liner Abdel Aziz Rantisi was elected as the new leader of the Islamic militant group in Gaza. The 54-year-old pediatrician replaces Sheik Ahmned Yassin, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike early Monday. Also yesterday, the meditator who arranged Yassin's release from prison said the Hamas founder offered Israel a 30-year truce in 1997. Israeli gunboats fired machine guns toward Gaza's coast late yesterday, witness- es said. There were no reports of damage or casualties, and the Israeli military had no inmmediate comment. Palestinians said the gunboats were firing at Palestinian fishing boats and piers. WASH INGTON OffiCials: MediCare to go broke by 2019 Medicare will have to begin dipping into its trust fund this year to keep up with expenditures and will go broke by 2019 without changes in a program that is swelling because of rising health costs, trustees reported yesterday. Social Security's finances showed little change, and its projected insol- vency date remained 2042. The 2019 go-broke date for the Medicare trust fund, which is devoted pri- marily to paying beneficiaries' hospital bills, is seven years sooner than what the trustees projected last year. The deteriorating financial picture for the health care program for older and disabled Americans is a result, in part, of the new Medicare prescrip- tion drug law that will swell costs by more than $500 billion over 10 years, according to the annual report by government trustees. Provisions of the law that President Bush signed into law in December "raise serious doubt about the sustainability of Medicare under current financing arrangements," the trustees said. 6 APPHOTO Secretary of State Colin Powell testifies before the federal panel reviewing the Sept. 11 attacks In Washington yesterday The staff reports found both administrations lacked the detailed intelligence needed to strike directly at bin Laden, so they fruitlessly sought a diplomatic solution to get the al-Qaida leader out of Afghanistan. WAN NA WRuTEl NEWS OR OPINION? CALL 76DALY 6 Girt Card G RADUATES! (hiMe i Jas~ Wake up. Get coffee. Change the world. 0g . ,rN W*,. . Spend 10 months (Sept-June) in Gift ertiicafull-time community service in the Gift Cer fmcttr Re eri area *sesti....fordeti - eev $4,725 scholarship, weekly stipend & health benefits -Tutor and mentor children / ~ "" ~. -yLead after school programs and community service projects -Engage & inspire community leaders - ~ - Promote civic engagement ~ ,. ~A For an application or more ~ ~ information, call City Year Detroit at 313-874-6148 or visit our website at PU www.cityyear.org. Space SA U R IC Omstis limited - apply today! imaurices~cem L4J Ct erDtot ew Towne Plaza * CantonCiyY r eri - **Putting idealism to work! PASADENA, Calif. NASA: Pool of wae once covered Mars Mars had a shallow pool of briny water on its surface long ago, NASA said yesterday in announcing what may be the strongest evidence yet that the now-dry Red Planet was once hospitable to life. The space agency's scientists announced earlier this month that the Opportunity rover found evidence of water in Mars' distant past. But it was unclear whether the water was in the soil or on the surface. The new findings suggest there was a pool of saltwater at least two inches deep. A rocky outcropping examined by the rover had ripple patterns and concentra- tions of salt - considered telltale signs that the rock formed in standing water. "We think Opportunity is now parked on what was once the shoreline of a salty sea on Mars," said Cornell Univer- sity astronomer Steve Squyres, the mis- sion's main scientist. WASHINGTON Military discharged fewer gays last year The number of gays dismissed from the military under the Pentagon's "don't- ask, don't tell" policy has dropped to its lowest level in nine years as U.S. forces fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, accord- ing to a report by an advocacy group. The military discharged 787 gays and lesbians last year, according to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Net- work, which attributed the decline to the importance of U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The figure marks a 17 percent decrease from 2002 and a 39 percent drop from 2001, just before the con- flicts began in Afghanistan and Iraq. MADRID, Spain Basque grup may call for cease-fire The Basque separatist group ETA may call a unilateral cease-fire in its campaign of violence, a founder and other Basque sources said, in an effort to win political concessions from the newly elected Socialists due to take power next month. Julen Madariaga, a founding mem- ber of ETA, said he thought a truce could be called soon. shave ethe impression tht in a very ing weeks - that ETA will declare a ceae-~i-e," heasaid in a tlphon in southern France. Within the month, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and his Socialists are to take over from the conservative Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who cracked down on ETA. -- Compiledfrom Daily wire reports WWWMICHIGANDAILY.COM The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is published Monday through Friday during the fai and winter terms by students at the University of Michigan. One copy is available free of charge to all readers. Additional copies may be picked up at the Daily's office for $2. Subscriptions for fall term, starting in September, via U.S. mail are $105. Winter term (January through April) is $110, yeariong (September through April) is $190. University, affiliates are subject to a reduced subscription rate On-campus subscriptions for fall term are $35. Subscrip- tions must be prepaid. The Michigan Daily is a member of The Associated Press and The Associated collegiate Press. ADDRESS: The Michigan Daily, 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1327. 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