Cato Daily Dispatch for December 4, 2002
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Saudis Unveil Initiatives to Combat TerrorismBush Officials Say Uncertainties Remain About Global Warming
North Korea Rejects Inspection of Nuclear Weapons Program
Saudis Unveil Initiatives to Combat Terrorism
The government of Saudi Arabia brushed aside criticism of its efforts to combat terrorism yesterday, asserting that it, too, had been a major target of Al Qaeda's violence and that its close cooperation with Washington to stem Islamic extremism had gone unnoticed and unappreciated, according to The New York Times.
During a news conference to unveil Saudi initiatives against terrorism, Adel al-Jubeir, a senior foreign policy adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah, lashed out at the kingdom's critics, arguing that Americans had been consumed by anti-Saudi sentiments that bordered on hate.
The Saudi effort, detailed in an eight-page report released yesterday, includes freezing 33 bank accounts containing $5.5 million, requiring all Saudi charities to undergo audits and creating a financial intelligence unit to investigate money-laundering. The report also said Saudi Arabia had questioned more than 2,000 people and detained about 100 others on suspicion of aiding terrorists.
On Fox News Channel's "Fox and Friends" program yesterday, Senior Fellow Doug Bandow said the Saudi government should cut off the money supply to terrorists.. "They have done some things since September 11th, thank goodness, but there's more to be done. So this is an area where the administration needs to keep the pressure on. In my mind, there's no more important issue than cutting off funding for terrorists. So you've got to keep pressing them on it to be serious."
In "Saudi Arabia: Friend, Foe, or Neither?", Cato Director of Defense Policy Studies Ivan Eland writes, "The Saudi government looked the other way for too long while organizations in Saudi Arabia funded and supported Al Qaeda. In addition, the Saudi government openly supported the Taliban regime, which harbored Al Qaeda, and fundamentalist Islamic schools in Pakistan that churned out terrorists."
Bush Officials Say Uncertainties Remain About Global Warming
The Bush administration acknowledges that global warming poses serious problems, but senior officials speaking at a climate-change policy conference yesterday said numerous uncertainties remain about global warming's cause and effects. They urged caution in committing the country to long-term solutions that might hurt the economy, The Washington Post reports.
Administration officials say the nation shouldn't panic and make unwise decisions. President Bush has called for a decade of research before the government commits to anything more than voluntary measures to stem carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from industry and vehicles that have been closely tied to global warming.
"I don't think there's any disagreement that human activity has substantially contributed to the amount of CO2 [carbon dioxide] in the environment," said John Marburger, the White House science and technology adviser. "What we are arguing is that we need more information to have a clearly articulated regulatory policy that is practical, that's affordable and doesn't put the economy at risk."
Patrick Michaels, senior fellow in environmental studies and co-author of "The Satanic Gases", writes in "Drought-Inspired Climate Panic" that statistics show that the Earth is becoming neither hotter nor drier. "U.S. surface temperatures have risen a mere 0.4ºC in the last 100 years. Are we getting drier? The answer is no. U.S. precipitation has increased about 10 percent over the 20th century, an increase of around 3 inches in the last 100 years."
North Korea Rejects Inspection of Nuclear Weapons Program
North Korea said today it had rejected a call by the International Atomic Energy Agency to open its nuclear weapons program to inspections, saying the U.N. nuclear watchdog was abetting U.S. policy toward the North, reports Reuters.
The IAEA called on North Korea last week to open its atomic weapons program to inspections and said it "deplored" Pyongyang's assertion it had a right to possess the weapons.
Closing off an avenue North Korea's neighbors had hoped might pre-empt a crisis, Pyongyang's communist government spurned the resolution as "an extremely unilateral resolution."
Following North Korea's admission in October that it has been conducting a nuclear weapons program, Senior Fellow Doug Bandow made the following comments: "North Korea's admission that it has maintained a nuclear weapons program likely reflects its international isolation and weakness in what for it is an increasingly hostile environment. Its unverified claim to have developed 'more powerful' weapons may be an attempt to deter the Bush administration's announced policy of preemption--an unexpected example of blowback."
"In any case," he argues, "the North poses no threat to America, the world's most powerful nation. With Pyongyang continuing to mix conciliation with belligerence, Washington should step back and let those countries with the most at stake, particularly South Korea and Japan, take the lead in developing policy towards North Korea."
Jonathan Block, editor, jblock@cato.org