Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been consistently denying that there's a security problem in Afghanistan. But fighting between warlords continues, ethnic Pashtuns are being massacred in Northern Afghanistan, and the capital city of Kabul is the only "secure" area in the country. Even there, a recent car bombing sent US reporters scurrying to the Pentagon for reassurance that US troops were not threatened. Last week, however, CIA Director George Tenet and Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Thomas Wilson told the Senate Armed Services Committee that attacks against US personnel in Afghanistan will increase as the weather grows warmer. Tenet called it a "classic insurgency format," while Wilson called it "a very widespread probability of insurgency-type warfare" in cities and in the countryside. Both estimates evoke the early months of the Vietnam War. With US troops stationed in nations all over the region, the potential for a major conflagration is increasing.--Maria Tomchick

We were also told last week that Operation Anaconda was a success, with as many as 1,000 Al Qaeda and Taliban dead. It turns out the Pentagon and US press inflated the figures by a factor of 10 or 20. According to our Afghan allies, who estimated the dead to be around 50 or 60, with the majority of Al Qaeda and Taliban scattering across the hills and escaping through the porous border into Pakistan. Even Canadian officers who served alongside US troops in the operation say that "there were few direct engagements with the enemy." (The Boston Globe, 3/20/02.)--MT

The main reason used to justify continued US troop presence in Afghanistan--and, indeed, the whole war on terrorism--is the possibility that Al Qaeda and the Taliban were developing weapons of mass destruction. But the New York Times reported last week that, after months of careful sifting through soil samples, analyzing swabs, and other chemical tests, US experts have found no trace of anthrax, other biological weapons, chemical weapons, or evidence of any "dirty bomb." The experts expected to at least find WWI type munitions (i.e., evidence of cyanide gas production), but even that is lacking. What have they found? Out-of-date US Army manuals on improvised explosives and some basic undergraduate college chemistry textbooks.(NYT, 3/20/02).--MT

Speaking of weapons of mass destruction, the US chemical weapons depot at Umatilla, OR, contains one of the most dangerous substances on earth. A new federal study on the lethality of the VX nerve agent stockpiled at Umatilla--some 25 miles from the Tri-Cities--shows that just one drop of the stuff can kill. It's 10 times more potent than Oregon Health Department personnel thought. All it would take is an explosion of some kind and a windy day to make 9/11 look like a picnic. And Hanford is a close neighbor to the north. An earthquake in that area could make us all wonder why the hell we ever worried about Afghanistan.--MT

Washington State, home of high-tech and more sports stadiums than old-growth forests, is also home to more underfed people in 44 other states - we're #5, and need to try harder - in redistributing food & other basic necessities. Hunger is nationwide, of course, and food stamp funding comes through the FDA, which does manage to help feed a few hungry people while shoveling huge subsidies into the troughs of biotech and giant agribusiness conglomerates. The feds are currently crafting a new farm bill/foodstamp policy, which will probably go to a vote in April; as 'welfare deform' continues to impoverish more women & children, food stamps are a critical lifeline for thousands. Tell your representative and senators to get the FDA to stop funding foodstamps at a starvation level, and feed people's needs, not greed! Contact the Western Region Against Hunger Coalition (www.wrahc.org) for info relevant across the US.--Valerie Rose

Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell worked hard in January to win a pork-barrel project for Boeing: a deal for the Pentagon to lease cargo jets from Boeing at double or triple what it would cost to buy them outright. Their reason for raiding taxpayer's pockets on Boeing's behalf was to fund jobs in Washington State. Now Boeing has announced that most of those jobs will go to Kansas City and other Boeing plants around the country. When will our dim senators figure out that Boeing is no longer a local company? Boeing has been shifting from a local manufacturer of commercial airplanes into a multinational defense contractor for over a decade. Get a clue, you two!--MT

Last issue, ETS! reported on the questionable off-balance-sheet accounting practices at Immunex, where costs and debts incurred by the new Elliot Bay waterfront complex being built with the help of a generous wet fat 1999 gift of taxpayer funds were funnelled through subsidiary corporations, Enron-style, to make Immunex's overall financial reports look better. Shortly after our issue came out, all hell broke loose, as word leaked to local media that the company that has since bought Immunex, a California-based biotech firm called Amgen, is dramatically scaling back the project and will even tear down some of what it's already built.

It's no surprise. It was entirely predictable that Immunex's extensive investments in new drug development would either go bust--in which case, public money was wasted--or pay off, leaving the company ripe for a non-local takeover. Which is what happened. And that's the ultimate flaw of most "public-private partnerships," the corporate welfare vehicle so beloved by the Port of Seattle, city, and just about every other public agency hereabouts. The promise of PPP's is that if you give lots of taxpayer money to a company now, they'll return more in jobs and taxes later than you would have netted without the gift. Problem is, that sort of long-term development no longer exists in the corporate world. Companies are managed for the next quarter, not ten-year growth. And usually the money is pocketed and the companies run off long before any promised benefits materialize.

If it were some ghetto kid stealing a candy bar, he'd go to jail; if it's some CEO stealing millions of taxpayer dollars, with a generous assist from our "leaders," said leaders shrug their shoulders and prepare the next gift to someone else. --Geov Parrish

Speaking of kleptoCEOs, the banner Seattle Times headline last Saturday, bringing out the violins for poor impoverished Boeing execs, was one of the most repulsive spectacles local media has put out in a while--which, given our local TV news, is saying a lot. The reason for the pathos? Under the headline "Boeing execs lose millions" [sic], we learn that Boeing's top five crimin--er, execs, with their stock-heavy compensation packages, pulled down $56.7 million in 2000, but "only" $12.5 million in 2001--meaning not that the execs "lost" a damn thing, but that their Boeing-generated wealth (as opposed to other boards or income sources they might have) expanded by only an order of magnitude more than the president of the United States last year, not nearly five times that amount.

Bear in mind that most of Boeing's business--both the commercial and the rapidly expanding military killtoy sides--is heavily dependent upon government largesse at every step, from R&D to marketing to DoD contracts and underwriting foreign sales.

And that the Times had no such headline when these guys pulled down $56.7 million for their largely taxpayer-funded efforts--only when we're supposed to feel sorry for them. Fat chance. How many blue collar Boeing employees have "compensation packages"? And given that they got their wealth from the state, and the state steals it, at (essentially) gunpoint, from us, why the hell should we feel sorry for these guys? Am I supposed to feel sorry when the burglar who ripped off my TV got less for it from his fence? --G.P.

Hey, in case you haven't listened lately to Eat the Airwaves!--the segment of the KEXP program Mind Over Matters on which ETS!'s Geov Parrish has been holding forth on the week's news since 1996--there's been a momentous change. The program now also features co-editor Maria Tomchick, whose tendencies toward exhaustive knowledge we've been trying to get onto the program for, oh, about five years. Now, of course, there's way too much info to cram into a half hour, but we try, every week, with host Mike McCormick. It's also available on the web (www.ekexp.org). Give it a listen--Saturday mornings, 8:30- 9 AM on KEXP 90.3 Seattle. (Mind Over Matters runs 6-9 AM on Saturdays and Sundays, and there's lots of other great stuff, too. Shame about the time slot!) --G.P.

And one more Kitchen note: The ETS! monthly social potluck is back, at a new venue in Belltown -- the home of ETS! volunteer David Cahn. We come together the last Friday of each month (that includes this Friday--March 29), 7 PM. Call the ETS! voice mail at 206-903-9461 and leave a message to get the exact location.--Ed