By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Sep 14 2001 (IPS)

The pace toward U.S. military action in the wake of Tuesday’s terror attacks in New York and at the Pentagon appeared to accelerate sharply on virtually every front Friday – diplomatic, legislative, diplomatic, and even spiritual.

Hours after the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to give President George W. Bush authority to “use all necessary and appropriate force” against groups responsible for the Sep. 11 attacks and those countries which harbour them, four ex-presidents, including Bill Clinton, joined Bush at the National Cathedral here as part of a “Day of Prayer and Remembrance.”

While the focus of the sombre service was on grief and remembering the approximately 5,000 victims of the attacks, the notion that Washington was now at war was never forgotten.

“Just three days removed from these events,” said Bush, the only non-clergy speaker at the service, “Americans do not yet have the distance of history, but our responsibility to history is already clear: To answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.”

Friday’s service capped a flurry of legislative activity designed to bolster Washington’s military and diplomatic position in advance of anticipated military operations likely to be directed, in the first instance, against Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden’s Afghanistan-based network.

Earlier in the day, Bush authorised the Pentagon to call up 50,000 reserve military personnel to replace active-duty troops, pilots, and sailors for “homeland defence.”

In addition to recovery operations in Manhattan and the Pentagon, the new forces are expected to support air patrols, which have become a new facet of daily life over Washington, New York and elsewhere, officials said.

In Congress, Republicans and Democrats worked swiftly to approve a variety of measures to bolster Washington’s anti-terrorist and diplomatic capabilities.

Besides granting Bush broad authority to conduct military operations against suspected terrorists and their protectors, Congress also appropriated 40 billion dollars for recovery efforts and anti-terrorism, much of which will likely be spent by the Pentagon and the intelligence community.

While there had been some wrangling over what strings would be tied to both the war-making authority and the money, the two parties moved quickly to reconcile their differences.

Under the resolution passed by the Senate, which is likely to be approved by the House of Representatives Saturday, Bush will be required to abide by provisions of the War Powers Resolution, a law that requires the president to report to Congress on any military actions and limits the deployment of troops without Congressional approval.

The resolution, however, not only authorises force against those responsible for Tuesday’s attacks and their protectors, it also authorises force “to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States.”

The Senate approved Thursday amendments to pending legislation that would make it much easier for U.S. law enforcement officials to conduct wiretaps on Internet communications against suspected terrorists and that would rescind a 1995 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) regulation that bans the recruitment of foreign intelligence sources who may have committed human rights abuses.

The regulation, which was put in place after a series of disclosures regarding CIA payments to senior officers in Central American intelligence agencies responsible for gross human rights abuses including torture, has long been opposed both by intelligence professionals and Republicans as impractical and self- defeating.

Several other developments in Congress over the past 24 hours were designed to strengthen Washington’s position at the United Nations, particularly in advance of Bush’s scheduled appearance there later this month.

At the administration’s behest, the powerful rightwing Republican Whip in the House of Representatives, Tom DeLay, agreed to the release of 582 million dollars in unpaid U.N. dues which he had held up in an effort to block U.S. cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC) and punish non-NATO countries which ratified the Rome Treaty on which it is based.

The administration had pushed DeLay unsuccessfully to drop his amendment before Tuesday’s attacks, arguing that the failure to pay the money to the U.N. would embarrass Bush when he is scheduled to speak before the General Assembly for the first time Sep. 24. In light of the attacks, “Congressman DeLay is not going to stand in the way of anything the president asks for right now,” a spokesperson said.

Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who had voiced strong reservations about Bush’s nomination of John Negroponte as ambassador to the United Nations, voted Thursday to confirm his appointment.

Democrats had raised questions about Negroponte’s fitness for the job based on his performance in Honduras in the early years of the Reagan administration, when Washington began financing and supplying the Nicaraguan “contras” and training a special army intelligence unit that acted as a death squad. Critics charged that he had covered up human rights abuses and failed to adequately inform Congress about what was taking place.

Negroponte, who subsequently served as ambassador to Mexico and in several other sensitive posts, denied the charges. In the end, the committee voted 14-3 to recommend confirmation to the full Senate.

On Friday, Bush reportedly followed up telephone calls Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and asked him to quickly agree on cease-fire talks with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. Bush’s direct involvement was seen as evidence of growing pressure by the administration on Israel to cease provocative acts that would inflame Islamic opinion.

Meanwhile, Vice President Dick Cheney, who played a key coordinating role in the hours after the attacks in New York and on the Pentagon when Bush was out of the capital, was moved to the presidential retreat at Camp David as a security measure, U.S. officials said.

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