August 9, 2006

Washington Post
August 9, 2006
Pg. 13

By Andy Mosher, Washington Post Foreign Service

TIKRIT, Iraq, Aug. 8 -- U.S. military commanders on Tuesday handed over to their Iraqi counterparts primary security responsibility for a swath of northern territory extending from the foothills of Iraq's eastern mountains all the way west to the Syrian border.

Visiting U.S. and Iraqi officials hailed the transfer -- which will have no immediate effect on American troop levels in the area -- as a watershed moment in the gradual shift of military duties in Iraq from U.S. forces to this country's nascent army. They also expressed optimism over stepped-up security operations in Baghdad, where military spokesmen announced Tuesday that a new phase of a U.S.-Iraqi crackdown on violence had begun.

Events in the capital and surrounding provinces, however, illustrated how deeply entrenched Iraq's security problems are after 3 1/2 years of war punctuated by nearly six months of intense sectarian violence.

At least 18 people were killed and more than 90 were wounded when two explosions ripped through al-Araby market in the capital's Shorja district, according to hospital workers. And in Diyala province, just east of Baghdad, local officials reported Tuesday night that a wave of killings, apparently sectarian in nature, had claimed at least 29 lives over the course of the day.

At Forward Operating Base Dagger, a U.S.-Iraqi military installation on the outskirts of Tikrit, the Iraqi army's 4th Division was given the lead security role in Salahuddin, Nineveh and Tamim provinces. In a festive ceremony held in the marble-lined main hall of a palace built by Saddam Hussein, the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division handed off what commanders described as primary responsibility for coordinating, planning and conducting security operations in the three-province area.

Five of the Iraqi army's 10 divisions now have primary responsibility for security in their areas, and FOB Dagger becomes the 48th of 110 U.S. bases handed over to Iraqi control.

"Half of the Iraqi army is now under control of Iraqis," said the country's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie. "We believe they will be much more competent in fighting terrorism. We know our way around."

Thousands of American troops will remain in the area, including about 9,000 at Camp Speicher, a larger base near Tikrit. Rubaie acknowledged that Iraqi forces will depend heavily on U.S troops for intelligence, logistical assistance and heavy firepower.

"I think everyone needs to understand that this is a step," said Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, who attended the handover ceremony with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. "First we had to build and train them. Then we put them in the lead, and we'll ultimately help them become independent. That's a little ways down the road."

Khalilzad called it "a good day for Iraq. Iraqi forces are taking on more responsibility."

Asked about the vastly greater challenge of tackling violence in Baghdad, the ambassador said: "Security in Baghdad is vital. It's the national capital, and 7 million Iraqis live there. . . . A new, modified security plan is in the process of being implemented that will take on one neighborhood after another."

After an earlier U.S.-Iraqi security scheme for Baghdad, called Operation Forward Together, failed to stem sectarian killings and other violence ravaging the city, Pentagon officials announced last month that thousands of U.S. troops would be moved to Baghdad from elsewhere in Iraq. A key component of the shift is the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, whose 3,700 troops have been gradually taking up positions in Baghdad, according to Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman.

The military said in a statement Tuesday that the second phase of Operation Forward Together had begun, with the Iraqi national police and the 4th Brigade Combat team of the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division conducting "clearing operations" in Baghdad.

"We must dramatically reduce the level of violence in Baghdad that is fueling sectarianism," Maj. Gen. J.D. Thurman, commander of the Multi-National Division in Baghdad, said in the statement. "Iraqi and U.S. forces will help the citizens of Baghdad by reducing the violence that has plagued this city since the Samarra bombing." The destruction of a Shiite shrine in the northern city of Samarra on Feb. 22 triggered the current wave of sectarian killings.

The bombings in Baghdad's Shorja district laid waste to the shops that make up the al-Araby market, according to survivors.

"The explosion did not hurt me, but glass panels of the shops and in the ceiling were shattered and caused the injuries," said Hameed Jabbar, 34, a merchant who was in serious condition at Kindi Hospital with wounds in the face, chest and abdomen.

Witnesses said that the two bombs detonated about 10 minutes apart and that the second caused the most devastation. "Many of the casualties occurred because of the flying glass caused by the second explosion," said Munthir Yassen, 30, a friend of Jabbar's who escaped injury. "This is a criminal act carried out against innocent civilians trying to make a living at this market."

Late Tuesday night, a pair of bombs exploded near an apartment building in the northern town of Baqubah. Police Capt. Noor Ibrahim said the bombs collapsed the building and heavily damaged a nearby Shiite prayer hall.

Four people were known dead, and rescue workers were still searching through the rubble at about midnight, Ibrahim said.

Special correspondent Hasan Shammari in Baqubah and other Washington Post employees in Iraq contributed to this report.

Los Angeles Times
August 9, 2006
Pg. 1

By Borzou Daragahi, Times Staff Writer

BAGHDAD — They have a new constitution, a new government and a new military. But faced with incessant sectarian bloodshed, Iraqis for the first time have begun openly discussing whether the only way to stop the violence is to remake the country they have just built.

Leaders of Iraq's powerful Shiite Muslim political bloc have begun aggressively promoting a radical plan to partition the country as a way of separating the warring sects. Some Iraqis are even talking about dividing the capital, with the Tigris River as a kind of Berlin Wall.

Shiites have long advocated some sort of autonomy in the south, similar to the Kurds' 15-year-old enclave in the north, with its own defense forces and control over oil exploration. And the new constitution does allow provinces to team up into federal regions. But the latest effort, promulgated by Cabinet ministers, clerics and columnists, marks the first time they have advocated regional partition as a way of stemming violence.

"Federalism will cut off all parts of the country that are incubating terrorism from those that are upgrading and improving," said Khudair Khuzai, the Shiite education minister. "We will do it just like Kurdistan. We will put soldiers along the frontiers."

The growing clamor for partition illustrates how dire the country's security, economic and political problems have come to seem to many Iraqis: Until recently, the idea of redrawing the 8 1/2 -decade-old map of Iraq was considered seditious.

Some of the advocates of partitioning the country are circumspect, arguing that federalism is only one of the tools under consideration for reducing violence.

But others push a plan by Abdelaziz Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a political party. Hakim advocates the creation of a nine-province district in the largely peaceful south, home to 60% of the country's proven oil reserves.

Sunni leaders see nothing but greed in the new push — the Shiites, they say, are taking advantage of the escalating violence to make an oil grab.

Iraq's oil is concentrated in the north and south; much of the Sunni-dominated west and northwest is desolate desert, devoid of oil and gas.

"Controlling these areas will create a grand fortune that they can exploit," said Adnan Dulaimi, a leading Sunni Arab politician. "Their motive is that they are thirsty for control and power."

Still, even nationalists who favor a united Iraq acknowledge that sectarian warfare has gotten so out of hand that even the possibility of splitting the capital along the Tigris, which roughly divides the city between a mostly Shiite east and a mostly Sunni west, is being openly discussed.

"Sunnis and Shiites are both starting to feel that dividing Baghdad will be the solution," said Ammar Wajuih, a Sunni politician.

Critics scoff at the idea that any geographical partitioning of Sunnis and Shiites will make the country safer. Some observers warn that cutting up the country's Arab provinces into separate religious cantons would be as cataclysmic as the partition of Pakistan and India in 1947.

Although growing numbers of Iraqis acknowledge that their country is in an undeclared civil war, a partition would "actually lead to increasing violence and sectarian displacement," said Hussein Athab, a political scientist and former lawmaker in Basra.

Critics of partitioning note that rival Shiite militias with ties to political parties in government appear to be responsible for as much of Iraq's violence as Sunni insurgents are, and have been known to turn their guns on one another.

"They're always talking about reconciliation and rejecting violence, but in truth they're not serious," Wajuih said. "Whenever there is a security escalation or violence, they bring the issue of federalism up again."

One Western diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, suggested that the Shiites were using the prospect of a southern ministate to gain political concessions from Sunnis — "a threat that they wouldn't want to have to exercise" because tearing the country asunder would be so traumatic.

A U.S. Embassy spokesperson declined to comment publicly on such a volatile issue. But U.S. policymakers also have begun to warm to the idea. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, one of the Democratic Party's leading voices on foreign policy, began openly advocating such a move this year.

"I think it's the only way out," says Ivan Eland, a former House Foreign Affairs Committee staffer who is now an analyst at the Independent Institute, an Oakland think tank. "Iraq is already partitioned. Kurds don't want to be part of it. And any central government controlled by one group, the other groups are going to be afraid of being oppressed by it."

The prospect of a decentralized Iraq drove opposition groups for decades; Shiites and Kurds were brutally suppressed under Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime, and once they came to power they wanted to weaken the central government. In a referendum last year, a constitution including the option of devolution was approved despite nearly uniform Sunni opposition.

Under the constitution, any of Iraq's 18 provinces, or a group of provinces, may hold a referendum to form a federal region. But the charter was vague on the definition of "federal." In Kurdistan it in effect has meant grouping three provinces into an autonomous enclave that has its own military, intelligence apparatus, prime minister and oil ministry.

The Kurdish experiment has inspired many Shiite leaders, especially Hakim. Clerics loyal to him already have begun using street demonstrations as well as Friday sermons to advance to desperate and war-weary Shiite masses the idea that an autonomous southern region will stem the bloodshed and bring prosperity.

"Those afraid of federalism in the south and middle are afraid that we will get our rights back," Shiite cleric Sadruddin Qubanchi told the faithful gathered for Friday prayers in Najaf last month.

"Why not now?" said a July 30 column in Al Adala, a Shiite daily newspaper. "We are in a race against time to establish federalism in Iraq."

Hakim's advisors have already begun drawing up proposals for the rights and territorial boundaries of such a region, said Haithem Hussein, one of his deputies. In one plan, the Shiite militias now considered part of Iraq's cycle of violence could serve as a regional security force, just as the Kurdish peshmerga militias form the core of Kurdistan's regional security forces.

"We don't want to establish a Shiite state or a state within a state," said Mukhlis Zamel, a Shiite lawmaker from the southern city of Nasiriya. "But we want to manage ourselves by ourselves."

In the halls of parliament, Sunni politicians say their Shiite colleagues try to strong-arm them to go along with their plan.

"They try to convince you that federalism is the only solution, whether you like it or not," said Salim Abdullah Jabouri, a former law professor now serving in parliament as a member of the main Sunni coalition.

Most agree that a partitioning of Iraq along the geographical lines advocated by Shiites would be an agonizing and traumatic process.

Almost all of Iraq's major tribes include both Shiite and Sunni branches, and cross-sectarian marriages abound.

Baghdad, Diyala, northern Babil and southern Salahuddin provinces are thoroughly mixed, often patchworks of Shiite and Sunni villages. Basra in the south includes a significant Sunni minority, while Mosul in the north includes significant numbers of Shiite Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens.

But all of these complications can be worked out, said analyst Eland.

"They could work out an oil-sharing agreement," he said. "It's a fallacy that you have to have contiguous borders. You could have deterrence: We won't hurt your minority if you don't hurt ours."

Sheik Diyadhin Fayadh, a Shiite politician, offered another solution to the sectarian patchwork stemming from a partition: "If people don't like the system in one region," he said, "they can go to another region."

Times staff writer Saif Rasheed in Baghdad and special correspondent Saad Fakhrildeen in Najaf contributed to this report.

Washington Post
August 9, 2006
Pg. 1

By R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post Staff Writer

The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading war prisoners, according to U.S. officials and a copy of the amendments.

Officials say the amendments would alter a U.S. law passed in the mid-1990s that criminalized violations of the Geneva Conventions, a set of international treaties governing military conduct in wartime. The conventions generally bar the cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment of wartime prisoners without spelling out what all those terms mean.

The draft U.S. amendments to the War Crimes Act would narrow the scope of potential criminal prosecutions to 10 specific categories of illegal acts against detainees during a war, including torture, murder, rape and hostage-taking.

Left off the list would be what the Geneva Conventions refer to as "outrages upon [the] personal dignity" of a prisoner and deliberately humiliating acts -- such as the forced nakedness, use of dog leashes and wearing of women's underwear seen at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq -- that fall short of torture.

"People have gotten worried, thinking that it's quite likely they might be under a microscope," said a U.S. official. Foreigners are using accusations of unlawful U.S. behavior as a way to rein in American power, the official said, and the amendments are partly meant to fend this off.

The plan has provoked concern at the International Committee of the Red Cross, the entity responsible for safeguarding the Geneva Conventions. A U.S official confirmed that the group's lawyers visited the Pentagon and the State Department last week to discuss the issue but left without any expectation that their objections would be heeded.

The administration has not officially released the draft amendments. Although they are part of broader legislation on military courts still being discussed within the government, their substance has already been embraced by key officials and will not change, two government sources said.

No criminal prosecutions have been brought under the War Crimes Act, which Congress passed in 1996 and expanded in 1997. But 10 experts on the laws of war, who reviewed a draft of the amendments at the request of The Washington Post, said the changes could affect how those involved in detainee matters act and how other nations view Washington's respect for its treaty obligations.

"This removal of [any] reference to humiliating and degrading treatment will be perceived by experts and probably allies as 'rewriting' " the Geneva Conventions, said retired Army Lt. Col. Geoffrey S. Corn, who was recently chief of the war law branch of the Army's Office of the Judge Advocate General. Others said the changes could affect how foreigners treat U.S. soldiers.

The amendments would narrow the reach of the War Crimes Act, which now states in general terms that Americans can be prosecuted in federal criminal courts for violations of "Common Article 3" of the Geneva Conventions, which the United States ratified in 1949.

U.S. officials have long interpreted the War Crimes Act as applying to civilians, including CIA officers, and former U.S. military personnel. Misconduct by serving military personnel is handled by military courts, which enforce a prohibition on cruelty and mistreatment. The Army Field Manual, which is being revised, separately bars cruel and degrading treatment, corporal punishment, assault, and sensory deprivation.

Common Article 3 is considered the universal minimum standard of treatment for civilian detainees in wartime. It requires that they be treated humanely and bars "violence to life and person," including murder, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture. It further prohibits "outrages upon personal dignity" such as "humiliating and degrading treatment." And it prohibits sentencing or execution by courts that fail to provide "all the judicial guarantees . . . recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."

The risk of possible prosecution of officials, CIA officers and former service personnel over alleged rough treatment of prisoners arises because the Bush administration, from January 2002 until June, maintained that the Geneva Conventions' protections did not apply to prisoners captured in Afghanistan.

As a result, the government authorized interrogations using methods that U.S. military lawyers have testified were in violation of Common Article 3; it also created a system of military courts not specifically authorized by Congress, which denied defendants many routine due process rights.

The Supreme Court decided in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld on June 29, however, that the administration's policy of not honoring the Geneva Conventions was illegal, and that prisoners in the fight against al-Qaeda are entitled to such protections.

U.S. officials have since responded in three ways: They have asked Congress to pass legislation blocking the prisoners' right to sue for the enforcement of those protections. They have drafted legislation allowing the consideration of intelligence-gathering needs during interrogations, in place of an absolute human rights standard.

They also formulated the War Crimes Act amendments spelling out some serious crimes and omitting altogether some that U.S. officials describe as less serious. For example, two acts considered under international law as constituting "outrages" -- rape and sexual abuse -- are listed as prosecutable.

But humiliations, degrading treatment and other acts specifically deemed as "outrages" by the international tribunal prosecuting war crimes in the former Yugoslavia -- such as placing prisoners in "inappropriate conditions of confinement," forcing them to urinate or defecate in their clothes, and merely threatening prisoners with "physical, mental, or sexual violence" -- would not be among the listed U.S. crimes, officials said.

"It's plain that this proposal would abrogate portions of Common Article 3," said Derek P. Jinks, a University of Texas assistant professor of law and author of a forthcoming book on the Geneva Conventions. The "entire family of techniques" that military interrogators used to deliberately degrade and humiliate, and thus coerce, detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at Abu Ghraib "is not addressed in any way, shape or form" in the new language authorizing prosecutions, he said.

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last Wednesday, however, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales complained repeatedly about the ambiguity and broad reach of the phrase "outrages upon personal dignity." He said that, "if left undefined, this provision will create an unacceptable degree of uncertainty for those who fight to defend us from terrorist attack."

Lawmakers from both parties expressed skepticism at the hearing. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the military's top uniformed lawyers had told him they are training to comply with Common Article 3 and that complying would not impede operations.

If the underlying treaty provision is too vague, asked Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), then how could the Defense Department instruct its personnel in a July 7 memorandum to certify their compliance with it? Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, who had signed the memo, responded at the hearing that he was concerned that "degrading" and "humiliating" are relative terms.

"I mean, what is degrading in one society may not be degrading in another, or may be degrading in one religion, not in another religion," England said. "And since it does have an international interpretation, which is generally, frankly, different than our own, it becomes very, very relevant" to define the meaning in new legislation.

This viewpoint appears to have won over the top uniformed military lawyers, who have criticized other aspects of the administration's detainee policy but said that they support the thrust of these amendments. Maj. Gen. Scott C. Black, the Army's judge advocate general, said in testimony that the changes can "elevate" the War Crimes Act "from an aspiration to an instrument" by defining offenses that can be prosecuted instead of endorsing "the ideals of the laws of war."

Lawyer David Rivkin, formerly on the staff of the Justice Department and the White House counsel's office, said "it's not a question of being stingy but coming up with a well-defined statutory scheme that would withstand constitutional challenges and would lead to successful prosecutions." Former Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo similarly said that U.S. soldiers and agents should "not be beholden to the definition of vague words by international or foreign courts, who often pursue nakedly political agendas at odds with the United States."

But Corn, the Army's former legal expert, said that Common Article 3 was, according to its written history, "left deliberately vague because efforts to define it would invariably lead to wrongdoers identifying 'exceptions,' and because the meaning was plain -- treat people like humans and not animals or objects." Eugene R. Fidell, president of the nonprofit National Institute of Military Justice, said that laws governing military conduct are filled with broadly described prohibitions that are nonetheless enforceable, including "dereliction of duty," "maltreatment" and "conduct unbecoming an officer."

Retired Rear Adm. John D. Hutson, the Navy's top uniformed lawyer from 1997 to 2000 and now dean of the Franklin Pierce Law Center, said his view is "don't trust the motives of any lawyer who changes a statutory provision that is short, clear, and to the point and replaces it with something that is much longer, more complicated, and includes exceptions within exceptions."

New York Times
August 9, 2006

Aid Crisis Worsens As Israel Pounds Southern Lebanon

By John Kifner

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Aug. 8 — A humanitarian crisis deepened across Lebanon on Tuesday as fighting continued to rage between Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah guerrillas along the border, amid indications that Israel was preparing for a major escalation.

In Tyre, the besieged major city in the south, leaflets fluttered down warning that any car on the roads south of the Litani River could be hit.

“Every vehicle, whatever its nature, which travels south of the Litani will be bombed on suspicion of transporting rockets and arms for the terrorists,” said the leaflets, addressed to the people of Lebanon and signed “State of Israel.”

The United Nations, as well as the Red Cross and other aid groups, said they were unable to move convoys to the villages around Tyre to deliver supplies or even dig out bodies buried under rubble.

In Israel, where public and political pressure is mounting over the stalled campaign, after four weeks of conflict, Defense Minister Amir Peretz said he had ordered contingency plans for a bigger ground offensive when the Security Cabinet meets on Wednesday to consider widening the war.

“I have instructed all the I.D.F. commanders to prepare for an operation aimed at taking over launching areas and reduce as much as possible Hezbollah’s rocket launching capability,” he said, using the initials for the Israeli Defense Forces.

“If we see that the diplomatic efforts do not yield the results we expect, we will have to do it ourselves,’’ he added, referring to efforts at the United Nations, led by the United States and France, for a cease-fire resolution.

But with both combatants locked in what each sees as a struggle for survival, it seemed unlikely that a Security Council resolution would have any immediate effect.

In New York on Tuesday, an Arab League delegation told members of the Security Council that the draft resolution to halt hostilities would only worsen the crisis, because it did not demand an immediate Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

“What is happening will sow the seeds of hatred and extremism in the area, and provide a pretext for those who feel that the international community is taking sides,’’ said Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, the foreign minister of Qatar.

A senior Bush administration official said he did not see Israel agreeing to a resolution that would call for an immediate withdrawal. Under the current draft, they would leave only on the arrival of an international force, which would be created by a second resolution that would also address political dimensions of the problems, including the disarming of Hezbollah.

But the official, requesting anonymity to discuss administration strategy, said the United States saw a plan announced Monday by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of Lebanon, which would send 15,000 Lebanese troops to the south, as something that could be written into the resolution to win Arab support.

“If the way this ends is deployment of the Lebanese armed forces to the blue line,” he said, referring to the Israeli border, “that would mean that the government of Lebanon was the one who would work with the Israelis to withdraw. It’s one piece of the puzzle that would help to stabilize Lebanon.”

Meanwhile, in an unusual move Israeli observers suggested was a prelude to heavy combat, the Israeli military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz of the air force, named his deputy, Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, as his personal representative to supervise the fighting in Lebanon. The bypassing of the Israeli ground commander, Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, led Israeli television news Tuesday night, with a Channel One reporter, Yoav Limor, saying “the failure is that of the army.” He described General Kaplinsky as “a winning officer” who was sent north to deliver victory.

In the fighting Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike killed 13 people in the Shiite village of Al Ghaziye. Other airstrikes hit the south — about 40 raids in a score of locations — and transportation routes to the east in the mostly Shiite Bekaa Valley.

The Israeli military said three soldiers were killed and eight wounded in the ground fighting on Tuesday. Much of the fighting was centered around Bint Jbail, which was a Hezbollah stronghold a few miles north of the border. Illustrating the tenacity of the fighting, it is an area Israel said it seized weeks ago.

In Beirut, explosions sounded Tuesday night in the heavily Shiite slum districts on the city’s southern edge. Hezbollah fired more than 150 rockets into northern Israel, injuring several people.

[An Israeli strike on a Palestinian refugee camp, Ain el Hilwe, in south Lebanon killed at least one person, medics said early Wednesday, according to Reuters.]

With all of the major highways now cut and with a naval blockade off the coast, gasoline and fuel for generating electricity were running short. With rationing, there is enough fuel for five more days of electricity, a Lebanese government official estimated Tuesday, putting hospitals, already overwhelmed with the wounded, in particular peril.

International aid workers said the situation was particularly dire throughout the south, because convoys could not reach Tyre, nor venture from there to the outlying villages.

“South of the Litani is off,” said Khaled Mansour, the chief United Nations spokesman in Lebanon, indicating that the agency’s aid convoys had been halted because the last bridge over the Litani River north of Tyre had been blown up.

The United Nations World Food Program has stopped deliveries of food to southern villages because of the danger on the roads, said a spokeswoman, Christiane Berthiaume.

The World Health Organization warned that if fuel is not delivered soon, 60 percent of the hospitals in Lebanon will “simply cease to function.”

USA Today
August 9, 2006
Pg. 1

By Susan Page, USA Today

Six years after he was cheered as the Democrats' choice for vice president, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman on Tuesday was denied his party's nomination for a fourth term in a bitter primary challenge that turned into a referendum on the Iraq war.

Challenger Ned Lamont, 52, a millionaire businessman who was unknown to nine of 10 Democrats in the state just three months ago, tapped anti-war sentiment and the support of liberal Internet bloggers to defeat one of the nation's most prominent Democrats.

However, Lieberman vowed to run as an independent against Lamont in the general election.

“I am, of course, disappointed by the results, but I am not discouraged,” Lieberman told supporters as he conceded at a Hartford hotel just after 11 p.m. He said “the old politics of political partisanship won today” and declared: “For the sake of our state, our country and my party, I cannot and will not let that result go unchallenged.”

A few minutes later in Meriden, Lamont decried that U.S. troops were “stuck in a civil war in Iraq” and said it was “high time we bring them home to a hero's welcome.” The crowd chanted: “Bring them home.”

Lamont's margin of victory — a lead of about 10,000 votes — was a bit narrower than predicted by statewide polls over the past week.

In a final dispute, Lieberman accused Lamont's supporters of crashing his campaign website on Tuesday and demanded a criminal investigation by state and federal authorities. The senator said he didn't have proof who was responsible but said it was safe to assume that “it wasn't any casual observer.”

Lamont denied his campaign was involved and called the accusation “another scurrilous charge.”

Lieberman's ouster was a sign of Democratic voters' anger over the war and their impatience with elected officials who haven't confronted President Bush with what they see as sufficient force.

In the past half-century, the only other such prominent senator to lose his party's nomination was J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a leading critic of the Vietnam War. He was defeated in the 1974 Arkansas Democratic primary by then-governor Dale Bumpers.

Washington Times
August 9, 2006
Pg. 11

By Kelly Hearn, The Washington Times

BUENOS AIRES -- Russia is negotiating arms sales to Argentina less than two weeks after angering Washington with a $3 billion deal to sell jets and helicopters to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Russian Ambassador Yuri Korchagin met with Argentine Minister of Defense Nilda Garre on Aug. 2 to express Moscow's willingness to "open a road to military and technical cooperation," according to a statement from Argentina's Ministry of Defense.

The statement said the Russian official presented a formal letter of intent, but an Argentine Defense Ministry spokesman declined to provide further details.

Miss Garre met previously on Jan. 18 and again on April 17 with the Russian ambassador, who was accompanied by Alexander Fomin, a ranking official within Russia's technical and military cooperation program.

A leading Argentine newspaper, La Nacion, reported on Monday that in those earlier meetings, the Russian officials raised the idea of trading Argentine beef, of which Russia is the largest importer, for military helicopters and armor-plated patrol boats.

Argentina has for years looked to acquire artillery-capable helicopters, but its 2001-2002 economic collapse scuttled those plans, and a Venezuelan buyout of Argentina's debt to the World Bank last year has done little to ease the burden.

But Mr. Chavez and Argentina's leftist president, Nestor Kirchner, have deepened their relations recently with new energy deals and a joint effort to create a South American development bank that would compete with the international lenders.

Officials have yet to offer a public response to the Russian proposal.

"Argentina has maintained in recent years a low level of military purchases because of the economic situation, among other reasons," Miss Garre told the ambassador, according to the official account of the meeting.

That account also said Mr. Korchagin talked of Russia's military ties with Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay.

The United States has already registered its concerns about Russian arms sales to Venezuela, whose president has been using his country's oil wealth to counter American influence in the region.

On Friday, the U.S. government imposed sanctions on seven arms companies in Cuba, India, North Korea and Russia, including Moscow's state-owned Sukhoi, a maker of fighter aircraft, and its state-owned export firm, Rosoboronexport.

Washington said the sanctions, which will remain in place until July 28, 2008, were imposed because of transfers of military technology to Iran. But Russian media are linking the sanctions instead to Washington's anger over Rosoboronexport's deal with Mr. Chavez, announced on July 27.

That deal provides for the shipment of 24 Russian Su-30 fighter jets and 53 helicopters. Venezuela, itself hit with a U.S. arms embargo in May, had already contracted to buy 100,000 Russian AK-103 machine guns, part of what U.S. officials cast as a disproportionate and unjustified Venezuelan military buildup.

In July, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI, reported that military purchases in Latin America and the Caribbean spiked by 7.2 percent in 2005. The report says Venezuela experienced the third-largest yearly increase after Brazil and Chile.

During a visit to Moscow last month, Mr. Chavez praised Russia for defying U.S. objections to selling him arms and repeated an earlier proposal to combine the militaries of the five nations that make up Mercosur, the South American political and trade bloc.

"We must form a defensive military pact between the armies of the region with a common doctrine and organization," Mr. Chavez said July 5 in Caracas during a military parade attended by Mr. Kirchner.

During his Russia visit, Mr. Chavez said: "We must form the armed forces of Mercosur, merging warfare capabilities of the continent."

During a nationally televised program on Monday, Mr. Chavez said he intends to build a network of anti-aircraft missiles.

"We're going to acquire the most modern anti-aircraft defense system," Mr. Chavez said. "We're going to armor Venezuela." He suggested he saw the components of such a system during his visits to Russia, Belarus and Iran late last month.

Washington Post
August 9, 2006
Pg. 13

By Andy Mosher, Washington Post Foreign Service

BAGHDAD, Aug. 8 -- The constant fear of death and the trauma of several devastating incidents took a heavy toll on morale in the U.S. Army unit whose members included five soldiers accused of involvement in the rape and killing of an Iraqi teenager, witnesses testified Tuesday in a military court.

Pfc. Justin Cross said the 1st Battalion of the 502nd Infantry Regiment was subjected to intense stress during the months it served in the area south of Baghdad known as the Triangle of Death. Patrols, he said, put soldiers in constant fear for their lives.

"I couldn't sleep, mainly for fear we would be attacked," he said. Cross described his unit as "full of despair" and recalled worrying that he would be killed while manning a checkpoint.

Cross testified during the third day of an Article 32 hearing, the military's equivalent of a grand jury. The hearing is being held to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to try Spec. James P. Barker, Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman and Pfc. Bryan L. Howard on charges of raping and murdering a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killing her parents and 5-year-old sister.

Another soldier, Sgt. Anthony W. Yribe, is accused of failing to report the attack but is not alleged to have participated.

The soldier described in testimony Monday as the ringleader in the attack, former private Steven D. Green, was discharged because of a "personality disorder" and does not face the possibility of court-martial. Green was arrested in the United States in June and has pleaded not guilty to federal rape and murder charges.

The alleged rape and killings were carried out on March 12 in the town of Mahmudiyah.

In his testimony, Cross said his unit was demoralized not only by the dangers of being posted in the Triangle of Death but also by several devastating setbacks. On Feb. 5, the unit's living quarters in Yusufiyah burned to the ground, destroying many soldiers' personal belongings. And the shooting of two members of the unit at a checkpoint "pretty much crushed the platoon," Cross said.

Sgt. 1st Class Jeffrey Fenlason, who testified that he had been sent to the unit to restore discipline, said that shortly after he arrived, he identified emotional and disciplinary problems in several soldiers, including Barker, Cortez and Green.

"I recall a conversation with [Green] regarding his lack of concern or caring for Iraqi life versus American soldiers' life," Fenlason said.

Eugene Fidell, a Washington military law expert, said Tuesday that the defense attorneys were most likely emphasizing combat stress to argue that their clients not face a possible death penalty in the event of a court-martial. "This is not a defense known to the law," Fidell said. "But this kind of evidence could come in during the court-martial, and it might be pertinent to the sentence. They could be setting the stage to avoid a death penalty."

Staff writer Josh White in Washington contributed to this report.

New York Times
August 9, 2006

Bank Robbery And Bombs Kill 24 In Iraq

By Paul von Zielbauer

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 8 — Five homemade bombs and a bank robbery left 24 people dead in Baghdad on Tuesday as the level of violence here remained undiminished despite a buildup of American and Iraqi troops meant to restore a sense of order.

Also Tuesday, several witnesses testified in the continuing military hearing for four soldiers charged with raping a 14-year-old girl and then killing her and her family in March.

The witnesses, members of the soldiers’ unit — Company B of the First Battalion, 502nd Infantry, 101st Airborne Division — were called by defense lawyers to describe the extreme conditions the soldiers had endured in their patrols south of Baghdad, and the low morale and combat stress that followed.

The hearing, known as an Article 32, mixes elements of a grand jury proceeding and a jury trial — including the introduction of evidence, testimony from witnesses and cross-examination by defense lawyers — and is the means by which a presiding officer determines whether enough evidence exists to recommend a court-martial, nonjudicial punishment or the dismissal of charges.

The four soldiers accused of killing the family, in Mahmudiya, a volatile town south of Baghdad, are Specialist James P. Barker, Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman, Pfc. Bryan L. Howard and Sgt. Paul E. Cortez.

In addition to rape and murder, each is also charged with arson; after raping the girl, military prosecutors said, the four burned her body with kerosene to conceal evidence.

A fifth soldier, Sergeant Anthony W. Yribe, who is not said to have been present at the rape and killings, is charged with dereliction of duty, for failing to report the crimes.

Several soldiers testified Sunday and Monday that a former member of Company B, Steven D. Green, thought up the plan to attack the family and rape the girl, and persuaded the other four, during card games and while driving golf balls, to go along with it.

Mr. Green, whom the Army allowed to enlist on “moral waivers” because he had a criminal record for minor offenses, was discharged as a private in May after a psychiatric evaluation.

He is in custody in Kentucky, where he faces federal rape and murder charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

In testimony on Tuesday, Sgt. Daniel Carrick, a member of the accused soldiers’ platoon, described how patrolling around Mahmudiya, a tense region south of Baghdad known as the “triangle of death,” turned many soldiers bitter, particularly Mr. Green.

“Green had hatred for a lot of people in general,” Sergeant Carrick said.

Sgt. First Class Jeffrey Fenlason testified about a conversation with Mr. Green “regarding his lack of concern or caring for Iraqi life versus American soldiers’ life.”

Several soldiers also testified to a grisly tale of how Mr. Green tossed a puppy off the roof of a building and set it on fire.

The increased American and Iraqi Army patrols in Baghdad on Tuesday seemed to have had little effect on the daily violence.

At 10:50 a.m., two explosions in a market in central Baghdad killed 10 people and wounded 69 others, an Interior Ministry official said. Minutes later, in the Adhamiya section of the city, gunmen burst into the Rashid Bank, killed three guards and two bank employees and stole 7 million Iraqi dinars, or about $5,000, the official said.

Earlier Tuesday morning, three apparently coordinated explosions near the Interior Ministry, in the center of Baghdad, killed nine people and wounded eight others, including three policemen, said the ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to a reporter. Two of the three explosions occurred near police patrols, and the third was at a busy bus station, he said.

The military announced that four American service members were killed Sunday. Three were killed by a roadside bomb southwest of Baghdad. The fourth, who served with the First Brigade, First Armored Division, died in fighting in Anbar Province, west of Baghdad, the military said in a statement.

In the past week, four Iraqi journalists from various news organizations based here were fatally shot, said a member of an Iraqi journalists’ group that tracks attacks on reporters.

Muhammad Abbas Hamid, 30, a reporter for the Shiite newspaper Al Bayinna al Jadida, was shot Monday as he left his home in the Adil section of west Baghdad, said the newspaper’s publisher, who asked that his name not be printed out of fear of reprisal.

Late Monday, the police found the body of Ismail Amin Ali, 30, a freelance journalist, less than a mile from where he was abducted two weeks ago in northeast Baghdad, according to the journalists’ group, the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory.

In an interview on Tuesday evening, Ziad al-Ajeely, who tracks attacks on journalists for the group, identified the two other journalists killed in Baghdad in the past week as Abdul Wahab al-Qaisi, a reporter for Kol al Dunia magazine, and Adil Naji al-Mansory, a reporter for Al Alim television.

Baghdad’s central morgue said it received the bodies of 1,855 people in July, an average of nearly 60 a day, nearly all of whom appeared to have died violently. The tally was a 16 percent rise from June and a 71 percent increase from January.

The United Nations said last month that an average of about 100 people were killed daily throughout Iraq in May and June. The organization based its figures on numbers from the Ministry of Health, which collates records of violent deaths from hospitals around the country and from Baghdad’s central morgue, where unidentified bodies are delivered.

Ministry officials said Tuesday that they had not completed the nationwide count for July.

Officials say the greatest concentration of violent deaths has been in Baghdad, which is the focus of a new military strategy to suppress the surge in violence.

Over the weekend, an American combat unit numbering nearly 4,000 soldiers, and featuring the highly mobile and resilient Stryker vehicles, rolled into Baghdad as part of a plan to elevate the street presence of American forces.

Reporting for this article was contributed by Kirk Semple, Qais Mizher, Ali Adeeb and Sahar Nageeb.

USA Today
August 9, 2006
Pg. 6

By Associated Press

BAGHDAD — At least 20 people were killed Tuesday in a string of bombings in the center of Baghdad, as more U.S. soldiers patrolled the streets of the capital in a bid to quell sectarian violence.

Nearly 60 people were wounded in the blasts, police said. The explosions began when three bombs went off simultaneously near the Interior Ministry in central Baghdad, killing 10 people and wounding eight, police Lt. Bilal Ali Majid said.

Two more bombs ripped through the main Shurja market, also in central Baghdad, killing 10 more civilians and wounding 50, police Lt. Mohammed Kheyoun said.

At least 13 other people were killed or found dead Tuesday, most in the Baghdad area, where tension between Sunni Arabs and Shiites runs the highest.

The violence has prompted U.S. commanders to send more U.S. soldiers to the capital. U.S. officials said the latest phase of the operation was launched Monday “to reduce the level of murders, kidnappings, assassinations, terrorism and sectarian violence in the city and to reinforce the Iraqi government's control of Baghdad.”

A U.S. statement said 6,000 more Iraqi troops were being sent to the Baghdad area, along with 3,500 U.S. soldiers of the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team and 2,000 soldiers of the 1st Armored Division.

American officials have released few details of the new campaign, citing security. However, more heavily armed U.S. soldiers were seen Tuesday patrolling in vehicles and on foot in a Sunni neighborhood. U.S. forces are trying to assure residents they will be protected from criminals and sectarian death squads.

“The general priorities are to bring stability to the key neighborhoods where there is sectarian fighting,” the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, said. “You'll see us starting there and then gradually expanding.”

Casey was in Tikrit to mark the formal transfer of security responsibility from the 101st Airborne Division to the Iraqi army across a wide area of northern Iraq.

Sectarian militias have stepped up reprisal killings since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad. Many militias are linked to political parties in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's national unity government, and they are reluctant to disband their armed wings unless others do the same.

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said there was talk among Sunni and Shiite groups to sign pledges to end sectarian fighting.

Differences have emerged between U.S. and Iraqi officials on tactics. The prime minister, a Shiite, accused U.S. and Iraqi troops of using excessive force in a raid Monday on Baghdad's Sadr City district. The neighborhood is a Shiite slum and stronghold of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia.

Washington Times
August 9, 2006
Pg. 11

By Alister Bull, Reuters News Agency

TIKRIT, Iraq — The U.S. ambassador to Iraq yesterday accused Iran of having forces in Iraq and said Tehran could use the war between Hezbollah and Israel in Lebanon to try and further destabilize the country.

“The region is very much interconnected. What happened in Lebanon affects things here,” Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters. “Iran . . . has some forces here. There is the possibility that they might encourage those forces to create increased instability here.”

Mr. Khalilzad was speaking at a ceremony marking the U.S. military transfer of security responsibilities to Iraqi forces in the northern town of Tikrit, ousted President Saddam Hussein’s hometown.

In violence yesterday, four separate roadside bomb attacks killed at least 19 persons in Baghdad as U.S. troops made new efforts to try to rid the capital of powerful militias and insurgents.

The deadliest bombing killed at least 10 persons and wounded 69 in the al-Shorja market in central Baghdad.

The United States has repeatedly accused non-Arab Shi’ite Iran of fomenting violence and instability by sending weapons and fighters into Iraq, a charge Tehran denied.

It also accuses Iran as well as Syria of backing the Shi’ite Hezbollah in its fight against Israel.

Iran, which has dramatically improved ties with its fellow Shi’ites leading the Baghdad government, says it wants a stable Iraq.

Tens of thousands of followers of radical Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr took to the streets of Baghdad on Friday in support of Hezbollah, wearing white to indicate they are ready to die in battle.

The United States has boosted its troop levels in the Iraqi capital to try to stop insurgent and sectarian violence from escalating. On Monday, U.S. and Iraqi forces fought Shi’ite militiamen during a Baghdad raid on a suspected death squad.

But Prime Minister Nouri alMaliki, a Shi’ite, immediately criticized the raid.

“This operation is rejected, and it was conducted without the agreement of the government, and it does not match the current national reconciliation environment in the country,” he told Al Iraqiya state television.

Aside from showing he can take control of the country, Mr. al-Maliki is also faced with the task of proving he can take a tough stand on abuse of Iraqis at the hands of U.S. troops.

A U.S. military court deciding whether four soldiers should be court-martialed for rape and murder heard how troops were “driven nuts” by combat stress and got high on Iraqi cough syrup.

Pfc. Justin Cross described how conditions “pretty much crushed the platoon,” which lived in constant fear of being killed in the Mahmudiyah area south of Baghdad, where the rape and murders purportedly took place in March.

London Times
August 8, 2006

Sunnis Form Their Own Militias In Fight For Baghdad

By James Hider, Baghdad

American and Iraqi troops fought a pitched battle with one of Baghdad’s most powerful Shia militias yesterday as they sought to seize control of the capital back from sectarian death squads and criminal gangs.

But as 3,700 extra US troops were deployed on the streets of Baghdad its terrified citizens, having lost faith in the Iraqi security forces, are forming their own militias.

The Times learnt yesterday that Tareq al-Hashemi, Iraq’s Sunni Vice-President, is forming a unit of the National Guard that will act as his personal bodyguard and fend off attacks against Addumiyah, a Sunni district surrounded by overwhelmingly Shia districts.

It will be the first official Sunni militia group and a counter to security forces that have been heavily infiltrated by Shia militias.

Yesterday’s battle erupted when Iraqi troops backed by US advisers raided a Shia death squad cell in the huge slum area of northern Baghdad known as Sadr City — the fiefdom of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and al-Mahdi Army, his illegal militia. There were two hours of heavy fighting — accompanied by US airstrikes — during which two militiamen were killed. Two Iraqi soldiers and an American were also injured.

The US military said that the operation was designed to seize “individuals involved in punishment and torture cell activities”. But al-Sadr’s followers said it was a direct attack on his movement, which forms part of the governing coalition.

As the death toll mounts ordinary Iraqis have increasingly been taking responsibility for their own security.

A young Sunni from west Baghdad, who refused to be identified, said that recruiting had already started for Mr al-Hashemi’s group. The initial aim was to sign up 350 former army personnel who are to be trained as part of the Defence Ministry, which will also outfit and arm them. They were being offered $700 a month.

“We all know the Shia are recruiting in their districts across the city, firstly to kill Sunnis and secondly to divide the country,” said the 26-year-old man, who said that his shop had been closed after Shia militiamen within the police force issued death threats against him and other Sunni shopkeepers in west Baghdad.

“It’ll be called a personal security guard unit for Tareq al-Hashemi to give it official cover and secure funding, but on the ground it’ll be a Sunni militia,” said the source, who is thinking of signing up.

An official from Mr al-Hashemi's Islamic Party told The Times last night: “It’s a very sensitive issue and I can’t comment on it.”

The new Sunni militia represents a fresh setback for the US military, which had withdrawn its troops from the capital and was handing over security to Iraqi forces. But the upsurge in sectarian violence has forced US commanders to reverse their policy and send in more troops from Mosul in the north.

One of the driving forces for the new militia, the Sunni source said, was the recent announcement by Abdelaziz al-Hakim, the head of one of the main Shia parties in government, of the planned formation of “public committees” to supervise neighbourhoods.

Many Sunnis fear that the committees will simply act as informants for Shia death squads.

In other violence yesterday six Iraqi soldiers were killed and fifteen wounded when gunmen attacked their checkpoint near Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, while nine people were killed by a suicide bomber in a police station in nearby Samarra. To the north, four civilians were killed when their bus hit a roadside bomb, while in Fallujah six people were killed in a similar incident.

London Financial Times
August 8, 2006

Iraqi Kurds Publish Draft Oil Law

Iraq's Kurdish autonomous region yesterday published a draft version of a law giving itself the right to control petroleum operations in its own territory and the disputed province of Kirkuk.

A memorandum attached to the draft provided by the Kurdish regional government said a final version would be presented to the Kurdish parliament in September, and that it had also prepared a draft of a petroleum law for the entire country.

The move seems intended to rekindle debate on an issue which appeared to have been temporarily shelved. Iraqi officials say they hope to pass a hydrocarbons law this year, but many observers believe that it will be postponed until 2007.

The question of who controls oil exploration - whether it be Iraq's federal government or regions like Kurdistan - was dodged during the run-up to last year's constitution, which included vague language allowing the federal government to administer "current" fields provided it split revenues "in a fair manner" among the regions.

Steve Negus, Iraq Correspondent

Wall Street Journal
August 9, 2006
Pg. 6

By Yochi J. Dreazen

CHICAGO -- When gunmen broke into Nabil Toma Shabo's Baghdad home a year ago and threatened to kill his family, he says he decided to flee Iraq. He had no idea how long the search for safety would last -- or where it would take him.

The seven-month trek began in Istanbul, where Mr. Shabo, traveling with his family, found a smuggler who promised to get them to Mexico and then the U.S. for $10,000 -- their life savings. After four months in Mexico, the Shabos were driven to the border. The driver pointed to a fence and told the family to start walking.

"He said, 'There it is, there is America,' " Mr. Shabo remembers. The Shabos walked to a U.S. guard post and, in halting English, requested political asylum. While they wait for a ruling, they are living in a Chicago suburb with Mr. Shabo's parents, who fled to the U.S. with an earlier migratory wave during the regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Amid sectarian violence in Iraq, senior U.S. military commanders warned lawmakers last week that the country is at risk of sliding into civil war. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are becoming refugees, with thousands of them trying to reach the U.S. But with visas difficult to come by, a growing number -- including the Shabo family -- are entering illegally and then seeking asylum, sparking questions about how much Washington should assist those fleeing a U.S.-led war.

The Iraqi exiles entering America are part of one of the largest exoduses in modern Middle Eastern history. The Iraqi government has over the past 12 months issued more than 1.8 million new passports, a figure that corresponds with nearly 10% of the country's population. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates there are more than 800,000 Iraqi exiles in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

Some U.S. border officials express general concern that Iraqi insurgents might try to enter the U.S., though they say there is no evidence any have. State Department officials say visa requirements for Iraqis are the same as those for all applicants. Many Iraqis say the process is more time-consuming and costly for them because the American embassy in Baghdad doesn't issue visas, citing security concerns. That means Iraqis must go to the U.S. embassy in Amman, Jordan. Applying for a visa is a multistage process, so Iraqis generally have to make two or three trips.

The State Department says Iraqis received 4,886 visas last year, up from 2,374 in 2003. Those numbers don't include refugees who entered the U.S. illegally and then applied for political asylum. In 2005, 287 Iraqis were granted asylum; officials at the Department of Homeland Security say figures for the number of applicants aren't available. In the U.S., there are an estimated 300,000 Iraqi expatriates, many of whom arrived during Mr. Hussein's brutal reign.

"There's a real desperation for many Iraqis, which leads to a willingness to do almost anything to get some place safe," says Robert DeKelaita, an Iraqi exile who is an immigration lawyer here. Mr. DeKelaita says he has handled more than 330 Iraqi asylum applications since the war began in March 2003, including several from Iraqi government officials who filed for asylum while in the U.S. on official business. "They are terrified of staying put."

The Shabo family's odyssey began in May 2005, according to an account provided by Mr. Shabo in an interview, and in a written asylum request filed with the Department of Homeland Security by Mr. DeKelaita, the family's lawyer. The account couldn't be independently verified, and a DHS spokeswoman says the department doesn't comment on pending asylum cases and .

Mr. Shabo, a Chaldean Christian, was working at his restaurant in Baghdad while his wife Susan was at home with their four-year-old son, Shmoan. Early one afternoon, four masked men pushed their way into the house and one put his gun to Mrs. Shabo's head, she says. The gunmen told Mrs. Shabo that they wanted her husband dead and would return to kill her if they could not find him. The men accused Mr. Shabo of having ties to the American military occupation, which he denies.

Mr. Shabo hastily sold his restaurant and received about $10,000, less than half its value, he says. The Shabos left their house and possessions and crossed into Turkey through the porous border with Iraqi Kurdistan. In Istanbul, they arranged with the smuggler to get to the U.S. "We didn't see any other option," Mrs. Shabo says.

The family flew to Mexico City from Istanbul. The smuggler had given them forged immigration papers allowing them to enter the country, where they were brought to a house and told to wait. Two months later, the Shabos applied for political asylum at a U.S. border post. Lacking passports and other documents, Mr. Shabo says he was dispatched to a jail-like facility in California. Susan and Shmoan Shabo were sent to a California halfway house run by Citizenship and Immigration Services, DHS's successor to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

About a month later, the CIS effectively paroled the Shabos into the U.S. while the government weighs their political-asylum application, which argues that anti-Christian violence in Iraq makes it too dangerous for the family to return. Asylum cases generally take a year to move through the system, which means the family should get their ruling in the next few months.

The decision allows the Shabos to remain in the U.S. temporarily but doesn't allow them to legally hold jobs or have access to public schools and other government services. In his parents' home near Chicago, Mr. Shabo, 38 years old, and his wife share a bedroom with their son.

Mr. Shabo fears Iraq can't be salvaged and blames the Bush administration for failing to do more to prevent militants from entering the country. But he is grateful that the U.S. has, for the moment, provided refuge for his family.

Miami Herald
August 9, 2006

Taliban Rebels Block Relief Aid To Flood Victims

By Chris Hawke, Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan - Security forces killed seven militants and captured a former Taliban official, while insurgents obstructed the distribution of emergency aid to thousands of flood-hit villagers in southeastern Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday.

U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces clashed Tuesday with Taliban militants in the Andar district of flood-struck Ghazni province, leaving four militants killed, two police officials said on condition of anonymity as they weren't authorized to speak to media.

A U.S. military spokesman had no immediate information about the incident.

In southern Helmand province -- the focus of a recent upsurge in Taliban attacks -- police killed two Taliban late Monday after coming under attack, provincial Police Chief Ghulam Nabi Malakhail said.

In eastern Paktika province, around 50 Taliban sneaked in from Pakistan and traded heavy machine-gun fire with Afghan police late Monday, said Sayyed Jamal, spokesman for the provincial governor. One militant was killed, he said.

Also in Paktika, police arrested Mullah Akhtar Mohammad, a former Taliban director of refugee affairs, along with five other men fleeing from Helmand overnight, Jamal said. One of the men was wounded, he said.

In the north of Helmand province, British troops accidentally shot and killed an armed Afghan policeman wearing civilian clothes after mistaking him for an insurgent outside a base in Musa Qula on Tuesday, a British Ministry of Defense spokesman said, speaking anonymously in keeping with department policy.

More than 900 people have died in violence across Afghanistan since May, most of them militants. The violence, the deadliest since the Taliban regime's ouster in late 2001, has underscored the weak grip of the government of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai, particularly in the volatile south and east of the country.

The presence of Taliban rebels also has hampered fearful local officials from responding to the flooding in Ghazni that killed at least three people and destroyed an estimated 1,600 homes last Friday.

A Ghazni resident said the Taliban control flooded areas, patrolling on motorcycles and intimidating officials. The resident spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to antagonize local authorities.

''If they get 100 security forces to go with them, it will be possible to enter the area. Otherwise, they cannot go or they will be attacked by Taliban,'' he said.

The government is resorting to an informal network of private groups and local residents to survey the damage and compile lists of the needy, said Abdul Rahim Zareen, spokesman for the Rural Rehabilitation and Development Ministry.

Food and supplies for 157 families had been distributed as of Tuesday, four days after the flood, said U.N. spokesman Aleem Siddique.

Associated Press writers Amir Shah and Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.

Mideast Stars and Stripes
August 8, 2006

Troops In Afghanistan Told To Wait For Armored Vehicles

By Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan — A top Central Command adviser promised troops here Sunday that he would work to put more armored vehicles in Afghanistan, but said that the roadside bomb threat in Iraq still outweighs the needs in this country.

The comments of Command Chief Master Sgt. Curtis Brownhill, adviser to CENTCOM commander Gen. John Abizaid on sustainment issues, came in response to a question from 1st Sgt. Jeff Gray of the 755th Mission Support Group during a question-and-answer session.

Gray said airmen and soldiers in his unit routinely rely on “soft-shelled” SUVs when they travel off base, because of the lack of fully up-armored Humvees for the number of missions in country.

Brownhill said commanders are aware of the problem and are working to get better protected vehicles to troops in country. But the insurgency in Iraq and its reliance on roadside bombs are still considered larger threats than Afghanistan’s militants.

“All of our Humvees are being up-armored now,” he said. “It’s just a matter of prioritization, and obviously Iraq is a pretty critical need. It’s based on risk and based on threat.”

Currently all troops leaving base in Iraq must travel in fully up-armored vehicles, according to safety regulations set down by military officials there.

But troops in Afghanistan have no such restrictions. Brownhill said officials have no plans to repeat the Iraq rule in Afghanistan, but added, “I think as the risk continues to be assessed here, I think you’ll see similar decisions being made.”

Brownhill said CENTCOM officials are “comfortable” with U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan currently, and do not anticipate any long-term increase in the number of troops serving in country.

About 23,000 U.S. servicemembers are currently in Afghanistan. Last week, Pentagon officials announced the next rotation of about 11,000 into the country later this year.

Brownhill would not comment on the possibility of a troop drawdown, but did say officials could temporarily increase the number of U.S. troops if security conditions deteriorate.

“I want people to understand if we have to temporarily have more people at a certain time, that is not a trend line we’re seeking,” he said. “The key to this thing will always remain the Afghan National Army being able to take on its own security requirements.”

Boston Globe
August 8, 2006

Karzai's Cabinet Picks Get Green Light

By Chris Hawke, Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghanistan's parliament approved President Hamid Karzai's choices for the vacant portfolios in his Cabinet yesterday in another step toward democracy, as his US-backed government struggled with a resurgent Taliban and floods in the south.

The slots had been left empty when Parliament rejected five of the 25 people Karzai initially chose in April. The completed Cabinet is the first approved by the Parliament since it was elected last year.

Its new members include the minister of women's affairs, Hosn Banu Ghazanfar, dean of the literature and language faculty at Kabul University. She was supported by 159 lawmakers, garnering the most support of the five new ministers.

The others were Mohammad Jalil Shams for economy and labor, Mir Mohammad Amin Farhang for commerce and industry, Nimatullah Hesan Jawed for transport and aviation, and Abdul Karim Khoram for culture and youth. All the new ministers were educated abroad.

But growing cynicism about Karzai's government is diluting Afghans' enthusiasm over the progress toward democracy following the 2005 elections for the country's first representative Parliament in more than 30 years.

The government is increasingly viewed as ineffective, tainted by corruption and unable to deliver security, services, or jobs.

Taliban rebels also have stepped up attacks this year, particularly in southern provinces, sparking the bloodiest fighting in nearly five years.

NATO forces have embarked on a mission to defeat the rebels and create the conditions for much-needed development to take root in the south. Nine NATO troops have been killed in the past week since the alliance took command of security.

Tom Koenigs, the top UN official in Afghanistan, warned the Taliban still posed a threat to Afghanistan. ``We should be more careful if we are going to tell you that [the insurgency] is going to be over in a year," Koenigs said.

London Financial Times
August 8, 2006

Afghanistan 'Is Gate To Asian Trade'

A more stable and open Afghanistan could serve as a gateway for increased trade between central and south Asia, said Richard Boucher, US assistant secretary of state, during a visit to New Delhi yesterday. Mr Boucher highlighted the importance of restoring stability to Afghanistan in order to forge stronger ties between central and south Asia, especially as an alternative to a proposed gas pipeline between Iran and India. "Our experience with Iran makes us realise that it is not a reliable partner," he cautioned in a statement after addressing the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

Amy Yee, New Delhi

Washington Post
August 9, 2006
Pg. 18

RALEIGH, N.C. -- A CIA employee testified that a former CIA contract worker admitted striking and kicking an Afghan detainee during an interrogation; the detainee later died. The employee was one of three who testified in disguise and under assumed names in the assault trial of David Passaro.

USA Today
August 9, 2006
Pg. 6

By Gregg Zoroya, USA Today

Congress appears ready to slash funding for the research and treatment of brain injuries caused by bomb blasts, an injury that military scientists describe as a signature wound of the Iraq war.

House and Senate versions of the 2007 Defense appropriation bill contain $7 million for the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center — half of what the center received last fiscal year.

Proponents of increased funding say they are shocked to see cuts in the treatment of bomb-blast injuries in the midst of a war.

“I find it basically unpardonable that Congress is not going to provide funds to take care of our soldiers and sailors who put their lives on the line for their country,” says Martin Foil, a member of the center's board of directors. “It blows my imagination.”

The Brain Injury Center, devoted to treating and understanding war-related brain injuries, has received more money each year of the war — from $6.5 million in fiscal 2001 to $14 million last year.

Spokespersons for the appropriations committees in both chambers say the cuts were proposed because of a tight budget this year.

“Honestly, they would have loved to have funded it, but there were just so many priorities,” says Jenny Manley, spokeswoman for the Senate Appropriations Committee. “They didn't have any flexibility in such a tight fiscal year.”

George Zitnay, co-founder of the center, testified before a Senate subcommittee in May that body armor saves troops caught in blasts but leaves many with brain damage. “Traumatic brain injury is the signature injury of the war on terrorism,” he testified.

Zitnay asked for $19 million, and 34 Democratic and six Republican members of Congress signed a letter endorsing the budget request.

The House of Representatives approved its version of the spending bill June 20. A vote in the Senate is pending.

Scientists at the center develop ways to diagnose and treat servicemembers who suffer brain damage. The work is done at seven military and Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals, including the center's headquarters at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, and one civilian treatment site.

The center has clashed with the Pentagon in recent months over a program to identify troops who have suffered mild to moderate brain injuries in Iraq from mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs.

Preliminary research by the center shows that about 10% of all troops in Iraq, and up to 20% of front line infantry troops, suffer concussions during combat tours. Many experience headaches, disturbed sleep, memory loss and behavior issues after coming home, the research shows.

The center urged the Pentagon to screen all troops returning from Iraq in order to treat symptoms and create a database of brain injury victims. Scientists say multiple concussions can cause permanent brain damage.

The Pentagon has declined to do the screening and argues that more research is needed.

New York Times
August 9, 2006

Senator Calls For V.A. Secretary's Resignation

By Associated Press

The Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson should resign and called his leadership a threat to national security after the department lost another computer with veterans’ data. “Less than a month after promising to make the V.A. the ‘gold standard’ in data security,” Mr. Reid said, “Secretary Nicholson has again presided over loss of the personal information of thousands more veterans.”

New York Times
August 9, 2006
Pg. 1

By Adam Nagourney

The victory of Ned Lamont over Joseph I. Lieberman, a three-term senator and former vice presidential candidate, was a vivid demonstration of how the Iraq war is buffeting American politics and of the deep hostility toward President Bush among Democrats. It also suggested there are stiff anti-status-quo winds blowing across the political landscape as the fall elections approach.

Mr. Lamont’s victory marked the first time that liberal political blogs, after playing an increasingly noisy role in Democratic politics, have been associated with a major winning campaign, suggesting a moment of arrival for this new force in political combat. And the outcome will also undoubtedly prod other Democrats who supported the war — albeit with less gusto than Mr. Lieberman — to step farther away from the increasingly unpopular conflict.

But more than that, the results of this most closely watched primary of the year raised red flags for both parties, going into the highly competitive fall elections.

For Democrats, the result — closer than polls suggested and than many Democrats had expected — dramatized the fault lines in the party over the war. And with Mr. Lieberman pledging in a concession speech last night to run as an independent in the general election, with a fierce attack on Mr. Lamont and “partisan” Washington Democrats, national Democrats have been put in an excruciating position.

They will be forced in the days ahead to choose between publicly renouncing a Democratic fixture, one popular among moderate and Jewish voters across the country, and embracing a Democrat who won a clear primary victory and has come to represent the winds of change. Although virtually every major national Democrat is expected to endorse Mr. Lamont as the winner of the party’s primary — from former President Bill Clinton, who campaigned on behalf of Mr. Lieberman in the primary, to the party’s prospective 2008 presidential candidates — that is different from coming to campaign on his behalf, against Mr. Lieberman.

At the same time, Republicans are ready to pounce on what they hoped could be a political opening presented by Mr. Lamont’s rising star, during what has been a difficult political season for them. They said this could become a crystallizing moment: an opportunity to frame the primary results in a way that has historically worked for them and that they have exploited ruthlessly, by presenting Republicans as better able to protect Americans in a dangerous world.

Ken Mehlman, the Republican National Committee chairman, is planning to give a speech in Columbus, Ohio this morning in which he will use Mr. Lamont’s victory to portray Democrats as a party weak on national defense, and his affiliation with blogs to present the Democrats as captive to the extreme wing of the party, Republican aides said.

Even before the results in Connecticut emerged, Republicans had made clear that they would try again to make national security the central issue in the fall Congressional elections. A list of talking points issued by Republican leaders for Senate Republicans to use while on recess this month bluntly advised them to note how “there have been no terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11.”

But the results suggest problems for Republicans as well. For Republicans already contemplating a gloomy fall horizon, the Lamont victory suggested that many Democrats — stirred by their opposition to the war and hostility toward Mr. Bush — are as energized as any group of voters in years, enough so to move them to the voting booth in huge numbers.

A primary or not, this still appears to have been a vote against the status quo, something that no party in power can welcome. And the results suggested that bloggers, who are more of a force for Democrats than Republicans, may have almost as much bite as bark, which could be significant in tight low-turnout Congressional elections this fall.

For Republicans, already worried about getting their supporters to the polls after what has been a tough year for the White House and Congress, this is unwelcome news — starting in Connecticut, where Democrats have put three House Republicans, including Rep. Christopher Shays, a strong backer of the war, at the top of their target list.

“This shows what blind loyalty to George Bush and being his love child means,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the leader of the Democratic House Congressional campaign. “This is not about the war. It’s blind loyalty to Bush.”

The road ahead for Mr. Lamont is hardly smooth. He now has to make the adjustment from being an insurgent— he gave his victory speech with the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson at his side — to being the official Democratic nominee, the symbol of the party establishment. He is relatively inexperienced, and is facing Mr. Lieberman, who still has extensive support from Republican and moderate voters.

In his concession, Mr. Lieberman sought to portray Mr. Lamont as the symbol of poisonous partisanship in Washington and to position himself as a candidate who could bridge the partisan divide. But increasing polarization over the Iraq war is what powered the Lamont campaign and it is unclear, without a base in either party, if Mr. Lieberman will be able to find a similar energy source.

To a considerable extent, this election may have been about a senator out of step with his constituency on the biggest issue of the day, running in an unusually narrow and liberal electorate. But even before the results were known, the accepted wisdom in political circles was that a victory by Mr. Lamont would signal there is little room in the Democratic Party for Iraq war supporters, an unwelcome event for a party still struggling to arrive at a unified position about the war, and elevate the influence of bloggers.

The actual outcome appears slightly more complicated than that. The bloggers certainly played a notable role in drawing attention to the Lamont candidacy, but they were one of a number of factors that contributed to the Lieberman defeat.

“My view is they got this whole thing started,’’ said Douglas Schwartz, the director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, which has been regularly surveying voters in this race. “But in the end, this is about a lot more than the blogs.”

Mr. Lieberman’s support of the war was toxic for him. But he is not alone in his party in supporting the war: two of the Democrats’ leading potential candidates for the 2008 presidential nomination — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Mark Warner, former governor of Virginia — hold similar positions.

Mr. Lieberman stands apart from them and other Democratic war supporters because he came to be seen by Democrats, fairly or not, as a cheerleader for the president, and a scold to Democrats who opposed Mr. Bush’s war policy. That was a matter of great frustration to Mr. Lieberman, who complained, as polls showed him slipping to defeat, that he had been critical of the way the war has been fought.

Perhaps. But if that was the case, it did not come through. And for Democrats contemplating the new landscape, that is sure to be one of the enduring lessons of what happened in Connecticut.

Washington Post
August 9, 2006
Pg. B7

By Alec MacGillis, Washington Post Staff Writer

The Army yesterday distanced itself from a proposal to turn a planned Army history museum at Fort Belvoir into what critics call a military theme park, calling a pitch from a former Universal Studios executive "dead on arrival."

But the Army is still considering a major tourist destination for the museum that could include a conference center and hotel and a partnership with the private sector to help pay for the museum, said Keith Eastin, assistant secretary of the Army. The entertainment concept would be "appropriate and tasteful," he said.

The comments represented a shift, coming a day after the Army declined to disavow the theme-park-like proposal it received in 2004 from Universal City Property Management. They also differed somewhat from an account of the museum discussions given yesterday by Marc A. Watson, Universal City's president, who has vast experience in the theme park industry.

Watson said Army officials approached him at Universal Studios in Orlando in 2003 for ideas on how to use simulation technology to attract more visitors to a planned museum. He continued to discuss the museum with the Army, which gave him a tour of Fort Belvoir in 2004 to inspect sites for what he was proposing, he said. Watson said he has not been told that his plan has been rejected.

"They said, 'What would you all do to the museum to make it more relevant to today's audiences? How would you breathe life into it?' " Watson said, describing the Army's visit to Orlando.

It was that inquiry, Watson said, that prompted his company's proposal for a 125-acre complex that would include the "Chateau Belvoir" hotel and bars such as the "1st Division Lounge." Trails would lead visitors to encampments and battlefields representing major wars, simulated rides would let visitors feel what it's like to drive a tank or jump from a plane, and a "multisensory interactive 4-D theater" would take visitors "from Valley Forge to Normandy as the greatest battles of U.S. history explode to life," according to the proposal.

Army spokesman Dave Foster said yesterday that the Army did approach Universal Studios, but only for information about using "so-called 4-D experiences" within the museum. The subsequent proposal from Universal City was "grander in scope than what the Army thought appropriate," Foster said. Universal was welcome to submit a future proposal, but "in no event would any proposal containing what might be characterized as an 'amusement park' be . . . seriously considered," he said.

The Army's consideration of a major tourist destination instead of a more conventional museum at Fort Belvoir has sparked resistance from Fairfax County officials, who are worried about the impact on traffic from the Army's plans to move 22,000 employees to the post as part of its base realignment.

County officials are also upset that the Army is proposing to build the museum at the Engineer Proving Ground, a mostly vacant site northwest of the main post, rather than on the post, as initially planned. The Army said the proving ground would be better partly because there is more room. Fairfax officials prefer the main post because it would be closer to other tourist sites, such as Mount Vernon.

Universal City Property Management, the former development arm of Universal Studios, specializes in building "urban destinations," including a railway museum in Sacramento.

Watson, an engineer with expertise in simulation technology, objected to the "theme park" label, saying his proposal is a serious attempt to acquaint those of all ages with the experience of the U.S. soldier.

"What's important is to engage guests . . . so they can get a real feel for what the life of a soldier is like," he said. "Too many museums these days are built and nobody goes to them. [This] should be one of the best in the world."

Staff writer Timothy Dwyer contributed to this report.

USA Today
August 9, 2006
Pg. 6

By Tom Vanden Brook, USA Today

FORT JACKSON, S.C. — Combat in Afghanistan and Iraq may be wearing the Army thin, but it also means that for the first time in decades, a majority of drill sergeants have real-war experience.

Chances are good that each of the 80,000 recruits the Army hopes to attract this year will have a battle-tested teacher. Most drill sergeants now have combat experience, says Col. Kevin Shwedo, assistant chief of staff at the Army's Accessions Command at Fort Monroe in Virginia, which is in charge of recruiting and initial training.

That hasn't been the case since the mid-1970s, when drill sergeants came home from Vietnam, he says. There are about 3,500 drill sergeants on active duty.

“You know what they teach these soldiers? Everything they wish somebody had taught them at a similar point,” Shwedo says. “When they hold them accountable to a specific standard, who do you think is getting better training, the soldier 10 years ago, the soldier four years ago or the soldier today? There's no comparison.”

When these combat veterans talk at Fort Jackson, the Army's largest training center, the recruits pay attention.

“Nine out of 10 listen when I tell them, ‘This is what you've got to know,' ” Sgt. 1st Class Derryl Haidek, 35, says of the young soldiers. He served in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division and is now a drill sergeant at Fort Jackson. “I've seen 99% of what happens in combat. I don't need to raise my voice to make a point.”

Stephen Chase is in his second week of training. He's wide-eyed, a little homesick for Utah and sweating from early-morning exercise.

“For me, my fear of heights has been the hardest part,” says Chase, 18, who plans to take advanced training in artillery. “I was about scared half to death climbing the tower here, but I put my trust in the drill sergeants.”

Combat experience can be a mixed blessing, says James Martin, an expert on military culture at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. Problems can occur if the drill sergeant brings home the wrong lessons from war, he says.

“The hard facts of seeing fellow soldiers injured or killed and the importance of maintaining the ethics of a soldier are what these drill sergeants can bring back,” Martin says. “If sorted out well, these experiences can become great assets.

“The downside is if people bring back the negatives. If they come out of this experience jaded, that gets passed on as well.”

New soldiers are particularly interested in the hazards of combat and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the homemade bombs that have become the top killer of U.S. troops in Iraq.

“They want to know what IEDs look like, what we've seen over there,” says Staff Sgt. Paul Evans, 29, of Chicago. He served in Iraq with the 95th Military Police Battalion. “They ask us tons of stuff. I tell them the most important thing they need to know is never get complacent.”

Since last year, the Army also has put a premium on helping its recruits succeed rather than washing them out of basic training.

The new approach reflects another reality: Each recruit is precious. Gone are the days when the Army could afford to wash out lots of would-be soldiers. The Army, the principal provider of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, missed its mark of 80,000 recruits last year by 8%.

In May 2005, about one in six recruits failed to graduate from basic training. Today, just one in 14 fails. “It's an investment strategy,” Shwedo says. “It's training every soldier that's trainable.”

At times that means less yelling, Shwedo says.

“Does a drill sergeant have to rip your lips off to get your attention?” Shwedo asks. “You know what? If we have automaton soldiers that only react when being yelled at, then we don't need them.”

Staff Sgt. Christopher Scott, 37, another drill sergeant, fought with the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan. “You don't need to yell to get their attention,” he says at the live-fire convoy training range. “A soldier could go to war from here. They want to absorb as much as possible.”

Nevertheless, they do make mistakes. And Scott isn't above pointing it out. Forcefully.

“Hey, wake up!” he shouts at a young soldier who has been careless pointing his rifle. “You're going to get somebody shot!”

San Diego Union-Tribune
August 8, 2006

Navy Loses First SEAL In Iraq War

By Cheryl Clark, Staff Writer

A Coronado-based Navy SEAL died Wednesday during the Iraq war's biggest battle between U.S. forces and insurgents in Ramadi, the Pentagon has announced.

Petty Officer Second Class Marc Alan Lee was the first SEAL to be killed in Iraq since the war began in 2003. Lee, 28, of Hood River, Ore., was stationed at Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado, where he received his special-operations training two years ago.

Before his death, Lee helped rescue a fellow SEAL during a two-hour battle in which he fired 100 rounds against insurgents, Lee's mother, Debbie Lee, said she learned from Navy personnel yesterday morning.

She said her son was “committed to stand up for what was right and to make a difference.” In an e-mail sent a few days before his death, Lee told his mother that Iraqis wanted the U.S. forces there because insurgents were routinely violating many of their rights.

“He said they were begging for the military to release them from this tyranny and were appalled at the things that were going on,” said Debbie Lee of Surprise, Ariz.

Lee joined the Navy in 2001 and graduated from boot camp at the Recruit Training Command in Great Lakes, Ill. He then underwent training in Pensacola, Fla., to become an aviation ordnanceman.

He began SEAL and basic underwater demolition training in Coronado in 2001 but had to interrupt the program because of pneumonia, according to a Navy statement. He returned to Coronado for SEAL training in March 2004 and graduated that November.

Lee's wife, Maya, couldn't be reached for comment because she was traveling yesterday from her family's home in New York. But the Navy released the following statement from her: “Nothing could have prepared me for a loss so great. ... We were very much looking forward to having a family of our own.”

Lee also is survived by his brother, Kris, of Surprise, and a sister, Cheryl Lee, of Longview, Wash.

Honolulu Advertiser
August 8, 2006

Hawai'i A Likely Base For Raptor Fighters

By Mike Leidemann and Mike Gordon, Advertiser Staff Writers

The Air Force is planning to bring one of its most sophisticated weapons — the F-22A Raptor fighter — to Hawai'i by 2011, officials said yesterday.

The Air Force next month will begin an environmental assessment process about basing 18 of the $135 million fighters at Hickam Air Force Base, said Capt. Allison Farabaugh, a spokeswoman for the Pacific Air Command.

"They are moving in the direction to bring the F-22s here. Everything supports that they will come here," Farabaugh said.

The environmental assessment process, expected to be completed in late 2007, is a crucial step in moving forward with the plans, she said.

In Marietta, Ga., last week, Air Force officials unveiled the first of the F-22As that will be based at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, beginning next year, prompting Gen. Paul Hester, commander of Pacific Air Forces, to say the planes could be put into operation in Hawai'i in the "mid-term" future, according to an Air Force news release.

"I'm excited about getting this incredible new air dominance capability into the Pacific," Hester said. "In the future, the aircraft will be assigned to Hickam Air Force Base." The planes will be owned and flown by the Hawai'i Air National Guard's 199th Fighter Squadron, part of a new cost-sharing approach adopted by the military, officials said. The Air National Guard will be augmented by the active-duty 531st Fighter Squadron, Farabaugh said.

Basing the jets at Hickam is part of an ongoing updating of military hardware throughout the state designed to recognize the growing importance of threats in the Asia-Pacific region. Other changes include the basing of eight C-17 Globemaster III cargo planes at Hickam, the Navy's announced intention to locate a new nuclear attack submarine in the Pacific and the Army's placement of a new fast-attack Stryker brigade at Schofield Barracks.

In Hawai'i, the F-22As, which can reach speeds of more than 1,600 mph, would replace aging F-15 fighter jets, significantly upgrading strategic capabilities in the Pacific region, officials said.

"The F-15s are old and outdated," said Charlie Ota, vice president for military affairs at the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce. "The F-22s would bring the best new electronic equipment and provide the Air National Guard here with far greater efficiency."

In March, Air Force officials announced that Hickam had been selected as a "preferred alternative" for the second wave of F-22A planes. The first sites scheduled to receive the fighters are Langley Air Force Base in Virginia and Elmendorf.

While no date has been set for the arrival of the first F-22A in Hawai'i, preparations are continuing, Farabaugh said.

Among the work being done is an environmental assessment of the Raptors' impact and consideration of the infrastructure necessary to support them here, Farabaugh said.

"The process is continuing to confirm that the F-22s are coming here, but they don't have a date or a particular time when they will touch down. General Hester is working toward getting them here, and everything he has been told by the Air Force is that the F-22s are coming to Hickam."

The F-22As are powered by twin engines that produce more thrust — 70,000 pounds — than any other current fighter and can cruise at supersonic speeds with a stealthy shape that makes them hard to spot on radar.

"I'm looking forward to leveraging all three components of our total force — active duty, National Guard and the Air Force Reserve — to squeeze every ounce of capability out of these great fighters," Hester said in the release. "Our total force is critical in today's challenging environments, and I couldn't be more pleased that all three elements are going to be fully engaged in the Raptor business."

Ultimately, the Air Force hopes to have 183 of the F-22As throughout the country by 2012. About 126 of the planes would be combat-ready at all times, with the others left in reserve or dedicated to testing and training.

Belleville (IL) News-Democrat
August 9, 2006

First Female Thunderbird Fell In Love With Flying

By Suzanne Boyle, News-Democrat

It is only two years out of her life, but for Air Force Maj. Nicole Malachowski, "it's the privilege of my life."

The 31-year-old is the first female pilot of the U.S. Air Force Thunderbird demonstration team, considered the best fliers in the world.

"It's a different kind of flying," said Malachowski in an understatement. "But not that different."

A fighter pilot who flew air support over Kosovo in 1998 during the Bosnian-Serb conflict and spent four months flying for Operation Iraqi Freedom, she knows something about maneuvering an aircraft.

"What we do is built upon the fundamentals and attention to detail."

Her first performance with the team was in March, after four months of intensive training that involved flying twice a day, five days a week.

"I'm always (aircraft) No. 3, the right wing."

And when the other pilots want to contact Malachowski, they use her call sign: Fifi.

When asked the origin of the name, the short version, she says, is "'a small person with a big attitude."

Learning to fly for the Thunderbirds is a building-block approach, she explained, where each formation is learned piece by piece, then aircraft are added and maneuvering brings jets closer and closer until wings seem to touch.

Traveling about 200 days a year, the eight pilots, six jets and about 70 other support members, equipment and supplies fly across the country -- with the help of a C-17 -- doing about 88 air shows, plus public appearances.

The one-hour precision performances are videotaped and scrutinized in two-hour debriefings after each show.

"There is no margin for error."

Until last fall, Malachowski was focused on being a fighter pilot. In the right place at the right time, she was attending the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1992 when the barrier that kept women in the military from flying fighters fell.

By 2003, she had done a tour in South Korea and then in 2004 was an instructor pilot and the supervisor of flying with a fighter squadron of the Royal Air Force in Lakenheath, England.

Being a Thunderbird was not on this Air Force Academy grad's mind until last year.

"It was my husband's idea," Malachowski said with a chuckle, giving credit to the other Maj. Malachowski, Paul. He's currently on assignment in Afghanistan. "He said I was a people person, loved to fly, loved to talk."

The Thunderbirds seemed a natural fit, and a job she has gladly accepted as a "very visible force of the Air Force."

Growing up in Las Vegas, Nicole Ellingwood at age 5 saw a F-4 Phantom at an air show and told her parents she wanted to fly fighter jets. They encouraged her to follow her dream, she said.

And she did, flying Cessnas at 12, trading in washing planes for flight time, and soloing at 16 -- before she got her driver's license.

Today, her aircraft is a sleek red, white and blue F-16 and she has traded in her olive green flight suit for a custom-made blue one with the Thunderbird patch and her name embroidered on it.

"We hang out at around 500 miles per hour," she said, laughing. "An F-16 is capable of 1,400 miles per hour, but we'd break the sound barrier and we don't want to do that. You'd have broken windows and alarms going off!"

And it's not really her jet, she's just filling the seat for two years until the next pilot comes along.

Before takeoff, Malachowski has a ritual: She looks at the crew chief, give him a thumbs up and says, "Thank you for letting me borrow your aircraft."

Going down in history as the first female pilot for the Thunderbirds and carrying that title through her career -- and likely her life outside the Air Force as well -- is not something Malachowski spends a lot of time thinking about.

"I am doing my job -- my one little role. It's about being part of a team. Every squad has a unique mission, and this is ours."

She paused.

"Somebody had to be first."

And she gladly is giving up the title as the sole female Thunderbird. In October, she'll be joined by Capt. Samantha Weeks.

New York Times
August 9, 2006

Coast Guard Lets Skullcap Stay, Meaning This Recruit Will, Too

By Andy Newman

The skullcap can stay on the Coast Guard auxiliarist’s head after all.

Jack Rosenberg, a 35-year-old Hasidic Jew from Rockland County, signed up for the Coast Guard Auxiliary last year and passed his training, only to be informed that regulations forbade him to wear his skullcap during some duties.

Much as he loves his country, Mr. Rosenberg was not about to doff his skullcap, which a Hasid normally sheds only to shower or to swim, so his uniform stayed in the closet.

Now he does not have to. The Coast Guard is issuing new regulations allowing members to wear religious headgear, a spokesman for the guard, Chief Petty Officer Daniel Tremper, said yesterday. This brings the guard, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, into line with the armed forces under the Defense Department, which have permitted religious garb since 1987.

Coast Guard auxiliary members’ duties include flying on domestic search-and-rescue missions. Mr. Rosenberg, a tire technician in Spring Valley and a certified pilot, had been sworn in when the skullcap issue arose. “I never considered it a problem,” he said yesterday, “only a bump in the road.”

The old rules said religious clothing could not be visible. Mr. Rosenberg’s Coast Guard cap is big enough to conceal his six-inch black velvet skullcap, but there are times when auxiliarists may not wear their guard caps, such as when they are indoors, and then Mr. Rosenberg’s skullcap would show.

In March, Assemblyman Dov Hikind of Brooklyn, who has a large Orthodox Jewish constituency, urged the Coast Guard to change its rules, arguing that it was hardly in the guard’s interest to turn away able-bodied volunteers. Other elected officials followed suit.

The new rules allow headgear as long as it is visually low-key: no bright colors, writing, pictures or symbols allowed, Chief Tremper said.

The changes have not been formally adopted yet, he said, but Mr. Rosenberg may wear his skullcap.

Still, Mr. Rosenberg, ever mindful of following protocol, declined to comment on the change itself until he was notified directly.

Mr. Hikind was under no such constraints. “He can’t tell you this,” Mr. Hikind said, “but I can tell you that he is very, very happy.”

Washington Post
August 9, 2006
Pg. 10

By Jonathan Finer and Edward Cody, Washington Post Foreign Service

KIRYAT SHEMONA, Israel, Aug. 8 -- Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters waged deadly clashes in several border towns Tuesday and exchanged air and rocket attacks as the Israeli army sent a new commander to oversee its offensive, a move widely believed to reflect dissatisfaction with the way the war is proceeding.

The command change came as Israel's top security officials were set to meet Wednesday to consider an expansion of the ground offensive in Lebanon, a move called for by several commanders.

Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, was named "to coordinate the Israeli army's operations in Lebanon," according to a statement. It said top army officials retained "complete confidence" in Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, head of Israel's Northern Command, who has led the assault on Hezbollah since it began July 12.

But some Israeli television reports described the arrival of Kaplinsky, who had previously commanded Israeli forces in the West Bank and Lebanon, as "an impeachment" and said it was the first time since 1973 that the top command had been reshuffled during a war.

Although the Israeli public has strongly backed the four-week air and ground campaign, criticism had recently begun to mount about the way it was being conducted. Commanders have said the assault is aimed at pushing Hezbollah away from the border to prevent it from launching rocket attacks on Israeli towns, but the group has carried out its deadliest barrages of the war in recent days, including attacks that killed 15 civilians and soldiers Sunday. More than 160 rockets were fired at northern Israel Tuesday, though no deaths were reported.

Commanders, including Adam and Brig. Gen Guy Tzur, had said a more substantial invasion of Lebanon could stem the rocket attacks. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was scheduled to confer with cabinet members Wednesday to consider their request to send more troops deeper into Lebanon.

[Early Wednesday, Israeli gunboats shelled Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp, killing at least one person and wounding three others, the Associated Press reported from Beirut, citing Lebanese and Palestinian officials. Israeli gunboats fired two shells, they said. One landed in the Ein el-Hilweh camp, located on the outskirts of the southern port city of Sidon, and the other slammed into the city's amusement park, they added. An Israeli military spokesman said, "It was an aerial attack, not a naval attack, and it was on a house in the camp that belongs to a Hezbollah member."]

The Israeli army on Tuesday reported three soldiers killed and several others wounded, almost all of them by antitank missiles in Lebanese border towns. It said at least 20 Hezbollah fighters had been killed in the day's clashes. [On Wednesday, it announced that two other soldiers had died in fighting Tuesday in south Lebanon, the Associated Press reported.]

In Naqourah, on the Mediterranean coast just north of the Israeli border, Hezbollah said its fighters attacked an Israeli patrol, killing a number of soldiers. The Israeli military acknowledged two killed in the battle.

Israeli warplanes pursued their bombing campaign against Hezbollah positions across southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley. One airstrike killed five people in the village of Ghazieh, south of Sidon, as villagers were burying 15 people who had been killed Monday in a similar bombing run, Hezbollah and Lebanese media reported.

Fighting also raged around Bint Jbeil, a town three miles north of the border that has been the scene of almost daily clashes since Israeli forces pushed into Lebanon. Hezbollah said its militia fighters entrenched in the town destroyed an approaching Israeli armored bulldozer and inflicted a number of casualties.

As Arab envoys traveled to the United Nations to push Lebanon's case for an immediate cease-fire, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said the Lebanese army is capable of assuming control of the border area in cooperation with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, if Israeli troops withdraw as Lebanon has demanded.

Siniora has proposed dispatching 15,000 Lebanese soldiers under the UNIFIL aegis until a more permanent international peacekeeping force can be assembled and deployed. In an interview on al-Arabiya television, he sought to allay Israeli fears that such an arrangement would allow Hezbollah fighters to rearm and remain in place just north of the Lebanese border with Israel in terrain they have controlled for years.

"There will be no authority, no one in command, no weapons, other than those of the Lebanese state," he said.

If the army were to be stationed in the border area, it would mark the first time it has returned in force since 1978, when it was chased out by an earlier Israeli invasion. Hezbollah has controlled the border zone since Israeli forces withdrew in 2000 after an intervention that began on a small scale in the late 1970s and grew into a full-scale occupation in 1982.

Olmert described the Lebanese government's proposal of deploying 15,000 soldiers to south Lebanon as "an interesting step that we need to examine and investigate and see if it's all that it means." He said one of Israel's primary goals has been persuading the Lebanese army to disarm or remove Hezbollah fighters from southern Lebanon.

There were numerous signs Tuesday that a broader Israeli invasion was imminent, pending government approval. The government began evacuating about 15,000 residents of northern towns struck frequently by rocket attacks. An estimated half-million residents of the north, about half the region's population, have already left on their own or with assistance from private groups.

At several staging points used by Israeli soldiers to enter Lebanon, including the town of Metula, columns of tanks and armored vehicles could be seen lined up Tuesday night. And the army told Lebanese civilians in leaflet drops and radio messages not to travel by vehicle in the country's south.

In a briefing for reporters Tuesday evening, Brig. Gen. Shucki Shacher, deputy commander of Israel's northern forces, listed what he called the accomplishments of the operation to date, adding, "The Israeli government will have to decide tomorrow if this is enough or not."

Other commanders have in recent days called such an expansion "necessary" to stop the rocket attacks that have plagued northern Israel for nearly four weeks.

Israeli forces dropped leaflets that residents found in the streets of Tyre on Tuesday morning, warning of attacks on any cars on the roads in southern Lebanon. The leaflet was addressed to the "people of Lebanon living south of the Litani River."

"Any vehicle of any type that moves south of the Litani River will be targeted because it will be suspected of carrying rockets and other military equipment," it said. "Be warned that anyone traveling in any vehicle will be exposed to great danger."

The warning removed almost all traffic from Tyre. Only a few shops opened, as residents gathered for coffee or hurriedly unloaded the few shipments of bread arriving into town. The Lebanese Red Cross and aid groups were hunkered down.

The United Nations was awaiting permission from Israeli forces to rebuild a bridge that was destroyed Sunday night over the Litani, which bisects southern Lebanon. Bulldozers stood at the ready, but the drivers were afraid to operate the machines without an Israeli guarantee. In the afternoon, residents standing in knee-deep water passed dozens of packets of bread across the river by hand.

Among those crossing a fallen tree over the Litani, effectively the last link between southern Lebanon and the rest of the country, was Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who visited Tyre on Tuesday and was on his way to Israel on Wednesday.

"We must have access to evacuate wounded civilians in villages," he said at a news conference in Tyre. "We've had no access so far."

He said he also was trying to win more access to remove corpses from the rubble.

Kellenberger, hewing to the strict Red Cross policy of neutrality, stopped short of criticizing any party to the conflict. But in an implicit criticism of Israeli forces, he said, "By letting down leaflets, you do not get rid of your responsibility under international law."

Cody reported from Beirut. Correspondents Molly Moore in Jerusalem and Anthony Shadid in Tyre contributed to this report.

Washington Post
August 9, 2006
Pg. 11

By Molly Moore, Washington Post Foreign Service

JERUSALEM, Aug. 8 -- Three years ago, Ron Kehrmann's 17-year-old daughter died when a suicide bomber blew up a Haifa city bus.

Two nights ago, a Hezbollah rocket landed about 100 yards from Kehrmann's print shop in downtown Haifa, the coastal city that has been the target of scores of rocket attacks.

"There's a lot of resemblance with what happened when my daughter was killed and what is going on now," said Kehrmann, a 48-year-old Haifa native. "This time it's an even more threatening situation. When you're a suicide bomber, you're one or two people; in this case there are barrages of 17 or more rockets, and your chances of getting hit are much higher."

Like the suicide bombers who terrified Israelis during the Palestinian uprising, Hezbollah's unguided and relatively unsophisticated missiles have left one of the world's best-equipped armies unable to defend its citizens.

Military analysts say Israel believed, perhaps mistakenly, that it could wage a Kosovo-style air war to eliminate most of Hezbollah's launchers. They also fault the military's over-reliance on high technology in an era of guerrilla-style threats, and a political strategy of trying to keep military deaths low by using minimal ground forces.

"I don't think anybody had any way to really grasp the implications of this kind of war," said Gerald Steinberg, head of the conflict management program at Bar-Ilan University.

With 150 to 200 missiles landing almost daily in northern Israel, the country's primary defense has been to clear citizens from the region or send them into shelters. The relentless and indiscriminant rocket attacks -- which increased despite Israeli air and ground wars against Hezbollah in Lebanon -- have undermined the country's faith in both military and political leaders and are likely to force major shifts in Israeli military strategy and tactics, according to many analysts.

"This war will be studied in all military academies in the world as a new kind of war which requires new and unprecedented definitions of how to fight it and how to win it," said Yaron Ezrahi, a professor at Hebrew University who is one of Israel's leading political scientists.

"The problem for the army and the problem for the Israeli government is the concept of military victory which was inscribed in the minds of Israelis in wars like the Six-Day War or even the Yom Kippur War," said Ezrahi. "That is utterly irrelevant to this kind of war, to the war of a regular army against a terrorist network."

One of the most significant military debates spawned by the conflict is over the investment in a state-of-the-art military that appears to be ill-equipped to combat weaponry such as Hezbollah's rockets.

"Technology has taken a blow in this war," said Hillel Frisch, a senior researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. "The Israeli air force is going to come under tremendous criticism."

The United States and Israel invested in developing a multibillion-dollar missile defense system after Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles at Israeli cities in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But the Arrow-2 system is incapable of hitting Hezbollah's long- or short-range rockets, which are launched too close to Israel and land too quickly.

The Israeli military scuttled a program several years ago to develop defenses against primitive rocketry, deciding the effort was too expensive and might not work, according to Frisch.

Instead, Israel Defense Forces aircraft, drones and surveillance systems have been trying to spot the elusive rocket launchers, usually after the rockets have been fired and the portable launchers have been driven away by Hezbollah fighters.

Just as suicide bombers packed their explosive devices with pieces of shrapnel and ball bearings to increase their potency, many of Hezbollah's warheads have been filled with bullets and tiny metal balls that augment their destructive power when they hit humans, buildings or automobiles, according to police investigators who have examined the rocket debris.

"These missiles are very inaccurate," said Martin Van Creveld, a prominent Israeli military historian who teaches at Hebrew University. The deaths of 12 reserve soldiers lounging in a parking lot in the border town of Kfar Giladi on Sunday "was a pure accident," he said. "It might have landed anywhere else."

Forty-eight people have died in the rocket attacks -- 36 civilians and 12 soldiers, according to the Israeli military.

The Israeli military has "not been able to break their spirit, yet," said Van Creveld, referring to Hezbollah. "Unless it is stopped diplomatically, it could go on for a long time."

Analysts and the Israeli military estimate that Hezbollah had anywhere from 12,000 to 16,000 rockets. The military estimates that Hezbollah has fired nearly 3,500 rockets into Israel -- most of them the medium- and shorter-range varieties. Those projectiles range from 302mm rockets weighing 165 pounds that can fly up to 68 miles to a Haseb rocket weighing 14 pounds that can travel up to seven miles, according to the Israeli National Police.

Steinberg estimated that Hezbollah had 1,000 to 1,500 rocket launchers before the conflict began, many of them hidden or kept underground. After four weeks of aerial bombardments and ground skirmishes, the Israeli military estimates that it has destroyed about 300 launchers, a spokesman said.

"To find all the needles in the haystack is going to be difficult," Steinberg said.

"Experience shows that air force is not good enough to deal with rocket-launching," said Eran Duvdevani, a military operations specialist at Israel's International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism and an instructor for Israeli military officer training programs. "There is no alternative but to use ground forces."

The debate over sending Israeli ground troops into southern Lebanon was one of the most emotional of the conflict.

Military officials feared significant casualties, and political leaders worried about the impact of the deaths in a nation where military service is mandatory for men and women.

"The Israeli army didn't move quickly and decisively as it should have," said Frisch, the military analyst. "The big debate is the change in ethos. Now soldiers' lives have become more precious than losses in the rear."

Wall Street Journal
August 9, 2006
Pg. 1

By Jay Solomon

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- With the United Nations pushing to disarm the militant group Hezbollah, the U.S. and other countries have expressed confidence that Lebanon's army can handle the job with help from a multinational force.

But Lebanese commanders such as Maj. Gen. Achraf Rifi, who leads the nation's police force, believe the task could prove difficult. Lebanon's military is poorly equipped and fragmented along ethnic and religious lines. Its police force has 20,000 members, but fewer than half have guns or ammunition. Some of the weapons they use are World War II-era rifles.

Lebanon's army, the other branch of its security forces, currently numbers about 40,000. Some of its tanks were produced in the 1940s, say senior army officers. And American-made helicopters it has purchased are one-engine models that are no longer legal to fly in the U.S.

Before Syrian forces withdrew from Lebanon just over a year ago, Lebanon's army and its police, called the Internal Security Forces, were under the direct control of Syria, a principal backer of Hezbollah. For that reason, both the U.S. and Israel didn't want Lebanon to strengthen its armed forces. But now they and other nations are pushing for exactly that. They hope a beefed up Lebanese force can play a central role in reining in Hezbollah, whose militia is now far more powerful than Lebanon's state security forces.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday that the international community's mission was to "get Lebanese authority to flow into the south" so that this type of war "doesn't happen again." The White House, the U.N. and the Lebanese government have all said in recent days they are laying the groundwork for Lebanon's army to deploy to the south, which Hezbollah has run as its own de facto state within a state. The Lebanese government is prepared to send 15,000 soldiers into the south. The Pentagon has talked of ramping up military assistance and training, though details are still being debated.

Lebanon's armed forces are just emerging from nearly 20 years of Syrian control. When Syrian forces withdrew from Lebanon, Gen. Rifi recalled recently, "we were in an institution without a soul or initiative. ... The habit was to receive orders from the Syrians."

Even today, the military's civilian commander, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, is a Syrian ally, and has called for the military to join with Hezbollah to fight Israel. But operational control of the army has shifted to Lebanon's cabinet. And the president's son-in-law, Defense Minister Elias Murr, has shown independence from Syria. A bomb that nearly killed him last year was widely attributed to operatives close to Syria, although Syria denied any involvement. This confusing picture has made it difficult for some American and other Western officials to understand exactly who is in charge of Lebanon's security apparatus.

Gen. Rifi, who is 52 years old, and other senior Lebanese officials say the nation's security forces are just beginning a major reform after the years of Syrian control. Syrian troops moved into Lebanon in 1976, and the Syrian government eventually became a caretaker power. Syria had the tacit backing of the international community, which hoped it would control competing Christian, Shiite, and Druze militias that had ensnared Lebanon in civil war. Lebanon's military had splintered, former Lebanese officers say, and some factions joined the militias in sectarian warfare. Beirut divided into a Christian east and a Muslim west.

Initially, some Lebanese military officers hoped Syria would rebuild the armed forces and the rest of Beirut's government. But Syria introduced its own pervasive security and intelligence apparatus, which fueled violence in Lebanon, say many current and former Lebanese officers. Syria favored Hezbollah and kept Lebanon's military weak, these officers say.

Nizar Abdel-Kader, a retired Lebanese general, says he was appointed to an army commission in the early 1990s that sought to transform the army by assembling more mechanized and rapid-reaction units and by refocusing it on quelling internal unrest. At the same time, it aimed to deter Israel, whose armed forces occupied southern Lebanon from 1982 until 2000. Under the "Army in the Year 2000" project, Mr. Abdel-Kader hoped to increase the army's size to 60,000 full-time soldiers and to expand its presence through territories controlled by Lebanon's many religious communities, including the Shiites in the south.

As the decade progressed, however, Lebanon's army shrank and its equipment deteriorated, say Mr. Abdel-Kader and some active army officers. Syria forced Lebanon to purchase second-hand Russian and American equipment. The Syrians called for Lebanon to cancel its draft, reducing the size of its army. According to Lebanese and American officials, Iran and Syria increased weapons shipments to Hezbollah, which the U.S. has labeled a terrorist organization. Militia units received sophisticated mines, long-range rockets and telecommunications equipment.

"The army was fully manipulated by the Syrians," says Mr. Abdel-Kader, who writes today on military affairs for Lebanese and foreign publications.

'Talking to a Wall'

Some former Lebanese diplomats say the U.S. military alliance with Israel prevented any meaningful American arms sales to Lebanon. Riad Tabbarah, who was Beirut's ambassador to the U.S. in the mid-1990s, says he negotiated a deal in 1996 to purchase used armored-personnel carriers from the Pentagon. But when the deal came before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, then headed by Sen. Jesse Helms, it was scrapped. Mr. Tabbarah says he was told by Mr. Helms's staffers that the weapons could challenge Israel's security. "It was like talking to a wall," says Mr. Tabbarah, who went on to become a foreign-affairs adviser to former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Danielle Pletka of the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, who was then an aide to the now-retired senator, says Mr. Helms's office held up a training program for Lebanese soldiers from 1992 to 1993 due to concerns over Beirut's ties to Syria. She says no major arms sales to Lebanon were ever considered due to the belief that the Lebanese military was a "wholly owned subsidiary" of Damascus. Israeli officials acknowledge they tried to prevent arms sales to Lebanon in the past, due to Syria's involvement there.

As Syrian intelligence services continued to dictate Lebanon's affairs, Lebanese politicians increasingly called for independence from Damascus, Lebanese officials say. A U.N. investigation into the bombing last year that killed Mr. Hariri, the former prime minister, pointed to pro-Syrian Lebanese intelligence agents, and suggested that officials in Syria might have been involved. Mr. Hariri's death fueled massive protests that eventually forced Syrian leader Bashar Assad to pull his remaining 17,000 troops out of Lebanon, freeing Lebanese forces from direct Syrian control.

In the months before the July 12 outbreak of war between Israel and Hezbollah, Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora's newly elected government began another push to reform the country's security forces. The government arrested four senior Lebanese military officials, including heads of the army's military intelligence unit and the Palace Guards, due to evidence of their complicity in the killing of Mr. Hariri. The longstanding commander of the police force, Ali al-Hajj, was also detained, and Gen. Rifi was appointed to the top post.

Both the army and police force, or ISF, moved to expand their ranks and resume training programs with the U.S., Europe and a number of Arab countries. Mr. Siniora authorized a "national dialogue" with Hezbollah aimed at gradually disarming it and possibly subsuming some of its members into the army.

The ISF set out to break up a network that smuggled arms into Lebanon, which was linked to pro-Syrian elements inside Lebanon. ISF officials say they were concerned that the arms could be used to continue a string of political assassinations that had continued even after Syria's withdrawal.

But with the Syrians gone, many members of Lebanon's armed forces were confused and timid, say Gen. Rifi and other senior military officers. Gen. Rifi says his officers had been trained "just to apply" the Syrians' orders. "We had to tell them that the security decisions were now our own," he says.

Widespread Distrust

Distrust of the U.S. government is still widespread among Lebanese officials. Some worry that Lebanon's attempts to purchase arms from the U.S. and France could still be rebuffed. Lebanese officials say that unless the U.S. shows greater trust toward Beirut and a more balanced policy toward Israel's role in the Middle East, any peacekeeping operation in southern Lebanon could fail.

Lebanese officials say that several countries have pledged to provide new equipment to the army and the ISF, but that little has materialized thus far. Ahmad Fatfat, Lebanon's interior minister, says he met on more than three occasions with senior Pentagon and State Department officials, including Assistant Secretary of State David Welch. He says he told them he desperately needs military hardware, particularly machine guns, but he has yet to receive any.

A spokesman for Mr. Welch acknowledges that the requests were received, but says no promises were made. The U.S., he says, might contribute logistical help, "but actual armaments would almost certainly run afoul of Congress."

So far this year, the U.S. has provided Lebanon with $1.62 million in military assistance, all in financial aid and training programs. But a U.S. official said an additional $10.6 million could be offered if there is an international agreement on how to disarm Hezbollah.

"The international community asks us for everything, yet gives us nothing," says Mr. Fatfat, who was a close aide to the late Mr. Hariri. "In such a situation, I ask: Why do I have to be friends of the U.S.?"

Israeli and U.S. officials say they are prepared to increase support for Lebanon's armed forces if that could lead to disarming Hezbollah. "We support any international efforts to strengthen the Lebanese government and army," says Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. "It's good for Lebanon and it's good for regional stability." But a firm plan hasn't been put in place.

Lebanon sees its armed forces as helping lend legitimacy to a larger U.N. peacekeeping force. Over time, as Lebanon's troops strengthen, they would take full control of the south, aides to Mr. Siniora say.

Cooperation between the U.S. and Lebanon has increased. Federal Bureau of Investigation officials credit the ISF with helping them crack what they say was an al Qaeda plot this year to attack underwater train tunnels leading into New York City. In April, Lebanese officers arrested a Lebanese man they say was preparing to fly to Pakistan to begin training for the plot. Gen. Rifi said such joint investigations with the FBI have allowed his officers to gain technical and forensic skills needed to conduct counterterrorism operations against believed al Qaeda cells.

Pentagon officials say they've been impressed with the Lebanese army's new leadership. The two countries had planned to hold joint-exercises on Lebanese soil last month, but the fighting forced them to be canceled.

As the international community calls for Lebanon's armed forces to regain control of the nation's south, senior members of Mr. Siniora's government say the war has taxed their army and police forces even more. Over the past month, the principal mission of Lebanese troops has been to help secure the shipment of humanitarian aid to the nearly one million Lebanese displaced by the war, the government officials say. The army and the ISF have also had to provide shelter and protection for the mostly Shiite refugees who have pushed into Beirut and its suburbs from Lebanon's south.

Senior Lebanese officials say dealing with this chaos has left them little time to put together a long-term plan to disarm Hezbollah. Some of them say that will require a comprehensive agreement with Israel involving land disputes and a prisoner exchange. Roughly 40% of Lebanon's security forces are Shiite Muslims and are viewed as sympathetic to Hezbollah's cause, they say. Some Lebanese analysts fear the military could splinter or rebel if it is called upon to disarm Hezbollah without the approval of Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

As hundreds of thousands of Shiite refugees push into territories that are home to Christians and Sunnis, Lebanese officials are concerned that the nation's historical sectarian tensions could be rekindled.

The potential for such conflict was apparent on Saturday at the Karm El-Zeitoun high-school complex in Beirut's Christian enclave of Achrafieh. More than 100 Shiite families were packed into two compounds, their laundry hanging from the classrooms. Painted on the school's walls were the symbols of Lebanon's largest Christian militia-turned-political party, the Lebanese Forces.

Army and ISF officers stationed at the school said concern is growing that the families might not be able to return home for months, potentially scuppering the upcoming school year and fueling unrest.

Guy Chazan in Tel Aviv and Neil King Jr. in Washington contributed to this article.

Philadelphia Inquirer
August 9, 2006

Policy Divides Psychologists

By Adam Fifield, Inquirer Staff Writer

Controversy over a year-old American Psychological Association policy allowing members to participate in military prisoner interrogations threatens to dominate the group's annual convention this week.

The debate, fueled by reports of alleged abuses of detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, focuses on whether the psychologists are more likely to serve as ethical monitors or to become accomplices to cruelty.

More than 1,500 psychologists have signed an online petition to protest APA guidelines that permit members to consult on "interrogation and information-gathering processes for national security purposes."

"We will not stand by and remain silent while our profession throws overboard its concern for human dignity by becoming complicit in inhumane institutions," the petition states.

Army Surgeon General Kevin Kiley is to address the 150,000-member group's governing body in New Orleans today, on the eve of the convention.

Locally, some psychologists said they supported the APA policy, which also bans members from assisting in torture or degrading treatment, and requires them to report such conduct. But most worried that mental-health professionals could be overruled, or co-opted, in military settings.

Psychologists help ensure that interrogations remain "safe, legal, ethical and effective," said Stephen Behnke, director of the APA ethics office. "You want to have people who understand the science, and who understand that torture and abusive treatment lead to bad information."

Psychologists can help elicit information to prevent terrorist attacks, said Frank Farley, a Temple University psychology professor and former APA president, who backs the policy.

There is a need to interview people, Farley said, adding that to think otherwise is "naive."

"Having a person who subscribes to APA ethics in the room at the time can only be a good thing," Farley said.

Others are grappling with the issue. "I'm not sure this is where psychology belongs," said Julie Levitt, of Center City, who will be in New Orleans.

Levitt leans toward opposing psychologists as consultants, she said, because of concerns about the military interrogators.

If they are "basically moral people" and "adhere to Geneva conventions, then it's certainly appropriate to help," said John Rooney, head of La Salle University's master's program in clinical counseling. But, he said, it's hard for an outsider to know.

Reported abuses of detainees at Guantanamo Bay have cast a pall over the debate. Critics of the APA policy cite news reports - and a 2005 New England Journal of Medicine article - charging that health-care professionals helped interrogators design coercive practices. The military has disputed the allegations.

"You get the best information from rapport-building and relationship-building, and the psychologists here do that," said Lt. Col. Lora Tucker, a Guantanamo spokeswoman.

Under military guidelines released in June, psychologists and psychiatrists on behavioral science consultation teams can "observe, but shall not conduct or direct, interrogations."

The teams have been responsible for reviewing detainees' medical histories for "depression, delusional behaviors, manifestations of stress, and 'what are their buttons,' " a 2005 Army surgeon general's report said. They have also helped determine "when to push or not push harder" for information.

The military typically uses psychologists rather than psychiatrists, William Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said in June. The American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association take positions more restrictive of their members' roles in interrogations.

"I was shocked and embarrassed at my organization's being chosen by the military to be the sole representative on these... teams in Guantanamo," said Steven Reisner of Columbia University's International Trauma Studies Program, who will speak against the policy in New Orleans.

Of the APA's 10-member task force behind the policy, six members have military ties, Salon.com reported last month. Four, including a Navy psychologist who reportedly protested abuses at Guantanamo, are on active duty. According to the APA Web site, others on the force have been in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib.

"That seemed to stack the deck," Reisner said.

The task force unanimously agreed on its primary recommendations, Behnke countered.

Emily K. Filardo, who teaches psychology at Kean University in Union County, N.J., said she worried that having psychologists at interrogations would legitimize practices over which they have no control.

"The Army can say, 'You see, things are OK. We have psychologists who've checked it out,' " Filardo said.

Andrew Jensen, a Cherry Hill psychologist who treats veterans, favors the APA position and suspects its foes are motivated by "the current political climate."

Behnke said his group recognized the obligations of psychologists to individuals and to the nation.

"We need to take a look at how we balance those against one another," he said.

Washington Post
August 9, 2006
Pg. 4

With deadlines approaching, the State Department said that it has seen no indications that Iran plans to comply with the United Nations' demands that it suspend its enrichment of uranium.

"There have been a variety of public statements from the Iranians, but we haven't seen any evidence yet that they are complying with the demand and requirement of the international community," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution on July 31 giving Iran until Aug. 31 to suspend the enrichment or face the threat of economic and diplomatic sanctions. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will confer with foreign ministers in New York this week on how to deal with Iran, McCormack said.

USA Today
August 9, 2006
Pg. 3

By Oren Dorell, USA Today

Alma Hart and Nikki Likely are American Gold Star Mothers, having received the honor when their sons died serving their country in war.

While both joined to be with women who could understand their loss, the two are at odds in a debate that could convert the group begun in World War I from a charitable outfit to a powerful lobby.

A college administrator whose son died in Iraq in 2003, Hart says Gold Star Mothers can be a potent advocate for improving and protecting the lives of servicemembers.

“If somebody has to get mad about scissors or funding or tourniquets” needed by troops in combat, who better to speak out than a mother who lost her child, says Hart, 48, of Bedford, Mass.

Likely, 73, worries that taking on sensitive issues could divide a group whose chief purpose is to honor the memory of men and women who gave their full measure of devotion to their country.

“We don't like change,” says Likely of Newton, Mass., who has volunteered many hours at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Bedford.

“We were more dedicated,” she says. “This generation is more political. … I don't think politics belongs here.”

American Gold Star Mothers is not a stranger to politics. After the Vietnam War, members pushed for treatment programs for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Members recently lobbied lawmakers for a $1,500 annual payment for parents of servicemembers who die at war.

Traditionally, members devoted themselves to supporting one another and volunteering at VA hospitals. Members like Hart want the national leadership to get more involved in such issues as whether troops have enough armor.

Hart's son, Pfc. John Hart, 20, died when his patrol was hit by rifle fire and grenades.

“We're the ones that can do it,” Hart says. “Because no congressman is going to be caught dead being rude to a Gold Star Mother.”

Judith Young, the group's service officer and 2005 president, says change is coming to a group that has seen little.

Headquartered in a row house in Washington, the group has started computerizing records that until recently were maintained on 3-by-5-inch cards and quadruplicate carbon-copy forms meant for manual typewriters.

“I personally think we have to get involved in more activities, like supporting something,” Young, 57, says. “We have new moms, and they want to do things. I think you're going to see more of this.”

Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the group was fading into the twilight. Most members, who always wear white at functions, date to the Vietnam and Korean wars.

The deaths of servicemembers in Iraq and Afghanistan renewed interest in the group. New Gold Star Mothers wanted to meet and network.

“I think we are poised to move in a wonderful direction,” says Molly Morel, 55, an entrepreneur who lives in Martin, Tenn., and whose Marine officer son died in Iraq.

U.S. Rep. Michael McNulty, D-N.Y., who sponsored a version of the Gold Star annual $1,500 payment bill in the House of Representatives, says the American Gold Star Mothers have always been “a laid-back, patriotic group.” He wasn't even aware of their involvement in the bill, which he sponsored.

“I would welcome any interest they have on any issues. They've certainly earned their right to speak out,” he says.

Others agree.

“You're talking about a very unique group of people that have suffered a great loss,” says Steve Robertson, the chief lobbyist for the American Legion.

American Gold Star Mothers was founded by Grace Seibold, a Washingtonian whose son fought with the British in World War I and was shot down over France. The name was based on the gold lapel pin sent to mothers of fallen troops.

At its peak, the group numbered 25,000 members, Young says. That number has dropped to 1,500, of which 230 joined in the past two years.

Pat Merville, 53, of Edgewood, N.M., whose son Christopher, 26, was killed by a sniper in Iraq, thinks getting more politically active fits in with the group's missions. She says mothers like her have a better understanding of legislative issues, like increases to the health insurance premiums of military retirees.

“We're in a position where we're more aware of veterans' issues than we would have been,” she says. “You just get more of a sense of what's right and what should be done.”

Ruth Stonesifer, 59, of Kitnersville, Pa., joined after her son, Army Ranger Kris, 28, died in Afghanistan in 2001.

“The first thing that you wake up and think about is that you're in this parallel universe: How did you get derailed?”

Stonesifer joined American Gold Star Mothers to find a volunteer project. She picked up quilting and now makes presentation quilts for new arrivals at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

“Speaking to another mom is therapy in itself. … They understand, even in silence,” she says.

Stonesifer says she has no interest in lobbying. She says she doesn't want to be like Cindy Sheehan, an anti-war activist whose son Casey, 24, died in Iraq in 2004.

“Just because my son was killed and died for his country, that doesn't weight my political opinion any more than anyone else's in the country,” Stonesifer says. “I wasn't going to let anyone stand on his coffin for a cause, because I wasn't going to do it either.”

Washington Post
August 9, 2006
Pg. 1

By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Staff Writer

Early this summer, a new strategy for combating terrorism, described by its authors as "revolutionary" in concept, arrived on President Bush's desk. The highly classified National Implementation Plan for the first time set government-wide goals and assigned responsibility for achieving them to specific departments and agencies.

Written by officials at the National Counterterrorism Center, under a directive signed by the president last winter, the 160-page plan aspires to achieve what has eluded the Bush administration in the five years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: bringing order and direction to the fight against terrorism.

In the years since Bush stood atop the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center and pledged retaliation against "the people who knocked down these buildings," the federal government has undergone an unprecedented expansion and reorganization.

Yet the counterterrorism infrastructure that resulted has become so immense and unwieldy that many looking at it from the outside, and even some on the inside, have trouble understanding how it works or how much safer it has made the country.

Huge amounts of money have been spent -- $430 billion so far on overseas military and diplomatic counterterrorism operations, according to the U.S. comptroller general, a tripling of pre-9/11 expenditures for domestic security programs to an estimated $50 billion to $60 billion this year, and untallied billions more in state and local money.

Institutions historically charged with protecting the nation have produced a new generation of bureaucratic offspring -- the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) and Joint Intelligence Task Force for Combating Terrorism (JITF-CT), the Treasury Department's Office of Intelligence and Analysis (OIA), and the FBI's National Security Service (NSS), to name a few -- many with seemingly overlapping missions.

New laws have broadened domestic enforcement powers, and the Justice Department has been radically restructured to emphasize counterterrorism. The FBI, where counterterrorism now accounts for half of all investigations, has nearly doubled its budget to $6 billion since 2001 and added 7,000 employees. Twenty-two domestic agencies have been combined under the new Department of Homeland Security, while separate counterterrorism divisions now exist in virtually every nook and cranny of the federal government, from the Transportation Department to the Food and Drug Administration.

Outside Washington, 42 states have established intelligence "fusion centers" -- centralized locations where local, state and federal officials operate joint information-gathering and analysis operations.

The proof that it is all working, White House officials often say, is that there has been no attack on U.S. soil since 2001.

But critics say that after nearly five years, the fight against terrorism often seems like a chaotic work in progress.

"It's as if we're at 2002 and not 2006 in terms of where we are," Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said in an interview.

The ad hoc construction, adding layer upon layer with none taken away, has left intelligence and security agencies competing for turf. Deadlines for priorities have been missed. DHS, for example, has repeatedly delayed supplying a congressionally mandated list of the nation's critical infrastructure, and a blueprint for information-sharing among federal, state and local entities has been slow to get off the ground.

Continuity and coherence have been undercut by rapid turnover among top officials, particularly in the institutions responsible for domestic security and preparedness.

DHS's cybersecurity division has been run by an acting director since the last full-time appointee -- the third person to leave the post in a year -- resigned in October 2004. In April, the FBI's sixth counterterrorism chief since 2001 tendered his resignation after 10 months on the job. Many with government training and security clearances resign or retire, only to sign on at far higher salaries with the burgeoning private-sector security industry.

At the state and local front lines, officials complain of limited input in the development of homeland security policies and impenetrable layers of federal secrecy -- including as many as 90 categories of "sensitive but unclassified" information -- that limit the usefulness of terrorism alerts they receive from Washington, according to separate surveys this spring by the National Governors Association and the Government Accountability Office.

On paper, at least, the man in charge of much of the counterterrorism effort is Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte. His office was created last year under the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act to fix two widely acknowledged problems. The first was the intelligence community's pre-9/11 failure to collect and share information that might have warned of the al-Qaeda attacks. The second problem was the confusion and competition spawned by post-9/11 attempts to fix the first.

Negroponte supervises the 16 agencies that make up the federal intelligence community and is the president's chief intelligence adviser. Directly under him, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) is the central repository for terrorism information collected throughout the community. Its several hundred analysts integrate intelligence, figure out what it means and redistribute it across the government. The center's strategic planning division provides what NCTC Director John Scott Redd has called "the missing piece" between White House policy decisions and the operational departments and agencies that carry them out.

"We've done a great deal" in the years since 9/11, said one of a number of counterterrorism officials interviewed for this article, all of whom agreed to speak only if their names were not used. "There's a lot more we need to do. A lot more."

The official added: "The American people ought to have some faith that we're working on it."

Beyond the Military Approach

It was only natural that the military would take the lead in fighting terrorism after Sept. 11. In Afghanistan and other al-Qaeda locales, U.S. forces produced victories that were substantive and quantifiable, as well as politically useful to the administration.

Other parts of the government had important roles. But the Defense Department, buttressed by its intrinsic organizational skills, its traditional role as the recipient of the lion's share of the intelligence budget, and the zeal and policymaking influence of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, quickly grew to dominate much more than the war-fighting effort.

The Pentagon has clashed repeatedly with the CIA and the State Department as it has sought to expand its counterterrorism mission. Last year, both protested a secret Pentagon program that sends Special Forces units in plain clothes on intelligence-gathering missions to countries where no war is in progress and with which the United States has friendly diplomatic relations.

The Pentagon argued that troops report to their commanders and the defense secretary, not the secretary of state or the CIA director, and do not need to seek permission from or even to inform local U.S. ambassadors or CIA station chiefs. And, it said, the military needs its own "situational awareness" of possible future combat areas.

When the level of animosity peaked last summer, Rumsfeld and then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss were prodded by Michael V. Hayden, then deputy director of national intelligence, to negotiate an agreement to delineate intelligence-gathering responsibilities. Under a separate memorandum of understanding, the Pentagon and the State Department agreed that ambassadors would be informed of all military activity in their countries and given the opportunity to object.

Beyond the turf battles, however, counterterrorism officials grew concerned that U.S. strategy needed to expand beyond what one called the "whack, capture, interrogate and whack again" approach of the military. "Our thinking has matured radically since 2001," he said. "Then, it was looked at as the al-Qaeda network. Now, it is seen as looser, more diffuse, and also in our own country, in Western Europe and Canada."

"The military can't be the big hammer" anymore, he said, because al-Qaeda and its affiliates "are not the nail."

"You'll never win unless you can get to the sources of radicalization," he added. ". . . As the threat has changed, we've tried to adapt. But it's taken some time. As an American taxpayer, I wish we could have gotten it right in October 2001."

The "changing paradigm" applies at home as well as overseas, said a senior FBI official. The FBI operated on the assumption that "al-Qaeda was 'The Sopranos,' with a boss, an underboss, the consiglieri and the captains who ran the cells," the official said. "It was comfortable for us to understand."

New initiatives such as the National Implementation Plan were launched to eliminate overlap and set priorities for what the administration now calls the "long war." Beyond drawing sharper lines of responsibility, officials said, the plan is designed to drag the nation's counterterrorism strategy back from military dominance, better balancing the military "whack" with diplomacy and the "hearts and minds" campaigns that are now seen as critical to long-term victory.

Bush was briefed on the plan on June 26. A White House official said the plan reflects Bush's feeling that the terrorism fight is "all-encompassing," including military attacks but also "the war of ideas and the softer side, the long-term battle."

Within half a dozen broad objectives, the document designates lead and subordinate agencies to carry out more than 500 discrete counterterrorism tasks, among them vanquishing al-Qaeda, protecting the homeland, wooing allies, training experts in other languages and cultures, and understanding and influencing the Islamic psyche.

Achieving agreement among more than 200 department and agency representatives over 10 months of often-torturous negotiations was "a heroically ambitious exercise," said a senior administration official who participated in the process. "A couple of months ago, everybody was still shaking their heads."

The plan is expected to prompt a rewrite of the president's February 2003 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, which emphasized the physical elimination of terrorist networks while making largely symbolic bows to international partnerships and addressing the "underlying conditions that terrorists seek to exploit."

Eventually, officials acknowledged, it will also require a reconfiguration of the intelligence budget, now heavily weighted toward the military. No one expects that to happen overnight -- early proposals to shift spending brought a sharp protest from Rumsfeld.

But even at the Pentagon there are signs of turf-war fatigue. "Two years ago, we didn't have anything," said Brig. Gen. Robert Caslen Jr., who until June was the Joint Chiefs of Staff's deputy director for the terrorism fight. "Every department of government had its own idea on who was the enemy. Now we have a strategy and a plan that gives specific tasks and responsibility," he said.

Others are guardedly optimistic that the plan can be implemented. "It's going to alleviate a lot of the turf tensions and the growing pains," said one senior counterterrorism official. "But they're not going to go away."

The Overlaps Persist

In the lead-up to this year's Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, eight of the 16 agencies in the U.S. intelligence community independently produced assessments of possible terrorist threats to the Games. The "finished intelligence products," a counterterrorism official said, all concluded exactly the same thing -- that the threat was minimal.

"They posted them internally to their own organizations and sent them out to share" with other community members as the authoritative bottom line, the official said. "They would all argue, 'We had to do it for our principal, our Cabinet member' or whatever." Watching the competing agencies, he said, "is like watching 7-year-olds play soccer -- you've got 20 kids all following the ball."

Avoiding such duplication and wasted effort, he said, "was the whole point" of setting up the NCTC as the sole provider of integrated intelligence analysis. Yet neither congressional mandates nor presidential directives have been enough to eliminate the overlap.

Before the Intelligence Reform Act, the CIA was in charge of bringing together "all-source" intelligence and analyzing it for the larger intelligence community, the White House and policymakers. It was the CIA that chaired the daily interagency meeting at 5 p.m. to discuss real-time terrorism information and what to do about it. The agency drew up the daily "threat matrix" and the CIA director briefed the president each morning.

But the Sept. 11 commission found that long-standing tensions within and among the CIA, the FBI and the rest of the community, along with institutional firewalls constructed during the Cold War, meant that "information was not shared" and "analysis was not pooled" that might have warned of the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

The CIA's responsibilities for integrating and analyzing all-source intelligence have now been transferred to the DNI and the NCTC. All members of the intelligence community -- including the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and other Defense Department agencies and the FBI -- are restricted to analyzing only what they need to accomplish the "tactical missions" specific to their own assignments. For the CIA, that means concentrating on building the clandestine network and human resources that Congress and a series of outside studies have found lacking, especially in the Middle East.

But the DNI-NCTC structure remains vastly outweighed in power, personnel and tradition by the growing bureaucracies it hopes to tame. While the number of NCTC analysts is scheduled to double to 400 by 2008, the FBI alone has tripled its analytic staff since 2001 to more than 2,700. The DIA has nearly 8,000 employees collecting and analyzing intelligence, and the CIA has twice that many.

On July 11, Negroponte signed an internal document titled "Analytic Framework for Counterterrorism" for distribution among the 16 agencies. In a cover note, he pointedly wrote that while he recognized each "must continue to support its agency leadership and unique operational activities, as well as to provide a robust analytical capability and reliable steam of diverse viewpoints," both Congress and the president had given him the authority and "fully empower the NCTC" to "reduce unnecessary duplication of effort."

The framework, said one counterterrorism official, directs operational agencies such as the CIA "to focus their analytical resources" on "penetrating and eliminating known terrorist organizations," leaving the NCTC to provide comprehensive threat analyses for the government as a whole.

Although Hayden's appointment as CIA director in May is likely to hasten the agency's acceptance of what is known in the community as "the lanes in the road," intelligence officials have not been shy about expressing skepticism and resentment.

Many see themselves as demoted to mere intelligence-gatherers, stripped of their rightful roles as strategic analysts and forward-looking policy advisers. An internal CIA study, declassified last month a year after it was written, criticized the NCTC model as promoting "watered-down analysis, duplication, confusion, and misuse of scarce resources." Separating those who collect intelligence from those who analyze it would result in a weaker product, the study said, and was likely to lead to more strategic failures like those in Iraq.

The addition of new non-operational layers to integrate, analyze and share information "has made the organizational picture more, not less, confusing," Paul R. Pillar, a former national intelligence officer for the Middle East and South Asia, said recently. The question of "who's in charge of intelligence, when it comes to counterterrorism, is harder to answer now than it was before."

Teamwork at the NCTC

Three times each day -- at 8 a.m., 3 p.m. and 1 a.m. -- representatives from across the intelligence community meet to update the nation's threat matrix. The meetings -- held most days via videoconference -- are chaired at NCTC headquarters, a nondescript, unlabeled office building in Northern Virginia, around a massive, football-shaped wooden table. The table, designed as neutral ground, has 16 seats, pop-up computer terminals and ceiling-mounted screens that can show al-Jazeera broadcasts as well as highly classified graphics.

Participants include representatives of the CIA and FBI; the Defense Intelligence Agency and others under the Pentagon umbrella; the departments of State, Homeland Security, Treasury and Energy; and other subsidiary agencies such as the Drug Enforcement and Transportation Security administrations. Topics include individual suicide bombers, movements of groups and people, potential targets, reliability of information on specific threats, and actions being planned or already taken.

Material for the meetings is gathered by the 24-hour operations center deep within the ultra-secure building. The room is dark, with a high ceiling, drop-down video screens and sound-muffling walls; its carpeted floor is covered with desks where integrated intelligence teams examine and share incoming data from their separate agencies in 12-hour shifts. At opposite ends of the room, the CIA and FBI counterterrorism divisions have satellite offices representing their own headquarters.

The thrice-daily meetings are the substantive and symbolic core of NCTC's melding of the intelligence community. But most of the center's activities take place in offices and cubicles where officials plumb 28 databases of raw and processed intelligence from across the community.

The analysts turn out reports, adding context and information about response actions already taken, that are disseminated to more than 5,500 policy and intelligence officials with the security clearances required to read them.

Even within the NCTC, however, access to information is not easy. Most desks are stacked high with half a dozen or more computer processing units connected to various intelligence agencies that still cannot, or will not, communicate with one another electronically.

Negroponte deputy Dale Meyerrose, a retired Air Force major general and expert in creating and integrating communications systems architecture, is charged with breaking down the technological barriers among what he calls intelligence "tribes" with a built-in reluctance to divulge their secrets.

Meyerrose, a recent addition to the DNI's office, does not dispute or defend the slow pace of information-sharing. "My government's had five years," he acknowledged in a recent interview behind a code-locked door inside the high-security DNI headquarters at Bolling Air Force Base. "I'm very sympathetic to that. But you know what? I've had four months, and there's nothing I can do about the 4 1/2 years that went before me."

Technology is important, but "it's the transparency of the process that people are griping about," Meyerrose said. Feuding intelligence agencies don't argue about a lack of computer interface, he said, they talk in terms of "The FBI wouldn't tell me this." Rather than imposing new computer systems from the top down, he has started from the human end, bringing representatives from different agencies to the same table to work on specific intelligence issues.

The NCTC operates on the same principle of "co-location," fashioned under the 2004 intelligence reforms, that pulled the branches of the armed forces into a combined structure designed to end decades of destructive and expensive rivalry.

The Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 created unified regional commands under a single general or admiral directly answerable to the nation's civilian leadership and named the chairman of the Joint Chiefs the principal military adviser to the president. By making assignments to the joint staff from across the military a prerequisite for most high-level promotions, it created a cadre of senior officers with perspectives beyond the narrow confines of their individual branches.

Negroponte, a former Foreign Service officer who most recently served as ambassador to Iraq and to the United Nations, is the intelligence community's equivalent of the chairman, and the NCTC is his joint staff. NCTC Director Redd is a retired vice admiral, and everyone else in the structure is on temporary duty from somewhere else in the intelligence community, usually for two-year stints. "Everybody still belongs to their other agency," a senior official said. "We're trying to tell them that the NCTC is them ."

The idea is that familiarity will breed cooperation and that personal relationships formed through shared tasks will carry through once individuals return to their home offices. "We are diverse cultures, working to form habitual relationships," the official said. "It takes time."

Staff writers Walter Pincus, Spencer S. Hsu, Dan Eggen and Ann Scott Tyson contributed to this report.

Special Report -- Between now and Sept. 11, this series of articles will explore the impact of the terrorist strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon five years after they occurred.

Miami Herald
August 9, 2006

Rumsfeld Is Right: There's No Rush To Leave

By Cal Thomas

Opponents of President Bush and his Iraq policy have jumped on a comment last week by Gen. John Abizaid, commander, U.S. Central Command, before the Senate Armed Services Committee: ``I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it, in Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war.''

Ignored in most of the media coverage was what Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the same hearing: ``I believe that we do have the possibility of that devolving to a civil war, but that does not have to be a fact. . . . Our enemy knows they cannot defeat us in battle. They do believe, however, that they can wear down our will as a nation.''

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., called the administration's Iraq policy a failure, which can only encourage the terrorist insurgents to keep on fighting and killing Iraqis and American soldiers. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., seemed fixated on timetables for withdrawal instead of defeating those who want to destroy the elected government of Iraq.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reminded the panel that the United States and the free world are in a ''global struggle against violent extremists.'' Rumsfeld's testimony bears reading and repeating to a large number of people who, in their quest for pleasure and personal peace, appear to lack the staying power required to defeat perhaps the greatest evil the world has ever faced.

Taking note of the differences between the way the United States and terrorists fight, Rumsfeld said, ''. . .one side puts their men and women at risk in uniform and obeys the laws of war, while the other side uses them against us.'' We have seen that in the world's reaction to Guantánamo Bay prison and Abu Ghraib. Terrorists use torture and murder and no court of public opinion or judicial entity holds them accountable. The rare instance of abuse by American soldiers is punished.

Rumsfeld elaborated on the difference between the two sides: ``One side does all it can to avoid civilian casualties, while the other side uses civilians as shields, and then skillfully orchestrates a public outcry when the other side accidentally kills civilians in their midst. One side is held to exacting standards of near perfection; the other side is held to no standards and no accountability at all.''

Rumsfeld noted how the enemy uses our media to undermine American resolve, ''planning attacks to gain the maximum media coverage and the maximum public outcry.'' And then, most importantly, he said: ``If we left Iraq prematurely -- as the terrorists demand -- the enemy would tell us to leave Afghanistan and then withdraw from the Middle East. And if we left the Middle East, they'd order us -- and all those who don't share their militant ideology -- to leave what they call occupied Muslim lands, from Spain to the Philippines, and then we would face not only the evil ideology of these violent extremists, but an enemy that will have grown accustomed to succeeding in telling free people everywhere what to do.''

For those who claim Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terrorism, Rumsfeld noted, ``This enemy has called Iraq the central front in the war on terrorism.''

During World War II, U.S. and German forces fought the battle of Hurtgen Forest. It began Sept. 19, 1944 and ended Feb. 10, 1945. That was one battle in a strategically insignificant corridor of barely 50 square miles east of the Belgium-Germany border. The Germans inflicted more than 24,000 casualties on American forces, while another 9,000 Americans were sidelined due to illness, fatigue and friendly fire. Had live TV beamed this battle to America, there might have been an outcry that the policy was failing and somehow a cease-fire and an accommodation with Hitler should be achieved.

America won that war because the objective wasn't to understand the Nazis, or to reach an accommodation with them; the objective was to win the war. Anything less in this war -- against an equally evil and unrelenting enemy -- will mean defeat for the United States and for freedom everywhere. That's what Rumsfeld was getting at when he said, ``We can persevere in Iraq or we can withdraw prematurely, until they force us to make a stand nearer home. But make no mistake: They are not going to give up, whether we acquiesce in their immediate demands or not.''

Rumsfeld is right.

Washington Post
August 9, 2006
Pg. 17

By Harold Meyerson

Of all the signs that the American people are fed up with the war in Iraq, the one that the administration should fear most was put forth last week by a longtime supporter of both the president and the war, Virginia Republican John Warner.

While chairing a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Warner suggested that the president might need a new congressional resolution authorizing our presence in Iraq, since the conflict there has become (or, best case, may yet become) a civil war.

Now, that would be one challenging resolution to write. Once you've come up with "Whereas the conflict in Iraq is now a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis," what is it, exactly, that we are therefore supposed to resolve? In an Iraqi civil war -- which is precisely what we now confront -- what is the mission of U.S. forces?

There are, after all, civil wars and civil wars. In the carnage that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia, it was chiefly the genocidal aggression of Slobodan Milosevic's Serbian nationalists that needed to be checked, and in time U.S. forces and their allies did just that. But the slaughter in Iraq is the work of many hands on both sides of their religious divide. And the role of American soldiers in an intra-Islamic conflict is impossible to plausibly articulate. (Imagine, for instance, that a small Islamic army had been plunked down in Europe during the Protestant-Catholic strife of the 16th and 17th centuries. Its mission would have been about as clear as ours in Iraq today.)

For the Bush administration, then, any admission that the Iraqi civil war is in fact a civil war destroys whatever remains of its justification for our presence there. For while it is true that the withdrawal of our forces will probably unleash even greater sectarian mayhem, it is also true that our presence cannot stop it and that our presence there has also greatly diminished our diplomatic and military capacity to accomplish anything else anyplace else.

If Iraqis have embarked on a bloody partition of their nation -- and to all appearances they have -- then the one remaining task for any non-indigenous force within Iraq is to help ensure that that division takes place with as little slaughter as possible. In the best of all possible worlds, the Iraqi parties would agree on their new lines of demarcation.

Agreement or no, however, the job of keeping the mayhem to a minimum would best be performed by forces with no perceived stake or history in the conflict -- that is, by a United Nations deployment of troops from nations that are neither Muslim nor Christian.

For George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, however, such a messy and sad resolution would make unmistakably clear the full dimensions of their folly. It's not true that they don't have a plan for Iraq. Their plan is to avoid having such a resolution occur on their watch, to delay the disintegration of Iraq, for which they more than anyone else are responsible, until Bush is out of office and they can lay the blame for this catastrophe on his successor.

There's also a more immediate reason why they need to stay the course. A recent poll of Republican voters commissioned by the Republican National Committee and reported on in yesterday's Los Angeles Times found that the best way the GOP could motivate its base in the upcoming election would be to contrast "the president's commitment to defeat the terrorists in Iraq" with the Democrats' supposed lack of commitment to that goal. (The quote is from pollster Fred Steeper's memo to Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman.)

The problem here is that only the Republican hard core still has confidence in Bush's Iraq policy, and a campaign focusing on affirming that policy would further inflame not only Democrats but independents as well. But with Republicans worrying about how just to turn out their base, staying the course in Iraq does retain a certain warped logic.

Once it's acknowledged that the war in Iraq is a sectarian civil war, however, staying the course has no logic for anyone. Which is why Bush remains determined to dispute any such characterization. "You know, I hear people say, well, civil war this, civil war that," he told reporters at his Crawford, Tex., ranch on Monday. "The Iraqi people decided against civil war when they went to the ballot box. And a unity government is working to respond to the will of the people. And, frankly, it's quite a remarkable achievement on the political front, and the security front is where there's been troubles."

As long as there's an Iraqi government, apparently, there can be no civil war in Iraq. Another problem solved in the neat little world of George Bush.

Los Angeles Times
August 9, 2006

Radical Ideas For Iraq

By Max Boot

President Bush admitted in late July that the security situation in Baghdad was "terrible" and announced that he was sending more troops to quell the violence. Because this is what I advocated in a May 24 column, I should be happy with the president's decision. But, alas, as with so many American initiatives in Iraq, it's too little, too late.

The security situation in Baghdad has been in free fall since the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra on Feb. 22. In retrospect, that attack appears to be a turning point when the chief problem in Iraq went from being a Sunni-dominated insurgency to a civil war in which Shiite and Sunni militias are equally culpable. The result has been a horrifying surge in violence, with about 100 Iraqis dying every day, the bulk of them in Baghdad.

To restore order in the capital, I suggested adding at least 35,000 U.S. troops — in line with Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez's comment in 2004 that he needed two divisions to control Baghdad. But that's not what Bush is sending. To bolster the 9,000 U.S. troops already in the capital, he is sending another brigade from northern Iraq, for a total of 13,000 U.S. troops, or less than one division. There will be an equal number of Iraqi troops — along with 35,000 Iraqi police officers, who are so sectarian and corrupt that they are more part of the problem than the solution.

If Bush thinks that a force this size can secure a city of more than 6 million people, he's not listening to the best professional military advice. An additional problem is that moving troops around Iraq, instead of sending extra units, may improve the situation in one spot but worsen the environment elsewhere. As a "senior American military official" in Iraq told McClatchy News Service, "You can't do clear-and-hold with the force structure we have."

If the present strategy doesn't work, what's the alternative? The most radical course would be a total U.S. withdrawal. The likely result would be an all-out civil war in which Iraqi casualties could easily soar to 1,000 a day and the price of oil could go above $100 a barrel. Proposals to carve up Iraq into three separate states — Sunni, Shiite and Kurd — would not ameliorate the violence because major cities such as Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk are full of different religious and ethnic groups that would fight for control.

THINGS MIGHT ultimately work out if the current, moderate Shiite leadership were to prevail. But the more likely result would be the empowerment of radicals on both sides, with someone like Muqtada Sadr taking over in Baghdad and a rump, Taliban-style Sunni state being carved out of western Iraq. U.S. prestige would be deeply wounded, and Islamist terrorists would be encouraged to keep attacking us outside Iraq.

No wonder almost all Iraqi political factions are opposed to a U.S. pullout. They know what horrors would ensue.

But there's another course short of withdrawal: reducing U.S. forces from today's level of 130,000 to under 50,000 and changing their focus from conducting combat operations to assisting Iraqi forces. The money saved from downsizing the U.S. presence could be used to better train and equip more Iraqi units. A smaller U.S. commitment also would be more sustainable over the long term. This is the option favored within the U.S. Special Forces community, in which the dominant view is that most American soldiers in Iraq, with their scant knowledge of the local language and customs, are more of a hindrance than a help to the counterinsurgency effort.

Make no mistake: This is a high-risk strategy. The drawdown of U.S. troops could catalyze the Iraqis into getting their own house in order, or it could lead to a more rapid and violent disintegration of the rickety structure that now exists.

Which path should we take? My preference remains deploying more soldiers, not fewer. A couple of divisions in Baghdad, if skillfully led, might be able to replicate the success that Col. H.R. McMaster's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment had in pacifying the western city of Tall Afar, where the troops-to-civilians ratio was 10 times higher than in Baghdad today. But at this point, I am also open to a substantial reduction in troop numbers because the current strategy just isn't working.

Bush needs to do something radical to shake up a deteriorating status quo if we are to have any hope of averting the worst American military defeat since Vietnam.

New York Post
August 8, 2006

Iraq War Three

By John Podhoretz

'The war in Iraq' is a misnomer. There have actually been three distinct wars in Iraq since 2003 - related wars, to be sure, but distinct nonetheless.

In the First Iraq War, the Coalition of the Willing scored a triumphant victory in the space of a month.

The Second Iraq War followed immediately upon the first, with two new antagonists. Those antagonists overlapped with the enemy from the first Iraq war, but were different in kind and degree. We spent three hard years fighting that second war, and now it appears we may have won it.

But now the Third Iraq War is raging. It too has some overlap with the first two. But the stark truth is that this third war is not one that America and Britain can win for the Iraqis.

The first war was, of course, the actual invasion of Iraq, during which the United States and its allies moved with unprecedented speed and agility to Baghdad and toppled Saddam Hussein's evil regime in three weeks' time. The victory was secured despite the fact that Turkey wouldn't let us use its territory to invade from the North.

Turkey's refusal would have powerful consequences. If U.S. troops had come into Iraq from the North, Saddam Hussein's military would have faced an enemy on two sides. Because we couldn't, much of the military simply evaporated into the civilian population in the Sunni Triangle. And some of them lived to fight another day.

But the First Iraq War achieved its goal - it toppled Saddam's regime. The presumption was that Saddam's departure would allow the United States to turn immediately to the political reconstruction of the country - that the problem with Iraq was the diseased Saddam regime and its destruction would allow constructive Iraqi leaders to find a new way forward.

That was why the first American coordinator in Iraq, Gen. Jay Garner, spent his brief sojourn there trying to broker a political deal - even as the Sunni resistance was organizing according to a Saddam-designed plan that predated the war.

The Second Iraq War was the guerrilla-terrorist assault on Coalition forces. The Sunni insurgents made common cause with the al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, with the horrific results we all know so well. Like any guerrilla-terror war, its purpose was to grind down and demoralize the enemy and to use the enemy's own internal contradictions against it.

We were the enemy, and our own internal contradictions included a desperate hunger on the part of so many to popularize, publicize and distort isolated incidents like the Abu Ghraib abuse beyond recognition. Thus we contributed to our own demoralization.

The grinding Second War may have come to a successful conclusion due to two events: The formation of the Iraqi government on May 20 and the killing of Zarqawi on June 8. The inability of the enemies of progress to prevent the government from coming to power must have been a huge blow, and certainly the death of its key strategist may have been the coup de grace. The Coalition casualty toll has decelerated radically in the last 9 weeks.

But now Iraqis are dying at a gruesome rate - in civil strife between Shiites and Sunnis. As many as 1,300 people were killed last month alone.

This is the Third Iraq War, and the most striking aspect of it is that it doesn't involve us. The Sunnis have now embarked on what I think is a pretty crazy strategy of trying to engage Iraq's Shiites in vicious sectarian conflict.

It's crazy because the Shiites outnumber the Sunnis three-to-one. It's even crazier because the Shiites have a natural ally in Iran, a Shiite nation that can secretly or not so secretly help them to win.

But then, the Sunni strategies in this conflict haven't been entirely rational. Saddam's demented strategy before the war failed to keep us from invading. The insurgent strategy of trying to drive us out ultimately failed to shake American and British resolve. And now they seemed determined to start a civil war that they can only lose.

If the Sunnis and Shiites really go at it, it's hard to see what exactly we can do to get them to stop. And thus, if the civil war flowers fully, the Third Iraq War may be the one we're going to lose. Even though we're not one of the combatants, a sectarian victory by Shiites fighting with Iran's backing will strengthen Tehran. And a stronger Iran is not something any American should want to see.

If Iraq wants to commit suicide in this manner - if the Sunnis want to be massacred and the Shiites want to end up under Iran's thumb - what can be done to prevent it?

I think the answer ultimately lies with the Iraqi people, who braved violence in three elections over more than a year's time because they were determined to help bring about a better future.

Los Angeles Times
August 9, 2006

Kiss Iraq Goodbye If Shiites Align With Hezbollah

By Rajan Menon

As Israel and Hezbollah continue to trade deadly blows, the Bush administration may have to brace itself for the possibility that the shock waves from the war in Lebanon could wreck its partnership with Iraq's Shiites and make Iraq's fragmentation well-nigh unavoidable.

Anger over Israel's bombing of Lebanon has reached Iraq, whose population is roughly two-thirds Shiite. Muqtada Sadr, the firebrand Shiite cleric who heads the Al Mahdi militia, was first to rail against the Israeli bombardment and Washington's fulsome support of it. He continues to do so. On Friday, thousands (estimates range from 14,000 to 100,000) of pro-Sadr Shiites flooded Baghdad's streets, chanting slogans of solidarity with Hezbollah and denouncing Israel and the United States.

Sadr is driven by more than religious solidarity with Hezbollah. He also seeks to outflank moderate Shiite leaders, particularly Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, perhaps even Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and he knows that the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon could boost his already substantial political stock.

Maliki and Sistani are well aware of this, of course, and they are not about to let that happen. They view Sadr as a dangerous demagogue and, unlike him, favor a continued American military presence in Iraq. But Sadr's rabble-rousing gambit has left them no choice but to follow his script.

Not surprisingly, then, Maliki was quick to condemn Israeli attacks in the wake of Sadr's statements. Other senior Shiite clerics and Iraq's main Shiite parties, Dawa and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, weighed in, expressing solidarity with Lebanon and lambasting Israel.

After some delay, Sistani, by far the most influential Shiite leader, also pilloried Israel's "flagrant aggression" and "outrageous oppression" and, while not specifically naming the United States, accused the world of "turning a blind eye" to Lebanese suffering.

After Israel's July 30 attack on a residential building in Qana, which killed at least 28 people (half of whom were said to be children), Sistani issued a fatwa condemning the "dastardly crime" by the "Israeli enemy." He called for an immediate cease-fire and warned that Muslims "will not excuse parties that put obstacles in the way of this." (What he left unsaid, but that was nevertheless clear to all who read the fatwa, was that it is the United States that opposed the cease-fire for several weeks in hopes of giving Israel time to destroy Hezbollah's bastions in southern Lebanon.) What remains unclear is whether a competitive process will begin, with Shiite leaders each ratcheting up anti-Israeli statements. That could produce a breach with the United States — one that could have lasting consequences. Shiite leaders cannot continue condemning Israel's war in Lebanon without coming out against the United States. That's because, in Arab eyes, American arms supplies and political backing are what enable Israel to persist with its military campaign.

AN OPEN RIFT between the Shiites and the United States is hardly inevitable. But it's certainly possible if the war in Lebanon drags on and if Iran starts stirring the pot, which it can, given its substantial sway with Iraqi Shiite parties.

With Gen. John P. Abizaid testifying before the Senate last week that Iraq's sectarian violence is getting worse, the United States can ill afford to forfeit Shiite support. It is one thing for the United States to have Sadr as an enemy; it's altogether different to lose the support of moderate Shiite leaders such as Maliki and Sistani, without whom the U.S. will be unable to hold Iraq together. U.S. forces may still remain in Iraq, but their nation-building assignment, already near-impossible, will have become truly impossible.

What's worse, an unraveling of the U.S.-Shiite partnership would inevitably affect the calculus of Iraq's Kurds, possibly prompting them to declare independence. Turkey might well intervene, turning an Iraqi civil war into a regional war that would make Washington's problems, hard as it is to imagine, much worse. Bush administration rhetoric notwithstanding, the U.S. would be forced to fold its tent and go home.

The good news is that there's still time to avoid this scenario by implementing a cease-fire in Lebanon. That would end the carnage and prevent Hezbollah from attaining heroic status among Iraqi Shiites.

RAJAN MENON is a professor of international relations at Lehigh University and a fellow at the New America Foundation.

New York Daily News
August 9, 2006

In U.S., Justice For All

By Bill Goodman

President Bush once said the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay are dangerous terrorists. Yet over the past five years, nearly 300 of the original 800 detainees held have been released. Just last month, five Kuwaitis, released after spending years in Guantánamo, were found innocent by their country's high court.

So the question must be asked: Is the President releasing terrorists?

The answer is no. It turns out that the overwhelming majority of Guantánamo detainees have no connection to terrorist activity. The Pentagon even announced it would release one-third of the remaining detainees, acknowledging they pose no threat to national security.

The fact is the Guantánamo prison system is far more effective at releasing detainees abroad than trying them at home. None of the detainees have been convicted by an American court of any crime. And only 10 were eligible to be tried by Bush's military commissions, which the Supreme Court recently rejected as unconstitutional.

Now there comes an opportunity for a new approach, but the administration is stubbornly pressing Congress to pass a bill authorizing a system to try the detainees that is similar to the commissions. That would be a mistake for two reasons.

First, the Supreme Court rejected Bush's commissions because they were not "regularly constituted courts," as required by domestic and international law. The new proposals would fail that same test.

Second, the President's newest proposal would permit hearsay evidence and allow detainees to be convicted and executed after being excluded from their own trials, a measure unheard of in civilized nations. (Even former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein can attend his trial.) And the new draft oddly has no speedy trial requirement, effectively allowing unlimited detention of innocent people.

There is a better way.

Detainees caught on the battlefield can be court-martialed and tried under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. All other detainees can be tried under the nation's existing civil laws. Civilian courts have resolved terrorism cases before, including the Oklahoma City bombing and the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.

Courts martial and civilian courts also are more likely to accurately determine who is a threat and who should be released.

Applying the military code to the detainees is not a new or radical solution. The military's top brass called for trials by court-martial in 2001, and today leading military lawyers are urging the administration and Congress to use the code to prosecute detainees. This standard is sufficient for the Supreme Court, which specifically noted that detainees could be court-martialed under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The higher standards of military code and civilian courts also are in the best interest of the U.S. because they enhance America's moral authority. Imprisoning innocent people for years without trial is not only a waste of time and resources, it violates the rights in the U.S. Constitution and common standards of decency. As people across the political spectrum have emphasized, today America is not only at war, but also engaged in a battle of ideas.

One of our founding principles is justice for all, and it is needed now more than ever.

Bill Goodman is the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which won the 2004 Supreme Court case establishing the Guantánamo detainees' rights to challenge their detention.

Washington Post
August 9, 2006
Pg. 17

By Fouad Siniora

BEIRUT -- A military solution to Israel's savage war on Lebanon and the Lebanese people is both morally unacceptable and totally unrealistic. We in Lebanon call upon the international community and citizens everywhere to support my country's sovereignty and end this folly now. We also insist that Israel be made to respect international humanitarian law, including the provisions of the Geneva Conventions, which it has repeatedly and willfully violated.

As the world watches, Israel has besieged and ravaged our country, created a humanitarian and environmental disaster, and shattered our infrastructure and economy, putting an intolerable strain on our social and economic systems. Fuel, food and medical equipment are in short supply; homes, factories and warehouses have been destroyed; roads severed, bridges smashed and airports disabled.

The damage to infrastructure alone is running into the billions of dollars, as are the losses to owners of private property, and the long-term direct and indirect costs due to lost revenue in tourism, agriculture and industrial sectors are expected to be many more billions. Lebanon's well-known achievements in 15 years of postwar development have been wiped out in a matter of days by Israel's deadly military might.

For all this carnage and death, and on behalf of all Lebanese, we demand an international inquiry into Israel's criminal actions in Lebanon and insist that Israel pay compensation for its wanton destruction.

Israel seems to think that its attacks will sow discord among the Lebanese. This will never happen. Israel should know that the Lebanese people will remain steadfast and united in the face of this latest Israeli aggression -- its seventh invasion -- just as they were during nearly two decades of brutal occupation. The people's will to resist grows ever stronger with each village demolished and each massacre committed.

On July 25, at the international conference for Lebanon in Rome, I proposed a comprehensive seven-point plan to end the war. It was well received by the conference and got the unanimous and full backing of the Lebanese Council of Ministers, in which Hezbollah is represented, as well as of the speaker of parliament and a majority of parliamentary blocs. Representatives of diverse segments of Lebanese civil society have come out strongly in favor, as has the Islamic-Christian Summit, representing all the religious confessions, ensuring a broad national consensus and preserving our delicate social equilibrium.

The plan, which also received the full support of the 56 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, included an immediate, unconditional and comprehensive cease-fire and called for:

*The release of Lebanese and Israeli prisoners and detainees through the International Committee of the Red Cross.

*The withdrawal of the Israeli army behind the "blue line."

*A commitment from the U.N. Security Council to place the Shebaa Farms and Kfar Shouba Hills areas under U.N. jurisdiction until border delineation and Lebanese sovereignty over them are fully settled. Further, Israel must surrender all maps of remaining land mines in southern Lebanon to the United Nations.

*Extension of the Lebanese government's authority over its territory through its legitimate armed forces, with no weapons or authority other than that of the Lebanese state, as stipulated in the Taif accord. We have indicated that the Lebanese armed forces are ready and able to deploy in southern Lebanon, alongside the U.N. forces there, the moment Israel pulls back to the international border.

*The supplementing of the U.N. international force operating in southern Lebanon and its enhancement in numbers, equipment, mandate and scope of operation, as needed, to undertake urgent humanitarian and relief work and guarantee stability and security in the south so that those who fled their homes can return.

*Action by the United Nations on the necessary measures to once again put into effect the 1949 armistice agreement signed by Lebanon and Israel and to ensure adherence to its provisions, as well as to explore possible amendments to or development of those provisions as necessary.

*The commitment of the international community to support Lebanon on all levels, including relief, reconstruction and development needs.

As part of this comprehensive plan, and empowered by strong domestic political support and the unanimous backing of the cabinet, the Lebanese government decided to deploy the Lebanese armed forces in southern Lebanon as the sole domestic military force in the area, alongside U.N. forces there, the moment Israel pulls back to the international border.

Israel responded by slaughtering more civilians in the biblical town of Qana. Such horrible scenes have been repeated daily for nearly four weeks and continue even as I write these words.

The resolution to this war must respect international law and U.N. resolutions, not just those selected by Israel, a state that deserves its reputation as a pariah because of its consistent disdain for and rejection of international law and the wishes of the international community for over half a century.

Lebanon calls, once again, on the United Nations to bring about an immediate cease-fire to relieve the beleaguered people of Lebanon. Only then can the root causes of this war -- Israeli occupation of Lebanese territories and its perennial threat to Lebanon's security, as well as Lebanon's struggle to regain full sovereignty over all its territory -- be addressed.

I believe that a political resolution rooted in international law and based on these seven points will lead to long-term stability. If Israel would realize that the peoples of the Middle East cannot be cowed into submission, that they aspire only to live in freedom and dignity, it could also be a stepping stone to a final solution of the wider Arab-Israeli conflict, which has plagued our region for 60 years.

The 2002 Arab summit in Beirut, which called for a just, comprehensive and lasting peace based on the principle of land for peace, showed the way forward. A political solution cannot, however, be implemented as long as Israel continues to occupy Arab land in Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights and as long as it wages war on innocent people in Lebanon and Palestine. As Jawaharlal Nehru said, "the only alternative to coexistence is co-destruction."

Enough destruction, dispossession, desperation, displacement and death! Lebanon must be allowed to reclaim its position in this troubled region as a beacon of freedom and democracy where justice and the rule of law prevail, and as a refuge for the oppressed where moderation, tolerance and enlightenment triumph.

The writer is prime minister of Lebanon.

Wall Street Journal
August 9, 2006
Pg. 10

By Peter Wehner

Recent elections in the Middle East discredit the Bush administration's efforts to promote democracy in that region, according to a line of argument. On "Meet the Press," Tim Russert summarized the criticism this way: "You have free elections in Iraq, and the head of the parliament calls us butchers. You have free elections in Palestine, and Hamas wins. You have elections in Lebanon, and Hezbollah wins 10, 12 seats in the parliament and two cabinet seats. Free elections are no guarantee of democracy."

George Will said this: "Elections have brought the Muslim Brotherhood into government in Egypt. Elections turned Hamas into the government of the Palestinian territories. . . . It could be that there are moments when sampling and empowering the popular will is going to empower extremism." And Time claims, "[E]lections [in the Middle East] are producing governments more hospitable to extremism, not less. Exhibit A was the election of Hamas . . ."

It's worth examining these arguments with care. It is not as if Hamas replaced the Palestinian version of the Federalist Party. Hamas defeated Fatah, which was a corrupt and brutal regime under Yasser Arafat -- himself a father of the modern terrorist movement. Mahmoud Abbas is a very different man and committed to peace, but he has been unable to fundamentally reform Fatah. The Palestinian people voted against Fatah in part because of Arafat's despotism. And note: Before the election, Hamas had influence and was under no international pressure to reform its ways; today, because of elections, it is for the first time facing pressure from other nations. The worst situation of all might have been for Hamas to have influence but no responsibility for governing. Now it has responsibility -- and like other governments, it should be held accountable for the choices it makes.

Hezbollah is powerful not because of the number of its parliamentary seats (14 out of 128); it is so because it is an armed, brutal militia that exists in a weak state and a fledgling democracy. Beyond that, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood were not the creation of free elections. None was radicalized by them; all were dangerous before them. It's also worth noting that radical Islamic governments have come to power through means other than the ballot. It's not as if an undemocratic Middle East is a region characterized by peace and harmony.

Elections are not the problem; rather, they reveal what problems exist and remind us what tyranny in the Middle East has wrought. Liberty is the antidote to the virus, not the virus itself. But freedom requires more time to work in the Middle East than the blink of an historical eye.

Perfection cannot be the price of support for democracy, and the fact that not every election goes as we might hope does not invalidate support for the effort to promote liberty. Freedom has a remarkable track record, including in regions that were once thought to be inimical to it. But it takes commitment to see it to success. We may well be present at the creation of something remarkable in the Arab world; but it will not come to pass without hardships. That is the nature of historic transitions, which can be jolting and where progress can be uneven.

In the very early days of democracy in the Middle East, we have seen the millions of purple fingers in Iraq -- and we have seen the election of Hamas. There have been instances of progress and setbacks. But the one thing we know is that the status quo in the Middle East gave us bin Ladenism, which is what the administration is attempting to undo. No serious alternative strategy to the Freedom Agenda has been proposed. And the best proof of how dangerous democracy is to Islamic fascists is the energy with which they are trying to defeat it. It would be better if a vibrant democratic culture existed in nations before elections were held, but how can such a culture be created in repressive societies? Civic institutions tend not to flourish in a society where, on a daily basis, jackboots stomp on human faces. And once people are liberated, is the argument that the U.S., as the liberating power, should postpone elections for five years? 10? Longer?

Free elections are not sufficient, but they can be catalyzing. They can help build the institutions of democracy and foster civic habits. It's also worth emphasizing that democracies in the Middle East will not look like our own, because they will reflect the traditions of their own citizens. What liberty in the Middle East will ultimately require is the emergence of responsible religious and secular parties.

Do critics of democracy believe we would be significantly better off with the reign of an Arafat? Do they believe that Iraq, which consists of a freely elected, multiethnic government whose leadership is fighting terrorism instead of supporting it, was better under Saddam Hussein than it is now? Do they believe that it was better to have the Taliban control Afghanistan, not Hamid Karzai? Do they believe we should support more repression within Arab societies? In the past, Western nations tolerated oppression for the sake of "stability." But this gave rise to resentments, anger and an ideology of violence -- and on Sept. 11, 2001, that ideology struck with deadly fury.

The people of the Middle East have for generations suffered under tyranny and been raised on hatred. Democracy and the accompanying rise in free institutions are what they deserve, and what our own security demands. The Freedom Agenda is morally compelling because liberty is better than bondage. But there is also a strong realpolitik argument in favor of the Freedom Agenda. In the words of President Bush, "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world." Those who disagree with him must believe, by the power of their own logic, that continued tyranny is the route to a better world. The president has a fundamentally different view, and his remarkable effort to promote human liberty and American security sets him apart from his critics.

In his autobiography, Dean Acheson wrote about the immensity of the task the Truman administration faced after war ended in 1945, which "only slowly revealed itself. As it did so, it began to appear as just a bit less formidable than that described in the first chapter of Genesis. That was to create a world out of chaos . . ." He wrote about the great revival of Western Europe after the war -- and of the "deepening gloom" and the "spirit of defeatism" that engulfed many people during the conflict with North Korea. Secretary Acheson's goal was to "tell a tale of large conceptions, great achievements, and some failures, the product of enormous will and effort."

We face a similar moment. The difficulties are just as formidable, the stakes just as high, the critics just as vocal, and the imperative for success just as vital.

Mr. Wehner is deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives.

Philadelphia Inquirer
August 8, 2006

Times Call For New Pentagon Papers

By Daniel Ellsberg

According to recent opinion polls, most Iraqis don't believe that we're making things better or safer in their country. What does that say about the legitimacy of prolonged occupation, much less permanent American bases in Iraq? What does it mean for continued American patrols such as the one last November in Haditha, which, we now learn, led to the deaths of a Marine and 24 unarmed civilians?

Questions very much like these nagged at my conscience at the height of the Vietnam War, and led, eventually, to the publication of the Pentagon Papers in the summer of 1971, 35 years ago.

As a former Marine commander and defense analyst in 1970, I had exclusive access to highly classified defense documents for research purposes. They constituted a 47-volume, top-secret Defense Department history of American involvement in Vietnam titled U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68. The Pentagon Papers made it very clear that I, like the rest of the American public, had been misled about the origins and purposes of the war I had participated in. Today's troops in Iraq have also been misled, as 85 percent of them believed, according to a Zogby poll from March, that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 and that he was allied with al-Qaeda.

That period had several other similarities to this one.

Americans saw the color photographs of the My Lai massacre; now we are seeing photographs eerily similar to those from Haditha: women, children, old men and babies, all shot at short range.

Congress was debating the withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from Indochina while President Richard Nixon was making secret plans to expand, rather than exit from, the ongoing war in Southeast Asia - including a major air offensive against North Vietnam, possibly using nuclear weapons. Today, the Bush administration's threats to wage war against Iran are explicit, with reports indicating that officials regularly reiterate that the nuclear "option" is "on the table."

What prompted me to begin copying 7,000 pages of highly classified documents - an act that I fully expected would send me to prison for life? I came to the conclusion that the system I had been part of as a Marine, a Pentagon official and a State Department officer in Vietnam lied reflexively, at every level, from sergeant to commander in chief, about murder. And I had the evidence to prove it.

The papers showed very clearly how we had become engaged in a reckless war of choice in someone else's country - a country that had not attacked us - for our own domestic and external purposes. It became clear to me that the justifications that had been given for our involvement were false. And if the war itself was unjust, then all the victims of our firepower were being killed without justification.

That's murder.

Today, there must be, at the very least, hundreds of civilian and military officials in the Pentagon, CIA, State Department, National Security Agency and White House who have in their safes and computers comparable documentation of intense internal debates - so far carefully concealed from Congress and the public - about prospective or actual war crimes, reckless policies and domestic crimes: the Pentagon Papers of Iraq, Iran or the ongoing war on U.S. liberties. Some of those officials, I hope, will choose to accept the personal risks of revealing the truth - earlier than I did - before more lives are lost or a new war is launched.

Haditha holds a mirror up not just to American troops in the field, but to our whole society. Not just to the liars in government but to those who believe them too easily. And to all of us in the public, in the administration, in Congress and the media who dissent so far ineffectively or who stand by as murder is being done and do nothing to stop it or expose it.

Americans must summon the courage to face what is being done in their name and to refuse to be accomplices. The Voters' Pledge (www.VotersForPeace.US) is one way to do this. This project comprises many of the major organizations in the antiwar movement - United for Peace and Justice, Peace Action, Gold Star Families for Peace, Code Pink, and Democracy Rising - as well as groups such as the National Organization for Women, Progressive Democrats in America and AfterDowningStreet.com. The coalition's goal is to build a base of antiwar voters that cannot be ignored by anyone running for office in the United States.

Voters in Connecticut will make their voices heard in today's primary election for U.S. senator. We want millions of other voters, including you, to sign the pledge and say no to pro-war candidates when you next go to the polls.

Daniel Ellsberg, an antiwar activist, is a former U.S. military analyst who released the Pentagon Papers to American newspapers.

USA Today
August 9, 2006
Pg. 8

I was disappointed, although not surprised, to read the headline "Army makes way for older soldiers: Raises age limit, eases requirements" (News, Wednesday). I was disappointed because:

*The military does not set physical requirements for soldiers. The requirements are set by steely-eyed fanatics halfway across the world, where the austere conditions are the same for every soldier: It's 120 degrees with 16-hour days, sandstorms, high altitudes and uncertainty — whether you're age 19 or age 42.

*There is no "front line" in Iraq or Afghanistan from which we can excuse the "older soldier." The front line in a counter-insurgency is one meter out and 360 degrees around each soldier.

*Soldiers depend on each other for their very survival. Will we forgive the "older soldier" who is subject to lower standards for not being able to get his wounded buddy to a medical aid station in time to save his life?

One may wonder whether an Army of standards is turning into one of compromise and rationalization.

Dennis Laich, Major general, retired, United States Army, Dublin, Ohio

Editor's Note: The article by Tom Vanden Brook appeared in the Current News Early Bird, August 2, 2006.

Washington Post
August 9, 2006
Pg. 16

T.R. Reid just scratched the surface concerning Cold War-era emergency command posts in writing about the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center in Colorado ["Military to Idle NORAD Compound," news story, July 29]. Unmentioned were two of the largest and most significant sites supporting highly secret "continuity of government" plans intended to ensure the government's survival during and after a nuclear war.

For decades, the High Point Special Facility, a 600,000-square-foot complex inside Virginia's Mount Weather (48 miles by air from Washington, near Berryville), served as the main relocation site for the White House, the Supreme Court and much of the executive branch. On Sept. 11, 2001, most of the congressional leadership was evacuated to the site by helicopter.

To the northeast, on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border near Camp David, is Site R, formally known as the Alternate Joint Communications Center. With more than 700,000 feet of usable floor space inside Raven Rock Mountain, Site R was designed to house 3,000 people and function as a backup Pentagon. It also served as Vice President Cheney's "secure, undisclosed location" following Sept. 11 and for much of 2002.

Even less well known is the so-called Federal Relocation Arc around Washington, in which every Cabinet department (and every government organization deemed essential) maintains its own emergency backup facility. Many were activated and staffed for months following Sept. 11. And in mid-June some 4,000 employees from 50 to 60 federal agencies participated in Forward Challenge '06, the largest ever continuity-of-government exercise.

Stephen I. Schwartz, Editor, The Nonproliferation Review, Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, Calif.

Editor's Note: The article referred to appeared in the Current News Early Bird, July 29, 2006.