Veterans for Common Sense

A majority of U.S. soldiers in Iraq say morale is low, according to an Army report that finds psychological stress is weighing particularly heavily on National Guard and Reserve troops.

Still, soldiers’ mental health has improved from the early months of the insurgency, and suicides have declined sharply, the report said. Also, substantially fewer soldiers had to be evacuated from Iraq for mental health problems last year.

The Army sent a team of mental health specialists to Iraq and Kuwait late last summer to assess conditions and measure progress in implementing programs designed to fix mental health problems discovered during a similar survey of troops a year earlier. Its report, dated Jan. 30, 2005, was released Wednesday.

The initial inquiry was triggered in part by an unusual surge in suicides among soldiers in Iraq in July 2003. Wednesday’s report said the number of suicides in Iraq and Kuwait declined from 24 in 2003 to nine last year.

A suicide prevention program was begun for soldiers in Iraq at the recommendation of the 2003 assessment team.

The overall assessment said 13 percent of soldiers in the most recent study screened positive for a mental health problem, compared with 18 percent a year earlier. Symptoms of acute or post-traumatic stress remained the top mental health problem, affecting at least 10 percent of all soldiers checked in the latest survey.

In the anonymous survey, 17 percent of soldiers said they had experienced moderate or severe stress or problems with alcohol, emotions or their families. That compares with 23 percent a year earlier.

The report said reasons for the improvement in mental health are not clear. Among possible explanations: less frequent and less intense combat, more comforts like air conditioning, wider access to mental health services and improved training in handling the stresses associated with deployments and combat.

National Guard and Reserve soldiers who serve in transportation and support units suffered more than others from depression, anxiety and other indications of acute psychological stress, the report said. These soldiers have often been targets of the insurgents’ lethal ambushes and roadside bombs, although the report said they had significantly fewer actual combat experiences than soldiers assigned to combat units.

The report recommended that the Army reconsider whether National Guard and Reserve support troops are getting adequate training in combat skills. Even though they do less fighting than combat troops, they might be better suited to cope with wartime stress if they had more confidence in their combat skills, it said.

Only 55 percent of National Guard support soldiers said they have “real confidence” in their unit’s ability to perform its mission, compared with 63 percent of active-duty Army support soldiers. And only 28 percent of the Guard troops rated their level of training as high, compared with 50 percent of their active-duty counterparts.

Small focus groups were held to ascertain troop morale.

The report said 54 percent of soldiers rated their units’ morale as low or very low. The comparable figure in a year-earlier Army survey was 72 percent. Although respondents said “combat stressors” like mortar attacks were higher in the most recent survey, “noncombat stressors” like uncertain tour lengths were much lower, the report said.

The thing that bothered soldiers the most, the latest assessment said, was the length of their required stay in Iraq. At the start of the war, most were deployed for six months, but now they go for 12 months.

Asked about this, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference that the Army’s 12-month requirement is linked in part to its effort to complete a fundamental reorganization of fighting units.

“I’ve tried to get the Army to look at the length of tours and I think at some point down the road they will,” he said.

RICHMOND, July 19 — A top government attorney declared Tuesday that, in the war on terror, the United States is a battlefield, and therefore President Bush has the authority to detain enemy combatants indefinitely in this country.

Solicitor General Paul D. Clement’s comments came as a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit is considering whether to overturn a lower court ruling that Jose Padilla should be charged with a crime or released. In 2002, Padilla, a former Chicago gang member and Muslim convert, was taken into custody by the military and has been held without trial since.

The government alleges that Padilla, a U.S. citizen, trained with al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and arrived in this country in May 2002 with the intent of blowing up apartment buildings.

The panel assigned to hear the arguments was Judge J. Michael Luttig of Alexandria, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, and two appointees of President Bill Clinton: Judge M. Blane Michael of Charleston, W.Va., and Judge William B. Traxler Jr. of Greenville, S.C.

The judges were most concerned with how to handle Padilla in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last year on Yaser Esam Hamdi. Hamdi, also a U.S. citizen, was captured by the military with Taliban forces in Afghanistan and placed in a Navy brig in Norfolk. The Supreme Court ruled that his detention was lawful but that he was entitled to a hearing to challenge the allegations against him.

But moments after Clement began his oral argument, Luttig interrupted to say that “arguably, Judge [Sandra Day] O’Connor in ‘Hamdi’ limited that law to the battlefield detention, did she not?” Padilla was picked up at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on a warrant from a federal court in New York and only later was turned over to the military.

“That’s not how I would read the case,” Clement responded.

Luttig repeatedly pressed Clement, even after the solicitor general noted that Padilla’s alleged intentions as a soldier of al Qaeda — to target civilians — constituted “unlawful combatantcy” even if he were on a battlefield in uniform.

“Those accusations don’t get you very far,” Luttig replied, “unless you’re prepared to boldly say the United States is a battlefield in the war on terror.”

Clement answered, “I can say that, and I can say it boldly.”

But Michael said Padilla wasn’t captured anywhere near a battlefield. “You captured Padilla in a Manhattan jail cell,” Michael said. “What, in the laws of war, allows you to undertake a non-battlefield capture and hold them for the duration? I don’t think you cite anything.”

Michael, addressing Clement’s claim that the United States is a battlefield, then asked: “To call the United States a battlefield, wouldn’t you have needed a specific authorization from Congress? It’s not up to us as a court to develop laws of war.”

Andrew G. Patel argued the case for Padilla, who has been held in a South Carolina brig for three years and only last year was granted the right to meet with his attorneys. “I may be the first lawyer to stand here and say I’m asking for my client to be indicted by a federal grand jury,” Patel told the panel.

Padilla’s attorneys believe that neither the Hamdi decision, nor a congressional authorization of military powers to the president in September 2001, negates a U.S. citizen’s right to challenge the government’s accusations at trial.

Michael said, “If we were to rule in your favor, we’d be saying you get a free pass to go back to the battle.”

Patel responded, “What you’d get a free pass to is a federal indictment and trial.”

Luttig posed a hypothetical in which the president learned that a terrorist was about to bomb a building in Manhattan. “Does he have to call a U.S. attorney and wait for the man to be picked up by civilian law enforcement? If the president sends the military, it’s illegal?” Luttig asked.

“If the military picks him up, he must be surrendered to civilian authorities,” Patel said.

“We might as well not have a president of the United States,” Luttig said, “if his hands are tied behind his back to protect the citizens of the United States. . . . This is a failure to appreciate the real world circumstances that can confront a president of the United States.”

Traxler spoke only once during the hour-long arguments, to ask if Luttig’s hypothetical situation would be different if the terrorist were a foreign citizen, or in uniform. Patel said it would not, unless Congress specifically authorized the military to take such action.

“There is absolutely no emergency authority resident with the president of the United States,” Luttig said. “That’s the argument you’re making, and it’s a fine argument.” But moments later, he added, “It seems to me that after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hamdi” and the congressional authorization for use of military force, “on the extant law, it’s exceedingly difficult to maintain the position you have.”

No date was set for when the panel might rule. The losing side could then ask that the entire 4th Circuit rehear the case, after which the case would probably head to the Supreme Court.

After the hearing, Donna Newman, another of Padilla’s attorneys, said, “We are quite confident that we will prevail because there simply is no authority for the president to detain an American citizen on American soil.

“If the traditional sense of what the battlefield is has changed, then we need Congress to come in,” she added. “We do not let a president determine ad hoc what a battlefield is.”

The British attorney general announced Tuesday that three British soldiers would be tried on war crimes charges for the abuse of Iraqi detainees, one of whom died.

The three were among 11 soldiers charged with mistreating prisoners in Basra in two incidents in May and September 2003. Basra is the headquarters of the 8,500 British troops still deployed as the closest allies of the United States.

The charges were said to be the first against British troops in Iraq on war crimes offenses, defined under the legislation approved here in 2001, committing Britain to joining the International Criminal Court.

The most serious charges were brought against a 34-year-old corporal, Donald Payne, accused of abusing and killing Baha Daoud Salim Musa, an Iraqi taken prisoner in a military operation in September 2003. Corporal Payne faces charges of manslaughter, inhumane treatment and perverting the course of justice, said the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith.

Two other soldiers, Lance Cpl. Wayne Crowcroft, 21, and Pvt. Darren Fallon, 22, are also accused of offenses including inhumane treatment of detainees. It was not immediately clear what sentence they could face. The charges will all be heard at military courts in Britain and not at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

In a separate charge announced Tuesday, four soldiers are accused of manslaughter in the death of another Iraqi detainee on May 8, 2003. The soldiers detained four Iraqis they believed were looters and forced them into a canal. One of the detainees, Ahmed Kareem, could not swim and drowned.

As fresh violence engulfs Iraq, the officials in charge of its government pressed a major meeting of donor nations here on Monday for billions of dollars in new financing to repair a country that remains in a state of physical and economic collapse.

But in a finely balanced argument, the Iraqi officials also said their country and its fledgling financial institutions were stable and secure enough to manage the influx of that much money.

In fact, those officials said, now is the time for local Iraqi governments to take the lead in setting priorities for rebuilding out of the hands of foreign nations, and for Iraqi contractors to carry out virtually all of the work with local labor.

Some of those pleas were answered when Japan reached what the Iraqi planning minister, Barham Salih, said were the outlines of an agreement to provide $3.5 billion in low-interest loans for water, sewage, road and other projects. The World Bank also announced that it had offered Iraq up to $500 million in similar loans over the next two years.

Mr. Salih, whose ministry functions as a kind of switchyard for rebuilding funds, made it clear that he was disappointed in major portions of the American rebuilding program, which he said had failed to produce quick results despite the expenditure of about $9 billion, according to Pentagon figures.

After formulaic declarations by officials at the United Nations and the World Bank that the first day of the conference had been a success, Mr. Salih gave a blunter assessment.

“I want to hold judgment and claim success once we see these pledges turned into realities on the ground,” Mr. Salih said, adding that the rebuilding effort had roughly six months to show results before Iraqis began giving up hope that it would ever improve their lives.

“This is the time to make the difference,” he said. “It is now or it will be too late. Iraq’s people have grown numb to many statements of support.”

Staffan de Mistura, a United Nations representative at the gathering, held at a conference center next to the Dead Sea, agreed that “we are facing six crucial months” but argued that some programs had quietly been successful. For example, he said, water chlorination programs carried out by Iraqis have prevented major outbreaks of cholera amid the chaos of the insurgency.

“We cannot be, outside of this room, too loud about it, for reasons that you know,” Mr. Mistura said, referring to the danger that any project faces in Iraq if it is understood to be directed or financed by foreigners.

That concession captured what often seemed to be a paradox of the meeting: although the Iraqis were trying to persuade other countries that Iraq was safe and secure enough to carry out rebuilding projects, the meeting took place in the safety of Jordan rather than in Baghdad.

Much of the conference focused on $1.1 billion already placed in trust funds for Iraqi reconstruction by a number of countries around the world, led by Japan, the European Union and Canada. Japan’s contribution to those funds is the largest, about $350 million, said Michael Bell, chairman of the International Reconstruction Fund Facility for Iraq, which oversees the money.

Most of the fund’s money has already been committed to specific projects, and Iraqi officials have been saying for weeks that they hoped to reel in more pledges here. But while 59 countries registered for the meeting by an official count, actual attendance seemed sparse, and a number of those countries did not send representatives.

Before his formal speech, Mr. Salih addressed the issue on the minds of many in attendance and asked for a moment of silence for victims of a suicide bomber who killed 71 people on Saturday in the town of Musayyib, south of Baghdad. He asked that the moment also commemorate the victims of the London bombings last week.

Referring to the American rebuilding program, Mr. Salih said in prepared remarks that its “large-scale, capital-intensive” focus had been inevitable because of the crumbling infrastructure inherited from Saddam Hussein’s government.

But he added, “It is now clear that that these megaprojects, though essential, have not succeeded in providing quickly enough for Iraqis’ basic needs like electricity, water and sanitation.”

American officials had little to say about the repeated criticism of their rebuilding programs. “We think this was a successful day,” said one American official who asked not to be identified because he wanted attention to remain on the Iraqis.

Mr. Salih tried to ease a major concern of some potential donor countries by saying Iraq was making new efforts to root out corrupt officials in the government ranks.

Christiaan Poortman, a World Bank official, acknowledged those concerns. “At this point in time, the push is to get the money out,” Mr. Poortman said. “Six months from now the talk will be about ‘where did the money go?’ “

He added, “And we are not going to get burned on this one.”

24 Killed in String of Attacks

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 18 (AP) – Gunmen killed at least 24 police officers, soldiers and government workers in attacks across Iraq on Monday, and an Iraqi general said about 50 suspected insurgents had been captured in the first days of a new security operation in Baghdad.

For the first time in several days, Baghdad was not hit by suicide bombers. But a car bomb went off near American and Iraqi troops in Rawah, 175 miles northwest of Baghdad, witnesses reported. At least one person, believed to have been a civilian, was killed, the witnesses said.

The latest bloodshed occurred in a series of small-scale ambushes and shootings. The deadliest attack on Monday was in the western Baghdad district of Khadra, where eight policemen died in a gun battle with insurgents, the police said. It was unclear whether the insurgents suffered casualties. There were other attacks in Baghdad, Taji, Samarra and Mosul as well.

The military said an American marine died in what was termed a non-hostile incident on Sunday at a base in Ramadi.

Iraqi forces reported a new offensive against the insurgents in Baghdad. An Iraqi general, who spoke Monday on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said the operation began last week on the west side of the Tigris, which divides the city. He said about 50 suspected insurgents, including two Syrians, had been captured in the opening days of the operation, which would be expanded in the next few days.

Plans by an alliance of rightwing extremists and football hooligans to exact “revenge” on Muslims after last week’s bomb attacks are being monitored by police.

The Guardian has learned that extremists are keen to cause widespread fear and injury with attacks on mosques and high-profile “anti-Muslim” events in the capital.

Football hooligans communicating over the internet have spoken of the need to put aside partisan support for teams and unite against Muslims. Hooligans from West Ham, Millwall, Crystal Palace and Arsenal are among those seeking to establish common cause.

As part of wider plans to generate a backlash, rightwing groups such as the Nationalist Alliance and the National Front are said to be planning marches. Extremists hope to hold a march along Victoria Embankment in London tomorrow.

It is also known that many mosques have received bomb threats since the attacks.

Attempts by the right to make capital out of the tragedy have created a powderkeg. Already extremist Islamist websites have told Muslims to be ready to retaliate.

The BNP sought to capitalise on last week’s atrocities in its byelection literature in Barking, Essex, by reproducing a picture of the bombed No 30 bus with the headline Maybe Now it’s Time to Listen to the BNP.

But the tactic backfired last night when Labour trounced the BNP, winning the Becontree byelection with 1,171 votes. The BNP received 378.

The BNP’s tactic prompted cross-party condemnation. Though it was designed to increase support for the far-right, many believe the message may have been too crass and too badly timed to work. The party does, however, enjoy some support in the area.

Gerry Gable, of the anti- fascist organisation Searchlight, said: “There is no doubt that the far-right are playing this for all they think it is worth.

“If you look at the BNP website there’s Nick Griffin saying ‘be calm’ and other material saying ‘don’t get angry, get even!'”

He added: “These things should be taken seriously. One site, Blood and Honour, had a posting about a mosque in the Wirral and soon after the mosque was hit. Soon after, the posting was taken down.”

The police have pledged to crack down on any attempts to provoke division in the aftermath of the bombs. Members of Scotland Yard’s independent advisory group have been asked to liaise with borough commanders in the capital to reassure the public and make sure the police carry out their pledges.

The Met has said from the outset that the bombs were an attack on all communities and that none should be scapegoated.

The synergy between rightwing extremists and football hooligans is not new. Throughout the 1980s, some of the biggest clubs in Britain were plagued by notoriously violent and racist followers.

Though virtually all clubs have since challenged the behaviour of extremist fans, and almost all now belong to the Kick Racism Out of Football initiative, violent followers continue to communicate with each other and supporters from other clubs to engineer confrontations.

The prospect of the opening day Championship fixture between Leeds and Millwall in August is already causing concern.

Convicted Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Monday for the 1998 bombing of an Alabama abortion clinic, which killed a police officer and maimed a nurse.

The 38-year-old abortion foe pleaded guilty in April to the clinic bombing in a federal plea bargain that spared him the death penalty. As part of the same deal, Rudolph confessed to the 1996 bombing of the Summer Olympics in Atlanta and blasts at an abortion clinic and gay bar in and around the Georgia capital.

He will be sentenced to life in prison without parole on Aug. 22 for the Atlanta attacks, which killed one person and injured more than 100 others.