Reporter Says He First Learned of C.I.A. Operative From Rove

Posted on July 18, 2005 by Team VCS

Matthew Cooper, a reporter for Time magazine, said the White House senior adviser Karl Rove was the first person to tell him that the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was a C.I.A. officer, according to a first-person account in this week’s issue of the magazine.

The account also stated that Mr. Rove said Mr. Wilson’s wife had played a role in sending Mr. Wilson to Africa to investigate possible uranium sales to Iraq.

The article, a description of Mr. Cooper’s testimony last Wednesday to a federal grand jury trying to determine whether White House officials illegally disclosed the identity of a covert intelligence officer, offered the most detailed account yet of how a White House official purportedly did not merely confirm what a journalist knew but supplied that information.

Mr. Cooper said in his article that Mr. Rove did not mention the name of Mr. Wilson’s wife, Valerie Wilson, or say that she was a covert officer. But, he wrote: “Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson’s wife worked at the C.I.A. and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the ‘agency’ on ‘W.M.D.’? Yes.

“Is any of this a crime? Beats me.”

The details in Mr. Cooper’s article about his conversation with Mr. Rove are largely consistent with the broad outlines of Mr. Rove’s grand jury testimony about the conversation as portrayed in news accounts.

But Mr. Cooper’s article, a rare look inside the deliberations from a prime participant in this political and journalistic drama, is likely to add fuel to a political firestorm over whether there was a White House effort to disclose Ms. Wilson’s identity as payback for her husband’s criticism of the administration.

Mr. Rove’s allies have said that he did not initiate any conversations with reporters and that he was merely warning them off what he said was faulty information. But White House statements over the past two years have left the impression that administration officials were not involved in identifying Ms. Wilson.

Mr. Cooper also wrote about a conversation he initiated with I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney. Although it has been known that reporters spoke to Mr. Libby, what he said was not known. His conversation with Mr. Cooper is the first indication that Mr. Libby was aware of Ms. Wilson’s role in her husband’s trip to Africa. When Mr. Cooper asked if Mr. Libby knew of that, Mr. Libby said he had heard that as well, the article said.

Both Mr. Libby and Mr. Rove sought to dispel speculation that Mr. Cheney had played a role in dispatching Mr. Wilson on his mission.

Mr. Cooper’s article was the fulcrum for a day of partisan bickering on the television news talk programs, cable news channels and the Web. Some Democrats, saying Mr. Rove’s credibility was in tatters, again called for his dismissal, while Republicans continued to defend him, saying Democrats were prejudging a continuing investigation and were trying to injure Mr. Rove’s reputation with information that actually vindicated him.

“It’s wrong, it’s outrageous, and folks involved in this, frankly, owe Karl Rove an apology,” Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said yesterday on “Meet the Press” on NBC.

Mr. Rove’s lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, declined to comment yesterday on the details in Mr. Cooper’s article. He has said previously that prosecutors advised Mr. Rove that he was not a target in the case. Mr. Libby and his lawyer, Joseph A. Tate, have said in the past that they will not discuss the matter. Efforts to reach Mr. Tate yesterday were unsuccessful.

Mr. Cooper found himself in front of the grand jury on Wednesday morning, a week after a receiving “an express personal release from my source,” sparing him a jail sentence for civil contempt of court. Another reporter facing the same punishment that day, Judith Miller of The New York Times, was jailed after refusing to disclose her source for an article she never wrote.

Mr. Cooper had refused to testify about what a confidential source, now known to be Mr. Rove, had told him for an article that appeared on Time magazine’s Web site on July 17, 2003, about administration officials “having taken public and private whacks” at Mr. Wilson.

It can be a crime to knowingly name a covert officer for the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Rove’s supporters have argued that he did not know of her history as a covert operative and questioned whether she remained one under the statute.

The Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into the leak in September 2003. But with pressure mounting on the administration to appoint an independent counsel, Attorney General John Ashcroft that December recused himself from the inquiry, and Patrick J. Fitzgerald, a federal prosecutor in Chicago, was chosen as special counsel.

Under federal law, prosecutors and grand jurors are sworn to secrecy. And while witnesses are free to discuss their testimony, Mr. Fitzgerald has asked that the witnesses not comment. Administration officials have heeded the request.

Mr. Cooper did not, instead providing a glimpse inside an inquiry engulfing Mr. Rove, the quintessential Bush insider who is on the cover of Time and Newsweek this week.

Mr. Cooper estimated that he spent about a third of his two and a half hours of testimony responding to jurors’ questions, rather than to the prosecutor’s, although Mr. Fitzgerald asked questions on their behalf.

“Virtually all the questions centered on the week of July 6, 2003,” Mr. Cooper wrote. Mr. Wilson wrote an Op-Ed article that appeared in The New York Times that day challenging the veracity of 16 words in Mr. Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech, which claimed that British intelligence believed that Saddam Hussein had sought nuclear fuel in Africa.

Mr. Cooper, who had just a few weeks earlier become a White House correspondent after serving as deputy bureau chief in Washington, wrote that he called Mr. Rove the next Friday, July 11. He said he told the grand jury he was interested in “an ancillary question” to whoever had vetted the president’s State of the Union address: “why government officials, publicly and privately, seemed to be disparaging Mr. Wilson” after the White House had said the claim about nuclear fuel should not have been in the speech.

But the Bush White House is not known for backing down from challenges, and Mr. Wilson had asserted that the administration had “twisted” intelligence about the threat posed by Iraq and was becoming increasingly public about his views after the Op-Ed article appeared.

Mr. Cooper said he spoke to Mr. Rove on “deep background,” saying the sourcing description of “double super secret background” he used in his e-mail message to his boss was “not a journalistic term of art” but a reference to the film “Animal House,” where the Delta House fraternity was placed on “double secret probation.”

“The notes, and my subsequent e-mails, go on to indicate that Rove told me material was going to be declassified in the coming days that would cast doubt on Wilson’s mission and his findings,” Mr. Cooper wrote.

Mr. Cooper also wrote that he told the grand jury he was certain Mr. Rove never mentioned Ms. Wilson by name, and that he did not learn of her identity until several days later, when he either read it in a column by the syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak, who referred to her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, or found it through a Google search.

“Rove did, however, clearly indicate that she worked at the ‘agency’ – by that, I told the grand jury, I inferred he obviously meant the C.I.A. and not, say, the Environmental Protection Agency. Rove added that that she worked on W.M.D. (the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction) issues and that she was responsible for sending Wilson. This was the first time I had heard anything about Wilson’s wife.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee, in its report, said interviews and documents provided by the C.I.A.’s counterproliferation division indicate that Ms. Wilson suggested her husband for the trip. Ms. Wilson portrayed her role as minimal to the committee and said she attended a meeting involving Mr. Wilson, intelligence analysts and other C.I.A. officials only to introduce her husband.

In his article, Mr. Cooper also shared a memory that was not in his notes or e-mail messages: Mr. Rove’s ending the phone call by saying, “I’ve already said too much.”

“This could have meant he was worried about being indiscreet, or it could have meant he was late for a meeting or something else,” he wrote. “I don’t know, but that sign-off has been in my memory for two years.”

In the article, Mr. Cooper writes only of his dealings with Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby, but under questioning by Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” yesterday, Mr. Cooper hinted that he might have had more sources for the original article.

“Did Fitzgerald’s questions give me a sense of where the investigation is heading? Perhaps,” Mr. Cooper added. “He asked me several different ways if Rove indicated how he had heard that Plame worked at the C.I.A. (He did not, I told the grand jury.) Maybe Fitzgerald is interested in whether Rove knew her C.I.A. ties through a person or through a document.”

Novak’s CNN Job Is Safe for Now

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., July 17 (AP) – Mr. Novak’s status as a CNN contributor will remain unaffected during a federal investigation into the revelation of a C.I.A. officer’s identity, executives at the news channel said Sunday.

“I think we’re all aware that no one really knows what’s going on in the investigation of the Valerie Plame incident,” said Jonathan Klein, president of CNN/U.S. “So it would be awfully presumptuous of us to take steps against a guy in his career based on second-, third-, fourth-hand reporting.”

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Suicide Bombs Potent Tools of Terrorists

Posted on July 18, 2005 by Team VCS

Unheard of only a few decades ago, suicide bombings have rapidly evolved into perhaps the most common method of terrorism in the world, moving west from the civil war in Sri Lanka in the 1980s to the Palestinian intifada of recent years to Iraq today. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide attacks in the United States, suicide bombers have struck from Indonesia to India, from Russia to Morocco.

Now governments throughout the West — including the United States — are bracing to cope with similar challenges in the wake of the deadly July 7 subway bombings in London, which marked the first time that suicide bombers had successfully mounted an attack in Western Europe.

The pace of such attacks is quickening. According to data compiled by the Rand Corp., about three-quarters of all suicide bombings have occurred since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The numbers in Iraq alone are breathtaking: About 400 suicide bombings have shaken Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003, and suicide now plays a role in two out of every three insurgent bombings. In May, an estimated 90 suicide bombings were carried out in the war-torn country — nearly as many as the Israeli government has documented in the conflict with Palestinians since 1993.

Yesterday, a suicide bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body inside a Shiite mosque south of Baghdad, triggering a huge fuel-tanker explosion that killed at least 54 people, according to police.

The bombings in London, which killed 55 people, illustrate the profound difficulty of preventing such attacks, experts say. Intelligence officials believe the bombers, in a common pattern, were foot soldiers recruited for the occasion, young men of Pakistani and Jamaican backgrounds reared in Britain who had recently converted to radical Islam. The four bombings required no exit strategy and were pulled off with devices that apparently were made in a bathtub and were small enough to fit in backpacks.

“With the exception of weapons of mass destruction, there is no other type of attack that is more effective than suicide terrorism,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert who heads the Washington office of Rand, a California think tank. “The perception is that it’s impossible to guard against.”

The motives behind suicide bombings are often mixed. Terrorism experts and intelligence officials disagree on the extent to which political strategy and religious fervor have led to the rising frequency of such attacks. But in addition to the death toll, a key objective of such bombings is clearly to sow terror by violating deeply held cultural and religious taboos against suicide, experts say.

Daniel Benjamin, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Clinton administration counterterrorism official, points to the frequent glorification of death and martyrdom by the leaders of al Qaeda and other extremist groups. In his famous fatwa , or declaration of war, against the United States in 1996, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden told U.S. officials: “These youth love death as you love life.”

“This is their way of saying they are much more determined than we are,” said Benjamin, who co-wrote the 2002 book “The Age of Sacred Terror.”

“They realize we are very unnerved by this. . . . I see the spread of it as a tactic as an indication of the strength of the ideology for Muslim radicals,” Benjamin said.

History of Suicide Attacks

The use of suicide attacks is not new. Japanese kamikaze pilots in World War II tried to cause maximum damage by crashing their fighter planes into U.S. ships. Walter Laqueur, an expert in the history of terrorism, also says that, for centuries, any attack on military or political leaders was a form of suicide because the act usually occurred at close quarters and brought swift and certain death for the killer.

One watershed came in 1983, when a Hezbollah operative drove his truck into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. service members in an attack that remains the deadliest terrorist strike on Americans overseas. Hezbollah would later carry out several dozen more suicide attacks.

Most experts agree that the modern style of suicide bombings first gained its greatest prominence outside the Middle East, in the island nation of Sri Lanka.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, popularly known as the Tamil Tigers, is an avowedly secular rebel movement of the country’s Tamil ethnic minority. It carried out scores of suicide bombings from the late 1980s until a cease-fire in 2002. The conflict between the Tigers and the government, which is dominated by members of the Sinhalese majority, began in 1983 and claimed an estimated 65,000 lives.

Though dominated by Hindus, the Tigers are predominantly ethnic and nationalist in outlook, with religion not playing a significant role in their actions. The Tigers’ early and aggressive use of suicide attacks, analysts say, reflected a pragmatic calculation of the need to level the military playing field against a larger and better-equipped foe.

The group created an elite force to carry out such attacks, the Black Tigers, whose members underwent rigorous training and were reportedly treated to dinner with rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran before being sent on their missions.

The rebels carried out their first suicide bombing in 1987, when a captain blew himself up along with 40 government troops at an army camp in the northern part of the country. Tamil Tiger spokesmen emphasize the use of suicide attackers against military targets, but the group has also used them against political and economic targets in strikes that have cost hundreds of civilian lives.

In 1991, a suspected Tamil Tiger assassinated former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. Two years later, a suicide bomber killed Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa and 23 others in Colombo. Tamil Tiger suicide attackers also staged devastating strikes on the country’s central bank, its holiest Buddhist shrine and its international airport.

Robert A. Pape, an associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago, calls the group the world’s “leading instigator” of suicide attacks. In his recent book “Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” Pape says that the group accounted for 76 of 315 suicide attacks carried out around the world from 1980 through 2003, compared with 54 for the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and 27 for Islamic Jihad.

Some analysts say the group’s strategy, though reprehensible, was effective in pushing the government toward a negotiated settlement.

“The suicide bombings in civilian areas, especially outside the conflict zones of the northeast, brought to the people outside the horror of the war and the vulnerability of society, ” Jehan Perera of the National Peace Council, an advocacy group in Colombo, said in a telephone interview.

Laqueur, the author of “A History of Terrorism” and other books, disagrees, noting that the Tigers’ primary goal — to gain power — has not been achieved after more than two decades of bloodshed. But he said Sri Lanka does illustrate how religious extremism has not always been central to the tactic. “It’s not purely a religious thing; it’s fanaticism,” Laqueur said in an interview from London. “It just happens that, now, we are seeing the fanaticism primarily with Islam.”

Iraq Is Now the Focus

Even as the Tigers have abandoned suicide attacks, others have adopted the tactic as their own. In Russia, Chechen Muslim radicals have mounted at least 19 suicide operations, according to Pape’s statistics, including those in one terribly deadly week last year when hundreds died in a fiery siege at a school, a bombing at a Moscow train station and the downing of two airliners.

Al Qaeda has also favored suicide plots on more than 20 occasions since 1996 against the United States and its allies, including the unprecedented Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people.

But for sheer volume, Iraq is now the global center of suicide terrorism. In the days before yesterday’s bombing, 27 people, mostly children, died in a suicide attack staged as soldiers handed out treats, and at least 25 others were killed when 10 suicide bombers targeted vehicles in coordinated attacks in Baghdad.

Though sporadic ambushes and roadside bombings began to plague U.S.-led occupation troops almost immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship in April 2003, the beginning of a full-fledged insurgency is generally traced to the suicide car bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad on Aug. 7 of that year. The attack, which killed 14, was followed two weeks later by a suicide truck-bomb attack that destroyed the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad and killed at least 20 people.

Delivered primarily in vehicles but also by individuals wearing rigged belts or vests, suicide bombs have killed and injured thousands. Vehicular suicide bombs, in particular, are “very lethal precision weapons that . . . have significant effect wherever they’re employed,” said the U.S. military’s chief spokesman in Iraq, Air Force Brig. Gen. Donald Alston.

“If we look at what it takes to drive a bomb-laden vehicle into a crowd of people, it is not that challenging to perform that function — especially if you’re willing to give your life,” Alston said.

Who the suicide bombers are, and what motivates them, remains much less clear in Iraq than in Israel and the occupied territories, where the attackers’ identities are quickly and widely disseminated by Palestinian factions and Israeli authorities.

Neither side in the Iraqi conflict has been willing or able to release detailed information on suicide bombers. U.S. and Iraqi authorities say they are certain that the vast majority of suicide bombers come from outside Iraq. But gathering forensic evidence is often impossible because of the continuing danger at bombing sites.

Pape says that attacks in Iraq and elsewhere show that “the connection between Islamic fundamentalism and suicide bombing is misleading.”

“The logic driving these attacks is mainly a strategic goal: to compel the U.S. and other countries to remove their forces from the Arabian peninsula,” Pape said. “The London attacks are simply the next step in al Qaeda executing its strategic logic.”

Others disagree, arguing that even if terrorist leaders have strategic reasons for choosing suicide attacks, the bombers and their families are often motivated by religious belief. Hoffman calculates that 31 of 35 groups that have used suicide bombings are Islamic.

“To try to reduce it to an agenda that is purely political is to misunderstand religion,” Benjamin said. “The reason that bin Laden and his followers want the U.S. out of the Middle East has religious roots.”

The Cult of Glorification

The boys all know the way to Ahmed Abu Khalil’s house, tucked along an alley in a neighborhood of the West Bank town of Atil known as Two Martyrs. Abu Khalil, 18, became its third after he blew himself up Tuesday near a shopping mall in the Israeli city of Netanya.

It is safe to say Abu Khalil knew how he would be remembered here for his twilight attack outside the HaSharon Mall, which killed five Israelis, including two 16-year-old girls who were lifelong best friends. Scores more were injured in Israel’s third suicide bombing this year.

The neighborhood is named for two local members of Islamic Jihad, the radical Palestinian group, who died fighting in the West Bank city of Jenin in 2003. The stylized posters of young men, posing with assault rifles and draped with ammunition belts, wallpaper the city. Graffiti urges uprising.

“This has given us a lot of pride, what he has done in Netanya,” said Ibrahim Shoukri, 14, who used to follow Abu Khalil to prayer at the mosque. “We hope all of us will be like him.”

The cult of glorification — a mix of nationalist, personal and religious fervor — that surrounds suicide bombers has long been one of the most difficult challenges facing Israeli security officials. Religious justification taught in the more radical West Bank mosques and intense familial pride — at least in the days immediately after the attacks — often outweigh the Israeli deterrent measures designed to make would-be suicide bombers think twice.

Judging by statistics, Israeli officials have made significant progress against suicide attacks since the start of the intifada in September 2000. At the height of the uprising in 2002, 42 suicide bombings killed 228 people. Two years later, the number had dropped to 12 bombings and 55 deaths.

Israeli officials say the construction of a concrete barrier that rises 24 feet high in some places and the intensive military operations in the West Bank have helped keep suicide bombers out of Israel. In addition, the Israeli military destroys the family homes of suicide bombers, a practice human rights groups have condemned as an illegal exercise of collective punishment.

Dore Gold, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said the tactic is designed in part to counter the financial incentives offered by enemy governments — and some nongovernmental groups in Arab countries — which encourage the bombings. Hussein’s Baath Party, for example, sent $15,000 checks to bombers’ families, a lot of money in poor West Bank towns.

“If you know your family will be impoverished as a result of your act, then that may affect the calculus,” Gold said.

In Atil on Tuesday morning, Abu Khalil left his house at 7 a.m., telling his family he was on his way to check his test scores. He never returned. The family found out about his attack from the television news.

Within hours, Israeli soldiers arrived at the family home. They arrested Khalil’s father, who is now in an Israeli military prison outside the northern West Bank. Why and how Abu Khalil carried out the bombing remains a mystery. “God knows how he got through the wall,” said an uncle, Burhan Abu Khalil. “The Islamic Jihad organizes those things.”

One recent morning, Palestinian television crews filled the family courtyard. As more than a dozen teenage boys looked on, the reporters posed 14-year-old Mahmoud and 4-year-old Othman with their brother’s picture, seeking their impressions. They put a black Islamic Jihad cap on Mahmoud’s head.

“Put the picture here on your chest,” the leader of a crew instructed Othman, the videotape rolling. “What did he tell you, what did he tell you?”

The boys looked nervous, confused. Finally, Mahmoud said, “He told me to pray.”

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The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already cost taxpayers $314 billion

Posted on July 17, 2005 by Team VCS

Many question long-term cost

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already cost taxpayers $314 billion, and the Congressional Budget Office projects additional expenses of perhaps $450 billion over the next 10 years.

 

The could make the combined campaigns, especially the war in Iraq, the most expensive military conflicts in the last 60 years, causing even some conservative experts to criticize the open-ended commitment to an elusive goal. The concern is that the soaring costs, given little weight before now, could play a growing role in U.S. strategic decisions because of the fiscal impact.

“Osama (bin Laden) doesn’t have to win; he will just bleed us to death,” said Michael Scheuer, a former counterterrorism official at the CIA who led the pursuit of bin Laden and recently retired after writing two books critical of the Clinton and Bush administrations. “He’s well on his way to doing it.”

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonpartisan Washington think tank, has estimated that the Korean War cost about $430 billion and the Vietnam War cost about $600 billion, in current dollars. According to the latest estimates, the cost of the war in Iraq could exceed $700 billion.

Put simply, critics say, the war is not making the United States safer and is harming U.S. taxpayers by saddling them with an enormous debt burden, since the war is being financed with deficit spending.

One of the most vocal Republican critics has been Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who said the costs of the war — many multiples greater than what the White House had estimated in 2003 — were throwing U.S. fiscal priorities out of balance.

“It’s dangerously irresponsible,” Hagel said in February of the war spending.

He later told U.S. News & World Report, “The White House is completely disconnected from reality.” He added that the apparent lack of solid plans for defeating the insurgency and providing stability in Iraq made it seem “like they’re just making it up as they go along.”

The Democrats have also raised concerns about the apparent lack of an exit strategy and the fast-rising costs, particularly since President Bush has chosen to pay for the war with special supplemental appropriations outside the normal budget process. Some Democrats have insisted that, to cover war costs, the president should propose comparable reductions in other government programs, in part to be fiscally responsible and in part to make the price of the war more tangible.

“We are not going to be stinting in our support of our troops,” said Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., a senior member of both the Budget and Armed Services committees. “The least we can do is make sure they have everything they need to do the job. On the other hand, we need to understand the long-term costs. We need to know it to make honest budgets.

“Are there trade-offs we can make to pay for this? We have to look at that. This has been longer-lasting and more intense than anybody anticipated.”

Some conservative experts outside Congress also have started questioning whether the costs of the war and its uncertain conclusion are worth the cost, in money and blood.

“The objective has always been to install a friendly government,” said Charles V. Peña, director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, a libertarian think tank. “Are the costs worth that? No, because it’s not something we can accomplish for the long term. It’s just going to continue to drain the American taxpayer. I don’t see how it’s going to get better. It’s only going to get worse.”

James Jay Carafano, a senior fellow for national security and homeland security at the Heritage Foundation, which supports the president on most matters, warned that the war’s costs would only rise because of the growing need to repair and replace battered military equipment, from helicopters to Humvees. In addition, the rising death toll is making it harder for the military to recruit new soldiers, and long deployments are hurting the morale of National Guard and reserve units sent to Iraq.

If the White House does not increase military spending, Carafano warned, the United States could end up with both a looming disaster in Iraq and a weaker military.

“I don’t think we’re going to have enough money to run this military based on what they’re asking for,” said Carafano. “If you don’t increase spending, you can hollow out the military.”

He added that the war itself increasingly looked like a bad investment: “I think there is a point of diminishing returns in Iraq. There is a point where you’re just throwing money at the problem. Quite frankly, I think we’re at the tipping point.”

Since the shooting war in Iraq began in March, 2003, 1,763 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq, and at least 13,336 have been wounded, according to data collected by the Iraq Index, which is assembled by the Brookings Institution in Washington.

In September 2002, the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan research arm of Congress, estimated that the war would cost $1.5 billion to $4 billion per month. In fact, it costs between $5 billion and $8 billion per month.

The Pentagon says the “burn rate” — the operating costs of the wars — has averaged $5.6 billion per month in the current fiscal year, but that does not include some costs for maintenance and replacement of equipment and some training and reconstruction costs, experts say.

According to an analysis by the Democratic staff of the House Budget Committee, from the beginning of the war in March, 2003, through the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, the Bush administration has received a total of $314 billion in special appropriations for the wars.

Unlike the Persian Gulf War against Iraq in 1991, the U.S. has had to bear nearly all this war’s costs on its own. The Congressional Research Service reported that, as of early June, 26 countries had military forces in Iraq, but they make up a small fraction of the U.S. troop levels, about 140,000; another 11 countries have already left Iraq.

Just for the current fiscal year, the administration has received $107 billion in special appropriations, about $87 billion of which is directly related to military operations, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Most of the remainder has been spent on training and equipping Iraqi forces.

U.S. taxpayers must also cover other costs. For instance, the United States is spending $658 million to construct an embassy in Baghdad, which, with initial operating costs, could bring the expense of this super-secure facility to nearly $1.3 billion by the time it opens in several years.

“Two years ago, no one expected the war would take this long,” said Steven Kosiak, director of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “On a per-troop basis, this war has been far more costly than expected, almost double the estimates.”

Edward Luttwak, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and a former military consultant to both Republican and Democratic administrations, said the unexpectedly high costs showed inappropriate military priorities in Iraq. He said too much was being spent on operating high-tech weaponry, such as jet fighters and naval battle groups, and not enough on troops, which are best at fighting elusive insurgents. That just further proves that the U.S. military, Luttwak said, is the best on earth at fighting conventional wars, but one of the worst at policing and counterinsurgencies.

For example, he noted that heavy Air Force fighters, such as the F-15E, were being used for aerial reconnaissance, when cheaper aircraft might work better. He questioned why a huge Navy battle group, including an aircraft carrier, was stationed near Iraq, when it offered little help in fighting a largely hidden insurgency in Iraq’s towns and cities.

“It’s quite important to look at the costs of the war, quite apart from counting the money, which is substantial,” Luttwak said. “It is a good way to assess what is going on. It’s not worth the price of what we’re paying.”

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For Soldiers’ Farewell, a Crucial Drill

Posted on July 16, 2005 by Team VCS

For Soldiers’ Farewell, a Crucial Drill — Burial Teams for War Dead Often Trained on the Fly

By Christian Davenport
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 16, 2005; A01

CORAOPOLIS, Pa. — The pallbearers held the coffin at a perilous tilt. Their fitful marching was nowhere near “left-right-left” synchronicity. Even the flag draped over the coffin was rumpled at the corners.

“Hold it. Hold it!” Army Chief Warrant Officer Paul Dziegielewski said, shaking his head.

“Once you get the coffin up, keep it straight and level,” he said, slashing a line through the air with his hand. The flag has to be draped smoothly, he chided, unfurling it at the sides.

“You have to remember, everyone is going to be watching you. . . . Let’s try again.”

The Army Reserve's 99th Regional Readiness Command relies on its assistants and supply clerks to fill out burial teams.

The Army Reserve’s 99th Regional Readiness Command relies on its assistants and supply clerks to fill out burial teams. (By John Heller For The Washington Post)

In less than 48 hours, the volunteers from the Army Reserve’s 99th Regional Readiness Command would be participating in a funeral, and it was immediately clear to Dziegielewski that the group of soldiers needed all the practice it could get.

The 99th, based in this town just west of Pittsburgh, doesn’t have a full burial team. Until the Iraq war, it didn’t need one. Now, it can be called on to perform at the funerals of soldiers from reserve units in Maryland, Virginia, the District, Delaware, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

That means that Dziegielewski, the command’s casualty officer, relies on volunteers he fondly calls “pencil pushers” — the administrative assistants and supply clerks whose usual job is to get other soldiers ready to deploy.

For all that the novices learn in his crash courses, often given just a day or two before a funeral, Dziegielewski acknowledged that “we are not the Old Guard,” the soldiers who make funerals at Arlington National Cemetery legendary.

Only about 150 of those killed in Iraq and about 20 killed in Afghanistan have been buried at Arlington. Many more are buried across the country in cemeteries closer to home. And with the deaths of World War II veterans, the demand for burial teams is such that some have resorted to using a bugle outfitted with a device that plays a recorded version of taps.

For this funeral, Dziegielewski had a real bugler borrowed from the Pennsylvania National Guard. It was everyone else he was worried about.

He was asking a lot of this hastily assembled band of ordinary soldiers. They not only would be representing the Army and the country, but also playing a part in a centuries-long tradition of nations honoring their war dead.

They had to be perfect.

“It’s rough when you start out,” Dziegielewski told the group before training began. “There’s a lot of pressure. You cannot make one mistake.”

The Firing Party

As Dziegielewski struggled to get the pallbearers in sync, Sgt. 1st Class Don Hammons was having just as hard a time with the firing party. At “Ready,” their feet swiveled at wildly different paces. “Aim” brought their rifle barrels out in a disjointed wave. “Fire” triggered a salute so scattered it sounded like popcorn popping.

“It’s going to take some repetition,” Hammons said. “We have to do this as one, in sync.”

All afternoon, he walked them through the movements. When they couldn’t get it right on their own, he set their arms and legs in place with his own hands, as if molding pieces of clay. Count out the steps in your mind, 1-2-3-4-5, he urged. And: “Use your peripheral vision to key off the people next to you so you can keep tempo with them.”

Hammons knows the consequences of war — and the importance of honoring its fatalities. He served with the elite 101st Airborne during the Persian Gulf War. A father of five boys, he is headed to Iraq this fall, another reason he wanted his soldiers to get the steps right.

“I would want my family to get the same treatment,” he said.

After a few wobbly practice runs, he grew impatient. “Stop,” he said. “Watch.” He tackled the routine with the controlled beauty of a dancer, tight and sharp: swivel right, back step, barrel up, aim, fire, cock the rifle, begin again.

“Like that,” he said after he finished. “Like that, but faster.”

Yet no matter how often the group went through its moves, Sgt. Sarah Williamson was almost always a half-step behind — late in swiveling, late in bringing up her rifle, late in getting off the shot. Sometimes she never got it off at all.

Slight and soft-spoken, she joined the Army 2 1/2 years ago not just for the benefits that would make being a single mother of a 5-year-old boy easier, but because “I wanted to do something with my life.”

By the second day of training, the pallbearers were so good that Dziegielewski let them quit at lunch. The firing party was coming along, too.

Williamson, though, was still lagging late into the day, and time was running out. Then she committed one of the worst mistakes for a soldier: Her rifle went off accidentally. Everyone around her jumped at the loud, unexpected BANG. It was just a blank, but Hammons scowled.

“That’s how people get killed,” he groused as they continued practicing into the hot afternoon.

No More Rehearsal

On the day of the funeral in Erie, Pa., the pallbearers stood expressionless in a row against a wall of the funeral home. The training had been so focused on getting it all right that Staff Sgt. Victor M. Cortes III, the man they had come to bury, had seemed an abstraction.

Suddenly, here were his family and friends, real and crying. The soldiers wondered who was who as they shuffled in and out of the viewing. Was the sobbing woman his mother? The two damp-eyed men his brothers? Could the woman who had slipped out to the hallway to change a baby’s diaper be the girlfriend?

They knew only what little Dziegielewski had told them about Cortes as they trained. He was 29, an Army mechanic from Erie. He died of “noncombat-related injuries” in Baghdad, a gunshot wound to the head, and the incident was under investigation. It didn’t matter how he died, Dziegielewski added quickly as he saw the soldiers’ baffled glances. Cortes had been a soldier serving his country, and they were going to honor him.

Finally, after everyone left, the pallbearers entered the viewing room. Before carrying the coffin out, they huddled around the snapshots next to it. Here was Cortes as a baby, as an adolescent mugging for the camera with his brothers, then grown and in uniform, stern and stolid. Here he was as a father holding the infant they had seen in the hallway.

“That was his baby,” one of the soldiers gasped.

The family was at the cemetery when the pallbearers arrived, marching the coffin toward the fresh grave. They looked majestic in their uniforms, clicking in step, the flag draped softly at the sides. They folded it into neat origami creases and marched off just as they had practiced.

Then it was the firing party’s turn.

“Detail, present arms!” came the command. At “Ready!” the soldiers began their five-step dance, fluidly and together. Williamson swiftly pointed her rifle out at “Aim!” Then at “Fire!” — BANG — she got the first shot off clean. BANG, came the second, still in cadence as the shots echoed across the cemetery, over tombstones and hedgerows in the late-morning humidity. BANG, came Williamson’s third, right on time.

The soldiers saluted during taps. Then the family was whisked away in a caravan of limousines. As the team relaxed for the first time all day, emotion seeped onto their faces. Master Sgt. Rhonda Beck’s blue eyes were red and damp, and she complained that these funerals always leave her with a throat made sore by choking down tears.

Williamson, though, couldn’t help but smile. After all the worry, she had nailed it. “It just came to me,” she said. “I didn’t even have to think about it.”

Dziegielewski was relieved but less enthusiastic. Their performance was dignified, workmanlike, perhaps as good as they could get with two days of training. But it was not perfect. There was a bit of a delay in the firing party’s second volley, he said, causing a slight crackle instead of a unified pop.

Still, he was satisfied and congratulated the soldiers for doing their duty. Best of all, he said, the family seemed satisfied and had invited them to lunch at a club.

The place was packed by the time the soldiers arrived. They huddled awkwardly off to the side, not sure about where to sit. After a brief moment, family members noticed them and guided them in with welcoming waves toward the buffet. Sit, they said. Eat, drink, stay a while.

Cortes’s uncle, a middle-aged man with silver hair and a dark suit, got up from the bar, made his way through the small crowd that had coalesced around the soldiers and shook Williamson’s hand. Then he went up to every one of the soldiers, patting them on their backs and looking at them with a sad, tight face.

“Thank you,” he said again and again. “Thank you.”

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Senators Propose Curbs on Patriot Act

Posted on July 15, 2005 by Team VCS

Two senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee introduced legislation yesterday that would lead to more restrictions on the government’s powers under the USA Patriot Act, setting the stage for a protracted legislative battle in coming months over the controversial anti-terrorism law.

The proposal by Sens. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) would scale back a law that the administration seeks to keep largely intact. But it also attracted immediate criticism from civil liberties advocates who say it does not adequately rein in the government’s activities.

In the House, lawmakers moved forward with legislation that would place far fewer restrictions on the government and would make permanent most, if not all, of the Patriot Act’s provisions.

Another bill recently approved by the Senate intelligence committee would expand the government’s powers in terrorism investigations, allowing the FBI to conduct secret searches more easily and clandestinely read the mail of targeted suspects.

The Patriot Act, approved overwhelmingly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, greatly expanded the FBI’s powers to conduct secret searches and surveillance in terrorism-related investigations. Sixteen provisions of the law are set to expire at year’s end, and President Bush, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and other administration officials have urged Congress to renew the law in its entirety.

But critics on both the right and the left call the act a potential infringement of civil liberties, and some members of Congress are pushing for restrictions. As of last month, nearly 400 cities and counties had joined seven states in approving resolutions condemning the Patriot Act.

The bill proposed yesterday by Specter and Feinstein would add increased public reporting of how some of the act’s powers are used and would place greater restrictions on certain warrants, wiretaps and e-mail monitoring. It would also make three of the most controversial anti-terrorism measures temporary and subject to renewal by Congress.

Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a news conference that the bill is “a very careful balance of protecting the country against terrorism with due regard for civil liberties.”

Specter said he expects “lively” discussions over the proposal. “We’re prepared to listen and talk about this some more,” he said.

The proposals engendered immediate criticism from both the Justice Department, which views some proposals as too restrictive, and from civil liberties groups, which consider Specter’s bill a starting point.

“It provides more protections and important clarifications than the other bills that are being considered,” said Lisa Graves, senior counsel for legislative strategy at the American Civil Liberties Union. “But all the bills fall short of what is necessary to bring the Patriot Act back in line with the Constitution.”

Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said late yesterday that the department is “still in the process of reviewing” the Specter proposal. “We have consistently said that full reauthorization of the Patriot Act is critical to ensuring that law enforcement has the tools they need to protect our country from future attacks,” she said.

The bill’s proposed restrictions on Internet monitoring appear to be more stringent than what is allowed in regular criminal cases, according to one Justice official who declined to be identified because the legislation is still being debated. Prosecutors also do not want to provide detailed reports about their methods to the public because it could alert terrorists, the official said.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), a member of the Judiciary Committee and the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act when it was approved in October 2001, said in a statement that he is “disappointed” in the bill introduced by Specter and Feinstein. “In its current form, I cannot support this bill, but I hope we can work together to improve the legislation in the coming weeks,” Feingold said.

In the House, two committees debated a Patriot Act reauthorization bill proposed on Monday by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

The House intelligence committee approved a version of the bill that contains a few new controls on FBI agents, including a provision requiring investigators to provide more information to a judge when using roving wiretaps that apply to all telephones a person uses, officials said.

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2004 Vote Fraud?

Posted on July 14, 2005 by Team VCS

2004 Vote Fraud?  Did party politics cloud non-partisan voter registration efforts during the 2004 election?

by Mark Crispin Miller and Jared Irmas, July 14, 2005

A huge expense

In the months before the presidential election, a firm called Sproul & Associates launched voter registration drives in at least eight states, most of them swing states. The group-run by Nathan Sproul, former head of the Arizona Christian Coalition and the Arizona Republican Party-had been hired by the Republican National Committee.

Sproul got into a bit of trouble last fall when, in certain states, it came out that the firm was playing dirty tricks in order to suppress the Democratic vote: concealing their partisan agenda, tricking Democrats into registering as Republicans, surreptitiously re-registering Democrats and Independents as Republicans, and shredding Democratic registration forms.

The scandal got a moderate amount of local coverage in some states–and then the election was over. Now anyone who brought up Nathan Sproul, or any of the other massive crimes and improprieties committed on or prior to Election Day, was shrugged off as a dealer in “conspiracy theory.”

It seems that Sproul did quite a lot of work for the Republicans. Exactly how much did he do? More specifically, how much did the RNC pay Sproul & Associates?

If you went online last week to look up how much money Sproul received from the Republicans in 2004, you would have found that, according to the party (whose figures had been posted by the Center for Responsive Politics), the firm was paid $488,957.

In fact, the RNC paid Sproul a great deal more than that. From an independent study of the original data filed by the Republicans with the Federal Election Commission, it is clear that Sproul was paid a staggering $8.3 million for its work against the Democrats.

How the true figures came to be revealed

On Dec. 3, 2004, the Republican National Committee filed their Post-General Report with the FEC, accounting for all expenditures between Oct. 14 and Nov. 22.

Among the Itemized Disbursements there were listed six expenditures to Sproul & Associates, amounting to a total sum of $4.5 million. Three of them were for “Political Consulting,” and the other three were for “Voter Registration Costs.” The RNC paid Sproul the biggest amount on the day before the election: $1,668,733.

On Jan. 7, 2005 and again on May 3, 2005, the RNC sent in revised reports. Those items were unchanged in all of them.

After they received the RNC’s second revised report, the FEC expressed dissatisfaction with the vague phrase “Voter Registration Costs.” In a May 18 letter to Michael Retzer, Treasurer of the RNC, the FEC requested that itemized disbursements labeled thus be further clarified.

On June 17, the RNC submitted a (third) revised report. In it, those three suspicious Sproul expenditures labeled “Voter Registration Costs” had been changed to “Political Consulting.” As a “clarification,” it was as vague as possible. Although it only raised more questions, there seems to be no letter in the FEC database concerning that unedifying correction.

Moreover, there are some big surprises buried in the paperwork. It turned out that the RNC paid Sproul not only for their pre-election work, but also paid them for work after the election. According to their Year-End Report, filed on Jan. 28, 2005, the RNC paid Sproul for “Political Consulting” in December-long after all the voter registration drives had ended.

And two months later, when the RNC filed their amended Year-End Report on May 3, the dates of those December expenditures mysteriously changed. A payment of $210,176, once made on Dec. 20, was changed to Dec. 22. A payment of $344,214, initially recorded on Dec. 22, was changed to Dec. 9.

As to why Sproul was being paid in December, and why the dates were changed, one can only speculate. But it may be worth noting that the Ohio recount took place from Dec. 13 through Dec. 28.

Because these amendments were made in 2005, the Center for Responsive Politics’ opensecrets.orgmistakenly allocated that money to the 2006 cycle. When we informed them of these missing numbers yesterday, CRP was quick to adjust them. They also included two more expenditures: a $323,907 payment for more “Political Consulting” (10/12/04) and $450,257 for “Mailing Costs” (10/04/04).

And there was more-much more.

Fuzzy math

The documents also suggest that the RNC may have changed the dates of nine payments to suggest expenditures in 2005, thereby shifting focus from the 2004 election.

In going through the documents, CRP located nine expenditures from the future: Sproul somehow received a total of $1,323,154 between Sept. 2 and Sept. 29, 2005. Another $472,642 is hidden in 2005. Four of those prospective items were (or will be) for “Generic Media Buys” or “Lodging, Transportation.” The other four are (or will be) for “Voter Registration Efforts”-surely an expense incurred in September of last year, not this year.

Larry Noble, executive director of CRP, considers such future expenditures for, say, “Lodging, Transportation” rather odd, but he gives the RNC the benefit of the doubt. “My guess is that it’s an error,” he suggests. “It’s possible that they’re cleaning up voter registration lists in September, but it’s also possible they made a mistake.”

Even if that mistaken date is just a typo, it is, to say the least, not likely that they made the same mistake in nine uniquely dated items for 2004.

In any case, all the payments by the RNC to Sproul add up to a whopping $8,359,161-making it the RNC’s eighth biggest expenditure of the 2004 campaign.

Sproul is currently under investigation by the Oregon Attorney General’s office, for altering the voter registration forms of several thousand students in that state. Whether the new numbers are in part mistaken, they represent a huge expense for the Republicans. Given Sproul’s history of serious electoral mischief, affecting countless Democratic voters in the last election, it is important that we ask some sober questions: Where did all that money come from? Why did the RNC suppress their real expenditures? And what exactly did Sproul do for all that pay? If we’re going to get some reasonable answers, the FEC must understake a very thorough audit of the books.

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Lower-Tier Death Benefit Stings Military Family

Posted on July 13, 2005 by Team VCS

Last February, a week after returning from his second, stress-filled tour in Iraq, Marine Lt. Col. Richard M. Wersel Jr, 43, had a fatal heart attack while lifting weights in a base gymnasium at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Had the decorated Marine died under identical circumstances in Iraq, his widow, Vivianne, would be eligible for an additional $238,000 in death benefits to help raise her two children, ages 12 and 14.

But Congress earlier this year, adopting a plan agreed to by top Pentagon civilians but opposed by military leaders, established the first two-tier military death benefits package. It also voted to pay the higher benefits retroactively for war zone deaths and combat-training or hazardous duty deaths, back to Oct. 7, 2001, the start of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

Denying the increases to survivors of 3000 other servicemembers who died on active duty since late 2001 has begun to raise morale-jarring issues for military leaders, the kind they warned Congress that a two-tier benefit might create.

Vivianne Wersel said she has no doubt that multiple deployments over 30 months, including a trips to Central and South America to train indigenous troops to fight drug traffickers, were the “silent bullet” that took her husband’s life. Before his death, she said, Rich had no history of heart disease, hypertension or cholesterol problems.

His final assignment was with Multi-National Force Iraq in Baghdad, serving as plans chief for the Civil Military Operations Directorate. Vivianne heard from colleagues that Rich had worked many long days there, under tight deadlines, in a tense environment that included random mortar attacks.

Vivianne said she isn’t angry with the Marine Corps whose efforts to help her and the children have been “fantastic.”

“Rich died doing what he loved most,” she said. “Even going to Iraq the second time, if he had to do it over again, he would have gone. But don’t deny my children benefits as if he wasn’t a casualty of war.”

The Defense Department has begun to pay retroactively the higher death benefits approved as part of the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror and Tsunami Relief Act 2005. The lump sum death gratuityis now $100,000, up from $12,420, for survivors of members who die in a combat zone or while training for combat or performing hazardous duty.

On Sept. 1, maximum coverage under Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance (SGLI)also will climb for all servicemembers to $400,000, up from $250,000. The government also will pay the SGLI premiums on $150,000 of that coverage for servicemembers in combat zones.

Until the SGLI increases kick in, the law provides for a special death gratuity of $150,000, retroactive to October 7, 2001, and, again, only for survivors of those who died in a combat zone or in training for combat.

So Vivianne’s benefits won’t change. She received a $12,420 death gratuity and $250,000 in SGLI. She is ineligible the added $237,580.

Vivianne said she was reconciled to this disparity until her children began to be denied other perks intended to honor the special sacrifice of families who lost loved ones to the war. One non-profit offers small scholarships, another gives these children a laptop computer. It’s as though her own kids didn’t lose a father fighting for his country, Vivianne said.

The final straw was learning that her daughter, Katie, was ineligible for a “comfort quilt” intended for the children of Marines killed in war.

“While it is true your husband was serving in the military,” the non-profit group told Vivianne in an e-mail, “he was not in an active war theater at the time he died. He lost his life back here at home.”

Defense officials argue there is precedence for a two-tier death benefit. Under the federal Public Safety Officers’ Benefits Program, police officers, firefighters and other safety officials receive a death benefit of $275,658 if killed by traumatic injury in the line of duty. Ironically, given Vivianne’s situation, Congress in 2003 extended eligibility for that payment to police and firefighter killed by stress-related heart attacks and strokes.

“What I want to do is stick out my red flag and say, ‘Hey, don’t just look at this pathology of death. Look at his history'” of service as an infantry officer, Vivianne said. On his first tour in Iraq, Wersel was the command operations center’s ground watch officer for Task Force Tarawa for which he received the Meritorious Service Medal. His award commends the precision and clarity of his reports to commanders during the battle of An Nasiriyah.

Three days before Rich Wersel’s death, Gen. William L. Nyland, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, joined other military leaders in warning Congress against establishing two levels of death benefits.

“I firmly believe that we would do great harm to our servicemen and women…were we to make such distinctions in one’s service,” Nyland said.

He said it would be wrong, for example, to pay a family more because a loved one died in Iraq versus in car accident after “a late night at the club, trying to come to grips with what he may have seen over there.”

The House-passed 2006 defense authorization bill would make the two-tier benefit permanent. The Senate bill would too, as written, but floor amendments are still possible. An aide to Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said he might propose again to extend the benefit increases retroactively to all active duty deaths since Oct. 7, 2001. An identical amendment was dropped from the supplemental bill earlier this year in final negotiations with the House.

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War’s Wounded Roll Their Message Into Washington

Posted on July 13, 2005 by Team VCS

Heath Calhoun is cycling across America. Because he has no legs, he is doing this with his hands, pushing his pedals mightily up the sides of mountains, through rolling stretches of farmland, across suburban byways and city streets, with one idea in mind: that the country, which may be forgetting, needs to remember its wounded soldiers.

They are women and men like him, returned from duty in Iraq — and some from Afghanistan — without a leg or an arm or an eye or a hand, troops who lived when others died but who have a long way to go as they recover and rebuild.

“A lot of people think that the war is over, but Iraqis are still shooting at us every day,” Calhoun, 26, said during a break near the White House, poised on his three-wheel hand cycle and surrounded by 50 other bicycle-mounted troops and supporters. “The wounded need their country’s support.”

With more than 3,500 miles behind them, Calhoun and two other riders yesterday brought their cross-country fundraising effort, Soldier Ride 2005, into Washington, to meet with President Bush in the morning and try to raise awareness about how many in the military are coming home injured. The latest Pentagon tallies show 13,336 wounded in Iraq and another 511 in the war on terrorism.

Here, as in other cities, the soldiers and other members of the military were joined in their journey by local wounded — about a dozen in all — some of whom would ride with them for a few hours, or a day, or a leg of their trip. That was part of the organizers’ goal: to inspire can-do thinking and physical activity among those with debilitating injuries.

“The greatest disability is in your mind, not your body,” said Army Capt. Marc Giammatteo, 27, who lost half his right leg below the knee in an ambush in Iraq in January 2004 and has had more than 30 surgeries. He counted himself lucky to be able to join the last 350 miles of the trip; six months ago, he could not have imagined himself on a bike.

Lonnie Moore, 29, an Army captain who lost his right leg in April 2004 after a rocket-propelled grenade hit the turret of his Bradley Fighting Vehicle outside Ramadi, Iraq, was similarly determined to ride using his remaining leg. The fundraising is important, he said. All money pledged will go to the nonprofit Wounded Warrior Project, which is a major source of help — moral, financial and therapeutic — for the military’s injured, organizers said.

“Most people don’t understand or are numb to the fact that more soldiers have been hurt this year than last year,” Moore said. Thinking about it, he guessed that “it’s kind of like 9/11. People just hear about it for so long and then they just kind of forget about it. But it’s not something you can forget about. These people have put their lives on the line.”

As Moore spoke, a passerby in a ball cap noted his evident injury, walked up and shook Moore’s hand. “Thank you, young man,” the man said, looking Moore in the eyes.

Moore said he was appreciative, and then he looked at Calhoun, ready for another day of pedaling his low-slung cycle. This was Day 51 of a ride that began in Marina del Rey, Calif., and would not end until July 18 in Montauk, N.Y. The riders average 70 to 90 miles a day.

“He’s an inspiration,” Moore said of Calhoun.

Calhoun is as strong in his physical feats as he is in his cause. Injured in Iraq in November 2003 when a grenade exploded in his truck, the retired staff sergeant said it had been a lengthy rebound to a life that is permanently changed.

“Those of us injured will recover for the rest of our lives,” said Calhoun, of Kentucky, a father of two with one more on the way.

Calhoun said it is important that people across the nation recognize this generation of the wartime wounded, whether or not they belong to a military family or support the war.

“We’re trying to touch everyone and trying to show that these soldiers are from their country, their cities, their states,” he said.

The idea for Soldier Ride started with Chris Carney, 35, a Long Island, N.Y., bartender who organized a fundraiser for an injured soldier and eventually visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center, glimpsing the bigger picture. “As soon as you get to the hospital,” he said, “You wonder what more you can do.”

Carney did the coast-to-coast ride by himself last year, joined by wounded troops along the way, and raised $2 million for the Wounded Warrior Project during the event.

This year, Calhoun and retired Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Kelly joined in for the full distance.

Many more troops have participated, and anyone is welcome to ride.

Contributions are fewer than last year, with less than $400,000 raised so far.

Many people talk about keeping troops in their thoughts and prayers, he said, but more tangible support is needed, too. “When you see these kids in the hospital, they are so positive,” Carney said. “They don’t want to live on benefits. They want to get out and do things.”

Today, the ride heads to Annapolis and then Baltimore, with stops to see Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a crowd at the U.S. Naval Academy and Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley.

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Report cites ‘degrading’ Guantanamo treatment

Posted on July 13, 2005 by Team VCS

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Guantanamo Bay interrogators degraded and abused a key prisoner but did not torture him when they told him he was gay, forced him to dance with another man and made him wear a bra and perform dog tricks, military investigators said on Wednesday.

The general who heads Southern Command, responsible for the jail for foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, also said he rejected his investigators’ recommendation to punish a former commander of the prison.

A military report presented before the Senate Armed Services Committee stated a Saudi man, described as the “20th hijacker” slated to have participated in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America, was forced by interrogators in late 2002 to wear a bra and had women’s thong underwear placed on his head.

U.S. interrogators also told him he was a homosexual, forced him to dance with a male interrogator, told him his mother and sister were whores, forced him to wear a leash and perform dog tricks, menaced him with a dog and regularly subjected him to interrogations up to 20 hours a day for about two months, the report said.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt, who headed the probe into FBI accounts of abuse of Guantanamo prisoners by Defense Department personnel, concluded that the man was subjected to “abusive and degrading treatment” due to “the cumulative effect of creative, persistent and lengthy interrogations.” The techniques used were authorized by the Pentagon, he said.

“As the bottom line, though, we found no torture. Detention and interrogation operations were safe, secure and humane,” Schmidt said.

The Pentagon identified the man as Mohamed al-Qahtani and said he ultimately provided “extremely valuable intelligence.”

Schmidt said, “He admitted to being the 20th hijacker, and he expected to fly on United Airlines Flight 93,” which crashed in Pennsylvania.

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, himself abused by the North Vietnamese as a Vietnam War POW, noted, “Humane treatment might be in the eye of the beholder.”

Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said terrorism suspects “are not to be coddled.”

“What damage are we doing to our war effort by parading these relatively minor infractions before the press and the world again and again and again while our soldiers risk their lives daily and are given no mercy by the enemy?” Inhofe said.

PRISON COMMANDER

Army Gen. Bantz Craddock, head of Southern Command, rejected the recommendation by Schmidt and fellow investigator Army Brig. Gen. John Furlow that Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, jail commander at the time, be admonished for failing to monitor and limit that prisoner’s interrogation.

Craddock said the interrogation “did not result in any violation of a U.S. law or policy,” and thus “there’s nothing for which to hold him accountable,” but asked the Army inspector general’s office to look into it.

Miller, who helped introduce Guantanamo-style questioning methods in Iraq ahead of the 2003 abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, would have been the highest-ranking officer punished in connection with the detainee abuse.

The report urged punishment of a Navy lieutenant commander, who wore a mask and was dubbed “Mr. X,” for breaking military law by making death threats to another “high-value” detainee and telling him he would die on “Christian … sovereign American soil.”

The report faulted a female interrogator who smeared fake menstrual blood on a prisoner who had spit in her face, but said it part of an authorized interrogation technique. It also faulted interrogators over two unauthorized techniques — wrapping duct tape around the mouth and head of a chanting detainee and chaining detainees to the floor.

McCain said, “I hold no brief for the prisoners. I do hold a brief for the reputation of the United States of America as to adhering to certain standards of treatment of people no matter how evil or terrible they might be.”

The investigation, announced in January, followed the release by the American Civil Liberties Union of FBI documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The documents described prisoners shackled hand and foot in a fetal position on a floor for 18 to 24 hours, and left to urinate and defecate on themselves. Others said military interrogators had used “torture techniques.”

About 520 men are held at the prison. Many were detained in Afghanistan and have been held for more than three years. Only four have been charged. The United States has classified them as “enemy combatants” and denied them rights accorded to prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. (Additional reporting by Vicki Allen)

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While You Were Watching the Hurricane: The Weekend in Iraq

Posted on July 11, 2005 by Team VCS

While You Were Watching the Hurricane: The Weekend in Iraq

The bombings in London and Hurricane Dennis knocked the war off the front pages again this week so let’s do some synthesis here:

Reuters offers a wrap-up of incidents in Iraqon Sunday at Reuters AlertNet:

“BAGHDAD – Four mortar rounds were fired at a police station in the northern Baghdad district of Aadhamiya, Iraq’s defence ministry said. Two people were wounded.
Five U.S. soldiers were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion in southern Baghdad, the U.S. military said.”

Jon Leyne notes some of the oddities in Iraq with a touch of black humor:

“If the insurgents do not get you, maybe the traffic police will. At least, that was my experience in Baghdad.”

It seems to me that the psyops guys are getting a good handle on the message out of Iraq (even the bloggers) and we hear very little of trouble there.

With our shortened news cycles and infotainment riding high on the television sets the public has little taste for the ‘same ole’ death and destruction’ that passes for everyday activity in the new Iraq. A leaked memo (I wonder if it isn’t a very poll-driven leak) discusses troop reductions but a careful reading shows that we are talking about 2007 and to paraphrase a Pentagon spokesman – it’s far from a done deal.

But let us not forget that our Soldiers are striving every day, dealing with the heat, boredom, separation, punishing work schedules, IEDs, suicide bombers, nearly impossible jobs they didn’t sign up for, and the potential for having promises and contracts broken to them. Soldiers and Marines conducted patrols and combat operations on the Fourth of July while legislators went on vacation leaving a nearly three billion dollar shortfall in the VA budget unsolved. The world watched the Live8 concerts while men and women in Iraq tried to shake the dust out of walkmen and orifices. Back in the states, the injured waited in vain for the call for needed treatment from the VA and examined claims summarily dismissed as part of a business model that disenfranchises those that put it on the line for us all.

In Afghanistan, a strengthened Taliban made threats about a SEAL they may or may not hold and men as quiet about their activities as they are dangerous went about their business trying to locate their missing comrade. A half-dozen headless bodies turned up there this week, testifying to a job left undone as NATO follows the model of the British as they retreat to Kabul.

In all of this, I fear that the public conciousness of the war, its origin, and the ramifications teeters near the edge of the news black hole. The country seems to move to a discussion of the London attacks as if they occurred in a vacumn and there is little awareness of malfeasance leading the world to this point. Deaths of Soldiers and security forces in Iraq seem to pale next to that of London citizens as if they were two different species.

I think that it is vitally important to remember the past and that the origins of the attacks both in the West and in Iraq had to do with a questionable policy of our own. Robin Cook talks about the genesis of Al Quaedain the Guardian.

“Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.”

We would do well to remember how we arrived at the place where we are. It didn’t swell up from nature and wash over us like a hurricane. It was created and fed by policy, unexamined acts, and bad deals with bad men.

Failing to demand accountability for these acts and to examine them completely in the light of day will allow both the ideas and the idealogues to scuttle for cover and reemerge on another dark day.

 By: Perry Jefferies

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Comments Off on While You Were Watching the Hurricane: The Weekend in Iraq