Veterans for Common Sense

  What Iraq needs is a Walter Cronkite President Bush went on the air this week to pretend again that things are OK in Iraq. Shades of President Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam nearly 40 years ago.

The most important similarity between Iraq and Vietnam is that both Democratic and Republican presidents lied to us in wartime. To refresh your memory, here’s how we got out of the Vietnam quagmire:

•Walter Cronkite, CBS-TV news anchor known as “the most trusted man in America,” after a combat tour of Vietnam in 1968 declared, “There is no way this war can be justified any longer.”

•Johnson lamented to aides, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.” He announced he would not run for re-election.

The crucial difference between Vietnam and Iraq is that there is no Cronkite to call Bush’s bluff. Without a strong, trusted, non-political voice, too many of us remain Bush-blinded. Bush tried keeping the wool over our eyes again Tuesday on national TV by repeatedly tying Iraq to 9/11. That charge is as phony as his discredited prewar claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Most of us who have had personal war experiences strongly believe this great country is worth fighting for at risk of lives. My World War II Bronze Star and Combat Infantryman’s Badge on the wall behind my desk remind me of that daily.

They also remind me that war is hell, that we must fully support our servicemen and women and put their lives at risk only for honest and just and noble causes.

That’s why I’m convinced the best way to support our troops in Iraq is to bring them home. Sooner rather than later.

Web visits put man in jail

Jordanian is a threat to national security, FBI says

BY DAVID ASHENFELTER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER, June 29, 2005

Mohammad Radwan Obeid is a threat to national security because he surfed terrorist Web sites and visited terrorist chat rooms, the FBI claims.

The 33-year-old Jordanian, who came to the United States with his American wife in 2001 and worked at a grocery store in Dayton, Ohio, before his arrest in March on immigration charges, says he was only gathering grist for a book about terrorism and world religions.

He said he volunteered to work for the FBI, but was rejected.

But a federal immigration judge in Detroit last week ordered Obeid jailed pending the outcome of charges that he entered the United States through marriage fraud. He also is being investigated by a federal grand jury.

“When taken altogether, the evidence establishes respondent presents a substantial risk to the national security of the United States,” Immigration Judge Robert Newberry said in a June 22 decision denying Obeid’s request to be released on bond. He is being held in the Monroe County Jail.

Newberry agreed with the FBI that Obeid’s claims of writing a book, his recent conversion to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and other activities often are used by terrorists to avoid arrest and deportation.

Obeid’s fiancee said Tuesday that the FBI is wrong about him.

“There’s no way he could be a terrorist,” said Misty Iddings, a 30-year-old nurse’s aide of Piqua, Ohio. “He wouldn’t hurt anybody. He’s a very nice person. He’s kind and friendly.”

Obeid came to the United States in February 2001 as a conditional resident after marrying a Kansas City woman in Jordan, court papers said. Five months after they arrived, their marriage was annulled.

His lawyer, Najad Mehanna of Dearborn Heights, said her family wouldn’t accept him because he was Muslim.

Afterward, Mehanna said, Obeid moved to the Dayton area, worked as a cashier at gas stations and convenience stores, and remarried. But the couple split up around May 2003 and he eventually met and moved in with Iddings.

In mid-2004, he became a Jehovah’s Witness, decided to write a book about terrorism, and began surfing terrorism sites on the Internet.

Mehanna said Obeid was stunned by what he found on those sites and called the CIA and FBI. He said they didn’t take him seriously.

On March 28, agents searched his home and on April 20, arrested him for immigration fraud.

The government has presented secret evidence at his deportation hearings to show that he is a threat to national security.

Obeid’s lawyer said he probably would appeal the denial of bond. He also has requested asylum on grounds that Obeid would be persecuted if returned to Jordan because of the FBI’s terrorism claims and his new faith.

But the lawyer concedes that Obeid is fighting a difficult battle, which resumes Sept. 19 in Detroit immigration court.

Contact DAVID ASHENFELTER at 313-223-4490 or ashenf@freepress.com

According to a report published on Monday from King’s College, London, the United States continues to have the highest incarceration rate in the world.

    With 714 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants, the United States remains the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world, ahead of Russia and Belarus, according to figures published by the London University King’s College International Centre for Prison Studies.

    The United States has held first place in this ranking since 2000.

    “In 200 years, the United States has succeeded in creating two million prisoners,” frets researcher Anton Shelupanov. “It’s a very worrying rate of growth.”

    Of nine million people imprisoned in the whole world, more than two million (22{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of the total) are behind American bars.

    Russia Is First in Europe

    Russia has the highest incarceration rate in Europe, with 550 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants, ahead of Belarus (532/100,000) and Ukraine (416/100,000). The rate is 91/100,000 in metropolitan France, between Belgium (88/100,000) and Germany (96/100,000).

    South Africa has the highest incarceration rate on the African continent (413/100,000) and Surinam the highest in South America (437/100,000).

    The International Centre for Prison Studies gathers data from various sources, notably the prison administrations of each country.

A unanimous House agreed late yesterday to immediately provide nearly $1 billion for veterans health care in a swift answer to President Bush’s call for lawmakers to plug a politically troubling shortfall.

House members approved by 419 to 0 a measure to close a funding gap that was disclosed last week to the surprise of lawmakers. They were told that unexpected health care demands had eaten a $1 billion hole in the fiscal 2005 budget of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The GOP’s speedy response did not soften Democratic criticism that Republicans had ignored the escalating need until it turned into an emergency. “This shortfall is the direct result of the failed budget policies and misplaced priorities of the Bush administration and the Republican Congress,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “Republicans here have either been in denial about the plight of our veterans or it simply hasn’t been a priority for them.”

Republicans responded that the GOP moved within one day to give the VA every penny it requested and that veterans will see no gap in their health care benefits. Rep. James T. Walsh (R-N.Y.) said annual spending increases show the GOP’s commitment to supporting veterans.

The House passed the $975 supplemental spending bill a day after the Senate voted unanimously to give the department an extra $1.5 billion to cover the health care shortfall, allowing the VA to carry unused funds into next year. Senators indicated that they want to stick to their bigger spending package.

“The Senate acted unanimously [Wednesday],” said Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho). “To do anything less than what we did . . . would be inadequate.”

Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) said: “The House, instead of agreeing with us and putting the dollars to work where they are so needed, has decided to take a major step backwards.”

The VA will not get any additional funds until the House and Senate reconcile their bills.

KABUL (Reuters) – U.S. helicopters and hundreds of troops were searching on Friday for soldiers who went missing in Afghanistan just before a helicopter coming to their aid was shot down, while the Taliban claimed to be holding one American.

U.S. forces looking for members of the reconnaissance team since Tuesday’s helicopter crash in mountainous Kunar province bordering Pakistan have no reason to believe any of them have been killed or captured, U.S. spokesmen said.

Col. Jim Yonts said he could neither confirm nor deny a claim by Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi that insurgents killed seven U.S. “spies” before the Chinook helicopter was shot down. All 16 Special Forces soldiers aboard were killed.

On Friday Hakimi, whose information has often proved unreliable, said guerrillas in Kunar captured an American soldier on Wednesday who had been aboard the helicopter when it crashed.

“He was trying to escape up the mountain when our mujahideen (holy warriors) caught him,” he said.

Asked what evidence the Taliban had that they were holding a U.S. soldier, he replied: “The Americans have announced themselves that some of their soldiers are missing.

“We don’t need to tell lies. When we kill him, we will tell the Americans to go and get the body and that will be the proof.”

While Hakimi’s information has often been inaccurate in the past, he has appeared well informed about the downing of the helicopter, although the U.S. military has identified the Kunar insurgents as more feared al Qaeda fighters rather than Taliban.

Another U.S. spokesman, Lt. Col. Jerry O’Hara, said there was no evidence soldiers had been killed, captured, hurt or were hiding out. “The only thing we do know is they are missing.”

He declined to comment on a BBC report that quoted military officials at the main U.S. base in Kunar as saying they had had “several indications” the troops were still alive.

The BBC said a number of Afghan guides working with the U.S. military were also missing.

BIG OPERATION

The U.S. military initially said 17 soldiers had been aboard the helicopter, but revised the figure down to 16 — eight from airborne special forces units and eight Navy Seal commandos.

Yonts said the Chinook was sent in after the reconnaissance team requested support, but the team was not at the site when the aircraft arrived and was shot down. He could not say how many were in the unit or whether they were also Special Forces.

Yonts said a large anti-insurgent operation codenamed “Redwing” was under way in Kunar to try to find the missing team and complete recovery and investigation work at the crash site.

The U.S. network ABC news said as many as 1,000 troops were taking part. O’Hara declined to give numbers but said: “We are using all available assets to find our missing.”

Dozens of vehicles packed with U.S. and Afghan troops were seen heading toward the crash site about 30 km (19 miles) northwest of Kunar’s capital Asadabad and more than a dozen U.S. helicopters were seen overhead, an Afghan reporter there said.

Hundreds more troops had set up a camp in the Shorak valley close to the site of the crash, he said.

The U.S. military has said work at the crash site has been hampered by the presence of militants in the area, cloudy weather and mountainous, heavily wooded terrain.

The crash was the biggest single combat blow to U.S. forces since they overthrew the Taliban in 2001. The insurgents have stepped up their activity to try to derail Sept. 18 elections, the next big step in Afghanistan’s difficult path to stability.

Elsewhere in the country, the threat to the elections was underescored by a series of Taliban attacks in which nine village elders, four policemen and two other civilians died along with 13 guerrillas, officials said.

In the bloodiest attack nine elders were killed in Lander village in the central province of Uruzgan on Thursday night, a day after security forces killed seven guerrillas in an attack on a security post there, Uruzgan governor Jan Mohammad Khan said.

He said the guerrillas released a 9-year-old boy to bring news of the killings and to offer to exchange the bodies of the elders and the guerrillas.

In another insurgent attack on Thursday, two civilians were killed when rockets aimed at a district office landed northeast of the city of Khost, in the southeast, police said.

(Additional reporting by Yousuf Azimy and Ismail Sameem in Kandahar)

When President Bush visits military bases, he invariably receives a foot-stomping, loud ovation at every applause line. At bases like Fort Bragg – the backdrop for his Tuesday night speech on Iraq – the clapping is often interspersed with calls of “Hoo-ah,” the military’s all-purpose, spirited response to, well, almost anything. 

So the silence during his speech was more than a little noticeable, both on television and in the hall. On Wednesday, as Mr. Bush’s repeated use of the imagery of the Sept. 11 attacks drew bitter criticism from Congressional Democrats, there was a parallel debate under way about whether the troops sat on their hands because they were not impressed, or because they thought that was their orders.

With Iraq once more atop the political agenda, the Senate on Wednesday gave hasty approval to an additional $1.5 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs, to cover a budget gap caused in part by unexpected demands for health care by returning Iraqi veterans. The administration has reversed itself, and now plans to seek emergency money from both the House and the Senate. Before the Senate voted unanimously to raise the spending for health care, the head of the veterans administration returned to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to tell House members that, contrary to his testimony the previous day, the agency needs emergency financing for this year and the administration will be submitting a request.

Democrats had seized on the veterans’ spending issue as another example of the administration’s mishandling of the war.

Republicans moved quickly to respond to what was becoming a significant embarrassment.

Capt. Tom Earnhardt, a public affairs officer at Fort Bragg who participated in the planning for the president’s trip, said that from the first meetings with White House officials there was agreement that a hall full of wildly cheering troops would not create the right atmosphere for a speech devoted to policy and strategy.

“The guy from White House advance, during the initial meetings, said, ‘Be careful not to let this become a pep rally,’ ” Captain Earnhardt recalled in a telephone interview. Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, confirmed that account.

As the message drifted down to commanders, it appears that it may have gained an interpretation beyond what the administration’s image-makers had in mind. “This is a very disciplined environment,” said Captain Earnhardt, “and some guys may have taken it a bit far,” leaving the troops hesitant to applaud.

After two presidential campaigns, Mr. Bush has finely tuned his sense of timing for cueing applause, especially when it comes to his most oft-expressed declarations of resolve to face down terrorists. But when the crowd did not respond on Tuesday , he seemed to speed up his delivery a bit. Then, toward the end of the 28-minute speech, there was an outbreak of clapping when Mr. Bush said, “We will stay in the fight until the fight is done.”

Terry Moran, an ABC News White House correspondent, said on the air on Tuesday night that the first to clap appeared to be a woman who works for the White House, arranging events. Some other reporters had the same account, but Captain Earnhardt and others in the back of the room say the applause was started by a group of officers.

While the White House tried to explain the silence, Democrats were critical of Mr. Bush’s use of the Sept. 11 attacks – comparing it to the administration’s argument, before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, that Saddam Hussein had links to Al Qaeda. The independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks found no evidence of “a collaborative operational relationship” between Iraq and Osama bin Laden’s organization.

Mr. Bush declared in his speech, as he has many times in recent months, that the Iraq campaign is part of a wider war on terrorism that was brought home to America on Sept. 11, 2001.

Mr. Bush, his aides said, was referring not to the past, but to the arrival in Iraq of terrorists linked to Al Qaeda once Mr. Hussein’s government fell.

“What we need is a policy to get it right in Iraq,” Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, Mr. Bush’s opponents in the 2004 election, said on the NBC morning show “Today.” “The way you honor the troops is not to bring up the memory of 9/11. It’s to give the troops leadership that’s equal to the sacrifice.”

Carl Hulse and David Stout contributed reporting for this article.

In anger and embarrassment, Congressional Republicans are scrambling to repair a budget shortfall in veterans’ medical care now that the Bush administration has admitted it vastly underestimated the number of returning Iraq and Afghanistan personnel needing treatment. The $1 billion-plus gaffe is considerable, with the original budget estimate of 23,553 returned veterans needing care this year now ballooning to 103,000. American taxpayers should be even more furious than Congress. 

The Capitol’s Republican majorities have shown no hesitation in signing the president’s serial blank-check supplemental budgets for waging the war, yet they repeatedly ignored months of warnings from Democrats that returning veterans were being shortchanged. One Republican who warned of the problem – Representative Christopher Smith of New Jersey – lost his chairmanship of the Veterans Affairs Committee after pressing his plea too boldly before the House leadership.

But partisan resistance melted in a flood of political chagrin once the administration admitted the budget error, which was first discovered in April but only now disclosed. The explanation offered – the gaffe was due to using dated formulas based on prewar calculations – left Republicans sputtering all the more.

All wars necessarily involve mismanagement, even successful ones. But there is no excuse for treating the needs of wounded and damaged warriors as a budgetary afterthought. Congressional Republicans were far from innocent victims of administrative ineptitude or deception. After years of approving record tax cuts and budget deficits, they stuck to this year’s pre-election script of fictitious “budget tightening” that underestimated inevitable expenses and shortchanged returning veterans with higher health care enrollment fees and drug co-payments. The only comfort for the American public is that unlike many of the war’s problems, this one can be repaired, providing partisan combat is suspended in the Capitol.

FORT HOOD, Tex., June 28 – Maj. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, home after a year commanding 39,000 troops in Baghdad, will enter a parade field here on Thursday morning to roll up and retire the banner of the Division Artillery of the First Cavalry Division, whose heavy guns saw duty in two Iraq wars, World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

The artillery and rockets, and the soldiers who fire them, all formerly part of the Division Artillery, will be divided across the First Cavalry Division, feeding into four new brigade combat teams, each with all the built-in combat, support and service personnel to enter a war zone as a nearly self-sustaining fighting unit.

Eliminating the Division Artillery’s headquarters will free 2,500 soldiers who are needed elsewhere as the Army struggles to recruit and re-enlist soldiers in a time of war.

Beyond the ceremonial flourishes at this base not far from President Bush’s ranch in central Texas, the changes within the First Cavalry Division demonstrate the Army-wide effects of the war in Iraq.

The whole Army is rapidly reshaping its brigades – three or four in each division – into stand-alone combat units that can be sent into battle more quickly. At the same time, it is struggling to scrape together enough soldiers to fulfill the Army’s day-to-day responsibilities, especially in Iraq, and to replenish and retrain quickly the units coming home exhausted from that fight.

There is much more involved than rearranging the troops and weapons on an organizational chart. While the First Cavalry Division left Iraq as a highly experienced and hardened division, today its combat teams are being broken apart to be rebuilt.

All of its tanks and most of its infantry fighting vehicles are in the shop after grinding an average 13,000 miles through dust and heat over a yearlong deployment to Baghdad. By July 15, all the division’s battalion and brigade commanders except one will leave for new jobs; the last one is scheduled to ship out in November. Over all, 40 percent of the division’s troops are switching to other divisions, or leaving active duty altogether, after being held in place for two summers by Army-wide orders halting movement out of units bound for Iraq.

“You can’t lose over 40 percent of the division between now and the first of December and not have a lot of turbulence,” General Chiarelli said. “And when you’re in a 72-ton tank, you’ve got to assure that you’ve got crews that are well trained and know exactly what they have to do in combat. For a period of time, I’m not going to be as ready as I was before.”

Absent a radical improvement in the security situation in Iraq, First Cavalry Division troops can anticipate another deployment, perhaps as soon as next year, and in addition the division will be on call for an unexpected crisis, in North Korea or Iran, for example.

“The only date that really makes a difference to me is the date I may have to go back to Iraq or go somewhere else, and everything I’m doing is based on that date,” General Chiarelli said. “Our enemies won’t always wait for the magical day that I’m supposed to be ready or I say I’m ready.”

So troubling is the burden of Iraq deployments, and of the time and money required to reset divisions returning from Iraq, that the Senate, also Thursday, will question the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Army and Marine Corps service chiefs on whether the American military remains truly ready to meet other threats, as well.

“The challenge is that we have this huge turnover of people, and a massive moving around of equipment – both within the division and external to the division,” said Brig. Gen. William J. Troy, one of two new assistant commanders of the First Cavalry Division.

“And we’ve got to get the people and the equipment married up so that we are able to go into new training at full speed,” said General Troy, who joined the division after a year in Baghdad as chief of staff for the Multinational Corps-Iraq. “That way, if we get called to deploy, we are just as ready as the last time – with the equipment ready, with confident leaders and with confident soldiers.”

Division commanders are already sending soldiers into training on an array of high-technology simulators to rebuild combat skills, even in advance of the return of their armor from repairs.

In many ways, the division and its commanders anticipated the rush to transform into modular brigades even while deployed to Iraq.

Long before the order was given to retire the Division Artillery, its commander, Col. Stephen R. Lanza, reshaped his soldiers for a yearlong tour in Al Rashid, a district of south Baghdad, as a regular combat brigade – with a wide array of security and stability responsibilities far beyond directing artillery and rocket fire.

The former artillery headquarters troops under Colonel Lanza conducted more than 17,000 combat patrols, detained about 1,000 suspected terrorists or insurgents, trained an Iraqi army battalion and managed almost 200 civil and municipal repair projects.

“To the purists who say you can’t or you shouldn’t take the Division Artillery and make it a maneuver brigade, I can say this,” Colonel Lanza said. “We already did it, and it was very effective.”

The War Against Veterans

President Bush gives plenty of lip service to men and women in uniform. Now it’s time for the President to put his money where his mouth is and fully fund veterans’ benefits.

An official of the Department of Veterans Affairs admitted last week that it is short $1 billion for the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, but giving short shrift to those who have served their country is nothing new for this administration.

For several years now, the Bush bean counters have been slashing funds for veterans’ medical care. Playing cheap with those who have put their lives on the line would be a concern any time. Coming as the shortfall does as soldiers return home daily from war in Afghanistan and Iraq with horrific injuries, it’s a scandal.

The outrage on Capitol Hill is bipartisan, even though Republicans have continually thwarted Democratic attempts to give the VA more money under the guise of budget restraint.

Sen. Larry Craig (R., Idaho), chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, let it be known that he has reamed out Jim Nicholson, who heads the VA.

Sen. Patty Murray (D., Washington), a member of an appropriations subcommittee overseeing the VA, declared that the administration is unwilling “to make the sacrifices necessary to fulfill the promises we have made to our veterans.”

The result has been a longer wait for medical care and the closing of some VA clinics.

Veterans groups are understandably hot, with most of their ire directed at Republicans, who control Congress and have made a priority of cutting so-called “domestic spending” at the behest of Mr. Bush. One thrust of the Bush policies has been to direct benefits mostly toward those with certain medical problems that are directly attributable to military service.

Steve Robertson, legislative director of the American Legion, says the spending cuts “are inconsistent with a nation at war.” He’s especially critical of dividing veterans into “little groups, the ones that ‘deserve’ and the ones who ‘don’t deserve.’”

Such discriminatory policies clearly are out of line. The federal government cannot be all things to all of the American people, but the least it can do is to keep faith with those who kept faith with it by serving in the armed forces

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Veterans Affairs Department will ask for an emergency infusion of cash to meet its health care expenses this year after pressure built in Congress to fill a $1 billion funding shortfall, a senator and other officials said Wednesday.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said the VA and White House agreed to seek emergency money after Senate Republicans moved quickly to add $1.5 billion to this year’s veterans budget.

Administration and congressional officials said House leaders agreed with the decision. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because an official announcement had not yet been made.

The Department of Veterans Affairs told lawmakers last week that it now predicts veterans’ health care will cost $1 billion more than had been expected this year. Senate Republicans, acting swiftly to minimize potential political damage, prepared to provide that money and more in a bill for debate and passage on Wednesday.

“I’m frankly frustrated to be put into this situation … but this Congress will not fail our nation’s veterans,” said Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho.

The maneuver cut off Democrats preparing to pounce on the shortfall with their own spending amendment, demanding a $1.4 billion injection into veterans programs.

“I warned my colleagues that what was an emergency would become a crisis if we didn’t work together to address the problem,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. “That emergency has indeed become a crisis.”

Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson told lawmakers Tuesday that he didn’t need more money right away. The department can juggle its internal accounts to meet health care needs without cutting the quality of veterans services, he said.

Lawmakers, however, worried that veterans services would suffer if the VA robbed its other accounts to pay for urgent health care expenses.

Democrats called the shortfall a symptom of President Bush’s mismanagement of the war in Iraq, as the president appealed for the nation’s patience for “difficult and dangerous” work ahead in Iraq.

“It’s distressing because our veterans deserve better than an administration focused on cutting corners and hiding costs while engaged in a war abroad,” said Rep. Sam Farr, D-Calif.

Nicholson said Tuesday the VA intended to cover its $1 billion in unexpected health care costs this year by drawing on a $400 million budgetary cushion and $600 million for building maintenance and operations.

About one-quarter of this year’s shortfall can be traced to an unexpectedly large number of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, but overall enrollment by veterans of all combat eras has exceeded the department’s estimates.

The department said it used figures from 2002, before the United States went to war in Iraq, to project is 2005 budget needs, citing the federal government’s long budgeting process.

Nicholson told lawmakers the VA also needs $1.5 billion to fill expected health care needs next year.

That includes $375 million to refill the cushion that would be depleted this year; $700 million for the department’s increased workload; and a $446 million error in estimating long-term care costs.

Congress has already added roughly $1 billion to next year’s budget for veterans, acknowledging that lawmakers won’t accept new health care fees and co-payments that the administration wanted to impose