It's been a horrible year with the election of Bush so let's have Uncle Creepy dress up as Sandy Claws and wish everyone Beast Witches for the Horrordays.
Friday, December 24, 2004
MERRY CREEPMAS!
It's been a horrible year with the election of Bush so let's have Uncle Creepy dress up as Sandy Claws and wish everyone Beast Witches for the Horrordays.
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Merry Christmas from Iraq!
Merry Christmas from Iraq! Enjoy the holidays and the knowledge that American soldiers are dying and being maimed INSIDE military bases NOW and that George Bush is the one that put them there based on using faulty and manipulative (he "lied" is the Missouri way of saying it) information while throwing flags in people's faces. Gee, think of the victims' families back in the states and what kind of holiday cheer this brings while you're opening your presents on Christmas day and Bing croons "White Christmas". And don't forget the soldiers who were lucky and only lost a limb, their hearing or went blind (and their faces scarred and disfigured). They'll get to go home now and remember this for every Christmas to come and all while dealing with the veterans health care crisis, stalled economy, social security's destruction, Medicare's meltdown and post-traumatic syndrome! ---Sam
Death Toll at 24 in Attack on Mosul Base
By MICHAEL McDONOUGH, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - An explosion ripped through a mess tent at a military base in Mosul where hundreds of U.S. soldiers had just sat down to lunch Tuesday, and officials said 24 people were killed and more than 60 wounded. A radical Muslim group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack on a U.S. base in Iraq.
The dead included U.S. military personnel, U.S. contractors, foreign national contractors and Iraqi army, said Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, commander of Task Force Olympia in Mosul.
The attack came the same day that British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a surprise visit to Baghdad and described the ongoing violence in Iraq as a "battle between democracy and terror."
Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, a spokesman for Task Force Olympia, told CNN that the toll was 24 dead. He added that more than 60 were wounded.
Jeremy Redmon, a reporter for the Richmond, Va., Times-Dispatch embedded with the troops in Mosul said the dead included two soldiers from the Richmond-based 276th Engineer Battalion, which had just sat down to eat at Forward Operating Base Merez. He reported 64 were wounded, and civilians may have been among them, he said.
Officials could not break down the toll of dead or wounded among the groups. Reports also differed as to the cause of the blast at the camp, which is based outside the predominantly Sunni Muslim city about 220 miles north of Baghdad.
The base, also known as the al-Ghizlani military camp, is used by both U.S. troops and the interim Iraqi government's security forces.
Although military officials initially said rockets or mortar rounds struck the camp, Hastings said it was still under investigation.
"We do not know if it was a mortar or a place explosive," he said, describing it as a "single explosion."
The force knocked soldiers off their feet and out of their seats as a fireball enveloped the top of the tent and shrapnel sprayed into the area, Redmon said.
Amid the screaming and thick smoke in the tent, soldiers turned their tables upside down, placed the wounded on them and gently carried them into the parking lot, Redmon said.
Scores of troops crammed into concrete bomb shelters, while others wandered around in a daze and collapsed, he said.
"I can't hear! I can't hear!" one female soldier cried as a friend hugged her.
A huge hole was blown in the roof of the tent, and puddles of blood, lunch trays and overturned tables and chairs covered the floor, Redmon reported.
Near the front entrance, troops tended a soldier with a serious head wound, but within minutes, they zipped him into a black body bag, he said. Three more bodies were in the parking lot.
"It is indeed a very, very sad day," Ham said.
It made no difference whether the casualties were soldiers or civilians, Americans or Iraqis, Ham said. "They were all brothers in arms taking care of one another," he said.
Redmon and photographer Dean Hoffmeyer are embedded with the 276th Engineer Battalion, a Richmond, Va., unit that can trace its lineage to the First Virginia Regiment of Volunteers formed in 1652. George Washington and Patrick Henry were two of its early commanders. Henry created the unit's motto, "Liberty or Death."
The Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on the Internet. It said the attack was a "martyrdom operation" targeting a mess hall in the al-Ghizlani camp.
Ansar al-Sunna is believed to be a fundamentalist group that wants to turn Iraq into an Islamic state like Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s former Taliban regime. The Sunni Muslim group claimed responsibility for beheading 12 Nepalese hostages and other recent attacks in Mosul.
Mosul was the scene of the deadliest single incident for U.S. troops in Iraq. On Nov. 15, 2003, two Black Hawk helicopters collided over the city, killing 17 soldiers and injuring five. The crash occurred as the two choppers maneuvered to avoid ground fire from insurgents.
Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, was relatively peaceful in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime last year. But insurgent attacks in the largely Sunni Arab area have increased dramatically in the past year and particularly since the U.S.-led military operation in November to retake the restive city of Fallujah from militants.
Earlier in the day, hundreds of students demonstrated in the center of the city, demanding that U.S. troops cease breaking into homes and mosques there.
Also Tuesday, Iraqi security forces repelled another attack by insurgents trying to seize a police station in the center of the city, the U.S. military said.
On Sunday, insurgents detonated two roadside bombs and a car bomb targeting U.S. forces in Mosul in three separate attacks. Other car bombs Sunday killed 67 people in the Shiite holy cites of Najaf and Karbala.
Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, warned Monday that insurgents are trying to foment sectarian civil war as well as derail the Jan. 30 elections.
During his visit, Blair held talks with Allawi and Iraqi election officials, whom he called heroes for carrying out their work despite attacks. Three members of Iraq's election commission were dragged from the car and killed this week in Baghdad.
"I said to them that I thought they were the heroes of the new Iraq that's being created, because here are people who are risking their lives every day to make sure that the people of Iraq get a chance to decide their own destiny," Blair said at a joint news conference with Allawi.
Blair, who has paid a political price for going to war in Iraq, defended the role of Britain's 8,000 troops by referring to terrorism.
"If we defeat it here, we deal it a blow worldwide," he said. "If Iraq is a stable and democratic country, that is good for the Middle East, and what is good for the Middle East, is actually good for the world, including Britain.
Blair, whose trip to Iraq hadn't been disclosed for security reasons, urged Iraqis to back next month's elections.
"Whatever people's feelings and beliefs about the removal of Saddam Hussein, and the wisdom of that, there surely is only one side to be on in what is now very clearly a battle between democracy and terror," he said.
Allawi said his government was committed to holding the elections as scheduled, despite calls for their postponement owing to the violence.
"We have always expected that the violence would increase as we approach the elections," Allawi said. "We now are on the verge, for the first time in history, of having democracy in action in this country."
Blair flew into the Iraqi capital about 11 a.m. aboard a British military transport aircraft from Jordan. A Royal Air Force Puma helicopter flew from Baghdad airport to the city center, escorted by U.S. Black Hawk helicopters.
It was Blair's first visit to Baghdad and his third to Iraq since the dictator Saddam Hussein was toppled in April 2003. Blair visited British troops stationed around the southern Iraqi city of Basra in mid-2003 and in January. President Bush (news - web sites) had paid a surprise visit to U.S. troops in Baghdad at Thanksgiving in 2003.
Blair flew to Basra later Tuesday.
The British leader was a key supporter of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam. His decision to back the U.S. offensive angered many lawmakers in his governing Labour Party and a large portion of the British public.
In other violence Tuesday, a U.S. jet bombed a suspected insurgent target west of Baghdad. Hamdi Al-Alosi, a doctor in a hospital in the city of Hit, said four people were killed and seven injured in the strike. He said the attack damaged several cars and two buildings. A U.S. military spokesman could not confirm the casualties.
Elsewhere, five American soldiers and an Iraqi civilian were wounded when the Humvee they were traveling in was hit by a car bomb near Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.
In Baqouba, a city 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, unidentified assailants shot and killed an Iraqi nuclear scientist as he was on his way to work, witnesses said. Taleb Ibrahim al-Daher, a professor at Diyala University, was killed as he drove over a bridge on the Khrisan river. His car swerved and plummeted into the water.
In northern Iraq, insurgents set ablaze a major pipeline used to ship oil to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, a principal export route for Iraqi oil, an official with the North Oil CO. said. Firefighters were on the scene, 70 miles southwest of Kirkuk.
Insurgents have often targeted Iraq's oil infrastructure, repeatedly cutting exports and denying the country much-needed reconstruction money.
___
Associated Press writers John Lumpkin in Washington and Slobodan Lekic in Baghdad contributed to this story.
Death Toll at 24 in Attack on Mosul Base
By MICHAEL McDONOUGH, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - An explosion ripped through a mess tent at a military base in Mosul where hundreds of U.S. soldiers had just sat down to lunch Tuesday, and officials said 24 people were killed and more than 60 wounded. A radical Muslim group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack on a U.S. base in Iraq.
The dead included U.S. military personnel, U.S. contractors, foreign national contractors and Iraqi army, said Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, commander of Task Force Olympia in Mosul.
The attack came the same day that British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a surprise visit to Baghdad and described the ongoing violence in Iraq as a "battle between democracy and terror."
Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, a spokesman for Task Force Olympia, told CNN that the toll was 24 dead. He added that more than 60 were wounded.
Jeremy Redmon, a reporter for the Richmond, Va., Times-Dispatch embedded with the troops in Mosul said the dead included two soldiers from the Richmond-based 276th Engineer Battalion, which had just sat down to eat at Forward Operating Base Merez. He reported 64 were wounded, and civilians may have been among them, he said.
Officials could not break down the toll of dead or wounded among the groups. Reports also differed as to the cause of the blast at the camp, which is based outside the predominantly Sunni Muslim city about 220 miles north of Baghdad.
The base, also known as the al-Ghizlani military camp, is used by both U.S. troops and the interim Iraqi government's security forces.
Although military officials initially said rockets or mortar rounds struck the camp, Hastings said it was still under investigation.
"We do not know if it was a mortar or a place explosive," he said, describing it as a "single explosion."
The force knocked soldiers off their feet and out of their seats as a fireball enveloped the top of the tent and shrapnel sprayed into the area, Redmon said.
Amid the screaming and thick smoke in the tent, soldiers turned their tables upside down, placed the wounded on them and gently carried them into the parking lot, Redmon said.
Scores of troops crammed into concrete bomb shelters, while others wandered around in a daze and collapsed, he said.
"I can't hear! I can't hear!" one female soldier cried as a friend hugged her.
A huge hole was blown in the roof of the tent, and puddles of blood, lunch trays and overturned tables and chairs covered the floor, Redmon reported.
Near the front entrance, troops tended a soldier with a serious head wound, but within minutes, they zipped him into a black body bag, he said. Three more bodies were in the parking lot.
"It is indeed a very, very sad day," Ham said.
It made no difference whether the casualties were soldiers or civilians, Americans or Iraqis, Ham said. "They were all brothers in arms taking care of one another," he said.
Redmon and photographer Dean Hoffmeyer are embedded with the 276th Engineer Battalion, a Richmond, Va., unit that can trace its lineage to the First Virginia Regiment of Volunteers formed in 1652. George Washington and Patrick Henry were two of its early commanders. Henry created the unit's motto, "Liberty or Death."
The Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on the Internet. It said the attack was a "martyrdom operation" targeting a mess hall in the al-Ghizlani camp.
Ansar al-Sunna is believed to be a fundamentalist group that wants to turn Iraq into an Islamic state like Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s former Taliban regime. The Sunni Muslim group claimed responsibility for beheading 12 Nepalese hostages and other recent attacks in Mosul.
Mosul was the scene of the deadliest single incident for U.S. troops in Iraq. On Nov. 15, 2003, two Black Hawk helicopters collided over the city, killing 17 soldiers and injuring five. The crash occurred as the two choppers maneuvered to avoid ground fire from insurgents.
Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, was relatively peaceful in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime last year. But insurgent attacks in the largely Sunni Arab area have increased dramatically in the past year and particularly since the U.S.-led military operation in November to retake the restive city of Fallujah from militants.
Earlier in the day, hundreds of students demonstrated in the center of the city, demanding that U.S. troops cease breaking into homes and mosques there.
Also Tuesday, Iraqi security forces repelled another attack by insurgents trying to seize a police station in the center of the city, the U.S. military said.
On Sunday, insurgents detonated two roadside bombs and a car bomb targeting U.S. forces in Mosul in three separate attacks. Other car bombs Sunday killed 67 people in the Shiite holy cites of Najaf and Karbala.
Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, warned Monday that insurgents are trying to foment sectarian civil war as well as derail the Jan. 30 elections.
During his visit, Blair held talks with Allawi and Iraqi election officials, whom he called heroes for carrying out their work despite attacks. Three members of Iraq's election commission were dragged from the car and killed this week in Baghdad.
"I said to them that I thought they were the heroes of the new Iraq that's being created, because here are people who are risking their lives every day to make sure that the people of Iraq get a chance to decide their own destiny," Blair said at a joint news conference with Allawi.
Blair, who has paid a political price for going to war in Iraq, defended the role of Britain's 8,000 troops by referring to terrorism.
"If we defeat it here, we deal it a blow worldwide," he said. "If Iraq is a stable and democratic country, that is good for the Middle East, and what is good for the Middle East, is actually good for the world, including Britain.
Blair, whose trip to Iraq hadn't been disclosed for security reasons, urged Iraqis to back next month's elections.
"Whatever people's feelings and beliefs about the removal of Saddam Hussein, and the wisdom of that, there surely is only one side to be on in what is now very clearly a battle between democracy and terror," he said.
Allawi said his government was committed to holding the elections as scheduled, despite calls for their postponement owing to the violence.
"We have always expected that the violence would increase as we approach the elections," Allawi said. "We now are on the verge, for the first time in history, of having democracy in action in this country."
Blair flew into the Iraqi capital about 11 a.m. aboard a British military transport aircraft from Jordan. A Royal Air Force Puma helicopter flew from Baghdad airport to the city center, escorted by U.S. Black Hawk helicopters.
It was Blair's first visit to Baghdad and his third to Iraq since the dictator Saddam Hussein was toppled in April 2003. Blair visited British troops stationed around the southern Iraqi city of Basra in mid-2003 and in January. President Bush (news - web sites) had paid a surprise visit to U.S. troops in Baghdad at Thanksgiving in 2003.
Blair flew to Basra later Tuesday.
The British leader was a key supporter of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam. His decision to back the U.S. offensive angered many lawmakers in his governing Labour Party and a large portion of the British public.
In other violence Tuesday, a U.S. jet bombed a suspected insurgent target west of Baghdad. Hamdi Al-Alosi, a doctor in a hospital in the city of Hit, said four people were killed and seven injured in the strike. He said the attack damaged several cars and two buildings. A U.S. military spokesman could not confirm the casualties.
Elsewhere, five American soldiers and an Iraqi civilian were wounded when the Humvee they were traveling in was hit by a car bomb near Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.
In Baqouba, a city 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, unidentified assailants shot and killed an Iraqi nuclear scientist as he was on his way to work, witnesses said. Taleb Ibrahim al-Daher, a professor at Diyala University, was killed as he drove over a bridge on the Khrisan river. His car swerved and plummeted into the water.
In northern Iraq, insurgents set ablaze a major pipeline used to ship oil to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, a principal export route for Iraqi oil, an official with the North Oil CO. said. Firefighters were on the scene, 70 miles southwest of Kirkuk.
Insurgents have often targeted Iraq's oil infrastructure, repeatedly cutting exports and denying the country much-needed reconstruction money.
___
Associated Press writers John Lumpkin in Washington and Slobodan Lekic in Baghdad contributed to this story.
Monday, December 20, 2004
No Explaining For American People For Soviet-Style Bush Presidency
Democracy is dead in America under Bush. "No negotiating with myself in public," means Bush is really saying, "@#$% the American public's right to know, I'm running the country Soviet-style!"
No 'Negotiating with Myself' for Bush
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In Washington, there are plenty of ways to say "no comment," but President Bush offered his own formulation on Monday, when he refused to "negotiate with myself in public."
Bush used the phrase to deflect a question on the future of Social Security at a televised news conference.
"Now, the temptation is going to be, by well-meaning people such as yourself and others here, as we run up to the issue, to get me to negotiate with myself in public," Bush told the questioner. "To say, you know, "What's this mean, Mr. President? What's that mean?
"I'm not going to do that. I don't get to write the law. I'll propose a solution at the appropriate time," Bush said.
In essence, this Bushism means the president will discuss options on such issues as Social Security with members of Congress who write the law, but not with the media.
Asked to explain one facet of his Social Security policy, Bush agreed but said, "I will try to explain how without negotiating with myself. It's a very tricky way to get me to play my cards. I understand that."
No 'Negotiating with Myself' for Bush
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In Washington, there are plenty of ways to say "no comment," but President Bush offered his own formulation on Monday, when he refused to "negotiate with myself in public."
Bush used the phrase to deflect a question on the future of Social Security at a televised news conference.
"Now, the temptation is going to be, by well-meaning people such as yourself and others here, as we run up to the issue, to get me to negotiate with myself in public," Bush told the questioner. "To say, you know, "What's this mean, Mr. President? What's that mean?
"I'm not going to do that. I don't get to write the law. I'll propose a solution at the appropriate time," Bush said.
In essence, this Bushism means the president will discuss options on such issues as Social Security with members of Congress who write the law, but not with the media.
Asked to explain one facet of his Social Security policy, Bush agreed but said, "I will try to explain how without negotiating with myself. It's a very tricky way to get me to play my cards. I understand that."
The Iraq War Grows Worse, Bush Supports Rumsfeld's Arrogant Folly
Our fighting men are some of the most courageous in the world. Our leaders under Bush are the most unfeeling and idiotic I have known in my time. You'll live to hear Marine and other Iraq veterans bitterly curse Bush's name in the future.
The New York Times
December 20, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
War on the Cheap
By BOB HERBERT
Greg Rund was a freshman at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in 1999 when two students shot and killed a teacher, a dozen of their fellow students and themselves. Mr. Rund survived that horror, but he wasn't able to survive the war in Iraq. The 21-year-old Marine lance corporal was killed on Dec. 11 in Falluja.
The people who were so anxious to launch the war in Iraq are a lot less enthusiastic about properly supporting the troops who are actually fighting, suffering and dying in it. Corporal Rund was on his second tour of duty in Iraq. Because of severe military personnel shortages, large numbers of troops are serving multiple tours in the war zone, and many are having their military enlistments involuntarily extended.
Troops approaching the end of their tours in Iraq are frequently dealt the emotional body blow of unexpected orders blocking their departure for home. "I've never seen so many grown men cry," said Paul Rieckhoff, a former infantry platoon leader who founded Operation Truth, an advocacy group for soldiers and veterans.
"Soldiers will do whatever you ask them to do," said Mr. Rieckhoff. "But when you tell them the finish line is here, and then you keep moving it back every time they get five meters away from it, it starts to really wear on them. It affects morale."
We don't have enough troops because we are fighting the war on the cheap. The Bush administration has refused to substantially expand the volunteer military and there is no public support for a draft. So the same troops head in and out of Iraq, and then back in again, as if through a revolving door. That naturally heightens their chances of being killed or wounded.
A reckoning is coming. The Army National Guard revealed last Thursday that it had missed its recruiting goals for the past two months by 30 percent. Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, who heads the National Guard Bureau, said: "We're in a more difficult recruiting environment, period. There's no question that when you have a sustained ground combat operation going that the Guard's participating in, that makes recruiting more difficult."
Just a few days earlier, the chief of the Army Reserve, Lt. Gen. James Helmly, told The Dallas Morning News that recruiting was in a "precipitous decline" that, if not reversed, could lead to renewed discussions about reinstatement of the draft.
The Bush administration, which has asked so much of the armed forces, has established a pattern of dealing in bad faith with its men and women in uniform. The callousness of its treatment of the troops was, of course, never more clear than in Donald Rumsfeld's high-handed response to a soldier's question about the shortages of battle armor in Iraq.
As the war in Iraq goes more and more poorly, the misery index of the men and women serving there gets higher and higher. More than 1,300 have been killed. Many thousands are coming home with agonizing wounds. Scott Shane of The Times reported last week that according to veterans' advocates and military doctors, the already hard-pressed system of health care for veterans "is facing a potential deluge of tens of thousands of soldiers returning from Iraq with serious mental health problems brought on by the stress and carnage of war."
Through the end of September, nearly 900 troops had been evacuated from Iraq by the Army for psychiatric reasons, included attempts or threatened attempts at suicide. Dr. Stephen C. Joseph, an assistant secretary of defense for health affairs from 1994 to 1997, said, "I have a very strong sense that the mental health consequences are going to be the medical story of this war."
When the war in Afghanistan as well as Iraq is considered, some experts believe that the number of American troops needing mental health treatment could exceed 100,000.
From the earliest planning stages until now, the war in Iraq has been a tragic exercise in official incompetence. The original rationale for the war was wrong. The intelligence was wrong. The estimates of required troop strength were wrong. The war hawks' guesses about the response of the Iraqi people were wrong. The cost estimates were wrong, and on and on.
Nevertheless the troops have fought valiantly, and the price paid by many has been horrific. They all deserve better than the bad faith and shoddy treatment they are receiving from the highest officials of their government.
And just when you think it can't get any worse...
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: December 20, 2004
The New York Times
December 20, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
War on the Cheap
By BOB HERBERT
Greg Rund was a freshman at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in 1999 when two students shot and killed a teacher, a dozen of their fellow students and themselves. Mr. Rund survived that horror, but he wasn't able to survive the war in Iraq. The 21-year-old Marine lance corporal was killed on Dec. 11 in Falluja.
The people who were so anxious to launch the war in Iraq are a lot less enthusiastic about properly supporting the troops who are actually fighting, suffering and dying in it. Corporal Rund was on his second tour of duty in Iraq. Because of severe military personnel shortages, large numbers of troops are serving multiple tours in the war zone, and many are having their military enlistments involuntarily extended.
Troops approaching the end of their tours in Iraq are frequently dealt the emotional body blow of unexpected orders blocking their departure for home. "I've never seen so many grown men cry," said Paul Rieckhoff, a former infantry platoon leader who founded Operation Truth, an advocacy group for soldiers and veterans.
"Soldiers will do whatever you ask them to do," said Mr. Rieckhoff. "But when you tell them the finish line is here, and then you keep moving it back every time they get five meters away from it, it starts to really wear on them. It affects morale."
We don't have enough troops because we are fighting the war on the cheap. The Bush administration has refused to substantially expand the volunteer military and there is no public support for a draft. So the same troops head in and out of Iraq, and then back in again, as if through a revolving door. That naturally heightens their chances of being killed or wounded.
A reckoning is coming. The Army National Guard revealed last Thursday that it had missed its recruiting goals for the past two months by 30 percent. Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, who heads the National Guard Bureau, said: "We're in a more difficult recruiting environment, period. There's no question that when you have a sustained ground combat operation going that the Guard's participating in, that makes recruiting more difficult."
Just a few days earlier, the chief of the Army Reserve, Lt. Gen. James Helmly, told The Dallas Morning News that recruiting was in a "precipitous decline" that, if not reversed, could lead to renewed discussions about reinstatement of the draft.
The Bush administration, which has asked so much of the armed forces, has established a pattern of dealing in bad faith with its men and women in uniform. The callousness of its treatment of the troops was, of course, never more clear than in Donald Rumsfeld's high-handed response to a soldier's question about the shortages of battle armor in Iraq.
As the war in Iraq goes more and more poorly, the misery index of the men and women serving there gets higher and higher. More than 1,300 have been killed. Many thousands are coming home with agonizing wounds. Scott Shane of The Times reported last week that according to veterans' advocates and military doctors, the already hard-pressed system of health care for veterans "is facing a potential deluge of tens of thousands of soldiers returning from Iraq with serious mental health problems brought on by the stress and carnage of war."
Through the end of September, nearly 900 troops had been evacuated from Iraq by the Army for psychiatric reasons, included attempts or threatened attempts at suicide. Dr. Stephen C. Joseph, an assistant secretary of defense for health affairs from 1994 to 1997, said, "I have a very strong sense that the mental health consequences are going to be the medical story of this war."
When the war in Afghanistan as well as Iraq is considered, some experts believe that the number of American troops needing mental health treatment could exceed 100,000.
From the earliest planning stages until now, the war in Iraq has been a tragic exercise in official incompetence. The original rationale for the war was wrong. The intelligence was wrong. The estimates of required troop strength were wrong. The war hawks' guesses about the response of the Iraqi people were wrong. The cost estimates were wrong, and on and on.
Nevertheless the troops have fought valiantly, and the price paid by many has been horrific. They all deserve better than the bad faith and shoddy treatment they are receiving from the highest officials of their government.
And just when you think it can't get any worse...
At Least 64 Dead as Rebels Strike in 3 Iraqi Cities
Published: December 20, 2004
AGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 19 - Only days into Iraq's six-week election campaign, car bombers struck crowds in Najaf and Karbala on Sunday, killing at least 61 people and wounding about 120 in those two holy Shiite cities. In the heart of Baghdad, about 30 insurgents hurling grenades and firing machine guns pulled three election officials from their car in the midst of morning traffic and killed them with shots to the head.
Taken together, the attacks represented the second-worst daily civilian death toll from insurgent mayhem in Iraq since the American military occupation transferred formal sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government nearly six months ago.
The worst attack was on July 28, when as many as 70 people were killed by a suicide bomber near a police recruiting center in the city of Baquba, north of Baghdad.
The attacks raised the specter of exactly the kind of violence that American and Iraqi officials have been hoping to minimize ahead of assembly elections on Jan. 30 that are a watershed in the American-inspired blueprint for democracy in Iraq.
Iraqi politicians arguing for a delay in the elections to allow for renewed mediation efforts with Sunni insurgents have repeatedly warned of the risks of a wave of sectarian killings, as well as attacks on election officials and candidates.
In Najaf and Karbala, Shiite clerics and government officials attributed the bombings to Sunni extremists seeking to ignite sectarian strife with the country's Shiite majority. The bombings took place within two hours of each other in crowded areas in the center of the cities near the Shiite sect's holiest shrines.
In Baghdad, the Iraqi Election Commission, supervising the campaign, described the victims of the ambush on Baghdad's notoriously lawless Haifa Street as martyrs and appealed urgently to all Iraqis to "support the lives of our officials."
The bombings in Najaf and Karbala seemed calculated to cause maximum loss of life and a wave of anger among Shiites, who constitute about 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million people.
In Karbala, a suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle amid minibuses at the entrance to the city's bus terminal. In Najaf, a car bomb exploded in a central square crowded with people watching a tribal leader's funeral procession, among them the provincial governor and the city's police chief, both of whom escaped unhurt.
Accounts filed by an Iraqi employee of The New York Times and Western news agencies told of residents pulling bodies from the rubble of shops around Maidan Square in the heart of Najaf's Old City, about 100 miles south of Baghdad.
An Associated Press report quoted Yousef Munim, an official at the city's Al Hakim Hospital, as saying that the hospital's preliminary account showed 47 people killed and 69 wounded. The blast occurred a few hundred yards from the Imam Ali Shrine, one of the most sacred in Shiite Islam, which was the center of an American-led offensive in August that cleared the city of rebels loyal to the rebel Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, but at a heavy cost in civilian lives and damage to buildings near the shrine.
In Karbala, about 50 miles north of Najaf, the bombing took place within a short walk of the Imam Hussein Shrine, another sacred site, outside of which another bomb exploded last Wednesday that killed 12 people and wounded dozens of others, including a close aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric.
Ali al-Ardawi, an assistant to the director of Al Hussein Hospital, said 14 people were killed and 52 wounded.
Shiite religious and political leaders said it was clear that Sunni insurgents were responsible. "They are trying to ignite a sectarian civil war and prevent elections from going ahead on time," said Muhammad Bahr al-Uloum, a moderate cleric who has worked with American officials to smooth the way for the elections. He added: "They have failed before, and they will fail again. The Shiites are committed not to respond with violence, which will only lead to more violence. We are determined on elections, as Ayatollah Sistani has made clear."
Friday, December 17, 2004
FDA Scientists Think Drug Industry Threatens Public Safety
Survey: FDA scientists question safety
By Julie Schmit, USA TODAY
Two-thirds of Food and Drug Administration scientists surveyed two years ago lacked confidence that the FDA adequately monitors the safety of prescription drugs, a report released Thursday shows.
And 18% of the almost 400 respondents said they had been pressured to approve or recommend a drug despite reservations about its safety, effectiveness or quality.
The survey, conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General, was partially released last year. An advocacy group released the full report, acquired via the Freedom of Information Act.
The survey's details come amid rising criticism that the FDA puts too much emphasis on getting drugs to market and too little on protecting consumers from unsafe or ineffective drugs. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told a Senate hearing last month he feared "that the FDA has a relationship with drug companies that is too cozy."
The survey results also lend credence to surprising congressional testimony last month by FDA scientist David Graham. The associate director of science and medicine in the FDA's drug safety office said the agency didn't adequately weigh safety concerns of drugs on the market and was incapable of preventing another Vioxx-type incident. The painkiller was pulled from the market Sept. 30 by maker Merck after a study tied it to increased risk of heart attack and stroke with long-term use.
The survey also found that:
•31% of the scientists were only "somewhat confident" and 5% were "not at all confident" that final decisions on new drugs adequately assessed the drug's safety; 52% were mostly confident; and 13% were completely confident.
•59% of them said the six months allotted to review some drugs wasn't enough time.
In a statement Thursday, the FDA said the study confirmed that, "overall," FDA medical reviewers believe their decisions appropriately assess drug safety and effectiveness and that debate is open and in-depth.
Still, the survey results "should cause a great deal of concern," says Arthur Levin of the Center for Medical Consumers, a New York-based patient advocacy group. But he says all fault doesn't lie with the FDA. Congress authorized it to collect fees from drugmakers to speed new drug approvals, blurring the line between those checking on drugs and those making them.
Grassley, a frequent FDA critic, said the survey helps "make an even stronger case" that a shake-up is needed at the FDA. That some scientists felt pressured, a survey statistic reported last year by consumer group Public Citizen, is noteworthy, says Jerry Avorn, author of Powerful Medicines and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "Nearly one in five is a bad pattern," he says.
In contrast, HHS' report last year concluded that FDA scientists had "confidence" in FDA decisions. While noting that workload pressures may be harming the process, it said scientists did not believe they were ignoring key information or data in order to meet time goals. "We have no evidence of a public health concern nor did we seek to obtain such evidence," the report said.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility secured the survey and released it with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Contributing: Donna Leinwand
Thursday, December 16, 2004
U.S. Current Account Gap Widens
 U.S. Current Account Gap Widens By Tim Ahmann WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. current account trade gap widened slightly to a record $164.71 billion in the third quarter, data showed on Thursday, but U.S. dependence on overseas capital was not as great as feared, fueling a big dollar rally.
Separate reports showed first-time claims for jobless aid posted their sharpest drop in three years last week, while activity at factories in the Middle Atlantic region quickened.
But in a touch of bad news, the government said housing starts in November logged the biggest drop in nearly 11 years.
Prices for U.S. government bonds slipped in the wake of the mixed data, but the dollar shot higher as traders breathed a collective sigh of relief that the trade shortfall was much smaller than the $170 billion Wall Street had braced for.
Stock indices were close to flat in early afternoon as corporate news pulled in differing directions.
The current account gap -- running at a hefty 5.6 percent of the size of the U.S. economy -- grew by just $318 million in the July-September period from a revised second-quarter reading of $164.39 billion, the Commerce Department (news - web sites) said. The second-quarter gap was first reported as $166.18 billion.
The dollar has fallen roughly 5 percent against the euro this year and some 4 percent against a basket of major currencies amid worry that foreign investors' willingness to finance the huge trade deficit will fade.
Economists have warned of the potential for a steep dollar drop if the supply of overseas cash that has helped fuel U.S. consumption begins to dry up.
Stephen Cecchetti, former research director at the New York Federal Reserve (news - web sites) Bank, blamed bloated U.S. budget deficits for the troubling current account shortfall.
"The problem with the current account is domestic saving," he said. "It requires a fiscal policy solution."
British Chancellor of the Excheckr Gordon Brown said on Thursday the twin U.S. trade and budget deficits were causing global economic stress and that he would discuss the matter with U.S. officials in coming days.
"They have got to set a clear path for showing that these can be dealt with over the next period of time," he said shortly before jetting off to New York.
President Bush (news - web sites), who pushed big tax cuts through Congress during his first term, restated Washington's commitment to getting its fiscal house in order on Wednesday as he met with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
JOB MARKET BRIGHTENS, HOUSING SOURS
A separate report showed initial claims for jobless benefits fell by much more than expected in the week ending Dec. 11 to 317,000, their lowest level since July. Wall Street economists had expected only a slight dip to 340,000.
The Labor Department (news - web sites) said there were no special factors to account for the drop, the largest since December 2001, but cautioned claims are often volatile in the holiday period toward the end of the year. (Sam note: Jobless claims ALWAYS drop at this time of the holiday year! This is the same ol' manipulative propraganda by the Bush administration.)
"It brings the claims number back down to a level that's really very positive," said Patrick Fearon, economist at A.G. Edwards & Sons in St. Louis.
Separately, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia said its index of factory activity in the mid-Atlantic region jumped to 29.6 in December from 20.7 in November, well ahead of forecasts. It was the 19th straight month the index has indicated an expansion with a reading above zero. Another report showed housing starts unexpectedly plummeted 13.1 percent last month, the biggest dive since a 17 percent tumble in January 1994, as groundbreaking activity fell sharply across the nation. Housing starts slid to an annual rate of 1.771 million units in November from an upwardly revised 2.039 million clip a month earlier, the Commerce Department said. Economists had expected starts to ease only slightly and some saw the report as a sign of brewing trouble for the long high-flying U.S. housing sector. "The housing market is finally beginning to cool off. This is the beginning of the end," said David Wyss, chief economist for Standard & Poor's. "The housing number is scary." (Additional reporting by Alister Bull in Washington and Pedro Nicolaci da Costa in New York) |
AP: Woman Died During Gov't AIDS Study
AP: Woman Died During Gov't AIDS Study
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By JOHN SOLOMON and RANDY HERSCHAFT, Associated Press Writers
A pregnant Tennessee woman who enrolled in federally funded research in hopes of saving her soon-to-be-born son from getting AIDS (news - web sites) died last year when doctors continued to give her an experimental drug regimen despite signs of liver failure, government memos say.
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Family members of Joyce Ann Hafford say the 33-year-old HIV (news - web sites)-positive woman died without ever holding her newborn boy. They also said they never were told the National Institutes of Health (news - web sites) concluded the drug therapy likely caused her death.
The family first learned of NIH's conclusions when The Associated Press obtained copies of the case file this month. For the past year, they say they were left to believe Hafford, of Memphis, Tenn., died from AIDS complications but began pursuing litigation to learn more.
"They tried to make it sound like she was just sick. They never connected it to the drug," said Rubbie King, Hafford's sister.
"If it were the disease, solely the disease, and the complications associated with the disease, that would be more readily acceptable than her being administered medication that came with warnings that the medical community failed to get ... to her."
Documents show Hafford's case reverberated among the government's top scientists in Washington, who were monitoring reports of her declining health in late July 2003 as she lay on a respirator.
NIH officials quickly suspected the drug regimen because it included nevirapine, a drug known to cause liver problems, and the case eventually reached the nation's chief AIDS researcher.
"Ouch! Not much wwe (we) can do about dumd (dumb) docs," Dr. Edmund Tramont, NIH's AIDS Division chief, responded in an e-mail after his staff reported that doctors continued to administer the drugs nevirapine and Combivir to Hafford despite signs of liver failure.
Nevirapine is an antiretroviral AIDS drug used since the mid-1990s, and the government has warned since at least 2000 that it could cause lethal liver problems or rashes when taken in multiple doses over time.
Asked about the case Thursday, White House press secretary Scott McClellan called Hafford's death "tragic and terrible." He gave no view on whether use of multiple doses of the drug should be halted.
"We want to see what the National Institute of Medicine (news - web sites) says," said McClellan. But he reiterated that the single dose of nevirapine used in the president's emergency AIDS relief plan in Africa is considered safe.
NIH officials acknowledge that experimental drugs, most likely nevirapine, caused Hafford's death, and that keeping the family in the dark was inappropriate. But NIH usually leaves disclosures like that to the doctors who treated her, officials said.
"We feel horrible that something like this would happen to anyone in any circumstance," said Dr. H. Clifford Lane, NIH's No. 2 infectious disease specialist. "There are risks in research and we try to minimize them."
Jim Kyle, a lawyer representing Regional Medical Center in Memphis where Hafford died, declined comment because of the family's pending litigation. The doctors there referred a call seeking comment to NIH.
The study during which Hafford died recently led researchers to conclude that nevirapine poses risks when taken over time by certain pregnant women.
"Continuous nevirapine may be associated with increased toxicity among HIV-1 infected pregnant women" with certain liver cell counts, the study concluded.
Lane said Hafford should have signed a 15-page, NIH-approved consent form at the start of the experiment specifically warning her of the risks of liver failure. The family says Hafford seemed unaware of the liver risks. They even kept the bottle of nevirapine showing it had no safety warnings.
"My daughter didn't know any of the warning signs," said Rubbie Malone, Hafford's mother and now caretaker of Hafford's new baby and older son. "She never got to hold her baby."
Lane confirmed the nevirapine bottle Hafford received likely wouldn't have had safety warnings because the experiment's rules called for the patient to be unaware of the exact drug effects to avoid patient influence on the test results. That means the consent form would have been her lone warning about potential liver problems, he said.
That 15-page, single-spaced consent form is chock full of complex medical terms like "hypersensitivity reactions" and "pharmacokinetic test." The warning about potential liver problems shows up on the sixth page, where it said liver inflammation was possible and "rarely may lead to severe and life threatening liver damage and death."
Hafford, who was HIV-positive but otherwise healthy, agreed to participate in the NIH-funded research project that provided her multiple doses of nevirapine, also known as Viramune, to protect her soon-to-be-born son, Sterling, from getting HIV at birth.
The project was an outgrowth of earlier research in Africa that concluded the drug could be taken in single doses safely to protect newborns half the time.
"She didn't want her baby to be born with HIV infection if it could be prevented at any cost," said King, her sister.
Hafford died Aug. 1, 2003, less than 72 hours after giving birth. Sterling was delivered prematurely by Caesarean section as his mother was dying. Though premature, he was spared from HIV and is healthy.
NIH's documents suggest Hafford's life might also have been spared if the drug had been stopped when the first liver problems showed up in her blood work two weeks before death.
"This case was particularly unfortunate b/c (because) the PI (principle investigative doctor) didn't stop drug when grade 3 liver enzymes were reported," Dr. Jonathan Fishbein, NIH's chief of good research practices, told Tramont in an August 2003 e-mail.
Fishbein, who is seeking federal whistleblower protection after raising concerns about NIH's practices, told AP that Hafford's death is attributable to a bigger problem in government research.
"This is not just a clinical trial issue this is a healthcare issue. The public expects that diagnostic test results are promptly evaluated and acted on, if need be," Fishbein said. "Sadly, this is but one example where an assessment was not done quickly and it cost this young mother her life."
NIH's official review determined the Memphis hospital failed to react to lab results that showed her liver failure was starting well before she died. "The site had identified that there was a delay in reviewing laboratory evaluations from the clinic visit the week before she presented with clinical hepatitis," an Aug. 15, 2003, report concluded.
The official investigative files cited "drug-induced hepatitis" of the liver as the cause of death.
As is routine after a research-related death, NIH ordered changes to the rules its researchers followed in the nevirapine studies to ensure the early detection of liver problems, the memos show.
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On the Net:
Documents gathered by AP for this story are available at: http://wid.ap.org/documents/nevirapine3.html
National Institutes of Health: http://www.nih.gov
Fishbein's whistleblower Web site: http://www.honestdoctor.org/
THANKS, BUSH FOR "BRING IT ON!"
ASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - The nation's hard-pressed health care system for veterans is facing a potential deluge of tens of thousands of soldiers returning from Iraq with serious mental health problems brought on by the stress and carnage of war, veterans' advocates and military doctors say.Monday, December 06, 2004
Army LIED About Ill-Fated Mission
The Bush administration has lied and covered up for the Iraq war from before the beginning. Here's another bit of evidence of how low they will go to exploit any angle to suit their goals. It's un-American and an insult to our troops who fight bravely for our country while believing in justice and truth from its leaders.
washingtonpost.com
By Steve Coll
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 6, 2004; Page A01
Second in a two-part series.
Just days after Pat Tillman died from friendly fire on a desolate ridge in southeastern Afghanistan, the U.S. Army Special Operations Command released a brief account of his last moments.
The April 30, 2004, statement awarded Tillman a posthumous Silver Star for combat valor and described how a section of his Ranger platoon came under attack.
"He ordered his team to dismount and then maneuvered the Rangers up a hill near the enemy's location," the release said. "As they crested the hill, Tillman directed his team into firing positions and personally provided suppressive fire. . . . Tillman's voice was heard issuing commands to take the fight to the enemy forces."
It was a stirring tale and fitting eulogy for the Army's most famous volunteer in the war on terrorism, a charismatic former pro football star whose reticence, courage and handsome beret-draped face captured for many Americans the best aspects of the country's post-Sept. 11 character.
It was also a distorted and incomplete narrative, according to dozens of internal Army documents obtained by The Washington Post that describe Tillman's death by fratricide after a chain of botched communications, a misguided order to divide his platoon over the objection of its leader and undisciplined firing by fellow Rangers.
The Army's public release made no mention of friendly fire, even though at the time it was issued, investigators in Afghanistan had already taken at least 14 sworn statements from Tillman's platoon members that made clear the true causes of his death. The statements included a searing account from the Ranger nearest Tillman during the firefight, who quoted him as shouting "Cease fire! Friendlies!" with his last breaths.
Army records show Tillman fought bravely during his final battle. He followed orders, never wavered and at one stage proposed discarding his heavy body armor, apparently because he wanted to charge a distant ridge occupied by the enemy, an idea his immediate superior rejected, witness statements show.
But the Army's published account not only withheld all evidence of fratricide, but also exaggerated Tillman's role and stripped his actions of their context. Tillman was not one of the senior commanders on the scene -- he directed only himself, one other Ranger and an Afghan militiaman, under supervision from others. And witness statements in the Army's files at the time of the news release describe Tillman's voice ringing out on the battlefield mainly in a desperate effort, joined by other Rangers on his ridge, to warn comrades to stop shooting at their own men.
The Army's April 30 news release was just one episode in a broader Army effort to manage the uncomfortable facts of Pat Tillman's death, according to internal records and interviews.
During several weeks of memorials and commemorations that followed Tillman's death, commanders at his 75th Ranger Regiment and their superiors hid the truth about friendly fire from Tillman's brother Kevin, who had fought with Pat in the same platoon, but was not involved in the firing incident and did not know the cause of his brother's death. Commanders also withheld the facts from Tillman's widow, his parents, national politicians and the public, according to records and interviews with sources involved in the case.
On May 3, Ranger and Army officers joined hundreds of mourners at a public ceremony in San Jose, where Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Denver Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer and Maria Shriver took the podium to remember Tillman. The visiting officers gave no hint of the evidence investigators had collected in Afghanistan.
In a telephone interview, McCain said: "I think it would have been helpful to have at least their suspicions known" before he spoke publicly about Tillman's death. Even more, he said, "the family deserved some kind of heads-up that there would be questions."
McCain said yesterday that questions raised by Mary Tillman, Pat's mother, about how the Army handled the case led him to meet twice earlier this fall with Army officers and former acting Army secretary Les Brownlee to seek answers. About a month ago, McCain said, Brownlee told him that the Pentagon would reopen its investigation. McCain said that he was not certain about the scope of the new investigation but that he believed it is continuing. A Pentagon official confirmed that an investigation is underway, but Army spokesmen declined to comment further.
When she first learned that friendly fire had taken her son's life, "I was upset about it, but I thought, 'Well, accidents happen,' " Mary Tillman said in a telephone interview yesterday. "Then when I found out that it was because of huge negligence at places along the way -- you have time to process that and you really get annoyed."
Army Cites Probable Friendly FireAs memorials and news releases shaped public perceptions in May, Army commanders privately pursued military justice investigations of several low-ranking Rangers who had fired on Tillman's position and officers who issued the ill-fated mission's orders, records show.
Army records show that Col. James C. Nixon, the 75th Ranger Regiment's commander, accepted his chief investigator's findings on the same day, May 8, that he was officially appointed to run the case. A spokesman for U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, which is legally responsible for the investigation, declined to respond to a question about the short time frame between the appointment and the findings.
The Army acknowledged only that friendly fire "probably" killed Tillman when Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger Jr. made a terse announcement on May 29 at Fort Bragg, N.C. Kensinger declined to answer further questions and offered no details about the investigation, its conclusions or who might be held accountable.
Army spokesmen said last week that they followed standard policy in delaying and limiting disclosure of fratricide evidence. "All the services do not prematurely disclose any investigation findings until the investigation is complete," said Lt. Col. Hans Bush, chief of public affairs for the Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg. The Silver Star narrative released on April 30 came from information provided by Ranger commanders in the field, Bush said.
Kensinger's May 29 announcement that fratricide was probable came from an executive summary supplied by Central Command only the night before, he said. Because Kensinger was unfamiliar with the underlying evidence, he felt he could not answer questions, Bush said.
For its part, Central Command, headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, handled the disclosures "in accordance with [Department of Defense] policies," Lt. Cmdr. Nick Balice, a command spokesman, said in an e-mail on Saturday responding to questions. Asked specifically why Central Command withheld any suggestion of fratricide when Army investigators by April 26 had collected at least 14 witness statements describing the incident, Balice wrote in an e-mail: "The specific details of this incident were not known until the completion of the investigation."
Few Guidelines for CasesThe U.S. military has confronted a series of prominent friendly-fire cases in recent years, in part because hair-trigger technology and increasingly lethal remote-fire weapons can quickly turn relatively small mistakes into deadly tragedies. Yet the military's justice system has few consistent guidelines for such cases, according to specialists in Army law. Decision-making about how to mete out justice rests with individual unit commanders who often work in secret, acting as both investigators and judges. Their judgments can vary widely from case to case.
"You can have tremendously divergent outcomes at a very low level of visibility," said Eugene R. Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice and a visiting lecturer at Harvard Law School. "That does not necessarily contribute to public confidence in the administration of justice in the military. Other countries have been moving away" from systems that put field commanders in charge of their own fratricide investigations, he said.
In the Tillman case, those factors were compounded by the victim's extraordinary public profile. Also, Tillman's April 22 death was announced just days before the shocking disclosure of photographs of abuse by U.S. soldiers working as guards in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. The photos ignited an international furor and generated widespread questions about discipline and accountability in the Army.
Commemorations of Tillman's courage and sacrifice offered contrasting images of honorable service, undisturbed by questions about possible command or battlefield mistakes.
Whatever the cause, McCain said, "you may have at least a subconscious desire here to portray the situation in the best light, which may not have been totally justified."
A Disaster UnfoldsWorking in private last spring, the 75th Ranger Regiment moved quickly to investigate and wrap up the case, Army records show.
Immediately after the incident, platoon members generated after-action statements, and investigators working in Afghanistan gathered logs, documents and e-mails. The investigators interviewed platoon members and senior officers to reconstruct the chain of events. By early May, the evidence made clear in precise detail how the disaster unfolded.
On patrol in Taliban-infested sectors of Afghanistan's Paktia province, Tillman's "Black Sheep" platoon, formally known as 2nd Platoon, A Company, 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, became bogged down because of a broken Humvee. Lt. David Uthlaut, the platoon leader, recommended that his unit stay together, deliver the truck to a nearby road, then complete his mission. He was overruled by a superior officer monitoring his operations from distant Bagram, near Kabul, who ordered Uthlaut to split his platoon, with one section taking care of the Humvee and the other proceeding to a village, where the platoon was to search for enemy guerrillas.
Steep terrain and high canyon walls prevented the two platoon sections from communicating with each other at crucial moments. When one section unexpectedly changed its route and ran into an apparent Taliban ambush while trapped in a deep canyon, the other section from a nearby ridge began firing in support at the ambushers. As the ambushed group broke free from the canyon, machine guns blazing, one heavily armed vehicle mistook an allied Afghan militiaman for the enemy and poured hundreds of rounds at positions occupied by fellow Rangers, killing Pat Tillman and the Afghan.
Investigators had to decide whether low-ranking Rangers who did the shooting had followed their training or had fired so recklessly that they should face military discipline or criminal charges. The investigators also had to decide whether more senior officers whose decisions contributed to the chain of confusion around the incident were liable.
Reporting formally to Col. Nixon in Bagram on May 8, the case's chief investigator offered nine specific conclusions, which Nixon endorsed, according to the records.
Among them:
• The decision by a Ranger commander to divide Tillman's 2nd Platoon into two groups, despite the objections of the platoon's leader, "created serious command and control issues" and "contributed to the eventual breakdown in internal Platoon communications." The Post could not confirm the name of the officer who issued this command.
• The A Company commander's order to the platoon leader to get "boots on the ground" at his mission objective created a "false sense of urgency" in the platoon, which, "whether intentional or not," led to "a hasty plan." That officer's name also could not be confirmed by The Post.
• Sgt. Greg Baker, the lead gunner in the Humvee that poured the heaviest fire on Ranger positions, "failed to maintain his situational awareness" at key moments of the battle and "failed" to direct the firing of the other gunners in his vehicle.
• The other gunners "failed to positively identify their respective targets and exercise good fire discipline. . . . Their collective failure to exercise fire discipline, by confirming the identity of their targets, resulted in the shootings of Corporal Tillman."
The chief investigator appeared to reserve his harshest judgments for the lower-ranking Rangers who did the shooting rather than the higher-ranking officers who oversaw the mission. While his judgments about the senior officers focused on process and communication problems, the chief investigator wrote about the failures in Baker's truck:
"While a great deal of discretion should be granted to a leader who is making difficult judgments in the heat of combat, the Command also has a responsibility to hold its leaders accountable when that judgment is so wanton or poor that it places the lives of other men at risk."
Gen. John P. Abizaid, CENTCOM's commander in chief, formally approved the investigation's conclusions on May 28 under an aide's signature and forwarded the report to Special Operations commanders "for evaluation and any action you deem appropriate to incorporate relevant lessons learned."
Deciding Accident or CrimeThe field investigation's findings raised another question for Army commanders: Were the failures that resulted in Pat Tillman's death serious enough to warrant administrative or criminal charges?
In the military justice system, field officers such as Nixon, commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment, can generally decide such matters on their own.
In the end, one member of Tillman's platoon received formal administrative charges, four others -- including one officer -- were discharged from the Rangers but not from the Army, and two additional officers were reprimanded, Lt. Col. Bush said. He declined to release their names, citing Privacy Act restrictions.
Baker left the Rangers on an honorable discharge when his enlistment ended last spring, while others who were in his truck remain in the Army, said sources involved in the case.
Military commanders have occasionally leveled charges of involuntary manslaughter in high-profile friendly-fire cases, such as one in 2002 when Maj. Harry Schmidt, an Illinois National Guard pilot, mistakenly bombed Canadian troops in Afghanistan. But in that case and others like it, military prosecutors have found it difficult to make murder charges stick against soldiers making rapid decisions in combat.
And because there is no uniform, openly published military case law about when friendly-fire cases cross the line from accident to crime, commanders are free to interpret that line for themselves.
The list of cases in recent years where manslaughter charges have been brought is "almost arbitrary and capricious," said Charles Gittins, a former Marine who is Schmidt's defense lawyer. Gittins said that senior military officers tend to focus on low-ranking personnel rather than commanders. In Schmidt's case, he said, "every single general and colonel with the exception of Harry's immediate commander has been promoted since the accident." Schmidt, on the other hand, was ultimately fined and banned from flying Air Force jets.
Short of manslaughter, the most common charge leveled in fratricide is dereliction of duty, or what the military code calls "culpable inefficiency" in the performance of duty, according to military law specialists. This violation is defined in the Pentagon's official Manual for Courts-Martial as "inefficiency for which there is no reasonable or just excuse."
In judging whether this standard applies to a case such as Tillman's death, prosecutors are supposed to decide whether the accused person exercised "that degree of care which a reasonably prudent person would have exercised under the same or similar circumstances."
Even if a soldier or officer is found guilty under this code, the punishments are limited to demotions, fines and minor discipline such as extra duty.
Records in the Tillman case do not make clear if Army commanders considered more serious punishments than this against any Rangers or officers, or, if so, why they were apparently rejected.
Staff writer Josh White contributed to this report.
Mon Dec 6, 8:36 AM ET
WASHINGTON - The last minutes of Pat Tillman's life were a horror of misdirected machine-gun fire and signals to firing colleagues that were misunderstood as hostile acts, according to an account published Sunday of the death of the NFL player-turned-soldier.
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It took the Army a month to change the record to show that Tillman, the Arizona Cardinals defensive back who gave up a $3.6 million contract to become an Army Ranger, was killed last April not by Afghan guerrillas but by his Ranger colleagues.
Even then, the statement by Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger Jr., head of the Army's Special Operations Command, gave few specifics of the corporal's death and implied that he was trying to suppress enemy fire when he "probably died as a result of friendly fire."
The Washington Post on Sunday, in the first article of a two-part series, published what it described as the first full telling of how and why Tillman died. The newspaper said it had access to "dozens of witness statements, e-mails, investigation findings, logbooks, maps and photographs."
A series of mishaps and missteps began the chain of events that resulted in Tillman's death in eastern Afghanistan (news - web sites), the newspaper said. A Humvee broke down, which led to the splitting up of his platoon.
The segment of the platoon with Tillman, Serial One, passed through a canyon and was near its north rim. The other segment, Serial Two, changed its plans because of poor roads and followed the same route into the canyon. It came under fire from Afghan Taliban fighters.
Men in Serial One heard an explosion that preceded the attack, and Tillman and two other fire team leaders were ordered to head toward the attackers, the Post said. The canyon's walls prevented them from radioing their positions to their colleagues, just as Serial Two had not radioed its change in plans.
Tillman's group moved toward the north-south ridge to face the canyon, and Tillman took another Ranger and an Afghan ally down the slope.
"As they pulled alongside the ridge, the gunners poured an undisciplined barrage of hundreds of rounds into the area Tillman and other members of Serial One had taken up positions," the Post said Army investigators concluded. It said the gunner handling the platoon's only .50-caliber machine gun fired every round he had.
The first to die was the Afghan, whom the Americans in the canyon mistook for a Taliban fighter.
Under fire, Tillman and almost a dozen others on the ridge "shouted, they waved their arms, and they screamed some more," the Post said.
"Then Tillman `came up with the idea to let a smoke grenade go.' As its thick smoke unfurled, `This stopped the friendly contact for a few moments,'" a Ranger was quoted as saying.
Assuming the friendly fire had stopped, the Ranger said, he and his comrades emerged and talked with each other, the Post reported.
"Suddenly, he saw the attacking Humvee move into `a better position to fire on us.' He heard a new machine gun burst and hit the ground, praying, as Pat Tillman fell," the Post reported.
The Ranger said Tillman had repeatedly screamed out his name and shouted for the shooting to stop, the Post said. He and others waved their arms, only attracting more fire. Tillman was shot repeatedly by rifles, finally succumbing to the machine gun.
The second part of the Post series, published on the newspaper's Web site Sunday night, tells of "a broader Army effort to manage the uncomfortable facts of Pat Tillman's death."
"Commemorations of Tillman's courage and sacrifice offered contrasting images of honorable service, undisturbed by questions about possible command or battlefield mistakes," the Post reported.
Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., told the Post, "You may have at least a subconscious desire here to portray the situation in the best light, which may not have been totally justified."
Mary Tillman told the Post that when she learned friendly fire had killed her son: "I was upset about it, but I thought, 'Well, accidents happen.' Then when I found out that it was because of huge negligence at places along the way — you have time to process that and you really get annoyed."
Eventually, one member of Tillman's platoon received formal administrative charges; four others, including an officer, were discharged from the Rangers but not from the Army; and two additional officers were reprimanded, Lt. Col. Hans Bush, chief of public affairs for the Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, told the Post.
Sunday, December 05, 2004
False Hopes In Iraq
style="font-family:helvetica,arial;font-size:-1;color:#000000;">washingtonpost.com
By Richard Hart Sinnreich
Sunday, December 5, 2004; Page B07
Gradualism rarely is a productive way to apply military power. War, as theorist Carl von Clausewitz reminded us, is not just the application of force against an unresisting object. Enemies adapt, and piecemealing combat power allows them that much more freedom to do it.
All of which is relevant to Iraq troop levels -- which, the Pentagon announced last week, will climb for the next few months to 150,000, the highest level since the war began. Only about 1,500 will be troops not already scheduled to deploy. The rest of the increase will come from extending the tours of the units the new deployments were intended to replace.
That's likely to arouse justifiable unhappiness among affected soldiers and their families. For all the benefits of unit rotation, raising expectations only to shatter them isn't one. As many have noted, the human burdens of this war are being borne by a very small number of our citizens in and out of uniform. Overstraining their undoubted dedication isn't wise.
But the broader question is what, in a military sense, 12,000 more troops for a few months will buy us. In that connection, recent trends are anything but encouraging.
This year alone U.S. troop levels in Iraq rose from 115,000 in February, to 130,000 in March, to 138,000 in May, to 140,000 in July, before dipping to 138,000 in September. During the same period, insurgent attacks on coalition forces, never mind Iraqis, rose from around 400 a month to 2,400.
That's an ominous correlation. It suggests that the insurgents have been able not only to withstand incremental U.S. troop increases but also to expand their operations significantly despite them.
There's no obvious reason to expect that another marginal troop increase will reverse that pattern. On the contrary, official announcement of the increase as merely a temporary measure to dampen violence in advance of January's scheduled election offers the insurgents every incentive to ride it out.
Given the overall scarcity of coalition forces in relation to Iraq's populated geography, that shouldn't be too difficult. From the outset, the military problem in Iraq has never been insufficient troops to defeat the enemy in battle, but rather insufficient troops to secure what they've won.
Now that we've belatedly decided to clear the insurgents from urban strongholds such as Samarra and Fallujah rather than simply hoping they would disarm, the problem is likely to mount. Each local success implies a subsequent requirement to secure the cleared locality, and troops committed to such occupation can't also continue to attack.
Nor, apparently, can we count on Iraq's fledgling security forces to bail us out. Even the most encouraging reports of their performance confirm that their reliability and effectiveness depend entirely on their continued integration with better equipped, trained and led coalition forces. Turning cleared areas over to them lock, stock and barrel isn't feasible yet.
Meanwhile, far from seeing an increase in other than U.S. forces, all the indications are that January may well see the departure or reduction of some current allied contingents. Presuming that these cutbacks would not include our British allies, the military consequences would be relatively modest, however uncomfortable the political ramifications. But they certainly wouldn't help.
All of which suggests that, as has been true from the first day of the invasion, this is America's war to win or lose. Barring an unlikely change of heart by those with little reason to have one, we had better start thinking seriously about what it will take to win it.
The odds are that continued gradualism won't. The temptation is to blame it on politicians too stubborn to admit that their predictions of cheap success in Iraq were monumentally wrong.
But that doesn't excuse military commanders who should know better and who repeatedly have insisted that they have all the troops they need even as events just as repeatedly have proved otherwise. A brand new lieutenant would blush at so consistent a pattern of military misjudgment.
That also happened 40 years ago, and we're still paying the price. Even the most stubborn leaders should be reluctant to risk making the same mistake again.
Richard Hart Sinnreich writes about military affairs for the Lawton, Okla., Sunday Constitution.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
Saturday, December 04, 2004
Economy Continues Drop Under Bush
Job Growth Slows Down in November
Employers add far fewer positions than expected. But the unemployment rate declines to 5.4%.
By David Streitfeld
Times Staff Writer
December 4, 2004
The nation's hiring engine sputtered again in November, as the Labor Department reported Friday that the economy added an unimpressive 112,000 net jobs during the month.
That was much less than the 200,000 jump economists were expecting, and only about two-thirds of what is needed each month just to keep up with population growth.
The unemployment rate fell to 5.4%, from 5.5% the previous month.
"Just when I thought it was safe to say the job market had finally firmed up, we discovered once again we were wrong," said economist Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors. "There's a new psychology in the corporate sector. If they need to hire 10 people, they try to get by with five."
Employment growth has seesawed all year, with brief periods of strength followed by extended episodes of weakness. November's numbers looked particularly poor in contrast to October's total, an impressive 303,000 even after being revised downward Friday.
October's numbers were probably inflated by temporary jobs stemming from cleaning up Florida after four successive hurricanes, economists said.
It's not surprising that business executives are cautious. Consumer confidence is down and interest rates are moving up, both of which could foreshadow a drop in household spending.
"Employers sense the economy will slow in the first several months of 2005 and thus see no reason to rush out and add to their payroll, especially now that analysts are projecting slimmer corporate profit growth next year," said Bernard Baumohl of Economic Outlook Group.
The Bush administration put a positive spin on the report. The jobs numbers are "a confirmation that the American economy is on a steady growth path," Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said. The economy has created more than 2 million net jobs this year, averaging nearly 200,000 a month, he said.
Others drew a more pessimistic picture.
The liberal Economic Policy Institute noted that in July 2003 the administration called its tax cut a "Jobs and Growth Plan." The White House's Council of Economic Advisors estimated then that 5.5 million jobs would be created by the end of 2004.
With one month to go, the institute said, the forecast is 3 million jobs short.
"Any time there's been a month of good job growth, people think it's going to settle down into consistently good job growth," said Lawrence Mishel, president of the institute. "That hasn't happened. It's very uncertain that it will."
If job creation has been underwhelming, wages have lately turned that way too. Average weekly wages fell $1.25 in November to $533.47. Over the last year, wages rose more slowly than inflation.
That might be a reason why the number of people holding down two jobs increased by 346,000 in the last year, to 7.6 million. Multiple jobholders are now 5.4% of the labor force.
November's job growth was held down by the elimination of 16,200 retailing positions. That restraint by merchants now looks smart in light of disappointing holiday sales. Manufacturers, whose four-year-old slump seemed to have ended in the spring, tightened their belts again, cutting another 5,000 jobs.
One bright spot was the lodging industry, up 18,000. However, the Labor Department said about half of that growth was because of the return of striking workers. Other strong categories included hospitals, up 8,000; nursing and residential care facilities, up 7,000; and physicians' offices, up 6,000.
Sluggish job reports imply a weakening economy. But the consensus viewpoint is still that the Federal Reserve will raise its benchmark short-term interest rate another quarter point, to 2.25%, at its next meeting Dec. 14.
Despite even softer payroll numbers in the summer, "the Fed kept tightening," said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics, in a report to clients. Another increase in February, he added, was "still more likely than not."
Wells Fargo Bank's chief economist, Sung Won Sohn, didn't believe the weak employment report boded trouble for the economy.
"It is too early to be pessimistic," Sohn said, pointing out that "uncertainties have diminished in recent months. We have gone through the Olympics and the national election without terrorism, the price of oil is trending down…. Business spending on equipment, software, inventories, etc., has been rising."
On Wall Street, the bad news about employment was offset by a continued fall in oil prices and a bullish revenue outlook from chip giant Intel Corp. Oil prices dropped below $43 for the first time in more than two months.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 7.09 points, or 0.07%, to 10,592.21.
Bond yields, however, tumbled, reflecting views of a slower economy.
Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
Employers add far fewer positions than expected. But the unemployment rate declines to 5.4%.
By David Streitfeld
Times Staff Writer
December 4, 2004
The nation's hiring engine sputtered again in November, as the Labor Department reported Friday that the economy added an unimpressive 112,000 net jobs during the month.
That was much less than the 200,000 jump economists were expecting, and only about two-thirds of what is needed each month just to keep up with population growth.
The unemployment rate fell to 5.4%, from 5.5% the previous month.
"Just when I thought it was safe to say the job market had finally firmed up, we discovered once again we were wrong," said economist Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors. "There's a new psychology in the corporate sector. If they need to hire 10 people, they try to get by with five."
Employment growth has seesawed all year, with brief periods of strength followed by extended episodes of weakness. November's numbers looked particularly poor in contrast to October's total, an impressive 303,000 even after being revised downward Friday.
October's numbers were probably inflated by temporary jobs stemming from cleaning up Florida after four successive hurricanes, economists said.
It's not surprising that business executives are cautious. Consumer confidence is down and interest rates are moving up, both of which could foreshadow a drop in household spending.
"Employers sense the economy will slow in the first several months of 2005 and thus see no reason to rush out and add to their payroll, especially now that analysts are projecting slimmer corporate profit growth next year," said Bernard Baumohl of Economic Outlook Group.
The Bush administration put a positive spin on the report. The jobs numbers are "a confirmation that the American economy is on a steady growth path," Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said. The economy has created more than 2 million net jobs this year, averaging nearly 200,000 a month, he said.
Others drew a more pessimistic picture.
The liberal Economic Policy Institute noted that in July 2003 the administration called its tax cut a "Jobs and Growth Plan." The White House's Council of Economic Advisors estimated then that 5.5 million jobs would be created by the end of 2004.
With one month to go, the institute said, the forecast is 3 million jobs short.
"Any time there's been a month of good job growth, people think it's going to settle down into consistently good job growth," said Lawrence Mishel, president of the institute. "That hasn't happened. It's very uncertain that it will."
If job creation has been underwhelming, wages have lately turned that way too. Average weekly wages fell $1.25 in November to $533.47. Over the last year, wages rose more slowly than inflation.
That might be a reason why the number of people holding down two jobs increased by 346,000 in the last year, to 7.6 million. Multiple jobholders are now 5.4% of the labor force.
November's job growth was held down by the elimination of 16,200 retailing positions. That restraint by merchants now looks smart in light of disappointing holiday sales. Manufacturers, whose four-year-old slump seemed to have ended in the spring, tightened their belts again, cutting another 5,000 jobs.
One bright spot was the lodging industry, up 18,000. However, the Labor Department said about half of that growth was because of the return of striking workers. Other strong categories included hospitals, up 8,000; nursing and residential care facilities, up 7,000; and physicians' offices, up 6,000.
Sluggish job reports imply a weakening economy. But the consensus viewpoint is still that the Federal Reserve will raise its benchmark short-term interest rate another quarter point, to 2.25%, at its next meeting Dec. 14.
Despite even softer payroll numbers in the summer, "the Fed kept tightening," said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics, in a report to clients. Another increase in February, he added, was "still more likely than not."
Wells Fargo Bank's chief economist, Sung Won Sohn, didn't believe the weak employment report boded trouble for the economy.
"It is too early to be pessimistic," Sohn said, pointing out that "uncertainties have diminished in recent months. We have gone through the Olympics and the national election without terrorism, the price of oil is trending down…. Business spending on equipment, software, inventories, etc., has been rising."
On Wall Street, the bad news about employment was offset by a continued fall in oil prices and a bullish revenue outlook from chip giant Intel Corp. Oil prices dropped below $43 for the first time in more than two months.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 7.09 points, or 0.07%, to 10,592.21.
Bond yields, however, tumbled, reflecting views of a slower economy.
Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
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