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 The Pentagon Early Bird 13 Jan 2008 January 13, 2008 Use of these news items does not reflect official endorsement. Reproduction for private use or gain is subject to original copyright restrictions. Item numbers indicate order of appearance only. This is the single print version. Use the PRINT command in your browser to print the entire Early Bird as one document. (NOTE: This single file format is a long document and can use 50 or more pages of paper.) IRAQ
January 13, 2008 Pg. 1 Iraq Passes Bill On Baathists Plan Would Ease Limits on Former Hussein Followers By Joshua Partlow and Michael Abramowitz, Washington Post Foreign Service BAGHDAD, Jan. 12 -- The Iraqi parliament passed a bill Saturday intended to make it easier for former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to return to government jobs and collect their pensions, a significant achievement for the divided legislature on an issue still regarded with raw emotion by many Iraqis. The agreement marks the passage of the first of the legislative benchmarks, a series of goals the U.S. government had once championed but largely ceased advocating publicly after months of delay, frustration and inaction. President Bush, in Bahrain on an eight-day trip through the Middle East, and some Iraqi officials described the agreement as an important boost for the prospects of reconciliation between the country's marginalized Sunni Muslim minority and its Shiite Muslim majority, which now dominates Iraqi politics. The legislation seeks to redress the first order issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003, the controversial decision that drove thousands of Baath Party members from their jobs and alienated them from Iraq's political process. That decision, along with a move to disband the Iraqi army, is widely believed to have fueled the Sunni insurgency that proved so deadly in the following years. Bush hailed the agreement as "an important sign that the leaders in that country must work together to meet the aspirations of the Iraqi people." At Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, Bush met for the first time in four months with Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, the top American military and civilian officials in Iraq. Bush said the U.S. military was "on track" to achieve its plan of reducing troop strength in Iraq from 20 combat brigades to 15 by the middle of the summer, down to about 130,000 soldiers, or roughly the level last January before he announced the troop "surge." About 160,000 U.S. troops are currently in Iraq. Bush and Petraeus discussed various scenarios in which even more troops might be pulled out, but both cautioned that it was too early to reach a definitive judgment. Some Pentagon officials are eager to withdraw troops faster in order to lessen the strain on the Army, but Bush and Petraeus appeared skeptical of drawing down too quickly. A final decision will probably come in March, when Petraeus is scheduled to deliver another report to Congress on conditions in Iraq. "If he didn't want to continue the drawdown, that's fine with me," Bush told reporters afterward. "I said to the general, 'If you want to slow her down, fine; it's up to you.' " The assessment of Iraq's progress probably also will rely heavily on political developments such as Saturday's vote in parliament. Although the agreement was widely praised, some Iraqi legislators saw the bill as motivated by the same punitive spirit that they felt guided the initial purge of Hussein's government after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The approval of the "accountability and justice law," with barely more than half the legislators present, means the legislation moves to the country's three-member Presidential Council for final ratification. "It's a good step for many reasons," said Falah Hassan Shanshal, who leads the parliamentary committee overseeing the legislation and is a member of the Shiite party loyal to influential cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. "First, it condemns all the crimes carried out by the Baath Party and its bloody regime. And this law will allow us to search for and detect every single person who committed a crime against Iraqis." Supporters of the measure say it is intended to ease the restrictions that prevented former Baathists from holding government jobs. Shanshal acknowledged that certain people joined the Baath Party not for ideological reasons but out of necessity, and for people who have not committed crimes, "it is possible for them to return to public life." When the U.S. military overthrew Hussein in 2003, the first order of business for the Coalition Provisional Authority was to disband the Baath Party that Hussein had fashioned into his personal empire over more than three decades in power. CPA Order 1, or the "De-Baathification of Iraqi Society," ordered members of the Baath Party's top four echelons "removed from their positions and banned from future employment in the public sector." The number of Baathists purged is in dispute, but Ali al-Lami, spokesman for the current de-Baathification commission, said 150,000 people were removed between May and September 2003. Since early 2004, when the de-Baathification commission began its work overseeing who could come back, about 102,000 former Baathists have returned to their jobs, Lami said. Existing rules prohibit members from the top three levels from government work but allowed people on the fourth level to return in some circumstances, he said. It remains unclear how many former Baath Party members would be eligible to return under the new legislation. Lami estimated that 3,500 people from the third-highest Baathist rank, or Shubah members, would be allowed to apply for pension payments but would still be kept from their jobs. About 13,000 people from the fourth rank, known as Firqa members, would be eligible to return, but he expected that many would not. "Most of them are either working outside the country and they don't want to go back to Iraq, or they're afraid somebody will take revenge on them or they got involved with the militant groups," Lami said. "Because for two years, we have been demanding that they come to the de-Baathification commission, but there was no response." The new measure would also prohibit Baathists who worked in Hussein's security services from returning to jobs, as well as ban their return to some of the most influential agencies, such as the Interior Ministry, Defense Ministry and Foreign Ministry, Shanshal said. "There is potential with most laws in Iraq right now for sectarian abuse, and certainly that potential would be there as well, which is why the implementation is going to be important," a U.S. official in Baghdad said this month on condition of anonymity. The new measure could lead to a new purge of members of the current Iraqi government, Lami said, including about 7,000 officers in the Interior Ministry. Even influential Iraqi security force officials who used to be Baathists could face removal. "The commander of the Baghdad security plan and his assistants, according to the new law, they should retire," he said. Many Iraqis say the concept of de-Baathification is hampered by the prevailing assumption that anyone who achieved a high rank in the party was by definition complicit in crimes during the Hussein era. "There's no question that the original de-Baathification program basically looked at the entire senior leadership of the Baath Party and made a collective judgment. The intent of this law is to roll back part of that but not all of it," said the U.S. official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the topic. "So you know, is it making a collective judgment about people who were higher up in the Baath Party? Yeah, it is. I still don't think that that means it doesn't represent political progress. Because it does represent political progress. This is certainly one of those cases where we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good," the official said. During the sometimes bitter negotiations over the measure in recent weeks, strong objections were raised by parliament members from Sadr's party, who regarded the proposed legislation as offering too many concessions to the murderous former administration and by those sympathetic to Baathists who felt it did not offer real concessions to the Sunni minority that was marginalized after the war. During the reading of the legislation in parliament Saturday, members of the Sunni bloc led by Saleh al-Mutlaq walked out, according to an aide to the deputy speaker of parliament. Some Sunnis wanted no restrictions on former Baath Party members. But members of the largest Sunni coalition in parliament agreed to the new measure. Adnan al-Dulaimi, the group's leader, said the legislation was fair to low-ranking former Baathists and allowed the higher-ranking Shubah members to receive pensions, "which I consider good and acceptable." "The current rules, on the other hand, deprived a huge number of Iraqi people who didn't commit any crimes and didn't commit any action that violated the law and the constitution," he said. Some Iraqi officials believe the new measure institutionalizes a punishment against people who acquiesced to Hussein at a time when publicly opposing him could have resulted in a death sentence. "The problem is that the new leaders have gone in the direction of revenge and vengeance, rather than going into healing those wounds," said Izzat Shabender, a Shiite who is on the de-Baathification committee in parliament. "Even if this law is passed, it cannot achieve the goal -- which is opening a new chapter with the Baathists. . . . It's got nothing to do with reconciliation. The culture of reconciliation does not exist in the heads of the Iraqi leaders." But with parliament nearly paralyzed by infighting, any agreement was something many Iraqis found heartening. As the prominent Shiite politician Humam Hamoudi said, "The most important thing about this new law is that it is an Iraqi law." Abramowitz reported from Camp Arifjan. Special correspondents Saad al-Izzi, Zaid Sabah and K.I. Ibrahim in Baghdad contributed to this report. <A name=e20080113572828.html> New York Times January 13, 2008 Pg. 1 Iraq Eases Curb On Ex-Officials Of Baath Party By Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Steven Lee Myers BAGHDAD — The Iraqi Parliament passed a bill on Saturday that would allow some former officials from Saddam Hussein’s party to fill government positions but would impose a strict ban on others. The legislation is the first of the major so-called political benchmark measures to pass after months of American pressure for progress. The measure, which is expected to be approved as a law by the presidential council, was described by its backers as opening the door for the reinstatement of thousands of low-level Baath Party members barred from office after the 2003 invasion. Since then, the Bush administration has urged the Iraqi government to reintegrate many officials in order to help mend the deep rifts between Sunni Arabs who used to control the government under Mr. Hussein and the Shiites who now dominate politics here. However, it was unclear on Saturday how far the legislation would go toward soothing Sunni Arabs, because serious disagreements emerged in the hours after the vote about how much the law would actually do. While the measure would reinstate many former Baathists, some political leaders said it would also force thousands of other former party members out of current government jobs and into retirement — especially in the security forces, where American military officials have worked hard to increase the role of Sunnis. One member of Iraq’s current de-Baathification committee said the law could even push 7,000 active Interior Ministry employees into retirement. President Bush, traveling in Kuwait and Bahrain on Saturday, praised the vote, calling it “an important step toward reconciliation.” And he said that to consolidate progress in the country in the past year, he was prepared to slow or even halt American troop reductions beyond those already planned to bring levels back to what they were before the so-called troop surge that began early in 2006. In doing so, he set the stage for renewed political debate over the war, both in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail. In Baghdad, Salim Abdullah al-Jibouri, a senior official from the largest Sunni Arab bloc in Parliament, Tawafiq, said many lawmakers from the bloc supported the new legislation. But only slightly more than half of the 275 members of Parliament were present to vote. And Mohammed al-Diani, a member of the hard-line Sunni National Dialogue Council, said the measure would still restrict “many scientists, professors, doctors, engineers and other competent men.” Some Shiite officials praised the legislation because they said strong curbs on former Baathists would remain in place. “They will not be allowed to get important posts or take part in the political process,” said Bahaa al-Araji, a leader of the bloc of Shiite lawmakers loyal to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr, describing the more senior former party members. “There will be many restrictions.” In many cases, the legislation would allow for pensions to be paid to former Baathists who are blocked from returning to government jobs. Beyond that, it was unclear how many of the former officials would be kept out of office or allowed back in. One Shiite politician, who spoke on condition that his name not be used, said the new law could forcibly retire up to 27,000 former Baathists, who would receive pensions. Other officials said the legislation could allow from 13,000 to 31,000 former Baathists back into the government. “The law allows a lot of them to come back to their jobs, but those who were responsible in the old regime, the highest ranking ones, they will be locked out,” said Mahmoud Othman, a prominent Kurdish lawmaker. He said that under the new law, only 3,500 former Baath Party members would be prevented from serving in the government, allowing more than 30,000 to hold government jobs. Former members of the Fedayeen paramilitary force and those found by a new de-Baathification committee to have committed serious crimes against the Iraqi people would be barred from government jobs and would not receive pensions, he said. Mr. Othman also said the law would abolish the old de-Baathification committee, created by the Iraqi Governing Council before the nation had established a parliament. Under the new law, he said, Baathists would be vetted by a different committee created by appointees selected by Parliament. Unlike the old committee, the new committee’s decisions will be subject to appeal by the Ministry of Justice. Lawmakers loyal to Mr. Sadr, however, said they did not expect the committee to change all that much. “The only thing I am concerned about is that this has come late, because now the other side may not be able to respond very positively,” said Mr. Othman, referring to some Sunni Arab politicians who opposed the new law. “Many were ready to respond one or two years ago, but now it will be more difficult.” A spokesperson at the United States embassy in Baghdad declined to comment on the legislation, saying that American officials were studying the bill. Hours before the vote, after meeting in Kuwait with President Bush and Gen. David H. Petraeus, Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq, said there were increasing signs of political reconciliation. “Reconciliation is more than national legislation,” he said. “It is also what we’re seeing in the provinces and around the country. There is more political activity. There is more cross-sectarian political activity.” Before traveling to Bahrain later on Saturday, Mr. Bush said he would be open to slowing or halting major troop reductions to keep progress going in Iraq, particularly noting the sharp reduction in attacks on American troops and Iraqi civilians in recent months. “We cannot take the achievements of 2007 for granted,” he said. “We must do all we can to ensure that 2008 brings even greater progress for Iraq’s young democracy.” He said additional troop withdrawals beyond those planned through this summer would depend solely on conditions in Iraq, which were being reviewed by General Petraeus, the top American commander in the country. During an 80-minute meeting, the president instructed the general, who is scheduled to report to Congress in March or April on suggested troop levels, to make no recommendation that would jeopardize improvements in security. “My attitude is, if he didn’t want to continue the drawdown, that’s fine with me in order to make sure we succeed, see,” Mr. Bush told reporters inside a command center that oversees Army operations in a region stretching from Kenya to Kazakhstan. “I said to the general, ‘If you want to slow her down, fine.’ It’s up to you.” On General Petraeus’s recommendation, Mr. Bush in September approved the withdrawal of one Army brigade and one Marine expeditionary unit in December, or roughly 5,700 troops, and four more Army brigades and two Marine battalions by July, effectively returning the American troop level to about 130,000, where it was before the beginning of the so-called troop surge in Iraq a year ago. General Petraeus later said that he and his commanders, including Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, had begun to consider a range of scenarios that would determine the timing and pace of any additional withdrawals, creating contingencies for both improvements and setbacks to the current security situation. Mr. Bush arrived in Kuwait on the fourth day of an eight-day trip that began with a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories. The first leg focused on his efforts to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty, which he said he expected to be signed before he stepped down a year from now. Increasingly, Mr. Bush seems to be racing against the dwindling months of his term. Speaking to more than 3,000 soldiers from the Third Army at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, he acknowledged that the war in Iraq would remain unfinished. Success, he said, will require an active American effort “that outlasts my presidency.” But the war’s critics in Congress used the first anniversary of the troop increase, announced last Jan. 10, to renew their demands for a substantial change in strategy, arguing that the military successes had not accomplished the goals the president himself had set. Those included an Iraqi takeover of security by November, provincial elections and passage of legislation intended to show reconciliation among the main ethnic and religious sects, like the one passed on Saturday. Although some Iraqi and American officials were praising the parliamentary vote on Saturday as an important first step toward that goal, disagreements over its eventual effects continued through the day. Ali Faisal, a senior member of the current de-Baathification committee and an aide to Ahmad Chalabi, an influential Shiite politician who had worked against previous American efforts to ease Baathists back into government, laid out one of the most extreme versions of what could happen under the new legislation. He said it could force thousands of employees in the Ministries of Defense and Interior, as well as other security institutions, into retirement, albeit with government pensions. He said about 3,500 former Baath Party members who served in the third-highest rung of the party’s hierarchy would be newly eligible for pensions, but would not be allowed to hold government jobs. Another 13,000 who served in the fourth rung would be eligible for government pensions or jobs, though not for security-related jobs, he said. In the early stages of the occupation, American officials had favored purging Baath Party members from government rolls. But the Shiite- and Kurdish-dominated government formed under the auspices of the American occupation administration took a very hard line on de-Baathification, forcing thousands of professionals and skilled technocrats out of government. Moreover, the move fueled Sunni mistrust of the government and helped drive the early stages of the Sunni insurgency. American officials came to believe it was crucial to reintegrate many former Baathists into the government. While the legislation would be the first major new law sought by the Bush administration intended to help reconcile Iraq’s warring factions, other so-called benchmark laws continue to be stalled. Those include measures that would allow provincial elections, contemplate constitutional changes sought by Sunnis, and spell out rules governing the development and distribution of the country’s huge oil reserves. Richard A. Oppel Jr. reported from Baghdad, and Steven Lee Myers from Kuwait and Bahrain. Reporting was contributed by Solomon Moore, Qais Mizher, Abeer Mohammed, Karim Hilmi, and Ahmad Fadam from Baghdad. <A name=e20080113572840.html> Washington Post January 13, 2008 Pg. 20 Bush Meets With Petraeus In Kuwait, President Seems to Claim Vindication for 'Surge' By Michael Abramowitz, Washington Post Staff Writer CAMP ARIFJAN, Kuwait, Jan. 12 -- President Bush ventured to this sprawling U.S. base near Iraq on Saturday to begin exploring further troop reductions with his top commander and take something of a victory lap over the country's improved security conditions a year after announcing "the surge." Bush seemed anxious to avoid another moment similar to one in 2003 soon after the fall of Saddam Hussein, when he appeared on the USS Abraham Lincoln below a giant sign reading "Mission Accomplished." In a statement to reporters here, Bush spoke of the difficult challenges ahead, such as defeating the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq and reaching political reconciliation among Iraq's feuding sects. But he also seemed to claim some vindication for his decision to send an additional 30,000 soldiers to Iraq last year to help quell spiraling violence. Bush pursued his policy in the face of questions not only from Democrats but also from many Republicans and generals at the Pentagon. "A lot of people thought that I was going to recommend pulling out or pulling back," Bush said. "Quite the contrary; I recommended increasing the number of forces so they could get more in the fight, because I believed all along if people are given a chance to live in a free society, they'll do the hard work necessary to live in a free society." "Iraq is now a different place from one year ago," Bush said after his first face-to-face meeting in four months with Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. Bush and Petraeus discussed the possibility of further troop reductions later this year, but no decisions were made. Bush then appeared briefly before several thousand soldiers gathered on bleachers in the middle of this large Army base in the desert south of Kuwait City. A giant "Hoo-ah!" greeted the commander in chief as he thanked the troops for their service and vowed victory in Iraq. "There is no doubt in my mind that we will succeed," Bush said, standing near a giant American flag hanging from a crane. "There is no doubt in my mind when history was written, the final page will say: 'Victory was achieved by the United States of America for the good of the world.' " Bush's visit to this Army base, between state visits with the leaders of Kuwait and Bahrain, is the only stop of his eight-day trip to the Middle East devoted solely to Iraq, the central project of his presidency. Whether Bush succeeds in creating a stable democracy remains in question, and debate has broken out among military experts over whether the decline in violence is a temporary lull or a permanent feature of life in Iraq. Petraeus reported at the end of last year that the number of weekly attacks in Iraq had dropped 60 percent since June, to roughly 500 a week by late December. A total of 901 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq in 2007, compared with 822 in 2006, according to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an independent organization that tracks casualties. As the Jan. 10 anniversary of the surge announcement approached, many Democrats ramped up criticism of what they see as a lack of progress on the political front. They argued that the troop increase has failed to achieve one of its principal objectives: Iraq's politicians, they say, have not used this period of reduced violence to make necessary political compromises, such as reaching an agreement on legislation about sharing oil revenue. In one sample of this critique, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said this week that political progress remains "out of reach" in Iraq while the Baghdad government "has done so little to achieve stability and it has been the most lethal year yet for American troops." Bush seemed to catch a break Saturday when the Iraqi parliament passed a key piece of legislation intended to help restore government jobs to people who had been in Hussein's Baath Party. U.S. officials have been pressing Iraqi lawmakers to enact such a law to help heal sectarian rifts. Asked about the political benchmarks, Bush said Iraqis have "a lot more work to do," but he suggested the criticism was overstated, noting that the Iraqi parliament is passing laws and reconciliation is taking place at a local level. "They passed a pension law, which, of course, got a huge yawn in our press," Bush said. "We can't reform our own pension system, like Social Security, but they did." During his visit, Bush kept up his fierce criticism of Iran, which he has offered at almost every stop of his trip. "Iran's role in fomenting violence" in Iraq, he said, "has been exposed. Iranian agents are in our custody, and we are learning more about how Iran has supported extremist groups with training and lethal aid." In a briefing afterward, Petraeus and Crocker said they remain uncertain about whether Iran has pulled back support for the Shiite militia groups that U.S. officials blame for much of the violence in Iraq. Crocker said that he is willing to meet with his Iranian counterpart at any point but that the Iranian envoy was not committed to a fourth meeting to discuss security in Iraq. Petraeus said attacks involving roadside explosive devices linked to Iran appeared to have been on the upswing in the past 10 days, although he also said attacks using certain other weapons associated with Iran had declined. "What we are seeing is what might be characterized as mixed signs or mixed indicators," he said. <A name=e20080113572849.html> Los Angeles Times January 13, 2008 Bush: Iraq Force Reduction Is On Track The president, speaking at a U.S. base in Kuwait, says at least 20,000 troops will be brought home by July -- unless commanders want to slow the drawdown. By James Gerstenzang, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer MANAMA, Bahrain —President Bush said Saturday that the United States was on track to bring home at least 20,000 troops from Iraq by summer, but he emphasized that he was willing to halt the drawdown "in order to make sure we succeed." After meeting in Kuwait with his top commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, and the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, the president presented a mixed picture of the conditions one year after he called for sending additional troops to Iraq. Bush said that extremist militias had been disrupted but remained a concern. "We cannot take the achievements of 2007 for granted," he said, referring to the reduction in violence toward the end of 2007, after the deadlier months at the start of the year. With a stop at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, the president was as close to Iraq as he is likely to get on his eight-day trip through the Middle East and Persian Gulf, unless he makes a detour to the war zone. The supply base is about 100 miles from Iraq. Speaking to about 3,000 U.S. troops who had gathered in the open on a chilly morning, Bush delivered a seven-minute pep talk, saying, "There is no doubt in my mind that we will succeed." He told the cheering troops that when the history of the early 21st century is written, "the final page will say: 'Victory was achieved by the United States of America for the good of the world.' " Administration officials have spoken for several weeks about their goal of reducing troop levels by five brigades by July, from a high of 20. That would bring the number of U.S. troops in Iraq below 140,000, from the 158,000 in the country at the end of December. There were about 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq a year ago when Bush announced he was sending more. Bush told reporters that, about the reductions, he had told Petraeus, "If you want to slow her down, fine; it's up to you." Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker provided the president with an in-person update ahead of their scheduled report to Congress in March on conditions in the country. Bush speaks frequently with the two by video over secure lines. The general later told reporters that he was seeing "mixed signs" about conditions in Iraq. He discussed a current operation against Al Qaeda in Iraq, an insurgent group that the administration says is led by foreigners, cautioning that to characterize the offensive as a final push "would be premature." Petraeus also raised anew concerns about what the administration says is Iran's support of anti-U.S. forces. He said that senior leaders in Tehran had told Iraq's top officials that Iran would stop "the funding, arming, training and directing of militia extremists," but the United States was waiting to see that promise kept. And Petraeus said that although certain methods of attacking U.S. troops had been curtailed, strikes using "explosively formed penetrators" had gone up in the last 10 days "by a factor of two or three." The United States has repeatedly accused Iran of providing the armor-piercing bombs, among the deadliest that U.S. troops face, to the Mahdi Army, a Shiite Muslim militia. Crocker said he could not "draw any conclusions that the Iranians have made a fundamental shift" away from allegedly supporting extremist groups in Iraq. Drawing attention to what the Bush administration alleges is Iran's role in Iraq is a central element of the president's travels among largely Sunni Muslim nations wary of Shiite-led Iran. Bush later flew to Bahrain, the first visit here by a U.S. president. He is scheduled to visit United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt before returning to Washington on Wednesday. Bahrain has played an important role in U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf, housing the headquarters of the Navy's 5th Fleet. It has long been counted in the camp of reliable moderate partners in an unstable region. Two years ago, it signed a free-trade agreement with Washington. But last month it was roiled by a week of clashes between Shiite Muslim opposition groups and forces of the Sunni-dominated government. The street fighting, sparked by the death of an activist, was some of the worst since a Shiite uprising in the 1990s. At a welcoming ceremony here, Bush waved a ceremonial sword, grinning sheepishly alongside King Hamed ibn Isa Khalifa, who appeared more accustomed to holding his sword at arm's length. The president, seeking to promote democracy in the region, noted that Bahrain had held two elections since 2000, and in 2006 a woman was elected for the first time to parliament. <A name=e20080113572867.html> Miami Herald January 13, 2008 Bush Lashes Iran, Lauds Iraq Progress President Bush -- on a peace-building trip to the Middle East -- again hit out at Iran, accusing the nation of fomenting violence in Iraq. By Leila Fadel, McClatchy News Service KUWAIT CITY -- President Bush, after meeting with the top two U.S. officials in Iraq and U.S. troops here Saturday, lauded progress in Iraq and again lashed out at Iran. While his Mideast trip is aimed mainly at promoting peace between Palestinians and Israelis, the president also seems to be drumming up support in the region against Iran, blamed by his administration for fomenting unrest in Iraq and, at least until recently, for dabbling in nuclear weapons. ''Iran's role in fomenting violence has been exposed,'' Bush said at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait's biggest U.S. troop base. "Iranian agents are in our custody, and we are learning more about how Iran has supported extremist groups with training and lethal aid.'' Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. general in Iraq, who briefed the president on Iraq along with U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, also spoke out against Iranian intervention. ''Iran's senior-most leaders promised Iraq that they would stop funding, arming, training and directing of militia extremists and other elements in Iraq that were creating security challenges,'' Petraeus said. ``We are waiting, frankly, to see that carried out.'' Petraeus, who'd said recently that attacks with weapons believed to be from Iran were down, raised a renewed worry Saturday. Over the past 10 days, he said, blasts involving explosively formed projectiles, or EFPs, an armor piercing roadside bomb believed to be imported from Iran, have increased sharply. Bush's appraisal of Iraq was far more upbeat. ''Iraq is now a different place from one year ago,'' he said. ``Much hard work remains, but levels of violence are significantly reduced. ''Hope is returning to Baghdad, and hope is returning to towns and villages throughout the country,'' he said. The president singled out for praise a U.S. program that pays mostly Sunni volunteers $300 a month to protect their neighborhoods and hold al Qaeda at bay. The program is known as Concerned Local Citizens or Awakening groups. They now number more than 80,000 people, mostly armed. Awakening groups are also raising concern in the Shiite-led government, however, over their potential to turn on it. Instead, Bagdad is trying to absorb Awakening forces into civil service jobs and the security forces. Bush said that he has no plans to reduce troops faster than the five-brigade withdrawal planned by July. That would bring the troop level to the pre-surge level of 130,000. Bush offered some coaxing support to Iraqi leaders Saturday shortly before Iraq's parliament passed a long-awaited, U.S.-backed law that lets former Baath Party members, who are mostly Sunnis, participate in the Shiite-dominated government. ''I'm not making excuses for a government,'' Bush said of the leadership in Iraq, ``but to go from a tyranny to a democracy is virtually impossible. ``Have they done enough? No. . . Our message is very clear: It's in your interest that you pass good law.'' Special Correspondent Sahar Issa contributed to this report. <A name=e20080113572836.html> Washington Post January 13, 2008 Pg. 4 Hands-On General Is Next No. 2 In Iraq Austin Will Take Over Daily Operations By Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post Staff Writer Most U.S. Army generals wear pistols on the battlefield. Lt. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, a decorated paratrooper who next month takes over as the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, packs an M4 rifle. A physically imposing but modest man who is little known outside Army circles, Austin's hands-on style reflects a connection with front-line troops and a breadth of combat leadership that senior officers say make him ideal for his new job: running the day-to-day operations of the Iraq war. Whereas the top U.S. commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, must serve as much as a diplomat and public face of the war as a military leader, Austin must master the gritty details of Iraq's battlefield geometry -- constantly prioritizing the use of dozens of U.S. and Iraqi combat units as well as aircraft, unmanned drones and other military forces to carry out the U.S. strategy. Austin, who during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 became the first black general to maneuver an Army division in combat, will replace Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, who has earned high marks for managing the "surge" of nearly 30,000 troops in Iraq. These days at his Fort Bragg headquarters, Austin is poring over the same daily briefings Odierno sees, while working to make sure his staff is electronically wired to battlefield commanders and to agencies in Washington, all with the goal of building "some sustainable momentum" in Iraq, he said in a radio interview last week. Still, Austin, who has played a central role in running the military's combat operations since 2001, predicts grueling years of conflict ahead -- in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere. "We're in it for the long haul. But it's a tough, tough road ahead," he told WFNC in Fayetteville, N.C. Austin declined to be interviewed for this story. Austin, 54, was a pivotal figure in the invasion of Iraq. Leading the forward headquarters of the 3rd Infantry Division as it spearheaded the march to Baghdad, he gained a reputation for showing up unexpectedly in the heat of battle. He received a Silver Star for gallantry in combat. "Lloyd's approach is, 'I am a soldier like everyone else,' " said retired Army Brig. Gen. Bill Weber, a fellow 3rd Infantry Division commander during the invasion. "His style is flak vest, Kevlar and a ton of ammunition, and he's a big, strapping guy and can carry it," Weber said of Austin, who stands 6-foot-4 and was a star high school basketball player in Thomasville, Ga. Austin also stood out for his strategic thinking: When the 3rd Infantry met unexpected resistance and essentially ran out of combat forces to carry on the armored thrust to Baghdad, he was central to formulating a new plan that brought in other brigades to relieve his troops and maintain the momentum critical to the campaign's success, Weber recalled. Within months after Baghdad fell, Austin was rewarded with command of the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan, one of a nonstop series of demanding assignments in recent years. That was followed by a posting from September 2005 to October 2006 as the chief of staff of U.S. Central Command, which oversees all U.S. forces in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa. "He's one of the best troop leaders we have," said Army Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo, who recalls that Austin hated sitting behind a desk when they served together in Afghanistan. "He goes everywhere he can. He will be standing on the walls at Shkin fire base [on the Pakistani border] to get a feel for what goes on there. He will fly to the deepest regions of Konar province to meet with village elders. . . . He'd never ask his soldiers to do anything he wouldn't do." In his current job as commander of the Army's 18th Airborne Corps -- which includes the 82nd Airborne Division and other units, with a total of 35,000 troops -- Austin recently led troops parachuting from aircraft as part of intensive preparations for the Iraq deployment. "He was the first off the ramp," as is traditional for the senior paratrooper on the aircraft, said Col. Ben Hodges, who jumped with the general as his chief of staff at the Corps. Subordinates say the personable, soft-spoken Georgian has high expectations and a side he refers to as "the evil twin." "When you're really screwing up, the evil twin can come out," said one Army general who worked for Austin. "So he can be tough but never unreasonable." They also praise Austin for his personal loyalty, saying he travels long distances to pin insignia at promotions and calls out of the blue to check in on old comrades. "He cares all the way down to the bone marrow," said retired Army Maj. Gen. Dorian Anderson, a West Point classmate who played rugby with Austin and graduated with him in 1975. The fifth of six children, Austin does not come from a military family but is a distant relative of the first black man to attend West Point, 2nd Lt. Henry O. Flipper, who graduated in 1877, Anderson said. As a black soldier, Anderson said, "we all accept that doing 120 percent is not always a bad thing. He's kind of driven by that." Austin has served more than three decades in the Army, but as an avid fisherman he sometimes jokes about leaving. "His inside joke is, 'I can't wait to go run a bait shop,' " Weber said. <A name=e20080113572863.html> Washington Times January 13, 2008 Pg. 1 Normalcy Returns To Baghdad, Block By Block By Richard Tomkins, The Washington Times BAGHDAD — Signs of improved security in Baghdad go beyond the obvious dampening of street battles and bombings: It's in the smaller transformations taking place in neighborhoods that the seeds of possibility are starting to take root. "When we meet and talk, we speak about how we must hold together in the future, and if we don't, the future won't be so good," said Thayia Aziz Kudam, a neighborhood leader in the East Rashid area of southern Baghdad. "Gangs, militias, al Qaeda — all of us, we want them to go away. We don't want them." East Rashid was best known from 2006 until last fall for sectarian violence and al Qaeda's campaign of terror. It has long been a mixed community, with Sunni Muslims in the majority but with Shi'ites and Christians as well. Today, a trickle of returning refugee families — about 400 since the end of October, according to one district leader — is greeted by large banners reading "Welcome back" and "We are all one." The growing sense of hope and confidence is based on the establishment of security checkpoints by the Iraqi National Police and Iraqi Security Volunteers — an armed, neighborhood-watch-type organization being established across the capital. Also helping is the frequent presence of patrols by U.S. and Iraqi military forces. The Americans, members of the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Cavalry, Stryker Regiment, are based in an abandoned Chaldean Catholic seminary at a combat operations post dubbed Blackfoot. The seminarians fled in 2006 after al Qaeda beheaded a priest and threatened the rest. In September and October, the Americans fought fierce battles in East Rashid, facing snipers, mortar attacks and roadside blasts. A long line of photographs on a wall of the Stryker headquarters honors the young soldiers who died in the battle. "When we first got here, there were memorial services almost every day," said Sgt. Jim Tripp, who belongs to a psychological-operations unit attached to the Stryker group. Attacks with improvised explosive devices and snipings still occur, but far less frequently than before, the soldiers say. Although Mr. Kudam's neighborhood is starting to resemble scenes of a normal life, the streets still are deserted in other parts of East Rashid. The problems are worst near 60th Street — once a major shopping area that became the scene of intense fighting between Iraqi militias and al Qaeda. Only an occasional pedestrian is seen hurrying across the broad avenue, even now. Neighboring streets are lined with vacant, battle-scarred houses and heaps of rubble and garbage, disturbed only by scavenging dogs. Farther from 60th Street, however, the streets are filling with people, walking more calmly and shopping at markets that sell everything from vegetables to small electronics. "It's quieter now; not much shooting anymore," said Omar Mohammed Salem, a 12-year-old whose family moved to East Rashid after being driven from another area of southern Baghdad a year ago. Many of the returning residents say they would like to see even more police checkpoints, which they consider key to encouraging more of their neighbors to come home and reopen shops and businesses. That, in turn, will require increased cooperation between the Sunni and Shi'ite factions in East Rashid. Leaders of the two groups meet regularly with local and national police and the Iraqi army to discuss security needs and to resolve conflicts. At one recent security meeting, Sunni and Shi'ite community leaders took up seats on opposite sides of a C-shaped table, barely looking at one another. But after two hours of talks, they were eating and chatting together. "We are all one people," a National Police official told them. "All of us are responsible to God for the blood of the innocent people." <A name=e20080113572874.html> San Diego Union-Tribune January 13, 2008 Military Targets Enemy At The Gates Al-Qaeda refuge near capital taken in four-day battle By Hamza Hendawi, Associated Press ZAMBARANIYAH, Iraq – Barely out of a four-day battle, the soldiers scanned palm-dotted farmland from the roof of a small house, kneeling to avoid a sniper's bullet. A pair of Apache gunships hovered above, and the occasional thud of artillery shells shook the ground. This front line in the U.S. military's fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq lies just 10 miles from the heart of the Iraqi capital. “This is a road we had not traveled on in nearly a year,” said Lt. Col. Mark Solomon, the area's U.S. commander, standing on a dirt lane a dozen yards from the one-story house taken over by his 3rd Infantry Division soldiers. “We are going after the enemy, and we are eliminating him.” Less than a week ago, men from Solomon's unit captured Zambaraniyah, a farming community southeast of Baghdad, after the four-day battle that left one of his soldiers dead and 10 wounded. Underlining the potency of al-Qaeda's threat in the area – a patchwork of Sunni and Shiite farming communities and towns known as the “triangle of death” – the military unleashed some of the Iraq war's heaviest airstrikes Thursday, dropping 40,000 pounds of explosives on al-Qaeda targets just to the east and southeast of Zambaraniyah. Al-Qaeda has long been entrenched in the Sunni hinterland south of Baghdad, but its strength there weakened when allied insurgent groups changed sides in recent months to join the Americans in the fight against the terror network. But al-Qaeda's presence continued in safe havens like Zambaraniyah until a 100-strong force of U.S. infantrymen along with 60 Iraqi army soldiers pushed the terror group out. The troops were backed by Bradley fighting vehicles, helicopter gunships, artillery and rare strafing runs by low-flying F-16s. Solomon, 40, a West Point graduate, said he believes about 30 al-Qaeda militants were killed in the battle but that at least two or three dozen more were holding out, expecting reinforcements of weapons and men to resume the fight. “They are off balance now, like a boxer punched hard in the head,” said Pedro Maldonado, a 23-year-old native of San Juan, Puerto Rico. He peered through his binoculars from the roof of the house. “I never thought it could be this tough,” Maldonado said of the recent battle. Some of the militants were so close that the Americans could see the flash of their rifles firing. That a major battle against al-Qaeda should take place so close to the capital and nearly a year after the U.S. military began a large-scale offensive to calm Baghdad and its suburbs suggests that the insurgents are elusive or that they are deeply entrenched. U.S. commanders say al-Qaeda militants have in recent months fled to the north and northeast of Baghdad to escape stepped-up security operations in the capital, where U.S. commanders say violence is down more than 50 percent, though devastating attacks persist. But Solomon said al-Qaeda's continued presence south and southeast of Baghdad was largely inconsequential, arguing that taking on the militants had always been planned as the next step after Baghdad became safer. “It's true that Zambaraniyah is only a few miles away from Baghdad, but al-Qaeda there has not been able to project its influence to Baghdad,” he said. Just how much work ahead was evident in Zambaraniyah. Solomon sternly warned a small group of reporters that the area remained infested with roadside bombs and they must walk only on ground that already had foot or track marks. “The enemy is a 100 yards from where we stand, and snipers have taken position in the houses you see some 200 or 300 yards away,” he said. “I believe they are looking at us now,” Solomon said after going to the roof. His soldiers, wrapped in heavy jackets and ski masks, burned wood in a metal wash basin to fend off the bitter January cold. Suddenly, several of the soldiers spotted what they said was a head popping up and down in a field near the house. Tensions rose, and the soldiers scrambled to firing positions. Three soldiers rushed out of the house and into the fields in pursuit. They found nobody. <A name=e20080113572829.html> New York Times January 13, 2008 Pg. 1 War Torn: Part I Across America, Deadly Echoes Of Foreign Battles By Deborah Sontag and Lizette Alvarez Late one night in the summer of 2005, Matthew Sepi, a 20-year-old Iraq combat veteran, headed out to a 7-Eleven in the seedy Las Vegas neighborhood where he had settled after leaving the Army. This particular 7-Eleven sits in the shadow of the Stratosphere casino-hotel in a section of town called the Naked City. By day, the area, littered with malt liquor cans, looks depressed but not menacing. By night, it becomes, in the words of a local homicide detective, “like Falluja.” Mr. Sepi did not like to venture outside too late. But, plagued by nightmares about an Iraqi civilian killed by his unit, he often needed alcohol to fall asleep. And so it was that night, when, seized by a gut feeling of lurking danger, he slid a trench coat over his slight frame — and tucked an assault rifle inside it. “Matthew knew he shouldn’t be taking his AK-47 to the 7-Eleven,” Detective Laura Andersen said, “but he was scared to death in that neighborhood, he was military trained and, in his mind, he needed the weapon to protect himself.” Head bowed, Mr. Sepi scurried down an alley, ignoring shouts about trespassing on gang turf. A battle-weary grenadier who was still legally under-age, he paid a stranger to buy him two tall cans of beer, his self-prescribed treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. As Mr. Sepi started home, two gang members, both large and both armed, stepped out of the darkness. Mr. Sepi said in an interview that he spied the butt of a gun, heard a boom, saw a flash and “just snapped.” In the end, one gang member lay dead, bleeding onto the pavement. The other was wounded. And Mr. Sepi fled, “breaking contact” with the enemy, as he later described it. With his rifle raised, he crept home, loaded 180 rounds of ammunition into his car and drove until police lights flashed behind him. “Who did I take fire from?” he asked urgently. Wearing his Army camouflage pants, the diminutive young man said he had been ambushed and then instinctively “engaged the targets.” He shook. He also cried. “I felt very bad for him,” Detective Andersen said. Nonetheless, Mr. Sepi was booked, and a local newspaper soon reported: “Iraq veteran arrested in killing.” Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: “Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife.” Pierre, S.D.: “Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress.” Colorado Springs: “Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring.” Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak. The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction. Three-quarters of these veterans were still in the military at the time of the killing. More than half the killings involved guns, and the rest were stabbings, beatings, strangulations and bathtub drownings. Twenty-five offenders faced murder, manslaughter or homicide charges for fatal car crashes resulting from drunken, reckless or suicidal driving. About a third of the victims were spouses, girlfriends, children or other relatives, among them 2-year-old Krisiauna Calaira Lewis, whose 20-year-old father slammed her against a wall when he was recuperating in Texas from a bombing near Falluja that blew off his foot and shook up his brain. A quarter of the victims were fellow service members, including Specialist Richard Davis of the Army, who was stabbed repeatedly and then set ablaze, his body hidden in the woods by fellow soldiers a day after they all returned from Iraq. And the rest were acquaintances or strangers, among them Noah P. Gamez, 21, who was breaking into a car at a Tucson motel when an Iraq combat veteran, also 21, caught him, shot him dead and then killed himself outside San Diego with one of several guns found in his car. Tracking the Killings The Pentagon does not keep track of such killings, most of which are prosecuted not by the military justice system but by civilian courts in state after state. Neither does the Justice Department. To compile and analyze its list, The Times conducted a search of local news reports, examined police, court and military records and interviewed the defendants, their lawyers and families, the victims’ families and military and law enforcement officials. This reporting most likely uncovered only the minimum number of such cases, given that not all killings, especially in big cities and on military bases, are reported publicly or in detail. Also, it was often not possible to determine the deployment history of other service members arrested on homicide charges. The Times used the same methods to research homicides involving all active-duty military personnel and new veterans for the six years before and after the present wartime period began with the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. This showed an 89 percent increase during the present wartime period, to 349 cases from 184, about three-quarters of which involved Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. The increase occurred even though there have been fewer troops stationed in the United States in the last six years and the American homicide rate has been, on average, lower. The Pentagon was given The Times’s roster of homicides. It declined to comment because, a spokesman, Lt. Col. Les Melnyk, said, the Department of Defense could not duplicate the newspaper’s research. Further, Colonel Melnyk questioned the validity of comparing prewar and wartime numbers based on news media reports, saying that the current increase might be explained by “an increase in awareness of military service by reporters since 9/11.” He also questioned the value of “lumping together different crimes such as involuntary manslaughter with first-degree homicide.” Given that many veterans rebound successfully from their war experiences and some flourish as a result of them, veterans groups have long deplored the attention paid to the minority of soldiers who fail to readjust to civilian life. After World War I, the American Legion passed a resolution asking the press “to subordinate whatever slight news value there may be in playing up the ex-service member angle in stories of crime or offense against the peace.” An article in the Veterans of Foreign Wars magazine in 2006 referred with disdain to the pervasive “wacko-vet myth,” which, veterans say, makes it difficult for them to find jobs. Clearly, committing homicide is an extreme manifestation of dysfunction for returning veterans, many of whom struggle in quieter ways, with crumbling marriages, mounting debt, deepening alcohol dependence or more-minor tangles with the law. But these killings provide a kind of echo sounding for the profound depths to which some veterans have fallen, whether at the bottom of a downward spiral or in a sudden burst of violence. Thirteen of these veterans took their own lives after the killings, and two more were fatally shot by the police. Several more attempted suicide or expressed a death wish, like Joshua Pol, a former soldier convicted of vehicular homicide, who told a judge in Montana in 2006, “To be honest with you, I really wish I had died in Iraq.” In some of the cases involving veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, the fact that the suspect went to war bears no apparent relationship to the crime committed or to the prosecution and punishment. But in many of the cases, the deployment of the service member invariably becomes a factor of some sort as the legal system, families and communities grapple to make sense of the crimes. This is especially stark where a previously upstanding young man — there is one woman among the 121 — appears to have committed a random act of violence. And The Times’s analysis showed that the overwhelming majority of these young men, unlike most civilian homicide offenders, had no criminal history. “When they’ve been in combat, you have to suspect immediately that combat has had some effect, especially with people who haven’t shown these tendencies in the past,” said Robert Jay Lifton, a lecturer in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance who used to run “rap groups” for Vietnam veterans and fought to earn recognition for what became known as post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. “Everything is multicausational, of course,” Dr. Lifton continued. “But combat, especially in a counterinsurgency war, is such a powerful experience that to discount it would be artificial.” Few of these 121 war veterans received more than a cursory mental health screening at the end of their deployments, according to interviews with the veterans, lawyers, relatives and prosecutors. Many displayed symptoms of combat trauma after their return, those interviews show, but they were not evaluated for or received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder until after they were arrested for homicides. What is clear is that experiences on the streets of Baghdad and Falluja shadowed these men back to places like Longview, Tex., and Edwardsville, Ill. “He came back different” is the shared refrain of the defendants’ family members, who mention irritability, detachment, volatility, sleeplessness, excessive drinking or drug use, and keeping a gun at hand. “You are unleashing certain things in a human being we don’t allow in civic society, and getting it all back in the box can be difficult for some people,” said William C. Gentry, an Army reservist and Iraq veteran who works as a prosecutor in San Diego County. When Archie O’Neil, a gunnery sergeant in the Marines, returned from a job handling dead bodies in Iraq, he became increasingly paranoid, jumpy and fearful — moving into his garage, eating M.R.E.’s, wearing his camouflage uniform, drinking heavily and carrying a gun at all times, even to answer the doorbell. “It was like I put one person on a ship and sent him over there, and they sent me a totally different person back,” Monique O’Neil, his wife, testified. A well-respected and decorated noncommissioned officer who did not want to endanger his chances for advancement, Sergeant O’Neil did not seek help for the PTSD that would later be diagnosed by government psychologists. “The Marine way,” his lawyer said at a preliminary hearing, “was to suck it up.” On the eve of his second deployment to Iraq in 2004, Sergeant O’Neil fatally shot his mistress, Kimberly O’Neal, after she threatened to kill his family while he was gone. During a military trial at Camp Pendleton, Calif., a Marine defense lawyer argued that “the ravages of war” provided the “trigger” for the killing. In 2005, a military jury convicted Sergeant O’Neil of murder but declined to impose the minimum sentence, life with the possibility of parole, considering it too harsh. A second jury, however, convened only for sentencing, voted the maximum penalty, life without parole. The case is on appeal. As with Sergeant O’Neil, a connection between a veteran’s combat service and his crime is sometimes declared overtly. Other times, though, the Iraq connection is a lingering question mark as offenders’ relatives struggle to understand how a strait-laced teenager or family man or wounded veteran ended up behind bars — or dead. That happened in the case of Stephen Sherwood, who enlisted in the Army at 34 to obtain medical insurance when his wife got pregnant. He may never have been screened for combat trauma. Yet Mr. Sherwood shot his wife and then himself nine days after returning from Iraq in the summer of 2005. Several months before, the other soldiers in his tank unit had been killed by a rocket attack while he was on a two-week leave to celebrate the first birthday of his now-orphaned son. “When he got back to Iraq, everyone was dead,” his father, Robert Sherwood, said. “He had survivor’s guilt.” Then his wife informed him that she wanted to end their marriage. After the murder-suicide, Mr. Sherwood’s parents could not help but wonder what role Iraq played and whether counseling might have helped keep their son away from the brink. “Ah boy, the amount of heartbreak involved in all of this,” said Dr. Jonathan Shay, a psychiatrist for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Boston and the author of two books that examine combat trauma through the lens of classical texts. An Ancient Connection The troubles and exploits of the returning war veteran represent a searing slice of reality. They have served as a recurring artistic theme throughout history — from Homer’s “Odyssey” to the World War I novel “All Quiet on the Western Front,” from the post-Vietnam-era movie “The Deer Hunter” to last fall’s film “In the Valley of Elah.” At the heart of these tales lie warriors plagued by the kind of psychic wounds that have always afflicted some fraction of combat veterans. In an online course for health professionals, Capt. William P. Nash, the combat/operational stress control coordinator for the Marines, reaches back to Sophocles’ account of Ajax, who slipped into a depression after the Trojan War, slaughtered a flock of sheep in a crazed state and then fell on his own sword. The nature of the counterinsurgency war in Iraq, where there is no traditional front line, has amplified the stresses of combat, and multiple tours of duty — a third of the troops involved in Iraq and Afghanistan have deployed more than once — ratchet up those stresses. In earlier eras, various labels attached to the psychological injuries of war: soldier’s heart, shell shock, Vietnam disorder. Today the focus is on PTSD, but military health care officials are seeing a spectrum of psychological issues, with an estimated half of the returning National Guard members, 38 percent of soldiers and 31 percent of marines reporting mental health problems, according to a Pentagon task force. Decades of studies on the problems of Vietnam veterans have established links between combat trauma and higher rates of unemployment, homelessness, gun ownership, child abuse, domestic violence, substance abuse — and criminality. On a less scientific level, such links have long been known. “The connection between war and crime is unfortunately very ancient,” said Dr. Shay, the V.A. psychiatrist and author. “The first thing that Odysseus did after he left Troy was to launch a pirate raid on Ismarus. Ending up in trouble with the law has always been a final common pathway for some portion of psychologically injured veterans.” The National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study, considered the most thorough analysis of this population, found that 15 percent of the male veterans still suffered from full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder more than a decade after the war ended. Half of the veterans with active PTSD had been arrested or in jail at least once, and 34.2 percent more than once. Some 11.5 percent of them had been convicted of felonies, and veterans are more likely to have committed violent crimes than nonveterans, according to government studies. In the mid-1980s, with so many Vietnam veterans behind bars that Vietnam Veterans of America created chapters in prisons, veterans made up a fifth of the nation’s inmate population. As Iraq and Afghanistan veterans get enmeshed in the criminal justice system, former advocates for Vietnam veterans are disheartened by what they see as history repeating itself. “These guys today, I recognize the hole in their souls,” said Hector Villarreal, a criminal defense lawyer in Mission, Tex., who briefly represented a three-time Iraq combat veteran charged with manslaughter. Brockton D. Hunter, a criminal defense lawyer in Minneapolis, told colleagues in a recent lecture at the Minnesota State Bar Association that society should try harder to prevent veterans from self-destructing. “To truly support our troops, we need to apply our lessons from history and newfound knowledge about PTSD to help the most troubled of our returning veterans,” Mr. Hunter said. “To deny the frequent connection between combat trauma and subsequent criminal behavior is to deny one of the direct societal costs of war and to discard another generation of troubled heroes.” ‘The Town Was Torn Up’ At the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution in Nebraska, Seth Strasburg, 29, displays an imposing, biker-style presence. He has a shaved head, bushy chin beard and tattoos scrolled around his thick arms and neck, one of which quotes, in Latin, a Crusades-era dictum: “Kill them all. God will know his own.” Beneath this fierce exterior, however, Mr. Strasburg, an Iraq combat veteran who pleaded no contest to manslaughter and gun charges in 2006, hides a tortured compulsion to understand his actions. Growing up in rural Nebraska, he read military history. Now he devours books like Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s “On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society” and Dr. Shay’s “Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming.” Because Mr. Strasburg is introspective, he provides a window into the reverberations of combat violence within one veteran’s psyche and from there outward. In Arnold, Neb., population 679, the unintentional killing last year by Mr. Strasburg of Thomas Tiffany Varney V, a pre-mortuary science major known as Moose, was a deeply unsettling event. “To lose one young man permanently and another to prison, with Iraq mixed up in the middle of it — the town was torn up,” said Pamela Eggleston, a waitress at Suzy’s Pizza and Spirits. In late 2005, Mr. Strasburg returned to Arnold for a holiday leave after two years in Iraq. Once home, he did not easily shed the extreme vigilance that had become second nature. He traveled around rural Nebraska with a gun and body armor in his Jeep, feeling irritable, out of sorts and out of place in tranquil, “American Idol”-obsessed America. During his leave, he shrank from questions about Iraq because he hated the cavalier ones: “So, did you kill anybody? What was it like?” He had, in fact, killed somebody in Iraq and was having trouble dealing with it. Like several veterans interviewed, Mr. Strasburg was plagued by one death before he caused another one. In 2004, Sergeant Strasburg’s section was engaged in a mission to counter a proliferation of improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, on the road west of Mosul. One night, posted in an old junked bus, he watched the road for hours until an Iraqi man, armed and out after curfew, appeared and circled a field, kicking the dirt as if he were searching for something. Finally, the man bent down, straining to pick up a large white flour sack, which he then dragged toward the road. “In my mind at the time, he had this I.E.D. hidden out there during the day and he was going to set it in place,” Mr. Strasburg said. “We radioed it in. They said, ‘Whatever, use your discretion.’ So I popped him.” With others on his reconnaissance team, Mr. Strasburg helped zip the man into a body bag, taking a few minutes to study the face that he now cannot forget. When they went to search the flour sack, they found nothing but gravel. “I reported the kill to the battalion,” Mr. Strasburg said. “They said, you know: ‘Good shot. It’s legal. Whatever. Don’t worry about it.’ After that, it was never mentioned. But, you know, I had some issues with it later.” Mr. Strasburg’s voice broke and he turned his head, wiping his eyes. A reporter noted that he was upset. “I’m trying not to be,” he said, then changed his mind. “I mean, how can you not be? If you’re human. What if I had waited?” “Maybe I was too eager,” he added. “Maybe I wanted to be the first one to get a kill, you know? Maybe, maybe, maybe. And that will never go away.” Which bothers him, Mr. Strasburg said, telling himself: “Get over it. You shot somebody. Everybody else shot somebody, too.” Shortly after Mr. Strasburg’s military tour of duty ended, he returned to Iraq as a private contractor because, he said, he did not know what else to do with himself after eight years in the Army. “I have no skill other than carrying a gun,” he said. By late 2005, home on leave, he was preparing to return once more to Iraq in January. On New Year’s Eve, Mr. Strasburg, accompanied by his brother, consumed vodka cocktails for hours at Jim’s Bar and Package in Arnold. Toward evening’s end, he engaged in an intense conversation with a Vietnam veteran, after which, he said, he inexplicably holstered his gun and headed to a party. Outside the party, he drunkenly approached a Chevrolet Suburban crowded with young people, got upset and thrust his gun inside the car. Mr. Strasburg said he did not remember what provoked him. According to one account, a young man — not the victim — set him off by calling him a paid killer. Mr. Strasburg, according to the prosecutor, stuck his gun under the young man’s chin. There was a struggle over the gun. It went off. And Mr. Varney, a strapping 21-year-old with a passion for hunting, car racing and baseball, was struck. Asked if he pulled the trigger, Mr. Strasburg said, “I don’t know,” adding that he took responsibility: “It was my gun and I was drunk. But what the hell was I thinking?” The Suburban drove quickly away. Mr. Strasburg jumped into his Jeep, speeding along wintry roads until he crashed into a culvert. Feeling doomed, he said, he donned his bulletproof vest and plunged into the woods, where he fell asleep in the snow as police helicopters and state troopers closed in on him. Mr. Strasburg had never been screened for post-traumatic stress disorder. Like many soldiers, he did not take seriously the Army’s mental health questionnaires given out at his tour’s end. “They were retarded,” he said. “All of us were like, ‘Let’s do this quickly so we can go home.’ They asked: ‘Did you see any dead bodies? Did you take part in any combat operations?’ Come on, we were in Iraq. They didn’t even ask us the really important question, if you killed someone.” After his arrest, a psychologist hired by his family diagnosed combat trauma in Mr. Strasburg, writing in an evaluation that post-traumatic stress disorder, exacerbated by alcohol, served as a “major factor” in the shooting. A Judge’s Harsh Words At the sentencing hearing in Broken Bow, Neb., in September 2006, however, the judge discounted the centrality of the PTSD. He called Mr. Varney “the epitome of an innocent victim” and Mr. Strasburg “a bully” who “misconstrued comments” and “reacted in a belligerent and hostile manner.” In a courtroom filled with Arnold townspeople and Iraq veterans, he sentenced Mr. Strasburg to 22 to 36 years in prison. Mr. Strasburg’s mother, Aneita, believing that the shooting was a product of his combat trauma, started an organization to create awareness about post-traumatic stress disorder. Her activism, however, deeply offended the victim’s parents, who run the Arnold Funeral Home. “I’m sorry, but it feels like a personal affront, like she’s trying to excuse our son’s death with the war,” Barb Varney said, adding that Mr. Strasburg has “never shown any remorse.” Thomas Tiffany Varney IV, the victim’s father, expressed skepticism about Mr. Strasburg’s PTSD and the disorder in general, saying, “His grandfather, my dad, a lot of people been there, done that, and it didn’t affect them,” Mr. Varney said. “They’re trying to brush it away, ‘Well, he murdered someone, it’s just post-traumatic stress.’” Mr. Strasburg himself, whose diagnosis was confirmed by the Department of Veterans Affairs, expressed discomfort with his post-traumatic stress disorder and its connection to his crime. “It’s not a be-all-and-end-all excuse, and I don’t mean it to be,” he said. As Mr. Strasburg prefers to see it, he had adapted his behavior to survive in Iraq and then retained that behavior — vigilant, distrustful, armed — when he returned home. “You need time to decompress,” he said. “If the exact same circumstances had happened a year later” — the circumstances of that New Year’s Eve — “nothing would have happened. It never would have went down.” Mr. Strasburg also voiced reluctance to being publicly identified as a PTSD sufferer, worried that his former military colleagues would see him as a weakling. “Nobody wants to be that guy who says, ‘I got counseling this afternoon, Sergeant,’” he said, mimicking a whining voice. Mr. Strasburg’s former platoon leader, Capt. Benjamin D. Tiffner, who was killed in an I.E.D. attack in Baghdad in November, wrote a letter to Nebraska state authorities. He protested the length of the sentence and requested Mr. Strasburg’s transfer “to a facility that would allow him to deal with his combat trauma.” “Seth has been asked and required to do very violent things in defense of his country,” Captain Tiffner wrote. “He spent the majority of 2003 to 2005 in Iraq solving very dangerous problems by using violence and the threat of violence as his main tools. He was congratulated and given awards for these actions. This builds in a person the propensity to deal with life’s problems through violence and the threat of violence. “I believe this might explain in some way why Seth reacted the way that he did that night in Nebraska,” the letter continued. “I’m not trying to explain away Seth’s actions, but I think he is a special case and he needs to be taken care of by our judicial system and our medical system.” Many Don’t Seek Treatment Unlike during the Vietnam War, the current military has made a concerted effort, through screenings and research, to gauge the mental health needs of returning veterans. But gauging and addressing needs are different, and a Pentagon task force last year described the military mental health system as overburdened, “woefully” understaffed, inadequately financed and undermined by the stigma attached to PTSD. Although early treatment might help veterans retain their relationships and avoid developing related problems like depression, alcoholism and criminal behavior, many do not seek or get such help. And this group of homicide defendants seems to be a prime example. Like Mr. Strasburg, many of these veterans learned that they had post-traumatic stress disorder only after their arrests. And their mental health issues often went unevaluated even after the killings if they were pleading not guilty, if they did not have aggressive lawyers and relatives — or if they killed themselves first. Of the 13 combat veterans in The Times database who committed murder-suicides, only two, as best as it can be determined, had psychological problems diagnosed by the military health care system after returning from war. “The real tragedy in these veterans’ case is that, where PTSD is a factor, it is highly treatable,” said Lawrence W. Sherman, director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. “And when people are exposed to serious trauma and don’t get it treated, it is a serious risk factor for violence.” At various times, the question of whether the military shares some blame for these killings gets posed. This occurs especially where the military knew beforehand of a combat veteran’s psychological troubles, marital problems or history of substance abuse. In some cases, the military sent service members with pre-existing problems — known histories of mental illness, drug abuse or domestic a |
