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 The Pentagon Early Bird March 8 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.) Please scroll down to read the Headlines then scroll down to read the Entire Article. URL's will not link out.IRAQ
New York Times March 8, 2008 Pg. 6 2 Markets, Of Varying Security, Highlight Challenge For U.S. Troops In Iraq By Thom Shanker HAWIJA, Iraq — As Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sits down over the coming days to prepare his formal recommendation to President Bush on future troop levels in Iraq, he will reflect on his visits to two markets. On a trip this week, Admiral Mullen first walked the Airport Road market in Dora, a neighborhood of south Baghdad. What had been an area firmly in the grip of insurgent violence is now a showcase for the American strategy of clear, hold and rebuild, with calm purchased by an increase in American and Iraqi troops and by tall concrete blast walls. Admiral Mullen saw commerce blooming, the sidewalks filled with shoppers, including women and children. The market was safe enough for America’s highest-ranking military officer to stroll for an hour with only a modest security detail. But he encountered a far more fragile sense of security a day later at a market here, in the north of Iraq, the region where more than 60 percent of all attacks nationwide now occur as insurgents and terrorists have been pushed from Baghdad and the surrounding belt of villages by the troop increase. Hawija has been cleared of fighters belonging to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni insurgent group that American intelligence says is foreign led. The numbers of Iraqi Army soldiers and police officers are growing here, as are the ranks of Sunni guardsmen, some even former insurgents, who have allied with American efforts to drive out Qaeda fighters. Yet, calm remains sufficiently suspect that Admiral Mullen walked within a large cordon of well-armed American and Iraqi foot soldiers (although some of the Iraqis had to be reminded to keep their rifle barrels pointed at the ground while on patrol, and not waving occasionally in the direction of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs). But that was only the inner layer of security that included rooftop snipers, Apache and Kiowa helicopters, remote-controlled Predator reconnaissance aircraft and even an F-16 fighter overhead. “A few weeks ago, you or I could not have walked here on the streets of Hawija,” Admiral Mullen said. He also acknowledged, though, that while “security is dramatically improved, it clearly remains fragile.” In several interviews over five days of travel, ending Wednesday, Admiral Mullen repeatedly said he had not made up his mind on what recommendation he would offer the president on the way ahead in Iraq. “Honestly, I am not there yet,” he said. But by his actions and comments, the chairman gave ample evidence that his thinking was closely aligned with that of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. Philosophically, Admiral Mullen is committed to getting more American troops out of Iraq before the end of the year. But he and other commanders are trying to come up with ways to do that without sacrificing improvements secured with the toil and lives of American troops, including the five extra combat brigades scheduled to leave by July. “An Iraq in chaos would be extremely dangerous for all of us,” Admiral Mullen said, stressing that his recommendation would reflect the “need to sustain these efforts to achieve success over time.” As chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mullen is also responsible for managing risks across this region and around the globe, which means freeing up forces from Iraq as rapidly as possible to assure the military can pivot to another crisis. As he visited bases, training centers and neighborhoods across Iraq, Admiral Mullen expressed frustration that the Iraqi leadership was not doing enough to cement security gains in the provinces. “Dora and Hawija brought this out, that the central government must be in contact with, and engaged with, the local community,” he said. “I went into many of the shops. They need sewage services. They need water. They need electricity.” His walking tours of the two markets also proved that there continued to be wrangling over sufficient troops for the war. Baghdad has been defined as the American center of gravity, with the five brigades of reinforcements focusing their efforts there. The Bush administration said it needed to make Baghdad secure to accomplish its objectives; that meant it needed the north of Iraq just to hold steady. The fight in the north, where most of the fighting is under way today, especially in Mosul, is thin of American troops. It is what the military calls an “economy of force” mission. That thinning of American troops, and the necessary reliance on Iraqi forces to step into the fight, certainly foreshadows the future of the American mission across the nation. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior American commander in Iraq, met several times with Admiral Mullen during his tour of Iraq and declared that the “key is to hang on to what you’ve got.” Indicating that the American focus will remain on security in the capital after the extra brigades leave in July, he cautioned against an “eagerness to go after something new,” if that put at risk gains achieved by the troop increase. In an interview, General Petraeus said that when he made his separate reports to Congress and the president in April, his recommendation on future troop levels would be based on such criteria as numbers of attacks nationwide; American combat deaths and injuries; Iraqi civilian and security forces losses; and the ability and size of the Iraqi police force and army. “If the population supports what we want to do, it won’t let Al Qaeda put roots down,” he said. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080308586124.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1462169_AEf PjkQAAWoLR9LliAO0dHim%2BQs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080308aaindex_concat.html&cred=T0opYWQVSrN10b 2OpuxNxgeWGcT47dIdGozXvC_sVJO2LjyVH2XIKQwsETfcM.#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Washington Times March 8, 2008 Pg. 3 U.S., Iraq To Negotiate Long-Term Relationship By Associated Press The United States and Iraq are opening negotiations in Baghdad on a blueprint for a long-term relationship, plus a narrower deal to define the legal basis for a U.S. troop presence, a Pentagon official said yesterday. Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said the talks are scheduled to start today. Leading the U.S. negotiating team will be Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. He will be assisted by senior officials from the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House's National Security Council. Mr. Morrell said the United States expects a lengthy negotiation, with a goal of completing a deal by December, when the U.N. Security Council resolution that now governs the United States and coalition presence in Iraq will expire. The process of negotiating a long-term deal with the Iraqi government has triggered criticism from some in Congress, in part because the administration's position is that the deal will not require congressional approval and in part out of concern that it might commit to a specific U.S. troop level. Mr. Morrell would not discuss specifics of the U.S. negotiating position. "Like in any negotiation, the to-ing and fro-ing that inevitably will go on will go on behind closed doors," he said. Mr. Morrell said the deal sought by the administration "does not seek permanent bases; will not in any way codify the number of troops that will remain in Iraq; it will not tie the hands of a future commander in chief; it will not require Senate ratification, but we will make every effort to keep Congress apprised of progress in these talks." The intent is to simultaneously negotiate two parallel agreements. One, known as a strategic framework agreement, would spell out the basis for a long-term U.S.-Iraqi relationship in the political, economic and security fields. Both sides see it as the basis for establishing a normal state-to-state relationship, enabling Iraq to function with full sovereignty. The other would be what is known as a status of forces agreement, a standard arrangement that spells out the legal basis for the presence of U.S. troops on Iraqi territory and establishes the legal rights and obligations of the troops. The U.S. government has such deals with dozens of other countries. What makes the Iraq case more complex is the U.S. interest in continuing to pursue terrorist threats inside Iraqi borders. Mr. Crocker addressed this issue in an Associated Press interview on Feb. 1. "I don't think al Qaeda is going to have gone away after this year, and we and the Iraqis are going to want to make sure we are able to pursue them, but questions of force levels and whatnot, those will be executive decisions by this president and by the next," he said. "This agreement is in no way going to get into that executive decision prerogative." The United States now has 159,000 troops in Iraq and is expected to have more than 100,000 by the time a new president enters the White House next January. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080308586224.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1462169_AEf PjkQAAWoLR9LliAO0dHim%2BQs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080308aaindex_concat.html&cred=T0opYWQVSrN10b 2OpuxNxgeWGcT47dIdGozXvC_sVJO2LjyVH2XIKQwsETfcM.#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Chicago Tribune March 8, 2008 Sadr Takes Break From Politics, Cites Failures By Liz Sly, Tribune correspondent BAGHDAD—Iraq's elusive Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr has decided to drop out of politics for the time being because his disillusionment with the political scene in Iraq has left him sick and anxious, he said in an unusually personal letter to his followers released Friday. In a written response to a query from a group of followers asking why he hadn't been seen in public for so long, Sadr said he had decided to devote himself to a period of study, reflection and prayer after failing in his core mission to rid Iraq of the U.S. occupation or to turn it into an Islamic society. He also cited the betrayal of some followers, whom he accused of falling prey to "materialistic" politics. "So far I did not succeed either to liberate Iraq or make it an Islamic society—whether because of my own inability or the inability of society, only God knows," Sadr wrote. "The continued presence of the occupiers, on the one hand, and the disobedience of many on the other, pushed me to isolate myself in protest. I gave society a big proportion of my life. Even my body became weaker, I got more sicknesses." Speculation has been intensifying as to the whereabouts of the maverick cleric, whose Mahdi Army militia twice fought U.S. troops in 2004 and then was accused of many of the sectarian killings of Sunnis that pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war. His last public statement came two weeks ago, when he renewed the six-month cease-fire that has been credited with helping bring down the levels of violence in Iraq. But he has not been seen in public since May. Sadrist officials said in January that he was studying to become an ayatollah in the holy city of Najaf, a position that would give the 30-something leader greater religious authority over the movement he inherited from his slain father. The U.S. military and some Iraqi officials say he is living in the Iranian city of Qom. This was the first time Sadr has sought to explain his absence, which had given rise to speculation that he was no longer exerting full control over the Mahdi Army. Sadr's chief spokesman, Sheik Salah al-Obeidi, disputed suggestions that the letter's doleful tone suggested Sadr is contemplating a prolonged absence from politics. "He remains actively involved in the political field and will return when the time is right," al-Obeidi said, citing the fact that most members of the Mahdi Army have obeyed the cease-fire order as evidence that Sadr commands their loyalty. The letter came as police raised the death toll in Thursday's double bombing along a busy Baghdad shopping street to 68. It was the bloodiest single attack in Baghdad since the level of violence began to fall last summer, and the U.S. Embassy in a statement blamed Al Qaeda in Iraq. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080308586072.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1462169_AEf PjkQAAWoLR9LliAO0dHim%2BQs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080308aaindex_concat.html&cred=T0opYWQVSrN10b 2OpuxNxgeWGcT47dIdGozXvC_sVJO2LjyVH2XIKQwsETfcM.#T OP">RETURN TO TOP London Times March 8, 2008 Bombs Will Not Affect Plans To Reduce Troops By Deborah Haynes, Baghdad Thursday night’s twin bombing in Baghdad will not affect a planned reduction in US forces from Iraq, a US military spokesman said yesterday. The coordinated blasts came after America announced that 2,000 soldiers in the Iraqi capital would not be replaced when they pull out over the next few weeks as part of a prescheduled reduction in troop levels. The total number of US troops is due to fall by more than 21,000 by the end of July, taking America’s combat power to the same level it was at before 30,000 additional troops were sent to Iraq last year. President Bush’s “surge” was one of the pivotal factors behind a dramatic drop in violence across Baghdad and the surrounding provinces. But a recent spate of bombings underscores the fragility of the renewed security. Colonel Bill Buckner, a military spokesman, blamed al-Qaeda for the bombing, which ripped through a busy shopping district in Karrada. Asked whether the continuing violence would affect the military’s redeployment timetable, he said: “There is no intent to change our drawdown plans as a result of yesterday’s attacks. We are on glide path to redeploy our remaining surge brigade combat teams by July 31.” A 60 per cent reduction in violence has fuelled expectations of further troop cuts. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080308586212.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1462169_AEf PjkQAAWoLR9LliAO0dHim%2BQs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080308aaindex_concat.html&cred=T0opYWQVSrN10b 2OpuxNxgeWGcT47dIdGozXvC_sVJO2LjyVH2XIKQwsETfcM.#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Los Angeles Times March 8, 2008 Iraqi Neighborhood Mourns Dead After Bombings The toll from two blasts in Baghdad's busy Karada district rises to 68 as victims succumb to their injuries. By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer BAGHDAD — Grief engulfed this city's most prosperous and lively enclave Friday as residents mourned loved ones who were lost in a suicide bomb attack a night earlier. Authorities said the death toll had risen to 68 and that 120 other people were injured in the Thursday evening assault, which targeted the busy Karada shopping and residential district. Fatalities climbed steadily overnight as patients who had suffered severe burns and shrapnel wounds died. The carefully planned attack was one of the worst in Baghdad in months. After the first bomb went off, a huge crowd of people gathered, and minutes later they became the target of an assailant wearing a bomb underneath his leather jacket, police said. Along Karada's streets Friday, funeral tents were spread open. Weeping relatives strapped simple wooden coffins to the roofs of white Chevy Suburbans and creaky Korean-made minivans, driving slowly through the neighborhood's main streets as people in black walked behind, beating their chests and wailing. Shops remained shuttered, and the neighborhood was closed to outside traffic as young men swept the blast site of debris. Most of the coffins were driven south to Najaf's Valley of Peace cemetery, the largest and most important burial place for members of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority. Many of the victims were residents of the neighborhood, enjoying an evening out. U.S. and Iraqi officials blamed the attack on Al Qaeda in Iraq, a loosely organized network of Sunni Arab extremists. "This terrorist attack was a senseless act of violence directed against the Iraqi people," U.S. Col. Allen Batschelet of the 4th Infantry Division in Baghdad said in a statement. Violence in Baghdad was minimal Friday, but a pair of attacks targeted Iraqi law enforcement officials in the northern city of Mosul. In one incident, a suicide car bomber rammed a downtown police station, killing four civilians and injuring 33. Later, a roadside bomb exploded near the home of a police officer. When people gathered at the bomb site, another blast went off, killing one person and injuring 14, police said. Sectarian and political violence has slowed overall in the months since a security plan in Baghdad went into effect, but bombings and killings continue. The bodies of at least three men were discovered Friday around the capital. Security gains have not been matched by political cooperation among the nation's feuding sectarian and ethnic groups. That has led to a fragile peace that could be upended at any time, said Wamidh Nadhmi, a Baghdad University political scientist. "There exists an option of violence in the absence of political progress," he said. "I think this feeds Al Qaeda." U.S. troops and Iraqi police continue pursuing both Sunni Arab militants suspected in bomb attacks and Shiite militiamen believed to be behind assassination campaigns. U.S.-led forces in Baghdad captured a suspect who allegedly coordinated the training, funding and arming of militants on behalf of Iran, the U.S. military announced. Early Friday, Iraqi security forces raided an office belonging to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr's movement, arresting two men and discovering half a ton of mercury stored in barrels. Tiny slivers of mercury can be used for detonators, but such large quantities of the poisonous substance could also fetch a price on the black market. Special correspondents in Baghdad, Basra, Hillah and Mosul contributed to this report. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080308586184.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1462169_AEf PjkQAAWoLR9LliAO0dHim%2BQs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080308aaindex_concat.html&cred=T0opYWQVSrN10b 2OpuxNxgeWGcT47dIdGozXvC_sVJO2LjyVH2XIKQwsETfcM.#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Philadelphia Inquirer March 8, 2008 Bombs Tatter Surge Security By John Affleck, Associated Press BAGHDAD - The death toll rose yesterday to 68 from twin bombings whose blow reverberated beyond the body count: showing that insurgents can still bring bloodshed into the heart of Baghdad and rattle the fragile confidence that is returning nightlife and commerce to parts of the battered city. The U.S. military blamed al-Qaeda in Iraq for the Thursday attack, one of the deadliest so far this year. It had all the signs of the radical Sunni group's previous assaults on Shiite civilians. It also struck in an area of high symbolic importance - the Karada neighborhood - which has bounced back as one of Baghdad's most vibrant commercial districts and also a stronghold for the country's most powerful Shiite political party, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. Also yesterday, Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, met with his Turkish counterpart in Ankara, Turkey. The visit comes a week after Turkish forces ended a ground incursion against Kurdish rebels based in Iraq. The visit reflects diplomatic efforts by Iraq and Turkey to lower tension after an operation that some had feared could spill into a wider conflict between two U.S. allies. Talabani, who was making his first trip to Turkey since his 2005 election, and Turkish President Abdullah Gul were expected to discuss military ties as well as energy cooperation and other economic issues, Gul's office said. Thursday's attack in Baghdad came on a beautiful evening and the streets were packed with shoppers and young people mingling at the start of the Iraqi weekend. Yet while the neighborhood has several checkpoints, and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council has a strong security presence, Karada has been targeted repeatedly. The Associated Press counted at least a dozen attacks that killed seven or more people in the area since last April, most before the surge of U.S. troops took full effect. Thursday's was the deadliest. The situation creates a quandary for Iraq's Shiite-led government and U.S. forces. How do you maintain security in a commercial district without smothering business? An Interior Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, told the AP yesterday that the ministry will add more checkpoints and increase staffing at all such places. As a long-range measure, the ministry is studying the idea of erecting blast walls around the commercial area, with checkpoints where visitors would be searched before entering the street, the official said. Shiites have been in the crosshairs of other spectacular attacks recently. Coordinated bombings of two pet markets with mostly Shiite shoppers killed about 100 people, while Shiite worshippers were hit repeatedly on a pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala. In the worst attack, a suicide bomber killed 56 people as they stopped at a refreshment tent. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080308586146.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1462169_AEf PjkQAAWoLR9LliAO0dHim%2BQs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080308aaindex_concat.html&cred=T0opYWQVSrN10b 2OpuxNxgeWGcT47dIdGozXvC_sVJO2LjyVH2XIKQwsETfcM.#T OP">RETURN TO TOP New York Times March 8, 2008 Pg. 6 Iraqi Leader Tries To Mend Relationship With Turkey By Sabrina Tavernise ISTANBUL — The president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, visited Turkey on Friday as part of a joint effort to mend relations strained by a Turkish ground offensive against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq. The visit, Mr. Talabani’s first since he became president of Iraq in 2005, came just a week after Turkey concluded the offensive against the militants, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K. It seemed to signal a new willingness by Turkey to talk to Iraqi Kurds, who had previously been shut out because of Turkish suspicions that Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region had allowed the militant group to operate unhindered there. Mr. Talabani, who is a Kurd, took pains to allay those fears, after his meeting with President Abdullah Gul of Turkey, in Ankara, the capital. “The Kurdish administration pressured the P.K.K. groups in the region to lay down arms or to leave the country,” he said in televised remarks. “We told them that we could not tolerate any terrorist acts against one of the friendliest neighboring countries.” Turkey has been suspicious of Iraqi Kurd efforts at formalizing their enclave in northern Iraq, and has refused to hold talks with Kurdish leaders there, namely Massoud Barzani, the regional president. Instead, Turkey has dealt with Iraq’s central government in Baghdad, which has limited control over the northern areas where the militants hide. While Turkey’s previous president, Ahmed Necdet Sezer, refused to invite Mr. Talabani to visit on the grounds that he had not done enough to stop the militants, Mr. Gul expressed his intention to invite Mr. Talabani after becoming president last year. “Iraqi people know the pain of terrorism the best,” Mr. Gul said. “Therefore, I believe that they would understand our struggle against terrorism and the P.K.K.” “I consider this visit an important one in that respect and I believe it’s going to bring about permanent results for Iraqi and Turkish people,” he added. Mr. Talabani was to meet with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday, but had no scheduled meetings with military officials. Also on Friday, a Turkish court upheld a previous ruling that acquitted a religious leader, Fetullah Gulen, of charges of trying to establish Islamic law in Turkey, Turkish NTV television reported. The ruling, by Turkey’s Court of Appeals, cleared the way for Mr. Gulen, 69, to return to Turkey from the United States, where he has lived in exile for at least eight years. He is a reclusive preacher who has spent much of his life establishing schools, universities and education networks first in Turkey and then in other countries, including the United States. He has rarely given interviews in recent years, but is a prolific writer. His religious movement owns newspapers, television networks, a bank and a publishing house. Mr. Gulen, who has been living in Pennsylvania, combines Sufi religious philosophy with modern science, offering a blend of Islamic tradition and secular modernism in the hundreds of schools that his followers have built. Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080308586130.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1462169_AEf PjkQAAWoLR9LliAO0dHim%2BQs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080308aaindex_concat.html&cred=T0opYWQVSrN10b 2OpuxNxgeWGcT47dIdGozXvC_sVJO2LjyVH2XIKQwsETfcM.#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Washington Times March 8, 2008 Pg. 5 Technocrats Eyed For Boost In Government By Sharon Behn, Washington Times Talks are under way among Iraqi political parties to overhaul the Cabinet and establish a new technocratic government, the prime minister's top political adviser said yesterday. Sadiq al-Rikabi, political adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said there were "hard negotiations" to fill ministry positions left vacant when the Sunni bloc and some Shi'ites quit the government last year. "If there is follow-through, this would be significant development and a vast improvement," said Jason Gluck, rule of law adviser for the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), which hosted Mr. al-Rikabi. "Including professional and technocratic ministers would be a major achievement that could lead to more effective government and an improvement in the delivery of critical services to Iraqi citizens," Mr. Gluck said. Mr. Gluck spent 18 months in Baghdad from March 2006 to August 2007 working with the Iraqi parliament and advising on the constitutional review. Mr. al-Rikabi also said that Baghdad and Washington will soon start talks over the role of the U.S. military in Iraq under a new security accord framework between the two countries. He declined to give any details. The agreement would replace the U.N. resolution permitting the coalition troop presence until December. Mr. al-Maliki has also alluded to reducing the number of Cabinet posts, which likely would intensify the political bargaining. Mr. al-Rikabi said meetings were going on between the prime minister and the three-person presidency council, as well as between the different political alliances "to establish criteria and nominate new ministers." Current government members, Mr. al-Rikabi said, would have the final say over choosing candidates. The Sunni Accordance Front, supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr and members of former prime minister Iyad Allawi's party walked out last year, leaving 11 ministry-level vacancies. Mr. al-Rikabi said the Shi'ite majority government was meeting with Mr. Allawi, a secular Sunni, and the Accordance Front, a coalition of Sunni parties. "It is not an easy process," he acknowledged, adding, "I don't find any real progress on establishing a new government." The Sadrists who abandoned the government in August 2007 have shown little interest in returning, while their leader, Sheik al-Sadr, is believed to be dividing his time between Iraq and Iran. Sheik al-Sadr wrote in a statement distributed yesterday explaining his absence to his followers that every "commander needs to be away for a while to worship," according to the Associated Press. Analysts say Sheik al-Sadr has found it politically expedient to be out of the country to avoid confrontation with the Americans while extending a cease-fire with the security forces. The cleric is also now studying to be an ayatollah — top religious leader — a position that would win him considerably wider credibility in Iraq. The Sadrists still hold 30 out of the 275 seats in parliament, and the AP said Sheik al-Sadr's street militia number some 60,000. A recent study by Rend al-Rahim, executive director of the Iraq Foundation and Iraq's chief of mission in Washington before becoming a senior fellow at USIP, and Daniel Serwer, vice president for peace and stability operations at USIP, said political pressure from the Iraqi street is forcing change at the government level. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080308586109.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1462169_AEf PjkQAAWoLR9LliAO0dHim%2BQs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080308aaindex_concat.html&cred=T0opYWQVSrN10b 2OpuxNxgeWGcT47dIdGozXvC_sVJO2LjyVH2XIKQwsETfcM.#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Washington Post March 8, 2008 Pg. 1 A Kurdish Society Of Soldiers In Rugged N. Iraq, Guerrillas Forge a Unity Based on Hardship and Defiance By Joshua Partlow, Washington Post Foreign Service ZAP VALLEY, Iraq -- On the day the Turkish soldiers withdrew from Iraq, 40 Kurdish guerrillas convened to bury five of their dead. The corpses were wrapped in black plastic and camouflage tarp, lashed to stretchers fashioned from branches, and draped in the flag of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. In silence the guerrillas stacked large rocks into five piles, resting the stretchers end-to-end on the cairns. They stood in two rows with machine guns pointed above the mountains that surrounded them and waited for their leader to speak. "The Turkish army could not capture any of our territory, could not get one of our bases, our weapons or even a scrap of nylon," Bahoz Erdal, the 39-year-old military commander of the Kurdish guerrillas, told his serried ranks. "The Turkish army didn't have any chance to rest. When they attacked, we hit them. When they made camp, we hit them. Even when they pulled back, we hit them." The conclusion of the eight-day battle last Friday along Iraq's northern border was described by Turkey's government as the scheduled end to a successful incursion that crippled its enemies, destroying hundreds of their caves and hideouts. But ultimately the battle ended where it had begun, with the intractable guerrillas in sole control of hundreds of miles of mountainous terrain. At the funeral, the quiet ending to their latest war, some guerrillas bowed their heads but no tears were shed. "In the last 10 days in Zap, our fighters displayed their historic heroism," Erdal told his soldiers. "In this defense, you brought back again the fighting spirit of the PKK." A Washington Post correspondent and staff photographer who spent five days inside rebel territory during and after the battle -- the only reporters allowed to accompany the guerrillas through this period -- observed a self-sufficient society, with its own rituals and traditions, that bears no resemblance to the rest of Iraq. Access, however, was limited to the people and places the guerrillas chose to reveal, and it was difficult to verify details of the battle because of the vast distances between locations. What was clear was that years in these snowcapped mountains have forged the fighters into rugged ascetics. Although they have based themselves in northern Iraq, they are oriented elsewhere, choosing even to live on Turkish time, an hour behind Iraq's. They are based in the heart of the Islamic Middle East but are largely uninterested in religion or the cultures they abandoned in Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq. They relate their struggle to those of the American revolutionaries who fought the British crown, and the Cuban guerrillas who followed Fidel Castro down from the Sierra Maestra mountains. "We are fighting for democracy, for freedom," said Osman Delbrine, a 32-year-old guerrilla with eight years in the mountains. "We are fighting for peace and for all Kurds in all nations." Their tactics can be ruthless. They slip over the border to blow up Turkish soldiers and retreat back to Iraq. It is more unusual for them to be on the defensive, protecting their territory from Turkish attack. The PKK, with 4,000 to 5,000 fighters, according to the U.S. State Department, represents less of a threat than it once did to the Turkish government. But the group is benefiting from a resurgence of nationalist feeling among the 25 million Kurds dispersed throughout the region. The PKK leaders say they are no longer fighting for an independent Kurdish state, or even to replicate or expand the semiautonomous Kurdish region in Iraq. Rather, they say, they want their people to speak Kurdish in schools, to receive national identification cards, to have equal rights for women, to avoid persecution by state security forces, and to gain respect and political influence wherever they live. To walk among the guerrillas, however, is to feel some are also fighting to prolong their communal, socialist experiment and to be left alone. "In society, in the cities, I feel like someone is choking me," said Berivan, a 27-year-old female guerrilla. "In the mountains I feel free." The guerrillas receive no salaries. They sew their olive-drab wool uniforms and treat their wounded. They have no homes and live in peripatetic motion, walking goat trails and dry creek beds, through mossy boulder fields and across slabs of brindled rock. The small villages that dot this territory are abandoned now, the lone paved road deserted. The guerrillas sleep on bedrolls in caves or under the stars, drink spring water and eat what they can forage or smuggle in from civilization. "Our life is totally different than yours," one guerrilla said. Although the PKK welcomes visitors, the Kurdistan Regional Government of northern Iraq has tried to bar outsiders, particularly journalists, from entering the area where the authorities effectively tolerate the guerrillas. After receiving an invitation to tour the area, The Post's journalists hiked for eight hours, first up a rocky path for herders to the top of a mountain overlooking Kurdish towns to the south, then down a precipitous slope a local guide said was littered with land mines. Along the way, it was necessary to shimmy across a steel bridge mangled by Turkish bombs and crouch below boulders when warplanes flew overhead. The mountains rang with the spatter of gunfire and the discharge of distant bombs. At dusk, the first guerrilla -- wearing camouflage and carrying a Kalashnikov rifle -- appeared from behind a tree in a rock-strewn ravine. Others soon emerged, and one of them held out his hand. "Welcome to our mountain," he said in English. 'He Was My Best Friend' The Turkish military invasion, known as Operation Sun, began Feb. 21 with an aerial bombardment, followed by a push of a reported 2,000 ground troops in various passes across the 200-mile border Turkey shares with Iraq. The thrust of the ground battle targeted the Zap Valley, a crucial region in the western portion of the guerrillas' territory, home to their headquarters, training camps, underground storage rooms, burial plots and fighters manning their Russian-made antiaircraft Dushka machine-gun positions on the snowy peaks. Erdal, the high-strung, fast-talking guerrilla commander, abandoned his medical school studies in Damascus, Syria, two decades ago to join the PKK. Since then, he has fixated on fighting Turkey. "It's not random that they are attacking this area," he said. "The army that they brought is enough to capture an area like Zap. But when you use a very big army, it's difficult to organize, and your movements will be slow." In the end, Erdal said, his guerrillas drove Turkey back down from the mountains after killing more than 120 of its soldiers; Turkey claimed to have lost 24. The disparity was larger on the guerrilla side: Erdal and several others insisted that just 10 of their own were killed, while Turkey put the number at more than 230. One of the corpses lashed to the branches on the day of the funeral belonged to Ayhan Eruh. During preparations for the funeral, the names of the dead were written on scraps of white paper tied to their chests. This was a scene Roshat Sarhat, a 30-year-old guerrilla who once was a journalist in Istanbul, had no interest in seeing. He stayed in an abandoned stone hut on a hillside far from the service. The bare single room was silent but for the crackle of his radio and the buzz of a surveillance drone high overhead. "He was my best friend," Sarhat said. Eruh had died on the first day of the battle. 'The Mountain Teaches Us' Throughout the fighting, the hundreds of guerrillas used the same battle-tested tactics they have relied on for years: Move quickly, hit and retreat, harass and confuse the more-powerful enemy. They carry AK-47s, sniper rifles, shoulder-fired rockets and hand grenades. "Some of our attacks required only five guerrillas, and others used 50 or 60," Erdal said. "For example, you send five guerrillas to a huge army at night, they attack them and leave the area; then these soldiers cannot sleep until the morning. In a different situation, you use 50 or 60 guerrillas to hold a mountain." After President Bush met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in November to discuss the PKK problem, the guerrillas rushed to make arrangements for battle. They stashed ammunition, weapons, food and water in caves and crags throughout the mountains, for quick resupply. Inside one such cave, they installed a cylindrical, metal wood-burning stove and chimney to heat a room constructed of army green cloth and plastic tarp. "The mountain is a school for us," said Elif, a 32-year-old commander who dropped out of interior design school in Turkey 10 years ago to join the PKK. "The mountain teaches us how to walk, it taught us how to live in cold weather, how to go without eating for a long time," she said. "The Turkish soldiers have huge bodies, but they can't stay in the snow for more than a couple hours." In the mountains they communicate using cellphone text messages or speak in code over hand-held Yaesu radios on ever-changing frequencies. If they occupy an abandoned home, they blanket the windows to hide the light and build fires at night to hide the smoke. "We are not scared," Sarhat said. "But we are always careful." Sarhat, a somber, serious man, joined the PKK a decade ago after working as a television reporter in Turkey. He was born to Kurdish parents in the city of Van but did not learn his ancestral language because teaching it in the schools was forbidden. As he grew older and studied Kurdish history, he felt increasingly angry that his culture was suppressed. "Anywhere the Kurds live in Turkey, you can't act like a Kurd. You can't have your own identification, you can't have your own history or culture," he said. "I realized that they took my nation's rights, our education, our identity. Then I decided to join the PKK." In wartime the guerrillas fill various roles. There are medics with UNICEF first-aid kits, cooks and videographers, frontline fighters and logisticians. Yet they are also uniform down to the smallest details. They smoke one brand of cigarettes, Business Royales, and nearly all wear peach-colored Turkish Mekap sneakers with orange laces. The guerrillas are not a people's army or ad hoc insurgency, but a trained paramilitary force that requires every new recruit to attend a three-month camp to study military tactics and become indoctrinated in the ideology of the imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan. The PKK's separatist war against Turkish authorities, which began in 1984 and lasted for a decade and a half, claimed the lives of about 35,000 people, mostly Kurds in southeastern Turkey. In the PKK enclave in northern Iraq, Ocalan's chubby, mustachioed face is emblazoned on hillsides, flags and small pins the fighters wear on their vests. The reverence they exhibit toward Ocalan, captured in 1999 in Nairobi and now in a Turkish prison, borders on cultish. After assassination attempts against Ocalan in the 1990s, guerrillas immolated themselves and some became suicide bombers. To the governments of Turkey, Iraq and the United States, those tactics solidified the PKK's reputation as a terrorist organization. "We don't want any mother in the world to have to receive the body of her dead son," said Hadar Afreen, a 26-year-old guerrilla who grew up outside Aleppo, Syria. "We don't want to fight; we want to be peaceful. But if they attack us, we will defend ourselves." The PKK recruits many of its fighters when they are teenagers or college students and has been criticized for exploiting young people and effectively trapping them in the guerrilla force. But more than a dozen people interviewed last week said they came to the fight willingly. Some said they joined because their villages had been attacked or relatives slain by Turkish soldiers. Afreen came to the mountains as an 18-year-old after she was told by Arab teachers she must join Syria's ruling Baath Party while in high school or face expulsion. She was familiar with the books of Ocalan and considered him a hero. She left a note for her parents saying she was joining the PKK, sneaked out of the house and has not spoken to them since. "What I'm doing here is more important than my parents," she said. After Erdal's speech at the funeral, the guerrillas, in solemn procession, marched the corpses up the mountainside, through wild grass meadows and over footbridges spanning two rushing creeks, until they reached their stone-walled cemetery surrounded by craters from Turkish bombs. With shovels and picks, they dug five spaces in the rows of cinder-block graves. They pushed the scraps of paper bearing names inside clear plastic bottles and placed them in the graves. Then they covered their dead with dirt and blank stone slabs and dispersed without ceremony back into the mountains. Staff photographer Andrea Bruce and special correspondent Dlovan Brwari contributed to this report. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080308586042.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1462169_AEf PjkQAAWoLR9LliAO0dHim%2BQs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080308aaindex_concat.html&cred=T0opYWQVSrN10b 2OpuxNxgeWGcT47dIdGozXvC_sVJO2LjyVH2XIKQwsETfcM.#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Mideast Stars and Stripes March 8, 2008 Iraq A Different World After Dark Nightfall offers a sense of security, greater challenges for pilots in Balad By James Warden, Stars and Stripes BALAD, Iraq — Darkness blankets the desert in ways that most city dwellers wouldn’t understand. Street lights die where the towns end, and even on a calm night, dust can choke off all the starlight but for a small circle at the top of the sky. Company A, 5th Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment, is just one of many units here in Balad that gets cranking up after the sun sets. The unit runs regular night flights that the crews call “Echo missions.” That’s “echo,” as in the letter “e,” one of several routes named after letters. No deeper code here. On these missions, pilots and crews don their gear, pick up a load of passengers and start circling between the forward operating bases. The darkness brings challenges that pilots don’t face during the day. If pilots don’t follow their instruments closely, they can find themselves drifting too high or low. “You gotta be more cautious,” said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Brett Henry, a 29-year-old pilot. “You get out there, over the open desert, you got no contrast.” Crews initiate more conversations with pilots to keep them apprised of what’s outside, said Chief Warrant Officer 3 Shawn Patterson, a 31-year-old pilot. Everyone stays alert for obstacles. “You have to increase your scanning more,” Patterson said. “Every day they’re putting up more towers.” Yet this same darkness also shields the helicopters from would-be attackers. Both pilots actually prefer these night flights because of the extra concealment they bring. Henry described how the helicopters seem to float along in a bubble of darkness on these night flights. “You’re in your own world, pretty much,” he said. “During the day, you’re just an open, moving target.” The desert nights are dark here in Iraq. But for American pilots, that darkness means security. “We do own the night,” Henry said. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080308586090.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1462169_AEf PjkQAAWoLR9LliAO0dHim%2BQs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080308aaindex_concat.html&cred=T0opYWQVSrN10b 2OpuxNxgeWGcT47dIdGozXvC_sVJO2LjyVH2XIKQwsETfcM.#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Wall Street Journal March 8, 2008 Pg. 3 Boeing Is Poised To Protest Air Force's Contract Decision By J. Lynn Lunsford After meeting with senior Air Force officials, Boeing Co. hinted strongly that it will file a formal protest over the award of a $40 billion aerial-refueling-tanker contract to Northrop Grumman Corp. and the parent company of Europe's Airbus. In a statement, Boeing said it will take the next few days to evaluate what it learned from the Air Force and "give serious consideration" to filing a protest. Such a protest would likely add fuel to a political fight over whether the contract awarded to Northrop and European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co. will cost the U.S. jobs. Mark McGraw, the Boeing vice president in charge of the company's tanker efforts, said that company officials spent several hours with the Air Force on Friday, trying to understand how it failed to win the prestigious contract. Mr. McGraw said company officials left the room with significant concerns about the process in several areas. "What is clear now is that reports claiming that the Airbus offering won by a wide margin could not be more inaccurate." Last Friday, the Air Force chose Northrop and EADS to build a fleet of 179 tankers for use as flying gas stations for fighter jets and other aircraft. Boeing's supporters in Congress reacted with outrage, holding a hearing earlier this week, with some members calling for the deal to be thrown out. By law, Boeing is allowed to protest the Air Force's decision, a tactic that has been used increasingly in recent years by companies competing for a dwindling number of big-dollar contracts. This debriefing was especially important to the Air Force because previous protests have been tied in part to problems related to losing bidders not receiving enough information following the decision. Earlier this week, Jim Albaugh, the chief executive of Boeing's Integrated Defense Systems unit, said the company would protest only if it believed significant irregularities had occurred that tilted the contest in favor of its rival. Although the company stopped short of saying it would definitely protest, people familiar with discussions inside the Chicago aerospace company said such a move appears increasingly likely. The decision ultimately rests with Boeing Chairman and Chief Executive Jim McNerney. "Our plan now is to work through the weekend to come to a decision on our course of action early next week," said Mr. McGraw. "It will be a very rigorous and deliberative process to ensure we're balancing the needs of the warfighter with our desire to be treated fairly." The Air Force, which plans to provide a similar briefing to the Northrop team Monday, declined to comment. In a statement, Northrop said it is "looking forward to learning more from the Air Force about the strength of its proposal, which led to the selection of its tanker as the most modern, most capable tanker for the warfighter." --August Cole contributed to this article. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080308586223.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1462169_AEf PjkQAAWoLR9LliAO0dHim%2BQs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080308aaindex_concat.html&cred=T0opYWQVSrN10b 2OpuxNxgeWGcT47dIdGozXvC_sVJO2LjyVH2XIKQwsETfcM.#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Seattle Times March 8, 2008 Tanker Bid Process Concerns Boeing By Bloomberg News Boeing said it has "significant concerns" about the bidding process for a $40 billion aerial-refueling tanker contract as it considers protesting the Air Force's decision to award the deal to Northrop Grumman and partner European Aeronautic Defence & Space (EADS). Boeing executives, who met Friday with Air Force officials about the rationale behind the service's Feb. 29 rejection of the company's tanker bid, are giving "serious consideration" to filing a protest and will make a decision early next week, the company said. Boeing, which was considered the favorite, has said it wanted to find out if there was a "disconnect" between what the Air Force requested in the bidding process and the criteria used to choose a winner. The Defense Department has defended its choice, saying the consortium's plane, based on an Airbus A330, was better than Boeing's and offered higher value for taxpayers' money. "We left the room with significant concerns about the process in several areas, including program requirements related to capabilities, cost and risk; evaluation of the bids and the ultimate decision," said Mark McGraw, Boeing vice president and program manager for the KC-767 tanker. "What is clear now is that reports claiming that the Airbus offering won by a wide margin could not be more inaccurate," McGraw said. If Boeing protests within the next five days, the award will be automatically suspended. The Government Accountability Office must receive a protest within 10 days or the matter is closed. The GAO has 100 days from receipt of a complaint to decide whether it is valid, and if so, offer a solution. Northrop executives will meet with Air Force officials on March 10, said Randy Belote, a spokesman for the Los Angeles company. EADS is the parent of Airbus. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080308586222.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1462169_AEf PjkQAAWoLR9LliAO0dHim%2BQs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080308aaindex_concat.html&cred=T0opYWQVSrN10b 2OpuxNxgeWGcT47dIdGozXvC_sVJO2LjyVH2XIKQwsETfcM.#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Seattle Post-Intelligencer March 8, 2008 Boeing Backers Blame McCain For Losing Deal By Eric Rosenberg, P-I Washington Bureau WASHINGTON -- Supporters of The Boeing Co. blame Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, for the company's failure to win the lucrative $35 billion contract to build new Air Force aerial refueling tankers. The Air Force last week awarded the contract to a team of Airbus parent EADS and Northrop Grumman Corp., triggering a firestorm from Boeing advocates who said the victory by the European-led consortium ignored American national security interests and would cost U.S. jobs. Boeing advocates say McCain was a major force behind the Air Force decision to ignore the issue of government subsidies to Airbus when the tanker contract was put up for competitive bidding last year. The issue of European government subsidies for Airbus has been raised for years by Boeing supporters who claim that those financial breaks have allowed the Toulouse, France-based company to undercut Boeing's prices and thus gain market share in the global competition between the two aircraft manufacturers. (Both the U.S. and the European Union, which claims Boeing also receives subsidies, have filed cases with the World Trade Organization.) Boeing advocates assert that those same subsidies helped European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. and Los-Angeles-based Northrop Grumman win the Air Force tanker project, with a value that could eventually top $100 billion. The Air Force, which briefed Boeing on Friday about its contract decision, hasn't publicly revealed the specifics of why it gave the contract to EADS or the relative prices of the competing bids. But that hasn't stopped critics. "The only reason that (Airbus) could even bid a low price is because they receive a subsidy," said Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., whose Seattle-area district includes thousands of Boeing workers. "Senator McCain jumped into this and said that they (the Air Force) could not look at the subsidy issue, which I think is a big mistake," he told PBS. McCain himself has received support from the EADS North America executive suite. He has received more than $12,000 in campaign donations from some of the company's top U.S. officials, support that continued even as his presidential campaign was foundering in mid- to late 2007. McCain's donors include EADS North America Chief Executive Officer Ralph Crosby and Senior Vice President of Government Relations Samuel Adcock. Other EADS or Airbus employees gave donations to Democratic presidential hopefuls Sen. Hillary Clinton ($2,300 from Airbus Japan President Glen Fukushima) and Sen. Barack Obama ($350 from an EADS attorney). McCain is also the only presidential candidate to have received donations from a top-level Boeing executive. Senior Vice President of Public Policy Tod Hullin gave $2,300. Obama and Clinton have received significant support from Boeing employees, but not from top executives. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the Air Force was on course to give the contract to Boeing but then, "Senator McCain intervened, and now we have a situation where the contract may be -- this work may be outsourced." Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., one of the top Democratic leaders in the House, also blamed McCain. "The person that stopped (the tanker) from going to a U.S. company was Senator McCain," said Emanuel, "and now we are going to send major high-paying jobs overseas." A former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain was an outspoken critic of a previous tanker deal that Chicago-based Boeing had gained from the Air Force. McCain's efforts scuttled that project in 2004 and helped uncover criminal wrongdoing on the part of a senior Air Force official and a senior Boeing executive. Both went to federal prison for conspiracy to violate conflict-of-interest rules after the Air Force official admitted steering huge contracts to Boeing, including a $20 billion project for tankers. McCain later pressed the Air Force to ignore the issue of government subsidies to Airbus when the service solicited bids for the new tanker, contending that competition between Airbus and Boeing was more important than the issue of subsidies. The tanker project, McCain wrote in a Sept. 8, 2006, letter to Gordon England, deputy secretary of defense, "will only succeed if it is supported by full and open competition, based on all applicable Air Force requirements, using objective, verifiable metrics." Any consideration of subsidies by the Air Force "is inherently beyond the Air Force ability to judge and measure," McCain wrote. "As such it needlessly and, in my view, improperly injects into what should be a full and open competition an element of arbitrariness and capriciousness." Unless the Air Force took subsidies off the table in the tanker project, "the Air Force will risk eliminating competition before the bids are submitted," he wrote. He echoed his arguments in a follow-up letter with Robert Gates, then President Bush's nominee for defense secretary to succeed Donald Rumsfeld. Sue Payton, the top acquisition official in the Air Force, told a House panel last week that when the service weighed the competing bids from Boeing and the Airbus-Northrop team, "subsidies are not taken into account within the evaluation criteria." McCain shrugged off the claims by Airbus critics. "I have always insisted that the Air Force buy major weapons through fair and open competition," he said in a statement. P-I reporter Daniel Lathrop contributed to this report. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080308586169.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1462169_AEf PjkQAAWoLR9LliAO0dHim%2BQs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080308aaindex_concat.html&cred=T0opYWQVSrN10b 2OpuxNxgeWGcT47dIdGozXvC_sVJO2LjyVH2XIKQwsETfcM.#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Arizona Daily Star (Tucson) March 8, 2008 GAO: Pentagon Under Environment Laws Dept. of Defense isn't exempt, report concludes By Associated Press WASHINGTON — The Pentagon hasn't made the case for exemptions from three environmental laws or provided examples of how military operations have been impeded by them, a congressional report said Friday. The Government Accountability Office report came after the Navy lost in court over training exercises it was conducting under an exemption to the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Environmentalists contended that the Navy's use of sonar could harm whales off Southern California, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Feb. 29 that the Navy had to limit the sonar use. In a written response included in the GAO report, the Pentagon contended it had provided a solid rationale for seeking the provisions. It argued that the term "exemptions" shouldn't be used because it was an oversimplification that "unnecessarily reinforces the perception that DoD has sought to avoid its environmental stewardship responsibilities." A Pentagon spokeswoman, Cheryl Irwin, declined Friday to comment beyond the written response, saying the report had not yet been reviewed. In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Pentagon asked Congress for limited exemptions from six major environmental laws, contending they could interfere with training and combat preparations. The Pentagon got its way with the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Congress, however, balked on exemptions for three other laws: the Clean Air Act; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which governs disposal of solid and hazardous waste; and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, commonly known as Superfund, which gives the government authority and resources to clean up hazardous substances. The Pentagon, whose bases cover vast swaths of beaches and other undeveloped land across the country, said it wanted flexibility to move forces and equipment in areas that don't meet air-quality standards. Pentagon officials said lawsuits under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act could impede live-fire training exercises, and that they were concerned munitions practices could trigger Superfund requirements. But the Pentagon provided no examples of problems actually caused by the laws, the GAO said. Despite the concern of some environmental groups, GAO investigators found no examples of where the exemptions from the endangered species and migratory bird laws had hurt the environment. The impact of the marine mammal exemption was not yet determined, the GAO said. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080308586185.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1462169_AEf PjkQAAWoLR9LliAO0dHim%2BQs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080308aaindex_concat.html&cred=T0opYWQVSrN10b 2OpuxNxgeWGcT47dIdGozXvC_sVJO2LjyVH2XIKQwsETfcM.#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Philadelphia Inquirer March 8, 2008 Troops' Hearing A Casualty Of War Noise from firefights and roadside blasts has left thousands with major disabilities. By Chelsea J. Carter, Associated Press SAN DIEGO - Soldiers and Marines caught in roadside bombings and firefights in Iraq and Afghanistan are coming home in epidemic numbers with permanent hearing loss and ringing in their ears, prompting the military to redouble its efforts to protect the troops from noise. Hearing damage is the No. 1 disability in the war on terror, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, and some experts say the true toll could take decades to become clear. Nearly 70,000 of the more than 1.3 million troops who have served in the two war zones are collecting disability for tinnitus, a potentially debilitating ringing in the ears, and more than 58,000 are on disability for hearing loss, the VA said. "The numbers are staggering," said Theresa Schulz, a former audiologist with the Air Force, past president of the National Hearing Conservation Association and author of a 2004 report titled "Troops Return With Alarming Rates of Hearing Loss." One major explanation given is the insurgency's use of a fearsome weapon the Pentagon did not fully anticipate: powerful roadside bombs. Their blasts cause violent changes in air pressure that can rupture the eardrum and break bones inside the ear. Also, much of the fighting consists of ambushes, bombings and firefights, which come suddenly and unexpectedly, giving soldiers no time to use their military-issued hearing protection. "They can't say, 'Wait a minute, let me put my earplugs in,' " said Dr. Michael E. Hoffer, a Navy captain and one of the country's leading inner-ear specialists. "They are in the fight of their lives." In addition, some service personnel on patrol refuse to wear earplugs for fear of dulling their senses and missing sounds that can make the difference between life and death, Hoffer and others said. Others were not given earplugs or did not take them along when they were sent into the war zone. And some Marines were not told how to use their specialized earplugs and inserted them incorrectly. The military has responded during the last three years with better and easier-to-use earplugs, greater efforts to educate troops about protecting their hearing, and more testing in the war zone to detect ear injuries. The results from the new measures are not in yet, but Army officials believe they will significantly slow the rate of new cases of hearing damage, said Col. Kathy Gates, the Army surgeon general's audiology adviser. Considerable damage already has been done. For former Staff Sgt. Ryan Kelly, 27, of Austin, Texas, the noise of war is still with him more than four years after the simultaneous explosion of three roadside bombs near Baghdad. "It's funny, you know. When it happened, I didn't feel my leg gone. What I remember was my ears ringing," said Kelly, who had a leg blown off below the knee in 2003. Today, the leg has been replaced with a prosthetic, but his ears are still ringing. "It is constantly there," he said. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080308586196.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1462169_AEf PjkQAAWoLR9LliAO0dHim%2BQs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080308aaindex_concat.html&cred=T0opYWQVSrN10b 2OpuxNxgeWGcT47dIdGozXvC_sVJO2LjyVH2XIKQwsETfcM.#T OP">RETURN TO TOP New York Daily News March 8, 2008 Uncle Sam Back In Biz, Taking Names By Joe Gould and Larry McShane, Daily News Staff Writers DESPITE SHEET METAL over a shattered window and a temporary aluminum front door, the message was clear yesterday at the Times Square recruiting station: Uncle Sam still wants you. “It’s just like a normal day,” station commander Lt. James Latella said as the building reopened barely 24 hours after it was targeted by a bicycleriding bomber. “It sends a message that we just don’t give up,” Latella said. Recruiters and recruits alike expressed anger, disgust and dismay about the unprovoked attack on the nation’s busiest recruiting stop. “It’s bad enough there are bombs going off in Iraq,” said Marine Cpl. Juan Morales, an Iraq war veteran who stopped by Times Square while on leave from Camp Pendleton, Calif. “We shouldn’t have them here in the United States.” A defiant Pvt. Kevin Rodriguez, on leave in the Bronx after completing basic training, came to midtown to express his anger. “That really [ticked] me off,” he said. “Of all the places to bomb, a recruiting station?” Recruiting stations around the city were on heightened alert with an increased police presence after the Thursday morning blast in Times Square. A new poster of the iconic Uncle Sam image was displayed at the center yesterday with a simple message: “Open for business.” Staff Sgt. Joe Avila, back on the recruiting trail, said he wasn’t surprised that the bomber picked the Times Square center, which an estimated 10,000 recruits visit annually. “It’s always been a target,” he said. “It’s ‘The Crossroads of the World.’ ” http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080308586089.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1462169_AEf PjkQAAWoLR9LliAO0dHim%2BQs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080308aaindex_concat.html&cred=T0opYWQVSrN10b 2OpuxNxgeWGcT47dIdGozXvC_sVJO2LjyVH2XIKQwsETfcM.#T OP"> |
