North Korean Leader Kim Jong Il, 69, Has Died

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
at The New York Times

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Kim Jong Il, North Korea's mercurial and enigmatic leader, has died. He was 69.

Kim's death was announced Monday by state television from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

Kim is believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008 but appeared relatively vigorous in photos and video from recent trips to China and Russia and in numerous trips around the country carefully documented by state media.

The leader, reputed to have had a taste for cigars, cognac and gourmet cuisine, was believed to have had diabetes and heart disease.

The news came as North Korea prepared for a hereditary succession. Kim Jong Il inherited power after his father, revered North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, died in 1994.

In September 2010, Kim Jong Il unveiled his third son, the twenty-something Kim Jong Un, as his successor, putting him in high-ranking posts.

Last Convoy of American Troops Leaves Iraq, Marking an End to the War

By TIM ARANGO and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

at The New York Times

BAGHDAD — The last convoy of American troops to leave Iraq drove into Kuwait on Sunday morning, marking the end of the nearly nine-year war.

The convoy’s departure, which included about 110 vehicles and 500 soldiers, came three days after the American military folded its flag in a muted ceremony here to celebrate the end of its mission.

In darkness, the convoy snaked out of Contingency Operating Base Adder, near the southern city of Nasiriyah, around 2:30 a.m., and headed toward the border. The departure appeared to be the final moment of a drawn-out withdrawal that included weeks of ceremonies in Baghdad and around Iraq, and included visits by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, as well as a trip to Washington by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq.

As dawn approached on Sunday morning, the last trucks began to cross over the border into Kuwait at an outpost lit by floodlights and secured by barbed wire.

“I just can’t wait to call my wife and kids and let them know I am safe,” said Sgt. First Class Rodolfo Ruiz just before his armored vehicle crossed over the border. “I am really feeling it now.”

Shortly after crossing into Kuwait, Sergeant Ruiz told the men in his vehicle: “Hey guys, you made it.”

Then, he ordered the vehicles in his convoy not to flash their lights or honk their horns.

For security reasons, the last soldiers made no time for goodbyes to Iraqis with whom they had become acquainted. To keep details of the final trip secret from insurgents, interpreters for the last unit to leave the base called local tribal sheiks and government leaders on Saturday morning and conveyed that business would go on as usual, not letting on that all the Americans would soon be gone.

Many troops wondered how the Iraqis, whom they had worked closely with and trained over the past year, would react when they awoke on Sunday to find that the remaining American troops on the base had left without saying anything.

“The Iraqis are going to wake up in the morning and nobody will be there,” said a soldier who only identified himself as Specialist Joseph. He said he had immigrated to the United States from Iraq in 2009 and enlisted a year later, and refused to give his full name because he worried for his family’s safety.

Fearing that insurgents would try to attack the last Americans leaving the country, the military treated all convoys like combat missions.

As the armored vehicles drove through the desert, Marine, Navy and Army helicopters and planes flew overhead scanning the ground for insurgents and preparing to respond if the convoys were attacked.

Col. Douglas Crissman, one of the military’s top commanders in southern Iraq, said in an interview on Friday that he planned to be in a Blackhawk helicopter over the convoy with special communication equipment.

“It is a little bit weird,” he said, referring to how he had not told his counterparts in the Iraqi military when they were leaving. “But the professionals among them understand.”

Over the past year, Colonel Crissman and his troops spearheaded the military’s efforts to ensure the security of the long highway that passes through southern Iraq that a majority of convoys traveled on their way out of the country.

“Ninety-five percent of what we have done has been for everyone else,” Colonel Crissman said.

Across the highway, the military built relationships with 20 tribal sheiks, paying them to clear the highway of garbage, making it difficult for insurgents to hide roadside bombs in blown-out tires and trash.

Along with keeping the highway clean, the military hoped that the sheiks would help police the highway and provide intelligence on militants.

“I can’t possibly be all places at one time,” said Colonel Crissman in an interview in May. “There are real incentives for them to keep the highway safe. Those sheiks we have the best relationships with and have kept their highways clear and safe will be the most likely ones to get renewed for the remainder of the year.”

All American troops were legally obligated to leave the country by the end of the month, but President Obama, in announcing in October the end of the American military role here, promised that everyone would be home for the holidays.

The United States will continue to play a role in Iraq. The largest American embassy in the world is located here, and in the wake of the military departure it is doubling in size — from about 8,000 people to 16,000 people, most of them contractors. Under the authority of the ambassador will be less than 200 military personnel, to guard the embassy and oversee the sale of weapons to the Iraqi government.

History’s final judgment on the war, which claimed nearly 4,500 American lives and cost almost $1 trillion, may not be determined for decades. But it will be forever tainted by the early missteps and miscalculations, the faulty intelligence over Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs and his supposed links to terrorists, and a litany of American abuses, from the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal to a public shootout involving Blackwater mercenaries that left civilians dead — a sum of agonizing factors that diminished America’s standing in the Muslim world and its power to shape events around the globe.

When President George W. Bush announced the start of the war in 2003 in an address from the Oval Office, he proclaimed, “we will accept no outcome but victory.”

But the end appears neither victory, nor defeat, but a stalemate — one in which the optimists say violence has been reduced to a level that will allow the country to continue on its lurching path toward stability and democracy, and the pessimists say the American presence has been a bandage on a festering wound.

The war’s conclusion marks a political triumph for President Obama, who ran for office promising to bring the troops home, but is bittersweet for Iraqis who will now face on their own the unfinished legacy of a conflict that rid their country of a hated dictator but did little else to improve their lives.

Feeling Warehoused in Army Trauma Care Units

THE NEW YORK TIMES

By JAMES DAO and DAN FROSCH

COLORADO SPRINGS — A year ago, Specialist Michael Crawford wanted nothing more than to get into Fort Carson’s Warrior Transition Battalion, a special unit created to provide closely managed care for soldiers with physical wounds and severe psychological trauma.

A strapping Army sniper who once brimmed with confidence, he had returned emotionally broken from Iraq, where he suffered two concussions from roadside bombs and watched several platoon mates burn to death. The transition unit at Fort Carson, outside Colorado Springs, seemed the surest way to keep suicidal thoughts at bay, his mother thought.

It did not work. He was prescribed a laundry list of medications for anxiety, nightmares, depression and headaches that made him feel listless and disoriented. His once-a-week session with a nurse case manager seemed grossly inadequate to him. And noncommissioned officers — soldiers supervising the unit — harangued or disciplined him when he arrived late to formation or violated rules.

Last August, Specialist Crawford attempted suicide with a bottle of whiskey and an overdose of painkillers. By the end of last year, he was begging to get out of the unit.

Continues...

Another Peril in War Zones: Sexual Abuse by Fellow G.I.’s

Women at Arms

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

BAGHDAD — Capt. Margaret H. White began a relationship with a warrant officer while both were training to be deployed to Iraq. By the time they arrived this year at Camp Taji, north of here, she felt what she called “creepy vibes” and tried to break it off.

In the claustrophobic confines of a combat post, it was not easy to do. He left notes on the door to her quarters, alternately pleading and menacing. He forced her to have sex, she said. He asked her to marry him, though he was already married. He waited for her outside the women’s latrines or her quarters, once for three hours.

“It got to the point that I felt safer outside the wire,” Captain White said, referring to operations that take soldiers off their heavily fortified bases, “than I did taking a shower.”

Her ordeal ended with the military equivalent of a restraining order and charges of stalking against the officer. It is one case that highlights the new and often messy reality the military has had to face as men and women serve side by side in combat zones more than ever before.

Sexual harassment and sexual assault, which the military now defines broadly to include not only rape but also crimes like groping and stalking, continue to afflict the ranks, and by some measures are rising. While tens of thousands of women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, often in combat, often with distinction, the integration of men and women in places like Camp Taji has forced to the surface issues that commanders rarely, if ever confronted before.

The military — belatedly, critics say — has radically changed the way it handles sexual abuse in particular, expanding access to treatment and toughening rules for prosecution. In the hardships of war, though, the effects of the changes remain unclear.

The strains of combat, close quarters in remote locations, tension and even boredom can create the conditions for abuse, even as they hinder medical care for victims and legal proceedings against those who attack them.

Captain White said she had feared coming forward, despite having become increasingly despondent and suffered panic attacks, because she was wary of she-said-he-said recriminations that would reverberate through the tightknit military world and disrupt the mission. Despite the military’s stated “zero tolerance” for abuse or harassment, she had no confidence her case would be taken seriously and so tried to cope on her own, Captain White said.

A Pentagon-appointed task force, in a report released this month, pointedly criticized the military’s efforts to prevent sexual abuse, citing the “unique stresses” of deployments in places like Camp Taji. “Some military personnel indicated that predators may believe they will not be held accountable for their misconduct during deployment because commanders’ focus on the mission overshadows other concerns,” the report said.

That, among other reasons, is why sexual assault and harassment go unreported far more often than not. “You’re in the middle of a war zone,” Captain White said, reflecting a fear many military women describe of being seen, somehow, as harming the mission.

“So it’s kind of like that one little thing is nothing compared with ‘There is an I.E.D. that went off in this convoy today and three people were injured,’ ” she said, referring to an improvised explosive device.

Common Fears

By the Pentagon’s own estimate, as few as 10 percent of sexual assaults are reported, far lower than the percentage reported in the civilian world. Specialist Erica A. Beck, a mechanic and gunner who served in Diyala Province in Iraq this summer, recalled a sexual proposition she called “inappropriate” during her first tour in the country in 2006-7. “Not necessarily being vulgar, but he, you know, was asking for favors,” she said.

She did not report it, she said, because she feared that her commanders would have reacted harshly — toward her.

“It was harassment,” she said. “And because it was a warrant officer, I didn’t say anything. I was just a private.”

Her fears were common, according to soldiers and advocates who remain skeptical of the military’s efforts to address abuse. A report last year by the Government Accountability Office concluded that victims were reluctant to report attacks “for a variety of reasons, including the belief that nothing would be done or that reporting an incident would negatively impact their careers.”

When Sgt. Tracey R. Phillips told a superior about an unwanted sexual advance from a private the night their unit arrived in Iraq in May, the accusations unleashed a flurry of charges and countercharges, an initial investigation of her on charges of adultery, a crime in the military justice system, and, according to her account, violations by her commanders of the new procedures meant to ease reporting of abuse.

In the end, she was kicked out of Iraq and the Army itself, while the private remained on duty here.

The military disputed her account but declined to state the reasons for sending her out of Iraq. Her paperwork showed that she received an honorable discharge, though with “serious misconduct” cited as the reason. The so-called misconduct, she said, stemmed from the Army’s allegation that she had had an inappropriate relationship with the private she accused. She denied that.

“If I would have never, ever, ever said anything, I wouldn’t be sitting here,” she said in an interview at her parents’ home near San Antonio. “I’d still be in Iraq.”

At bases around Iraq, many said that acceptance and respect for women in uniform were now more common than the opposite. In part, they said, that reflects a sweeping change in military culture that has accompanied the rise of women through the ranks and into more positions once reserved for men.

“It’s not tolerated — it’s just not,” said Lt. Brenda L. Beegle, a married military police officer, referring to sexual harassment and abuse.

In an interview at Liberty Base, near Baghdad’s airport, she said: “Everyone has heard stories about bad things that have happened. I’ve never had an issue.”

Although exact comparisons to the civilian world are difficult because of different methods of defining and reporting abuse, Pentagon officials and some experts say that the incidence of abuse in the military appears to be no higher than in society generally, and might be lower. It appears to be even lower in combat operations than at bases in the United States, because of stricter discipline and scrutiny during deployments, as well as restrictions on alcohol, which is often a factor in assaults, for example, on college campuses.

Complaints Increase

The number of complaints, though, is rising. Across the military, there were 2,908 reported cases of sexual abuse involving service members as victims or assailants, in the fiscal year that ended in September 2008, the last year for which the Pentagon made numbers available. That was an 8 percent increase from the previous year, when there were 2,688.

In the turbulent regions from Egypt to Afghanistan where most American combat troops are now deployed, the increase in reported cases was even sharper: 251 cases, compared with 174 the year before, a 44 percent increase. The number in Iraq rose to 143, from 112 the year before. Everyone agrees that those represent only a fraction of the instances of assault, let alone harassment.

“A woman in the military is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq,” Representative Jane Harman, a Democrat from California, said at a Congressional hearing this year, repeating an assertion she has made a refrain in a campaign of hers to force the military to do more to address abuses.

At least 10 percent of the victims in the last year were men, a reality that the Pentagon’s task force said the armed services had done practically nothing to address in terms of counseling, treatment and prosecution. Men are considered even less likely to report attacks, officials said, because of the stigma, and fears that their own sexual orientation would be questioned. In the majority of the reported cases, the attacker was male.

Senior Pentagon officials argued that the increase in reports did not necessarily signify a higher number of attacks. Rather, they said, there is now a greater awareness as well as an improved command climate, encouraging more victims to come forward.

“We believe the increase in the number of reported cases means the department is capturing a greater proportion of the cases that occurred during the year, which is good news,” said the Pentagon’s senior official overseeing abuse policies, Kaye Whitley.

The military can no more eradicate sexual abuse than can society in general, but soldiers, officers and experts acknowledge that it is particularly harmful when soldiers are in combat zones, affecting not only the victims but also, as the military relies more than ever on women when the nation goes to war, the mission.

“For the military the potential costs are even higher as it can also negatively impact mission readiness,” the Pentagon’s annual report on sexual abuse said, referring to sexual violence. “Service members risk their lives for one another and bear the responsibility of keeping fellow service members out of harm’s way. Sexual assault in the military breaks this bond.”

Even investigations into accusations, which are often difficult to prove, can disrupt operations. In Sergeant Phillips’s case, she was relieved of her duties leading a squad of soldiers refueling emergency rescue helicopters and other aircraft at Camp Kalsu, south of Baghdad.

Cases like hers suggest that the vagaries of sex and sexual abuse, especially in combat zones, continue to vex commanders on the ground, despite the transformation of the military’s policies.

The majority of sexual abuse allegations end with no prosecution at all. Of 2,171 suspects of investigations that were completed during the fiscal year that ended in September 2008, only 317 faced a court-martial. Another 515 faced administrative punishments or discharges. Nearly half of the completed investigations lacked evidence or were “unsubstantiated or unfounded.”

The Pentagon, facing criticism, maintains that it has transformed the way it handles sexual abuse. In the wake of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as highly publicized cases and revelations of rampant abuse at the Air Force Academy in 2003, the Pentagon created a single agency to oversee the issue and rewrote the rules of reporting, treatment and prosecution. Beginning in October 2007, the Uniform Code of Military Justice expanded the provision that once covered rape — Article 120 — to include other offenses, like indecent exposure and stalking.

The Army, which has provided the bulk of the forces in Iraq, has increased the number of investigators and lawyers trained to investigate accusations. Most bases now have kits to collect forensic evidence in rape cases, which was not the case immediately after the invasion in 2003.

Larger field hospitals in Balad and Mosul now have the same type of sexual assault nurse examiners widely used in the civilian world, as well as a dozen other examiners who are not nurses but are trained to conduct forensic examinations.

The military has set up a system of confidential advisers women can turn to who are outside the usual chain of command — an avenue Sergeant Phillips said she had been denied.

If they want to, the women can now seek medical treatment and counseling without setting off a criminal investigation. And all the services have started educational programs to address aspects of a hierarchical warrior culture that some say contributes to hostility toward women. Posters for the campaign blanket bulletin boards in offices, chow halls and recreational buildings on bases across Iraq.

The military’s efforts, however well intentioned, are often undermined by commanders who are skeptical or even conflicted, suspicious of accusations and fearful that reports of abuse reflect badly on their commands. The Pentagon task force also reported that victims of assault did not come forward because they might “have engaged in misconduct for which they could be disciplined, such as under-age drinking, fraternization or adultery.”

Marti Ribeiro, then an Air Force sergeant, said she was raped by another soldier after she stepped away from a guard post in Afghanistan in 2006 to smoke a cigarette, a story first recounted in “The Lonely Soldier,” a book by Helen Benedictabout women who served in Iraq and elsewhere. When she went to the abuse coordinator, she was threatened with prosecution for having left her weapon and her post.

“I didn’t get any help at all, let alone compassion,” said Ms. Ribeiro, who has since retired and joined the Service Women’s Action Network, a new advocacy organization devoted to shaping the Pentagon’s policy.

The hardships of combat operations often compound the anguish of victims and complicate investigations, as well as counseling and treatment. The Government Accountability Office suggested that the “unique living and social circumstances” of combat posts heightened the risk for assault. Both the G.A.O. and the Pentagon’s task force found that, despite the Pentagon’s policy, remote bases did not have adequate medical and mental health services for victims. The task force also found that abuse coordinators and victim advocates were often ill trained or absent.

As a result, victims often suffer the consequences alone, working in the heat and dust, living in trailers surrounded by gravel and concrete blast walls, with nowhere private to retreat to. In Captain White’s case, she had to work and live beside the man who assaulted and stalked her until their deployment ended in August and they both went home.

“You’re in such a fishbowl,” she said. “You can’t really get away from someone. You see him in the chow hall. You see him in the gym.”

The Danger Nearby

Captain White’s case is typical of many here, according to military lawyers and experts, in that she knew the man she said assaulted her, circumstances that complicated the investigation and prosecution.

She had dated the warrant officer when they arrived in Fort Dix, N.J., for predeployment training with the 56th Stryker Combat Team. The newly revised article of the Uniform Code of Military Justice says that “a current or previous dating relationship by itself” does not constitute consent.

Once at Camp Taji, a sprawling base just north of Baghdad, she grew troubled by his behavior. He cajoled her with presents and sent her e-mail messages. She said that for fear of running into him, she stopped drinking water after 7 p.m. so she would not have to go to the latrine at night alone.

She never came forward herself. Her case came to light only when military prosecutors questioned her about another investigation involving the warrant officer. He was ultimately charged with 19 offenses, said Lt. Col. Philip J. Smith, a spokesman for the division that oversaw operations in central Iraq. The charges included seven counts of fraternization and two of adultery, interfering with an investigation and, in Captain White’s case, stalking.

After their deployment ended in September, the officer pleaded guilty and resigned from the Army in lieu of prosecution, Colonel Smith said.

Captain White said that she was satisfied with the legal outcome of her case, though her account of it highlighted the emotional strains that sexual abuse causes.

“I’m not saying that I handled it the best way,” she said in an interview after her own retirement from the Army, “but I handled it at the time and in the situation what I thought was the best way, which was just to keep my head down, keep going — which was kind of an Army thing to say: Drive on.”

Kassie Bracken contributed reporting from San Antonio and Houston.

Multimedia Content at NYTimes

Small Business Faces Sharp Rise in Costs of Health Care

October 25, 2009
By REED ABELSON

As Congress nears votes on legislation that would overhaul the health care system, many small businesses say they are facing the steepest rise in insurance premiums they have seen in recent years.

Insurance brokers and benefits consultants say their small business clients are seeing premiums go up an average of about 15 percent for the coming year — double the rate of last year’s increases. That would mean an annual premium that was $4,500 per employee in 2008 and $4,800 this year would rise to $5,500 in 2010.

The higher premiums at least partly reflect the inexorable rise of medical costs, which is forcing Medicare to raise premiums, too. Health insurance bills are also rising for big employers, but because they have more negotiating clout, their increases are generally not as steep.

Higher medical costs aside, some experts say they think the insurance industry, under pressure from Wall Street, is raising premiums to get ahead of any legislative changes that might reduce their profits.

The increases come at a politically fraught time for the insurers, as they try to fight off the creation of a government-run competitor and as they push their case that they have a central role to play in controlling the nation’s health care costs.

President Obama, in his Saturday radio address, said the Democrats’ health insurance overhaul would help small businesses and stimulate the economy by providing relief from “the crushing costs of health care — costs that have forced too many small businesses to cut benefits, shed jobs, or shut their doors for good.”

The insurance industry has already been under sharp attack by Democratic lawmakers who favor creating a government-run insurance plan that would compete with private insurers. Without that competition, proponents say, insurers will continue to price coverage beyond the reach of many Americans.

Small businesses, which employ about 40 percent of the private labor force, are a big constituency for both parties.

Continues - Link

Historians Reassess Battle of Agincourt

October 25, 2009
By JAMES GLANZ

MAISONCELLE, France — The heavy clay-laced mud behind the cattle pen on Antoine Renault’s farm looks as treacherous as it must have been nearly 600 years ago, when King Henry V rode from a spot near here to lead a sodden and exhausted English Army against a French force that was said to outnumber his by as much as five to one.

No one can ever take away the shocking victory by Henry and his “band of brothers,” as Shakespeare would famously call them, on St. Crispin’s Day, Oct. 25, 1415. They devastated a force of heavily armored French nobles who had gotten bogged down in the region’s sucking mud, riddled by thousands of arrows from English longbowmen and outmaneuvered by common soldiers with much lighter gear. It would become known as the Battle of Agincourt.

But Agincourt’s status as perhaps the greatest victory against overwhelming odds in military history — and a keystone of the English self-image — has been called into doubt by a group of historians in Britain and France who have painstakingly combed an array of military and tax records from that time and now take a skeptical view of the figures handed down by medieval chroniclers.

The historians have concluded that the English could not have been outnumbered by more than about two to one. And depending on how the math is carried out, Henry may well have faced something closer to an even fight, said Anne Curry, a professor at the University of Southampton who is leading the study.

Those cold figures threaten an image of the battle that even professional researchers and academics have been reluctant to challenge in the face of Shakespearean prose and centuries of English pride, Ms. Curry said.

“It’s just a myth, but it’s a myth that’s part of the British psyche,” Ms. Curry said.

The work, which has received both glowing praise and sharp criticism from other historians in the United States and Europe, is the most striking of the revisionist accounts to emerge from a new science of military history. The new accounts tend to be not only more quantitative but also more attuned to political, cultural and technological factors, and focus more on the experience of the common soldier than on grand strategies and heroic deeds.

The approach has drastically changed views on everything from Roman battles with Germanic tribes, to Napoleon’s disastrous occupation of Spain, to the Tet offensive in the Vietnam War. But the most telling gauge of the respect being given to the new historians and their penchant for tearing down established wisdom is that it has now become almost routine for American commanders to call on them for advice on strategy and tactics in Afghanistan, Iraq and other present-day conflicts.

The most influential example is the “Counterinsurgency Field Manual” adopted in 2006 by the United States Army and Marines and smack in the middle of the debate over whether to increase troop levels in Afghanistan.

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CNN Special on Latinos Stokes Debate Over Dobbs

By BRIAN STELTER
October 24, 2009

Instead of being simply a draw for Hispanic viewers, CNN’s four-hour documentary, “Latino in America,” turned into a political rallying cry for activist groups who are calling on the cable news channel to fire Lou Dobbs, a veteran anchor with well-known views on immigration.

An array of minorities held small protests in New York and other cities on Wednesday, the first night of CNN’s presentation. They are trying to highlight what they say are years of lies about immigration by Mr. Dobbs, who anchors the 7 p.m. hour on CNN.

CNN, a unit of Time Warner, has not commented on the protests or covered them on its news programs. One of the activists featured in the documentary said she tried to raise what she called Mr. Dobbs’s “hatred” on one of the channel’s news programs Wednesday, but her remarks were cut from the interview.

The anti-Dobbs campaign has, however, drawn considerable attention in the Spanish-language press; the Thursday front page of the New York newspaper El Diario featured a red slash mark through Mr. Dobbs’s face and the word “hipocresia,” Spanish for “hypocrisy,” atop the illustration.

The hypocrisy, critics say, lies in CNN’s decision to woo Hispanic viewers with a prime-time documentary while still giving Mr. Dobbs a nightly forum. Roberto Lovato, a founding member of Presente.org, a Latino advocacy group, said in a statement, “We won’t allow the network to court us as viewers while, at the same time, they allow Dobbs to spread lies and misinformation about us each night.”

Separately, Mr. Dobbs is also the target of a “Drop Dobbs” campaign by the progressive groups NDN, Media Matters for America, and others. That effort started after Mr. Dobbs repeatedly raised questions about President Obama’s birth certificate.

There is no indication that the campaigns are affecting CNN’s revenue, but they are highlighting Mr. Dobbs’s status as an outlier at the channel, which has sought to position itself as a middle ground of sorts in the fractious cable news arena. Mr. Dobbs is known to be exploring an exit from CNN, and he is viewed as a potential hire for the Fox Business Network, an upstart channel owned by the News Corporation.

Continues: Link

We Still Need the Big Guns

January 9, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
At NY Times
By CHARLES J. DUNLAP Jr.

Washington

THE relative calm that America’s armed forces have imposed on Iraq is certainly grounds for cautious optimism. But it also raises some obvious questions: how was it achieved and what does it mean for future defense planning?

Many analysts understandably attribute the success to our troops’ following the dictums of the Army’s lauded new counterinsurgency manual. While the manual is a vast improvement over its predecessors, it would be a huge mistake to take it as proof — as some in the press, academia and independent policy organizations have — that victory over insurgents is achievable by anything other than traditional military force.

Unfortunately, starry-eyed enthusiasts have misread the manual to say that defeating an insurgency is all about winning hearts and minds with teams of anthropologists, propagandists and civil-affairs officers armed with democracy-in-a-box kits and volleyball nets. They dismiss as passé killing or capturing insurgents.

Actually, the reality is quite different. The lesson of Iraq is that old-fashioned force works. Add 30,000 of the world’s finest infantry to the 135,000 battle-hardened troops already there, as we have done, and the outnumbered insurgency is in serious trouble. Detain thousands more Iraqis as security threats, and the potential for violence inevitably declines. Press reports indicate that the number of Iraqis in prison doubled over the last year, to 30,000 from 15,000; and while casualty figures are sketchy, military officials told USA Today last September that the number of insurgents killed was already 25 percent higher in 2007 than in all of 2006.

And while the new counterinsurgency doctrine has an anti-technology flavor that seems to discourage the use of air power especially, savvy ground-force commanders in Iraq got the right results last year by discounting those admonitions. Few Americans are likely to be aware that there was a fivefold increase in airstrikes during 2007 as compared with the previous year, which went hand in hand with the rest of the surge strategy. Going high-tech once again proved to be highly successful.

Regrettably, two other uncomfortable developments also helped suppress violence. First, the Iraqi population has largely segregated itself into sectarian fiefs. Second, supposedly “reformed” insurgents now dominate Anbar Province. While these Sunni partisans have for the moment sided with the United States, can we assume they’ve bought into the idea of a truly pluralistic and democratic Iraq?

Nonetheless, fans of the counterinsurgency manual are using it as a bludgeon against anyone who wants to plan to fight the next war rather than the last one. Their line of thinking holds that our next war will be a replay of Iraq, and thus most of our armed forces should be structured for counterinsurgency.

But this ignores other potential threats. Should we simply wish away China’s increasing muscle, or a resurgent Russia’s plans for a fifth-generation fighter that would surpass our top of the line jet, the F-22 stealth fighter? Moreover, does anyone really believe that creating corps of civil affairs officers will deter North Korea or Iran?

Yes, there is always the possibility that we may again find ourselves battling an insurgency, and the manual has many great ideas. Furthermore, the proposal for a 20,000-strong adviser corps to help Iraqi local forces fight insurgents ought to be green-lighted.

The problem emerges when we consider pouring excessive resources into preparing for only one kind of conflict. Doing so would put us at real risk of losing the technological superiority that has kept America’s vastly more dangerous threats at bay. Consider, for example, that our warplanes are on average more than 25 years old.

The enormous cost of the Iraq war, not to mention the loss of life on both sides, would seem to counsel against the idea of a similar operation elsewhere. Looking ahead, America needs a military centered not on occupying another country but on denying potential adversaries the ability to attack our interests. This is not a task for counterinsurgents, but rather for an unapologetically high-tech military that substitutes machines for the bodies of young Americans.

Charles J. Dunlap Jr. is an Air Force major general and the author of “Shortchanging the Joint Fight?,” an assessment of the Army’s counterinsurgency manual.

Helicopter Downed as 12 Killed In Rio Violence

By REUTERS

Filed at 7:04 p.m. ET

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Drug traffickers shot down a police helicopter in Rio de Janeiro Saturday, killing two officers, and 10 suspected gang members were killed in the city's worst recent outbreak of violence, police said.

The violence, in which authorities said 8 buses were set on fire by suspected traffickers and 6 police officers wounded, came only two weeks after the Brazilian city was awarded the 2016 Olympic Games despite worries over high levels of violence.

The helicopter carrying six crew came down after its pilot was hit in the leg by a bullet as it flew over the "Hill of Monkeys" slum in the city's north zone, where police were responding to a gun battle between rival gangs, Major Oderlei Santos of the military police told Reuters.

He said it was the first time that a police helicopter had been shot down and destroyed in Rio.

Despite being wounded, the pilot managed to land the aircraft on a football pitch but it then exploded in flames, killing two officers and wounding the other four crew members, including the pilot, one of them gravely.

The 10 suspected traffickers were killed by police and in the gun battle between rival gangs. Four residents were wounded by stray bullets, police said.

A Reuters photographer at the slum said he saw three bodies laid out on the ground. Residents said the three were not drug traffickers and had been caught in a cross-fire.

"It was a night of chaos. ... We are still really scared," 17-year-old slum resident Cristina Soares was quoted as saying by the O Globo newspaper's website.

"Later on, it is going to get worse."

Rio's state security secretary, Jose Beltrame, said gang members set fire to a total of 8 buses in the northern zone in an apparent attempt to distract security forces.

O Globo, which showed images of the destroyed helicopter and several buses in flames, quoted witnesses as saying that about 15 masked, armed men had ordered passengers to leave one bus before setting it on fire.

Security forces said the situation was now under control and an additional 3,500 troops had been put on duty to reinforce the affected areas and hunt for the criminals.

"We will put all our efforts into responding to this action by criminals," Mario Sergio Duarte, the commander-general of Rio's military police, told a news conference.

The beach-side city of six million people is one of the world's most violent, with almost daily shoot-outs between police and the heavily armed gangs that control many of its roughly 1,000 slums.

Officials played down the city's security problems during their successful bid for the 2016 Olympics, saying the violence could be contained during major events and pledging to expand state control to more slums.

(Additional reporting by Pedro Fonseca; Ana Nicolaci da Costa, Eduardo Simoes and Rodrigo Viga Gaier; Writing by Stuart Grudgings; editing by Todd Eastham)

My Lai Haunts the Lieutenant

NY Times

Editorial

The nation has finally heard a note of personal regret from William Calley 38 years after he became the sole American soldier convicted in the My Lai massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians.

“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” Mr. Calley, a former lieutenant who now is a 66-year-old graybeard, told the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus, Ga. His appearance this month came after decades of no comment. “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families,” said Mr. Calley, who was defended as a dutiful soldier by many when the slaughter was disclosed.

His remarks are an important reminder for a nation again at war of the considerable risks to honor and truth that can undermine troops caught in the frustrations and fears of the battlefront. The slaughter was conducted in March 1968 by platoons of American soldiers who shot and abused more than 300 victims — mainly women, children and elderly peasants — in a murderous frenzy.

After an 18-month cover-up, the story was broken by Seymour Hersh, the relentless reporter who pried truth firsthand from Mr. Calley and other perpetrators. The massacre sparked world outrage and helped unravel support for the Vietnam War, but it left still-gaping holes in the need for full justice up the military chain of command.

“I gave them a good boy, and they sent me back a murderer,” an American mother told Mr. Hersh of the guilt haunting My Lai veterans. There was small comfort in pleading they had to follow orders and shoot victims fleeing for their lives and cowering in an irrigation pit. Twenty-six soldiers eventually were charged, but only Mr. Calley was convicted. Ranking brass separately accused in the cover-up were acquitted.

Mr. Calley endures as a classic scapegoat. He was sentenced to life in prison. But as the nation polarized and he was lionized in a jingoistic pop song, he was ordered transferred by President Richard Nixon to house arrest at a comfortable apartment. His sentence was eventually reduced, and he served three years. “I am very sorry,” Mr. Calley told the Kiwanis, stirring the ghosts of a horrific episode the nation dare not forget.

Proposal to Ease Aid for G.I.’s With Stress Disorder

The New York Times

August 25, 2009

By JAMES DAO

Under fire from veterans groups and Congress for its handling of disability claims, the Department of Veterans Affairs is proposing new regulations that it says will make it easier for veterans to seek compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder.

The proposal is intended to lower the burden on noncombat veterans who claim they developed PTSD in the service and to speed processing of those claims, which represent a significant part of the 82,000 disability claims the department receives each month.

Current rules require veterans who have received diagnoses of PTSD to document that they experienced traumatic events during service that triggered the disorder. For veterans who did not serve in combat units, such proof can be difficult to find given the unevenness of military record keeping.

But veterans’ advocates have argued that many noncombat troops, including truck drivers and supply clerks, have experienced such events, which include roadside bombs, firefights, mortar attacks or the deaths of friends. Despite receiving diagnoses of PTSD, many of those troops struggle to receive disability compensation.

The proposed rule would eliminate the requirement to document triggering events, provided veterans with PTSD could show that they were in places and performed duties where such events might have occurred. Their symptoms must also be consistent with the trauma they claim to have experienced.

By some estimates, 20 percent of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have PTSD.

In a news release on Monday, the secretary of veterans affairs, Eric K. Shinseki, said, “The hidden wounds of war are being addressed vigorously and comprehensively by this administration as we move V.A. forward in its transformation to the 21st century.”

Dennis M. Cullinan, national legislative director for Veterans of Foreign Wars, called the proposed change “a big plus” for veterans. Mr. Cullinan cited the example of a truck driver in Iraq who might have experienced repeated roadside bomb attacks but whose military record would not have shown combat duty.

Mr. Cullinan also said that changing the policy administratively was faster than waiting for legislation. A bill in Congress that would make similar changes, sponsored by Representative John Hall, Democrat of New York, faces opposition because of the projected cost, nearly $5 billion.

But some veterans’ advocates responded skeptically to the proposed regulation, which now must undergo a 60-day review period.

“Whenever the V.A. touts a proposed compensation rule change that it says will ‘make it easier for a veteran to claim service connection,’ red flags go up all over the place,” a veterans’ advocate, Larry Scott, wrote on his Web site, vawatchdog.org.

Critics said the proposed rule would still require veterans to prove a connection between a traumatizing event and their PTSD, even when that connection was not clear cut. Strict application of that requirement could lead to many rejected claims, they say.

Katrina J. Eagle, a veterans’ lawyer in California, said the proposed rule would also require veterans to receive diagnoses from department-employed or approved psychiatrists and psychologists. Currently, veterans can receive diagnoses from their own psychiatrists.

“This is their way of being able to control the diagnosis,” Ms. Eagle said. “I don’t see how this is going to make it easier.”

But other veterans’ advocates said the proposed requirement on using department psychiatrists seemed like a reasonable means to reduce fraud and standardize diagnoses.

Meaghan Smith, a spokeswoman for Mr. Hall, said that he thought the proposed rule change was “pretty significant” but that he would study it closer to make sure it was “as inclusive” as his bill.

'Truth' vs. 'Facts' from America's Media

Americans need the media to give us the truth in the healthcare debate.

By Neal Gabler
August 23, 2009

T.S. Eliot was wrong. August is the cruelest month. As we head toward next month's congressional face-off on a national healthcare bill, the news media are infatuated with town hall meetings. Over and over, we see angry citizens screaming about a Big Government takeover of the healthcare system, shouting that they will lose their insurance or be forced to give up their doctors and denouncing "death panels" that will euthanize old people.

Of course, none of this is even remotely true. These are all canards peddled by insurance companies terrified of losing their power and profits, by right-wing militants terrified of a victory for the president they hate and by the Republican Party, which has been commandeered by the insurance industry and the militants. But the lies have obviously had their effect. Recent polls show that support for healthcare reform -- reform that would insure more Americans, would force insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions and prevent them from capriciously terminating coverage, and would provide competition to drive down costs -- is rapidly eroding.

Maybe Americans should know better. Maybe they shouldn't fall for the latest imbecilic propaganda and scare tactics. Maybe. But a citizenry is only as well-informed as the quality of information it receives. One can't expect Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin or the Republican Party or even the Democrats to provide serious, truthful assessments of a complex health plan. Truth has to come from somewhere else -- from a reliable, objective, trustworthy source.

That source should be the media, and there has been, in fact, some excellent coverage of healthcare, especially by our better newspapers and especially lately when the untruths have become a torrent, rousing reporters to provide a corrective. But overall, the coverage has not been exactly edifying. According to the Pew Research Center, 16% of the stories in its media sample last week were devoted to healthcare, but three-quarters of that coverage was either about legislative politics or the town halls. Tom Rosenstiel, who heads Pew's Center for Excellence in Journalism, said that if the healthcare debate is a potential teaching moment, that "moment is passing us by."

Television particularly has been remiss, even without mentioning cable news, which may be the greatest source of disinformation. ABC took some heat from Republicans for giving President Obama a prime-time forum to answer questions about healthcare in June. But as far as I can tell, it is the only prime-time special that any broadcast network has devoted to the healthcare debate. Even so, rather than merely host the president, ABC should have had a variety of experts and qualified reporters assessing exactly what the proposed bills will and will not do and who is and is not telling the truth -- a difficult but not impossible task.

To look at this in a larger context, journalists would no doubt say that it isn't really their job to ferret out the "truth." It is their job to report "facts." If Palin says that Obama intends to euthanize her child, they report it. If Limbaugh says that Obama's healthcare plan smacks of Nazism, they report it. And if riled citizens begin shouting down their representatives, they report it, and report it, and report it. The more noise and the bigger the controversy, the greater the coverage. This creates a situation in which not only is the truth subordinate to lies, but one in which shameless lies are actually privileged over reasoned debate.

Don't think the militants don't know this and take full advantage of it. They know that the media, especially the so-called liberal mainstream media -- which are hardly liberal if assessed honestly -- refrain from attempting to referee arguments for fear that they will be accused by the right of taking sides. So rather than be battered, the media -- and I am talking about the respectable media, not the carnival barkers on cable -- increasingly strive for the simplest sort of balance rather than real objectivity. They marshal facts, but they don't seek truth. They behave as if every argument must be heard and has equal merit, when some are simply specious. That is how global warming, WMD and "end of life" counseling have become part of silly reportorial ping-pong at best and badly misleading information at worst.

All of this is even more relevant given the death of media oracle Walter Cronkite several weeks ago. He achieved his legendary status, as many have observed, not because he was the reassuring avuncular voice of America, blandly reading the news, but because he was often its truth teller, upsetting our complacency. It was Cronkite who visited Vietnam and declared it a stalemate when nearly everyone else in the news media was gung-ho. And it was Cronkite who decided to take the Washington Post's reporting on Watergate and devote 14 minutes of his broadcast to it, thus dragging it from the sidelines into the national conversation. The truth is also relevant in light of a recent online poll that showed Jon Stewart as the nation's most trusted newsman. Stewart is, of course, a comedian, and the news media's incapacity to tell the truth, along with the idiocies and hypocrisies of our political leadership, are his running joke. What he does to politicians and to the media is exactly what the media should be doing to politicians and to one another.

It was because we didn't have a committed, truth-telling media that the country marched happily into Iraq, with tragic consequences that should have been foreseen. As media analyst Michael Massing discovered in his study of the prewar coverage, virtually the entire media, except for the McClatchy papers, reported the administration's rationale without devoting more than a few sentences or minutes to dissenting voices, much less doing their own analysis. It was because we didn't have a committed, truth-telling media that the country plunged off the economic cliff with so little warning. And it may very well be because we don't have a committed, truth-telling media that we will fail to get the healthcare reform we so desperately need.

Why don't we get the truth? Part of it, as I've said, is fear -- fear that if journalists dispel the rumors they will be bashed by the right, which is implacably against the president's reforms no matter how much sense they make. Part of it is a lack of expertise. Most reporters are not equipped to quickly and authoritatively tell truth from spin on an issue such as healthcare. And part of it, frankly, is sheer laziness.

Telling the truth requires shoe leather. It requires digging up facts that aren't being handed to you, talking to experts, thinking hard about what you find. This isn't easy. It takes time and energy as well as guts, especially when there are conflicting studies, as there are on healthcare. But finally, we may not have a journalism of truth because we haven't demanded one. Many of us are invested in one side of the story; we are for Obama or against him, for healthcare reform or against it. These are a priori positions. Truth won't change them.

Yet the danger of not insisting on the truth in a brave new world of constant lies is that it subjects our policies to whichever side shouts the loudest or has the most money to spend to mislead us. That is likely to lead to disastrous governance: a needless war, a great recession, a continuation of a failing healthcare system.

What it comes down to is that sometimes the media have to tell the truth not because anyone really wants them to but because it is the right thing to do -- the essential thing to do -- for the sake of our democracy.

Neal Gabler is the author, most recently, of "Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination."

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

Mental Stress Training Is Planned for U.S. Soldiers

By BENEDICT CAREY

PHILADELPHIA — The Army plans to require that all 1.1 million of its soldiers take intensive training in emotional resiliency, military officials say.

The training, the first of its kind in the military, is meant to improve performance in combat and head off the mental health problems, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide, that plague about one-fifth of troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Active-duty soldiers, reservists and members of the National Guard will receive the training, which will also be available to their family members and to civilian employees.

The new program is to be introduced at two bases in October and phased in gradually throughout the service, starting in basic training. It is modeled on techniques that have been tested mainly in middle schools.

Usually taught in weekly 90-minute classes, the methods seek to defuse or expose common habits of thinking and flawed beliefs that can lead to anger and frustration — for example, the tendency to assume the worst. (“My wife didn’t answer the phone; she must be with someone else.”)

The Army wants to train 1,500 sergeants by next summer to teach the techniques.

In an interview, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army’s chief of staff, said the $117 million program was an effort to transform a military culture that has generally considered talk of emotions to be so much hand-holding, a sign of weakness.

“I’m still not sure that our culture is ready to accept this,” General Casey said. “That’s what I worry about most.”

In an open exchange at an early training session here last week, General Casey asked a group of sergeants what they thought of the new training. Did it seem too touchy-feely?

“I believe so, sir,” said one, standing to address the general. He said a formal class would be a hard sell to a young private “who all he wants to do is hang out with his buddies and drink beer.”

But others disagreed, saying the program was desperately needed. And in the interview, General Casey said the mental effects of repeated deployments — rising suicide rates in the Army, mild traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress — had convinced commanders “that we need a program that gives soldiers and their families better ways to cope.”

The general agreed to the interview after The New York Times learned of the program from Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman, chairman of the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center, who has been consulting with the Pentagon.

In recent studies, psychologists at Penn and elsewhere have found that the techniques can reduce mental distress in some children and teenagers. But outside experts cautioned that the Army program was more an experiment than a proven solution.

“It’s important to be clear that there’s no evidence that any program makes soldiers more resilient,” said George A. Bonanno, a psychologist at Columbia University. But he and others said the program could settle one of the most important questions in psychology: whether mental toughness can be taught in the classroom.

“These are skills that apply broadly, they’re things people use throughout life, and what we’ve done is adapt them for soldiers,” said Karen Reivich, a psychologist at Penn, who is helping the Army carry out the program.

At the training session, given at a hotel near the university, 48 sergeants in full fatigues and boots sat at desks, took notes, play-acted, and wisecracked as psychologists taught them about mental fitness. In one role-playing exercise, Sgt. First Class James Cole of Fort Riley, Kan., and a classmate acted out Sergeant Cole’s thinking in response to an order late in the day to have his exhausted men do one last difficult assignment.

“Why is he tasking us again for this job?” the classmate asked. “It’s not fair.”

“Well, maybe,” Sergeant Cole responded. “Or maybe he’s hitting us because he knows we’re more reliable.”

In another session, Dr. Reivich asked the sergeants to think of situations when such internal debates were useful.

One, a veteran of several deployments to Iraq, said he was out at dinner the night before when a customer at a nearby table said he and his friends were being obnoxious.

“At one time maybe I would have thrown the guy out the window and gone for the jugular,” the sergeant said. But guided by the new techniques, he fought the temptation and decided to buy the man a beer instead. “The guy came over and apologized,” he said.

The training is based in part on the ideas of Dr. Aaron Beck and the late Albert Ellis, who found that mentally disputing unexamined thoughts and assumptions often defuses them. It also draws on recent research suggesting that people can manage stress by thinking in terms of their psychological strengths.

“Psychology has given us this whole language of pathology, so that a soldier in tears after seeing someone killed thinks, ‘Something’s wrong with me; I have post-traumatic stress,’ ” or P.T.S.D., Dr. Seligman said. “The idea here is to give people a new vocabulary, to speak in terms of resilience. Most people who experience trauma don’t end up with P.T.S.D.; many experience post-traumatic growth.”

Many of the sergeants were at first leery of the techniques. “But I think maybe it becomes like muscle memory — with practice you start to use them automatically,” said Sgt. First Class Darlene Sanders of Fort Jackson, S.C.

To track the effects of the program, the Army will require troops at all levels, from new recruits to officers, to regularly fill out a 170-item questionnaire to evaluate their mental health, along with the strength of their social support, among other things.

The program is not intended to diagnose mental health problems. The results will be kept private, General Casey said.

The Army will track average scores in units to see whether the training has any impact on mental symptoms and performance, said Gen. Rhonda Cornum, the director of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, who is overseeing the carrying out of the new resilience program. General Cornum said that the Army had contracted with researchers at the University of Michigan to determine whether the training was working, and added that corrections could be made along the way “if the program is not having the intended effect.”

This being the Army, the sergeants at the training session last week had questions about logistics. How would teachers be evaluated? How and when would Reserve and Guard units get the training?

Perhaps the biggest question — can an organization that has long suppressed talk of emotions now open up? — is unlikely to have an answer until next year at the earliest. But the Army’s leaders are determined to ask.

“For years, the military has been saying, ‘Oh, my God, a suicide, what do we do now?’ ” said Col. Darryl Williams, the program’s deputy director. “It was reactive. It’s time to change that.”