Posted on 05/12/2005 7:15:08 PM PDT by TexKat
Two Iraqi girls, refugees from the embattled city of al-Qaim fetch water from a truck after fleeing with others into the desert, about 45 km (29 miles) south of al-Qaim, in western Iraq, Thursday, May 12, 2005. Near the Syrian border, hundreds of American troops in tanks and light armored vehicles rolled through desert outposts as Operation Matador entered its fifth day, the U.S. military said Thursday.
Iraqis inspect the damaged house of Soud Daham in the village of Saada, 10 km (6 miles) east of al-Qaim, Iraq, Thursday, May 12, 2005.Local residents say the house was hit during an airstrike, killing Daham's daughter and wounding four. Near the Syrian border, hundreds of American troops in tanks and light armored vehicles rolled through desert outposts as Operation Matador entered its fifth day, the U.S. military said Thursday. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Presenter: Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Air Force General Richard Myers, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Thursday, May 12, 2005 2:00 p.m. EDT
A car bomb has exploded in a teeming Baghdad neighbourhood, killing several people in this latest attack in one of the bloodiest insurgent offensives in Iraq since the 2003 invasion(AFP/Ahmad Al-Rubaye)
Suicide car bomb kills 12 in Baghdad market
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A suicide car bomb exploded at a market in a mostly Shi'ite part of Baghdad on Thursday, killing 12 people in escalating violence that has claimed more than 400 lives since a new government was named two weeks ago.
In a scene that has become all too familiar in the streets of Iraq, frantic young men, some crying, pushed wooden carts carrying charred bodies of women and men.
Ambulance sirens wailed as flames and black smoke rose skywards over mangled market stalls and cars in the New Baghdad district.
The blast, which police said also wounded 56 people, followed a series of suicide bomb attacks on Wednesday that killed at least 71 people.
Iraq has witnessed a dramatic rise in bloodshed since its first democratically elected government was formed on April 28, raising fears of civil war if the country's new leaders do not deliver on promises of stability soon.
"There are families in the building. Most of them are wounded," a medical worker yelled over a mobile telephone as an elderly couple with bloodied heads sat in his ambulance.
Sunni insurgents have been stepping up attacks on Shi'ite targets over the last two weeks in a campaign Iraqi officials say is designed to deepen sectarian strife.
The January 30 polls have dramatically changed Iraq's power structure after decades of Sunni Arab rule under toppled leader Saddam Hussein. Once oppressed Shi'ites and Kurds are the new holders of power and Sunni Arabs have been sidelined, holding only 17 seats in the 275-member parliament.
Shi'ite and Kurdish leaders want to give Sunnis a prominent role in government in a bid to defuse the Sunni-led insurgency.
BOMBS, ASSASSINATIONS AND INTIMIDATION
Under the strategy, a Sunni former exile, Saadoun al-Dulaimi, now heads the Defence Ministry. But guerrilla assassinations of security officials show no signs of easing.
An official who works in the Defence Ministry's operations centre was assassinated by gunmen in southwestern Baghdad early on Thursday, an Interior Ministry official said.
Brigadier Ayad Imad Mehdi was killed when three insurgents stopped his car and shot him dead before fleeing.
Gunmen also killed an Interior Ministry official, Colonel Muhammad al-Taie, in a separate attack, police said.
Guerrillas also target ordinary Iraqis who cooperate with government security forces or U.S. troops. Witnesses said gunmen killed two Iraqis in the northern town of Samarra for selling bread to Iraqi soldiers.
Iraqis who braved suicide bombings to vote in the elections expected improved security after two years of bloody chaos.
But Iraqi forces who have lost hundreds of comrades can barely protect themselves, raising questions over when resented U.S. forces training them will leave the country.
Battered by violence, Iraq offers little economic and social hope with a tragic deterioration in living standards and high unemployment, a Planning Ministry survey showed on Thursday.
The oil power once regarded as an intellectual and economic centre in the Arab world is suffering from rapidly deteriorating living standards, the survey showed.
"This survey shows a rather tragic situation of the quality of life in Iraq," Minister of Planning Barham Salih told a news conference.
In the rebellious western Anbar province U.S. troops are pressing ahead with operations designed to crush insurgents and foreign fighters, suspected of carrying out many of the suicide bombings that have killed thousands.
The government said it has captured two followers of the Jordanian militant who has claimed responsibility for that carnage, the al Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
One of the militants, Amar al-Jaburi, was captured on April 15, accused of working as a financier for Zarqawi in the northern guerrilla stronghold of Mosul.
The other, Seifeddine al-Nuaimee, was captured a few days ago. The government said he had carried out "terrorist" attacks on Iraqis and was involved in the manufacture of roadside bombs.
Two U.S. Marines were killed on Wednesday when their armoured vehicle drove over a mine in northwest Iraq near the Syrian border during the offensive, Operation Matador, the U.S. Military said on Thursday.
Insurgents are also keeping up the pressure on U.S. allies in Iraq, snatching two more foreign hostages -- an Australian engineer captured in Baghdad in late April and a Japanese security contractor seized on Sunday in western Iraq.
The captors of Australian hostage Douglas Wood, 63, demanded that Australia pull its troops out of Iraq by Tuesday. Canberra insisted it would not negotiate with kidnappers and the deadline passed with no word on his fate.
Wood's captors have released video footage showing him looking distraught as two masked gunmen pointed rifles at him.
The Japanese hostage, 44-year-old Akihiko Saito, was captured when a foreign security convoy was ambushed in western Iraq on Sunday evening. Army of Ansar al-Sunna, one of Iraq's most ruthless insurgent groups, said it was holding Saito.
God Bless our men and women. It isn't getting any easier.
MoodyBlu
The U.S. Congress released evidence on Thursday showing George Galloway and former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua were given oil deals during the U.N. oil-for-food programme for Iraq. In this file photo, Galloway arrives at the High Court in London, November 19, 2004. REUTERS/Stephen Hird
Galloway seeks to clear name in US on Iraq scandal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Independent MP George Galloway on Thursday agreed to testify before a U.S. Senate panel "with both barrels" to dispute allegations Saddam Hussein awarded him the right to buy oil.
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, in a new report on fraud in the now-defunct U.N. oil-for-food humanitarian program for Iraq, released documents saying Galloway got rights to 20 million barrels in oil, personally approved by ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
The same 96-page report said Charles Pasqua, the former French interior minister and now a senator, got 11 million barrels. Both men denied the allegations, which have surfaced earlier, but with less documentation.
"I'll be there to give them both barrels - verbal guns, of course, not oil -- assuming we get the visas. I welcome the opportunity to clear my name," Galloway said in London.
"My first words will be 'Senator, it's a pity that we are having this interview after you have found me guilty. Even in Kafka there was the semblance of a trial,'" Galloway said.
The Senate plans to hold a hearing on Tuesday and "there will be a witness chair and microphone available for Mr. Galloway's use," said a spokesman for Sen. Norm Coleman, the Minnesota Republic, who chairs the panel.
"We look forward to have Mr Galloway at our bipartisan hearing next week and will be happy to help with any logistical needs he may have in order to travel to Washington," said Coleman's press secretary, Andy Brehm. He said Galloway had not yet notified the committee of his appearance.
Pasqua is a one-time close associate of conservative President Jacques Chirac. He is now a member of the French Senate which brings immunity from prosecution in France.
FRAUD IN THE SYSTEM
The panel said Pasqua tried to hide his right to buy oil by having his agent, Bernard Guillet, insist that a Swiss company Saddam preferred pump the oil, rather than a French company. Guillet has also denied wrongdoing.
The oil-for-food program, which ran from late 1996 to 2003 allowed Baghdad to sell oil to buy basic goods to ease the impact on ordinary Iraqis of sanctions imposed when Saddam's troops invaded Kuwait in 1990.
A CIA report estimated $1.7 billion in fraud in the $67 billion program but said that most of Saddam's illicit earnings came through oil sales to Jordan and Syria outside of the U.N. program, which were known to U.N. Security Council members.
After the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the Iraqi government released lists of political and government officials around the world to whom it had awarded oil rights or allocations, which could then be sold to traders for up to 30 cents a barrel.
"This report exposes how Saddam Hussein turned the oil-for-food program on its head and used the program to reward his political allies like Pasqua and Galloway," Coleman said.
His report, however, did not provide evidence of bank accounts showing Galloway and Pasqua actually received funds.
Prime Minister Tony Blair, asked if Britain would investigate the allegations, said: "We've no plans to do that."
Galloway, newly elected to the British Parliament as a left-wing anti-Iraq war independent after Blair's Labor Party expelled him over his outspoken opposition to the conflict, said the claims were absurd.
"Why am I not surprised? Let me repeat: I have never traded in a barrel of oil or any vouchers for it," Galloway said, adding he had written to the committee to rebut the allegations but had not received a response.
But Coleman's communications director, Tom Steward said, Galloway had never tried to contact the subcommittee "by any means, including but not limited to telephone, fax, e-mail, letter, Morse code or carrier pigeon."
According to the report, Saddam's vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, told the Senate subcommittee last month that Galloway had been granted oil allocations "because of his opinions about Iraq" and because he backed lifting sanctions.
US Senate accuses Galloway over Iraq oil
Says it all!
May God be with the family and love ones of these heros that gave their all. Thank you and RIP Marines.
Explosion effectively finishes off squad
By Ellen Knickmeyer
The Washington Post
HABAN, Iraq - The explosion enveloped the armored vehicle in flames, sending orange balls of fire bubbling above the trees along the Euphrates River near the Syrian border.
Marines in surrounding vehicles threw open their hatches and took off running across the plowed fields, toward the already blackening metal of the destroyed vehicle. Shouting, they pulled to safety those they could, as the flames ignited the bullets, mortar rounds, flares and grenades inside, rocketing them into the sky and across pastures.
Gunnery Sgt. Chuck Hurley emerged from the smoke and turmoil around the vehicle, circling toward the spot where helicopters would later land to pick up casualties. As he passed one group of Marines, he uttered just one sentence: "That was the same squad."
Among the four Marines killed and 10 wounded when a bomb exploded under their amtrac on Wednesday were the last battle-ready members of a squad that four days earlier had battled foreign fighters holed up in a house in the town of Ubaydi. In that fight, two squad members were killed and five wounded.
In 96 hours of fighting and ambushes in far western Iraq, the squad had just ceased to be.
Every member of the unit -- one of three squads that make up the 1st Platoon of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment -- had been killed or wounded, Marines here said. All told, the 1st Platoon, which Hurley commands, had sustained 60 percent casualties, demolishing it as a fighting force.
"They used to call it Lucky Lima," said Maj. Steve Lawson, commander of the company. "That turned around and bit us."
Wednesday was the fourth day of fighting in far western Iraq, as the U.S. military continued an assault that has sent more than 1,000 Marines down the ungoverned north bank of the Euphrates River in search of foreign fighters crossing the border from Syria. Of seven Marines killed so far in Operation Matador, six came come from Lima Company, 1st Platoon. As many as 100 insurgents were killed in the first 48 hours of the offensive.
Lima Company drew Marine reservists from across Ohio into the conflict in Iraq. Some were still too young to be bothered much by shaving, or even stubble. They rode to war on a Marine amtrac, an armored vehicle that travels on tank-like treads.
On Monday, when the Marine assault on foreign fighters formally began, the young Marines of the squad from 1st Platoon were already exhausted. Their encounter at the house in Ubaydi that morning and the previous night had been the unintended first clash of the operation, pitting them against insurgents who fired armor-piercing bullets up through the floor. It took 12 hours and five assaults by the squad -- plus grenades, bombing by an F/A-18 attack plane, tank rounds and rockets at 20 yards -- to kill the insurgents and permit recovery of the dead Marines' bodies.
Afterward, they slept in the moving amtrac, heads back and mouths open. One stood up to stretch his legs. He fell asleep again standing up, leaning against the metal walls.
Squad members spoke only to compare their knowledge of the condition of their wounded. Getting the latest news, they fell silent again. After one such half-hour of silence, a Marine offered a terse commendation for one of the squad members shot at Ubaydi: "Bunker's a good man."
Commanders had hoped the latest operation would swiftly capture or kill large numbers of foreign fighters. But the foreigners, and everyone else here, had plenty of warning that the Marines were coming.
By the time the squad from Lima Company crossed north of the Euphrates, whole villages consisted of little more than abandoned houses with fresh tire tracks leading off into pastures, or homes occupied only by prepubescent boys or old men.
After a day of uneventful house searches, the amtrac with the squad from 1st Platoon was rolling toward the Euphrates in a row of armored vehicles, headed for more house searches, when the vehicle rolled over the explosive.
Hurley and others pulled passengers out of the Amtrac as flames detonated its ammunition and sent it flying. As Marines carrying stretchers ran to the amtrac, bullets snapped out of the burning hulk and traveled for hundreds of feet.
The Marines ran back through the fusillade, carrying out the wounded. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!" some shouted, desperate to get the wounded out.
The four dead were trapped inside the vehicle, Lawson said.
"That's the last of the squad," Cpl. Craig Miller, whose reassignment last month had taken him out of the unit, said as he surveyed the scene. "Three weeks ago, that would have been me."
Prayer's for the Troops !!!!
By ANTONIO CASTANEDA
Thursday, May 12, 2005 9:05 PM CDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A car bomb exploded in a jammed commercial district Thursday, turning the sky gray as shops and restaurants caught fire in the most deadly of a string of attacks that killed 21, including a general and colonel who were assassinated.
Iraqis expressed growing fury at the relentless bloodshed, throwing stones at police and U.S. forces who came to the scene of the bombing. More than 90 were also wounded in Thursday's violence.
The attacks came as U.S. troops were in the midst of a major offensive near the Syrian border, 200 miles northwest of Baghdad. Fierce clashes were reported with insurgents on the outskirts of the town of Qaim, where angry residents lashed out at U.S. forces.
"They destroyed our city, killed our children, destroyed our houses. We have nothing left," one man in Qaim told Associated Press Television News. He did not give his name and hid his face with a scarf to address the camera.
Families were fleeing in trucks packed with luggage and APTN footage showed plumes of smoke rising from the town. The U.S. has pounded the area with air strikes, artillery barrages and gunfire in the first days of the offensive aimed at rooting out followers of Iraq's most wanted militant leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Five more American troops died in Iraq, two during the offensive Wednesday and three others when their convoys hit roadside bombs Thursday in Baghdad and surrounding areas, the U.S. military announced. At least 1,611 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
More than 420 people have died in the two weeks since Iraq's first democratically elected government was announced.
At the Pentagon, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated Thursday that the insurgency could last for many more years.
"This requires patience," he said at a news conference. "This is a thinking and adapting adversary ... I wouldn't look for results tomorrow. One thing we know about insurgencies, that they last from three, four years to nine years."
"What we're seeing is really an attempt to discredit this new cabinet and new government," Myers said. "This is, the most cases, Iraqis blowing up other Iraqis. And I don't how they expect to curry favor with the Iraq population when we have Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence."
Scores of Iraqis in Baghdad vented their frustration at the nonstop violence, beating two Iraqi photographers and throwing rocks at Iraqi police and U.S. forces at the site of the bloody car bombing near a market, cinema and mosque.
The U.S. and Iraqi troops fired in the air to disperse the crowd, according to an Associated Press photographer at the scene.
The blast, which set fire to shops, restaurants and cars, killed 17 Iraqis and injured 81, including women and children, police said. About 15 minutes later, the fuel tank of a burning car also exploded, wounding three more people, police said.
In all, four car bombs hit Baghdad on Thursday, two of them suicide attacks, said Master Sgt. Greg Kaufman, a U.S. military spokesman. At least two of the attacks targeted U.S. patrols, he said, but he had no immediate word on casualties. Police said a suicide car bomber targeting an American convoy on a highway injured two civilian bystanders. Another car bomb in eastern Baghdad wounded three civilians, the U.S. military said.
Elsewhere in the capital, insurgents assassinated Col. Fadhil Mohammed Mobarak on his way to work at the Interior Ministry, and Brig. Gen. Iyad Imad Mahdi, who worked at the Defense Ministry, police said. Al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida group in Iraq claimed responsibility for Mobarak's death in an Internet posting. The claim could not be verified.
Two more car bombs exploded in Kirkuk, about 180 miles north of Baghdad, police said. One blast occurred near a police station, killing two people and wounding two, authorities said. The other occurred at a site where explosives experts were dismantling a homemade bomb and two explosive experts were wounded, police said.
The Sunni militant Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed responsibility for both Kirkuk attacks on its Web site, claims which also could not be verified.
Near the Syrian border, hundreds of American troops searched sparsely populated desert outposts house by house for insurgents as Operation Matador entered its fifth day.
Residents reached by telephone in the villages of Karabilah and Saadah reported hearing heavy bombardments in the morning.
On the outskirts of Qaim, a group of masked gunmen armed with machine guns, remained defiant.
"We will fight whoever comes, whether they are American or Arab," one of them told APTN.
The offensive was launched after U.S. intelligence showed large numbers of insurgents had moved into the northern Jazirah Desert following losses in Fallujah and Ramadi, further east. The area is believed to be a staging ground for foreign fighters crossing into Iraq from Syria along ancient smuggling routes.
The U.S. military has confirmed five Marine deaths so far and says about 100 insurgents have been killed in the operation _ one of the largest U.S. offensive since Fallujah was reclaimed from militants.
However, The Washington Post, which has a journalist embedded with the offensive, put the number of Americans killed at seven in a Thursday report. Six of the dead came from a single squad, which also had 15 wounded, according to the Post.
In one battle early in the offensive, foreign fighters holed up in a house in Obeidi killed two Marines and wounded five, the report said. In another attack, an explosive device detonated under their vehicle, killing four Marines and wounding 10, it said.
The article identified the squad as one of three belonging to the 1st Platoon of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment.
"They used to call it Lucky Lima," the Post quoted Maj. Steve Lawson, the commander of the company, as saying of the badly hit squad. "That turned around and bit us."
U.S. military spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Pool said a U.S. Assault Amphibian Vehicle struck an explosive device in Qaim on Wednesday night, killing two Marines and wounding 14. It was not clear whether he was referring to the same incident mentioned in the Post article.
Stepped up raids also continued in other parts of Iraq. Iraq's government announced the capture of two more wanted insurgents _ one a bomb maker with links to al-Zarqawi called Seif-Eddine Mustafa al-Naimi, the other a financier for an insurgent group linked to al-Qaida in Iraq identified as Amar Farid Abdul-Qader Ashur al-Jibouri.
Meanwhile, Australia's top Islamic leader met with clerics in Baghdad on Thursday to appeal for the release of Australian hostage, Douglas Wood. Sheik Taj El Din al-Hilaly told reporters he had made no contact yet with Woods' captors, but said he was ready to negotiate with anyone.
There has been no word of Wood's fate since his kidnappers' deadline for Australia to start withdrawing its forces from Iraq passed Monday.
More than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed in April 2003. More than 30 have been killed by their captors.
A service of the Associated Press(AP)
Thanks for more good stuff.
By Albert Aji
ASSOCIATED PRESS
1:12 p.m. May 12, 2005
DAMASCUS, Syria – From their rooftops, Syrians in frontier towns watched airstrikes and battles on the other side of the Iraqi border, where U.S. forces are fighting insurgents in an offensive raging uncomfortably close to Syria's doorstep.
Rawaf Hamad, a farmer in the village of Showaiyeh, said he was shaken awake at 3 a.m. Thursday by shelling about a mile away in the Iraqi town of al-Qaim. He heard the sound of warplanes
"There was heavy gunfire that lasted until 6 a.m today," the 24-year-old said.
Besides unnerving border residents, the fighting is politically unsettling for the Syrian government – in light of persistent U.S. pressure on it to do more to stop fighters crossing its borders into Iraq.
The Syrian government has not made any comment about the combat, and its security forces have been keeping non-residents away from the border area, requiring journalists to get permits to go there.
Hundreds of American troops have been rolling through desert outposts along the Euphrates River in northwest Iraq, trying to root out what they say is a refuge for insurgents from other parts of Iraq and a staging ground for fighters coming in from Syria.
The fighting, now in its fifth day, is one of the biggest U.S. military operations in Iraq since Fallujah was taken from militants six months ago. As many as 100 insurgents were killed in the first 48 hours of the offensive, and at least five Marines have been killed.
In Abu Kamal , a town of 70,000 about three miles from the border, residents could feel the ground shake from the fighting across the border. People took to rooftops to watch U.S. fighter jets and helicopter gunships bombard insurgents hiding in houses in al-Qaim. The Syrians said they could hear small arms fire from the ground, apparently insurgents returning fire.
Heavy fighting broke out in the area at about midday Wednesday and continued through daybreak Thursday before it tapered off to sporadic exchanges in the afternoon.
"Smoke was rising in the air from al-Qaim," said one Abu Kamal resident, speaking on condition of anonymity because of worries about problems with the Syrian security agency.
Residents of the town were "not scared because nothing is happening on this side and it's a bit far for shrapnel to hurt people," he said by telephone. Power remained on in Abu Kamal and businesses were open during the day.
The Syrian border post area of Al-Hiri was empty of travelers. The border point had been closed for months.
The border has been a point of friction at times in the past, with Bush administration officials accusing Syria of letting Islamic militants bent on fighting U.S.-led coalition forces enter Iraq.
Last month, Iraq accused Syrian border guards of opening fire on their Iraqi counterparts as a group of militants tried to slip through, an accusation Damascus denied. American forces have complained of coming under mortar fire from the Syrian side of the border – though they say they don't know by whom.
Since the war in Iraq began in 2003, several cross-border shootings have wounded Syrians and damaged property.
Syria has repeatedly denied it was allowing fighters to slip across its 380-mile border into Iraq and stressed it was doing all it can to stop it.
In November, Syrian bulldozers built a 12-foot-high sand barrier along Syria's remote border with Iraq in the Abu Kamal region. Authorities said they've begun round-the-clock patrols and set up new observation posts to stop foreign fighters from crossing into Iraq.
Bump!!
Thank you for posting these threads. Sometimes I am so afraid America is forgetting about these young men. I know their families aren't. May God be with them.
U.S. Marine Corps Cpl. Jennifer Shivley, 22, radio maintenance technician, Communication Company, Headquarters Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, is serving in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom at Camp Blue Diamond, Iraq. Shivley also has a younger sister, Army Pfc. Tiffany Shivley, stationed in Abu Ghraib, Iraq. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Steven D'Alessio
U.S. Marine Corps Cpl. Jennifer Shivley
Sisters Serve Marines, Army in Iraq
CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq, May 13, 2005 — When mothers raise their daughters to be independent, strong-willed and successful they often don’t think of them growing up and joining the military.
When Patricia Shivley, of North Augusta, S.C., first learned of her daughter Jennifer’s interest in joining the Marine Corps she said at first she was shocked.
“Then I thought, it’s just like Jennifer to do something like this,” said Patricia. “She knew her dad was looking at putting both girls (Jennifer and her sister Tiffany) in college and she decided to join the military to get an education.”
Cpl. Jennifer Shivley, radio maintenance technician, Communication Company, Headquarters Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, said she wasn’t ready to go to college right out of high school.
“I wasn’t mentally ready to go to college,” she said. “I wouldn’t have done well if I had.”
Jennifer, 22, joined the Corps in May 2001 two days after graduating from Beddingfield High School in Wilson, N.C.
“When I saw her at the boot camp graduation my heart filled with pride to see her standing tall in her uniform,” Patricia explained. “I knew then she could accomplish anything she sets her mind to.”
Upon Jennifer’s initial enlistment, she was in the reserves. After her first year, she decided to go active duty and worked in the local recruiting station for five months before getting orders to Okinawa.
Since Jennifer’s time in the Marines, Patricia said she has noticed a lot of changes in her daughter.
“It (Corps) has instilled a lot of pride in what she does,” Patricia said proudly. “She had to grow up a little to take on responsibilities for what she does.”
Jennifer agrees she has gained a lot of experience and discipline.
“My dad thought I needed to do something with structure,” said the four-year veteran. “That is exactly what the Corps has done for me.”
However, Jennifer isn’t the only daughter Patricia has serving her country.
Army Pfc. Tiffany Shivley, interrogator, attended the University of North Carolina for a year after high school. She enlisted during the summer of 2003 and shipped to boot camp after the beginning of the New Year.
“I didn’t have enough money to continue paying the tuition and really get on my feet,” Tiffany explained.
Tiffany said seeing her sister being able to take care of herself in the military allowed her to realize she could do the same.
“She (Jennifer) did try to get me to join the Marines, but I figured one per military branch would be OK,” she said of her decision to join the Army.
Patricia said she is very proud of her daughters.
“We raised them to be independent and to think for themselves in everything they do,” she added.
Both daughters are currently deployed to Iraq. Jennifer is at Camp Blue Diamond and Tiffany is stationed at Abu Ghraib.
“I am sad and concerned for their safety, but I am also very proud of them,” Patricia said about her daughters being in a combat zone. “I know that we raised two very smart girls.”
Patricia added, she thinks her daughters supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom is great.
“I hope they learn and take back a lot of experience,” she said. “I want them to make a lot of friends, but most of all I just want them to come home because I miss them.”
Thank you for following the threads and for your support of our brave military men and women.
U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Bryan T. Orwig, radio operator, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Headquarters Group, II MEF (Forward), works on a radio at Pumphouse Barney in Iraq, May 4, 2005. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Evan M. Eagan
U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Bryan T. Orwig
II MEF Marine Chooses Corps Over College
By Lance Cpl. Evan M. Eagan II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward)
FALLUJAH, Iraq, May 12, 2005 — After experiencing the college life for a short time while attending a technical school in Winter Park, Fla., a communications Marine, with S-6, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Headquarters Group, II MEF (FWD) chose to take a different path. This path has led him to the Marine Corps and his first deployment to Iraq.
“I joined because I was sick of spending my parents' money,” said Lance Cpl. Bryan T. Orwig, a 19-year-old native of Highland, Md. “I dropped out of Full Sail, a tech school in Florida where I was learning C++ programming. I was doing video game design. I went for about six months and was partying a lot and got distracted and eventually ended up going back home.”
After returning home, Orwig realized he needed to do something with his life besides living under his parents’ roof.
“After the first 15 days at home I decided I didn’t want to stick around there and live off my parents,” he said. “I got in contact with a Marine Corps recruiter and within a week I was at Parris Island recruit depot.”
With a history of military service in his family, choosing to join the Marine Corps was not a tough decision.
“My grandpa was a truck driver in the Army during World War II and my step-dad was in the Air Force,” he said. “My parents were very happy that I joined because they could see I was trying to better myself.”
Orwig, who deployed with S-6, is serving temporary additional duty orders from his original unit, 8th Communication Battalion, where he works as a radio operator.
“I’m working at S-6 with some Marines that got TAD orders also,” said Orwig. “I really enjoy it out here. I got really close with guys that I came out here with and made some really good friends.”
With S-6, Orwig is still working in the field of communications.
“I maintain connection with other radio units and do cryptographic changeovers,” said Orwig during his latest assignment of doing a cryptographic changeover at Pumphouse Barney. “We also do a lot of convoys. We do about three a week. We go to Baghdad on supply runs and drop off tractor trailers and bring some back with us.”
Being in Iraq has helped Orwig become more proficient in his military occupational specialty because of the fast-paced environment, he said.
“It’s really hands on out here,” he said. “I learned pretty much everything I know about my MOS by being out here in Iraq.”
When he gets out in 2007, Orwig said he might decide to give technical college another shot or use his Marine Corps training and join the police force.
“When I get out I want to do something in law enforcement,” Orwig said. “If I do then I will try to go SWAT (special weapons and tactics) after serving as a police officer for five years. If I don’t do that then I will go back to school at Full Sail to be a video game programmer.”
13.05.2005, 02.34
BEIRUT, May 13 (Itar-Tass) -- Iraqi insurgents downed two US helicopter gunships near the town of Qaim on the Syrian border on Thursday, the Al-Jazeera TV channel reported quoting the head of the city post office. He said the fate of the crews was unknown.
Fourteen US servicemen and dozens of Iraqi insurgents were killed in five days of fighting in areas close to the Syrian border.
On Thursday US marines blocked Qaim and shelled the town with incessant mortar fire and air raids.
Al-Jazeera quoted the chief doctor of the city hospital as saying the fire on residential areas does not allow to rescue people from under the ruined houses.
The humanitarian situation is deteriorating, as there are no food, water and medicine supplies.
The US command wants to root out the supporters of most wanted militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. However according to Al-Jazeera, the militants left Qaid five days before the US offensive and are now attacking US forces from adjacent areas.
Public Affairs Office 2nd Marine Division; Camp Blue Diamond, Ar Ramadi, Iraq
2005-05-12
Marines, sailors and soldiers from Regimental Combat Team 2, 2nd Marine Division, continue combat operations in northwestern Al Anbar province.
Three Marines have been killed in the course of the four-day operation. The number of insurgents and foreign fighters killed is estimated to be at 100.
The offensive is aimed at eliminating insurgents and foreign fighters from the area.
Information gathered prior to the operation about the presence of foreign fighters in the region has been confirmed by clothing, identification, dialect and by admissions from the detainees. The number of foreign fighters in the Al Qaim area is not known.
The region is used as staging area for foreign fighters who cross the Syrian border illegally through smuggling routes, known as “rat lines”. It is here that these foreign fighters receive the weapons and equipment to conduct attacks, such as suicide car bombs and assassination or kidnapping of political or civilian targets, in the more populated key cities of Baghdad, Ramadi, Fallujah and Mosul.
Yesterday, east of Husaybah, AH-1W “Super Cobra” helicopters observed three armed males digging holes into the road to emplace explosives. The helicopters engaged and killed the insurgents.
In Husaybah last night, half a mile south of Camp Gannon, Marines killed four insurgents armed with AK-47 automatic rifles. The enemy was brought down by Marine light-machinegun fire.
Two nights ago, insurgents attempted to launch a counter-attack seven kilometers from nearby Camp Gannon, in Al Qaim. They attacked a Marine convoy with small arms fire, RPGs, roadside bombs and two suicide car bombers. One car bomb damaged an armored humvee. The second suicide car bomber was destroyed by a Marine M-1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank.
At a vehicle checkpoint five kilometers southeast of Ubaydi, the scene of the initial fighting and in the area where insurgents launched the suicide vehicle attacks against a convoy, Marines fired on a car that continued toward the checkpoint despite warnings to stop. The driver was unharmed but a woman and child in the vehicle died as a result of the incident.
The driver, approaching the check point ignored the posted warning signs to stop and bypassed an obstacle barrier, continued toward the post. At 200 meters from the checkpoint, Marines used hand and arm signals then fired a warning flare towards the vehicle, both which the driver ignored. The Marines next fired warning shots in front of the vehicle.
The driver then jumped out of his moving car and fled away on foot, leaving his car, and its passengers, to continue towards the checkpoint. The Marines then fired at the vehicle’s engine block to disable it. The vehicle rolled to a stop in front of the checkpoint. At the time the vehicle was heading toward the checkpoint, the Marines were unaware of the gender of the passenger or that there was a child in the vehicle. The Marines stated that they believed the vehicle was a suicide car bomb.
The driver of the vehicle was apprehended and is being held for questioning in a nearby detention facility.
Coalition and Marine Corps aircraft, tank and light armored reconnaissance vehicles are participating in the operation.
By Ralph Kinney Bennett
Published 05/13/2005
What do you do when you're Islamothug Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and you're running out of "front line" fanatics to handle your suicide bombings?
You lie. You get some pathetic shlub who's just come over the border from Syria with an I.Q. well south of his enthusiasm to fight the infidels. You dramatically inform him he is needed to drive an important cargo of explosives to location X, where al-Qaida experts are going to make it into a bomb that will be employed on an important mission.
Off he goes at the wheel of some beat-up white Nissan, sitting low on its springs from the cargo of artillery shells in the back. What he doesn't know, of course is that he is the bomb, complete with remotely controlled fuse hidden somewhere in the car.
He's wheeling through the outskirts of Baghdad, drumming his thumbs on the steering wheel and trying to remember the name of the guy he's supposed to meet for the delivery but he's actually one cell phone ring away from what some believe is a rendezvous with numerous virgins.
Thus does the Iraq war lumber on in this bloody month of May. In a paroxysm of savagery, the so-called "insurgents" have killed more than 400, mostly Iraqi civilians, in a series of "suicide" bombing attacks across the country.
The desperation of the Islamofanatics is evident in such actions as an attempted attack by as many as 50 fighters against a Marine convoy near Qaim a few days ago. Two car bombs were employed in the attack. One was blown up by a Marine tank round; the other blew up possibly prematurely but managed to damage an armored Humvee. Outright "foot soldier" attacks like this against Americans have been rare because they have always ended badly for the "young lions of martyrdom" in the withering counter fire.
Give these murderous fanatics credit. As we have pointed out in previous TCS articles, they continue to show the gruesome fatal resiliency of the Japanese in a losing cause on Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
But one must wonder at the cynicism of their leadership, who know that they now fight for nothing but blood hatred. They offer the people of Iraq nothing -- neither stability, nor "heritage," nor hope. They are increasingly isolated and informed upon, forced into more remote regions of the country.
And now there are more signs that one of al-Qaida's chief sources of cannon fodder -- young Iraqi Sunni men -- may be diminishing. Here's a headline from the May 9th edition of the Arabic newspaper Alsharq Alawsat:
"Iraqi Arab Sunnis head towards Army Enlisting Posts in spite of Explosions."
The article (picked up thanks to the ever-amazing chrenkoff.blogspot.com) notes that "we witnessed thousands of Iraqi Arab Sunnis coming from different provinces to military enlisting stations in Baghdad."
The paper interviewed some of them, including Ahmed Mahmud, 30, who says, "I came because I desire to join in protecting the peace and my country." Another, who had served in the old Iraqi army, says, "I heard a number of (Sunni) religious leaders call for us to join the new army."
This is a significant development, but as it unfolds, the desperate and futile bloodshed continues, with more and more Sunnis becoming victims as well as Shiites. One cannot underestimate the terrorists' continued capacity to commit large-scale murder, but it is possible that this bloody May could be a turning point akin to the Mau Mau in Kenya beginning to lose their hold on their own Kikuyu tribesmen after the loathsome butchery of the Lari massacre, in Kenya in March 1953.
Like many Kikuyu tribesmen then, it is clear that Iraqis, including many Sunnis -- revolted by the daily butchery -- hate the terrorists rather than fear them. They see al-Zarqawi's "young lions" for what they are -- simple thugs and murderers, the enemies of the peace in this new nation.
Suspected Al Qaeda No. 3 Abu Faraj al-Libbi.
No plans to hand over Al-Libbi to any foreign country
RAWALPINDI: Pakistan has no plans to hand over Al Qaeda militant Abu Al-Faraj Al-Libbi and his other arrested associates to any foreign country, said Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad. Sheikh Rashid said that local security agencies were interrogating Al-Libbi for masterminding the attempts on the lives of the president, the prime minister and other prominent people. Talking to reporters after administrating oath to the All Pakistan Clerks Association (Punjab chapter) office-bearers on Thursday, the information minister said no country had contacted Islamabad to get hold of Al-Libbi. Sheikh Rashid said the arrest of the key Al Qaeda militant was a big victory in the war against terrorism.
AP: Pakistan Won't Soon Hand Al Qaeda's No. 3 to U.S. - Fox News
Militants planned parliament raid
MULTAN, May 12: Police have arrested two members of an outlawed group suspected of plotting a series of attacks, including one on parliament, an official said on Thursday. The men arrested in Multan belong to the banned Lashkar-i-Jhangvi. District Police Officer Sikandar Hayat told Reuters they were part of a network of up to 23 members who had been recruiting ‘suicide attackers’ for assaults on the National Assembly and Shias.
“They had planned to make their way into the National Assembly and take the lawmakers hostage to press for their demands,” Mr Hayat said. He said police had arrested up to eight members of the network and a hunt was under way for the rest.
Police paraded the prisoners, Amir Shehzad and Khawaja Ibrahim, before journalists. The suspects had volunteered for a suicide mission and five hand grenades were seized during the arrests.
Mr Shehzad told Reuters on a mobile telephone: “I have been arrested on charges of being a Lashkar-i-Jhangvi member. My friends carried out attacks.” The two men are also suspected of involvement in a suicide bombing that killed 30 people in a mosque in Sialkot on Oct 1.
Last week, security forces caught Abu Faraj Al Libbi, whom United States counter-terrorism officials describe as the third most senior commander in Al Qaeda. More than two dozen other suspects, most belonging to local groups linked to Al Qaeda, have been netted in the days before and after Al Libbi’s capture on May 2.
Al Libbi is being questioned in Rawalpindi. Relevant information was being passed directly to US agents, but contrary to earlier reports they were not part of the interrogation team, officials told Reuters.
Covering their faces in the style of Palestinian and Lebanese militants, Iranian women, walk, behind the men, as they wear white shrouds, a symbolic gesture that they were prepared to die for their cause, and headbands with the inscription 'Prophet Muhammad,' and 'there is no Allah but the Almighty,' during a meeting where more than 200 young men and women presented themselves as volunteers to carry out suicide bomb attacks against Americans in Iraq and Israelis, at the Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery, just outside Tehran, Iran, Thursday, May 12, 2005. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Over 200 volunteer in Iran to carry out suicide bombings in Israel
Associated Press
May 12, 2005
More than 200 young men and women presented themselves Thursday as volunteers to carry out suicide bomb attacks against Israelis and Americans in Iraq.
The meeting was organized at Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery, south of Tehran, by the Headquarters for Commemorating Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement, a shadowy group that has sought volunteers for attacks in Iraq and Israel since last year.
It was the third such ceremony that the group has held, but there has been no independent confirmation that any of its volunteers has carried out a bombing. The group claims its bombers have done attacks in Israel, but Israeli officials have said all suicide bombings have been claimed by Palestinians, with militant groups releasing videotapes of the bombers speaking before their attacks.
In Iraq, Sunni militants - many of them virulently anti-Shiite - are blamed for most suicide bombings against United States troops and their Iraqi allies.
Most of those attending Thursday's meeting, half of them women, were members of the Basij militia, a hard-line paramilitary group, and have already had military training. But the movement says it provides more training for suicide attacks.
The movement's spokesman, Mohammad Ali Samadi, told the audience that the volunteers were preparing for "martyrdom attacks against occupiers of Palestine, the assassination of (British author) apostate Salman Rushdie and attacks against occupiers of holy places (in Iraq)."
The volunteers, who chanted "Allahu akbar" - "God is great" - and "Death to America," wore white shrouds symbolizing their willingness to die and headbands with the slogan "There is no Allah but the Almighty." No weapons or explosives were visible at the ceremony.
The two previous such ceremonies - in December and April - each had 200 volunteers.
The Iranian government has distanced itself from the organization, but the group has occasionally used buildings belonging to semi-official hard-line organizations. Certain hard-line lawmakers and some commanders of the elite Revolutionary Guards have spoken in support of the movement.
"We are ready to sacrifice our blood to defend the Holy Mosque (in east Jerusalem)," Samadi told the volunteers.
The volunteers were given metal name plates to identify them after they've carried out attacks and presented wills to Samadi. They refused to show their will to reporters.
One woman, who only gave her first name Zahra, said a "sense of obligation" encouraged her to leave her family and become a suicide bomber.
Asked how they will cross the border to head for their targets, volunteer Abouzar Rahman insisted said Islam knows no boundaries.
"The government won't allow us to cross the border but there are ways we can cross," he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, meets with Federal Security Service (FSB) chief Nikolai Patrushev in Moscow's Kremlin in this May 28, 2004 file photo. Patrushev said Thursday May 12, 2005 that his agency has uncovered U.S., British, Kuwaiti and Saudi spy activity that was being conducted under the cover of non-governmental organizations. He also suggested that foreign governments are using NGOs to fund and support changes of power in former Soviet republics. (AP Photo/ITAR-TASS, Presidential Press Service/File)
Russia Accuses Foreign Agencies of Spying
By STEVE GUTTERMAN, Associated Press Writer
MOSCOW - Russia's security chief accused U.S. and other foreign intelligence services Thursday of using non-governmental organizations that promote democracy to spy on Russia and bring about political upheaval in former Soviet republics.
The remarks by an ally of President Vladimir Putin reflect concern in the Kremlin over its waning regional clout following the ascent of pro-Western governments on its borders.
"Along with classic forms of influence on political and economic processes, foreign intelligence agencies are ever more actively using non-traditional methods," including working through "various non-governmental organizations," Federal Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev told lawmakers.
"Under cover of implementing humanitarian and educational programs in Russian regions, they lobby the interests of the states in question and gather classified information on a broad spectrum of issues," he said.
Patrushev reiterated claims by Russian officials who have accused the United States and other Western nations of using government-funded groups to aid opposition forces that have brought down governments in former Soviet republics in the past two years.
Groups Patrushev accused of involvement in espionage — including the Peace Corps — denied the allegations. And White House press secretary Scott McClellan said he was not aware of the accusations by Russia's security chief. "I have not seen those comments and I have no idea what he is referring to," McClellan said.
Just this week, President Bush visited Georgia, site of the 2003 Rose Revolution — first of the uprisings against entrenched leaders in ex-Soviet republics that later spread to Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. On Monday, Bush stood beside Putin in Red Square for a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
"Our opponents are steadily and persistently trying to weaken Russian influence in the Commonwealth of Independent States and the international arena as a whole," Patrushev said. "The latest events in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan unambiguously confirm this."
With Bush joining domestic critics who question Putin's tightened control over electoral processes in Russia and pointedly advocating democracy in visits to Russia's neighbors, the Kremlin is sensitive about foreign influence as elections approach in 2007 and 2008.
Russian politicians have claimed that U.S. government money, funneled through NGOs that promote democracy, was a major force behind the protests that swept Western-leaning opposition leaders to power in Georgia and Ukraine, and was also a factor in Kyrgyzstan.
U.S. officials say the programs of American groups — whose activities include providing election training, underwriting exit polls and supporting independent media — are not interference, but acknowledge that some of the money has helped opposition groups.
Patrushev suggested Russia believes the next Western target is Moscow ally Belarus, where U.S. officials have not masked their disgust at authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko. Bush has called Belarus the last dictatorship in Europe, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said it was time for a change in the country, where a presidential election is to be held next year.
Patrushev said the International Republican Institute, a group that promotes democracy and gets most of its money from the U.S. government, held a meeting in Slovakia last month during which "the possibility of continuing 'velvet revolutions' on the post-Soviet space was discussed." He also claimed $5 million was earmarked for IRI funding of opposition groups in Belarus this year.
IRI spokeswoman Lisa Gates said in Washington that the organization spends about $500,000 annually on programs in Belarus and that none of it goes to political parties. She said the IRI's Eurasia division had held a staff retreat in Slovakia and discussed "program initiatives."
The IRI received $25.9 million in 2003 to encourage democracy in Ukraine and more than 50 other countries.
Patrushev said his agency, which is known by its Russian acronym FSB and is the main successor to the Soviet KGB, "has prevented a series of espionage operations carried out through foreign non-governmental organizations."
He said the groups included the Peace Corps — which pulled out of Russia in 2003 amid FSB spying allegations — as well as the British medical charity Merlin, the "Saudi Red Crescent" and a Kuwaiti group he called the Society of Social Reforms.
In Washington, Peace Corps spokeswoman Barbara Daly dismissed Patrushev's charges as "completely baseless" and untrue. She said 700 volunteers served in Russia since the program was started in 1993, mainly as teachers of English and business education.
A spokeswoman for Merlin in London said the group denied any involvement in espionage. She said Merlin had worked in Russia since 1996, fighting tuberculosis.
Although the FSB routinely claims to have uncovered spying by foreign countries, including the United States, Patrushev's comments underline the wariness of foreigners among Russian security officials who have gained influence under Putin — a longtime KGB officer and former FSB chief.
It was the latest remark from a top official assailing civil society groups in Russia, which Putin criticized last year as often being more interested in foreign funding than in helping Russians. Patrushev called for tighter legislation governing NGOs, saying current laws were insufficient to stem foreign NGO activity "that damages the security of our country."
Russian security services have long expressed alarm over U.S. NGOs, and Moscow has frequently expelled foreigners considered a threat to the nation, including missionaries and Peace Corps volunteers. Patrushev accused Peace Corps volunteers of spying in 2002, and that year Russia refused to extend volunteers' visas or issue new ones — forcing the program to shut down.
By JIM HEINTZ, Associated Press Writer
MOSCOW - Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday threatened retaliation if Georgia puts Russia's bases there in danger, hours after top Georgian officials increased pressure on the Kremlin to pull out by the end of the year.
The two Russian bases in Georgia, holdovers from the Soviet era, are causes of high antagonism between Russia and diminutive, Western-looking Georgia. Russia has bristled at Georgian officials' frequently expressed aim of deepening ties with NATO and the European Union.
In a visit to Georgia this week, President Bush noted that Russia had committed itself to withdrawing the bases, but did not publicly urge the Kremlin to speed up its efforts.
But on Thursday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States is pushing Russia to end its military presence in Georgia as quickly as possible.
She also spoke to the Senate Appropriations subcommittee of concerns about Georgia remaining together as a country because of the breakaway of Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions after wars in the 90s.
If the separatist regions continue to pull away in the country, "there is not going to be very much left to the territorial integrity of Georgia," she said.
Russian officials have said the withdrawal from the Georgian bases would take at least three years, and maybe up to a dozen.
Georgian officials say that is far too slow and suggest that Russia simply is aiming to prolong its presence in the Caucasus Mountain nation that the Kremlin regards as its geopolitical backyard.
Georgian Parliament Speaker Nino Burdzhanadze said that if negotiators don't reach agreement on a withdrawal timetable by Sunday, the legislature would order the government to take steps to ensure the bases were closed by Jan. 1.
Defense Minister Irakly Okruashvili said Georgia would soon stop allowing Russian military cargoes and troops for rotations at the bases into the country.
"We won't yield to blackmail," Lavrov said. "If any steps aimed against our bases are taken — concerning security and threats to the lives of our citizens and of weapons ending up in someone else's hands, I assure you we won't remain passive."
This undated photo provided by the U.S. Army shows Army 1st Sgt Michael J. Bordelon. Bordelon, 37, of Morgan City, La., died Tuesday, May 10, 2005, at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. Bordelon was injured when a car bomb detonated near his Stryker military vehicle. Bordelon was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division at Fort Lewis, Wash. (AP Photo/U.S. Army)
By Will Dunham Thu May 12, 5:07 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army will allow recruits to sign up for just 15 months of active-duty service, rather than the typical four-year enlistment, as it struggles to lure new soldiers amid the Iraq war, a general said on Thursday.
Maj. Gen. Michael Rochelle, U.S. Army Recruiting Command head, also said this was "the toughest recruiting climate ever faced by the all-volunteer Army," with the war causing concern among potential recruits and their families and the economy offering civilian job prospects.
America abolished the draft in 1973 during the tumult of the Vietnam War era and has since relied on a military made up exclusively of volunteers.
Rochelle said the Army this week expanded nationwide a pilot program in place since October 2003 in 10 cities offering recruits the option of a 15-month active-duty enlistment.
In a conference call with reporters, Rochelle expressed concern about a recent spike in recruiting improprieties. The Army said this week it will suspend recruiting on May 20 to counsel its 7,545 recruiters on ethics.
The Army is examining allegations recruiters offered to help people cheat on drug tests or get phony diplomas. In a recent incident in Texas, a recruiter threatened a 20-year-old man with arrest if he did not get to an interview at a recruiting station by a given time.
"Some of the incidents were flying just below my radar," said Rochelle, who acknowledged the stress experienced by recruiters who work nearly 80 hours per week to attract new soldiers.
Army Recruiting Command spokesman Douglas Smith said as of April 29, the Army had fielded 480 allegations of improper conduct by recruiters in fiscal 2005 beginning Oct. 1. So far, there have been 91 substantiated improprieties, with eight recruiters relieved and 98 recruiters admonished, Smith said.
A NEW OPTION
The Army said some young people might want to serve the country but do not want to dedicate the amount of time required by the normal four-year active-duty enlistment.
They will be offered the option of serving 15 months on active duty after completing their training, and then two years in the part-time Army Reserve or National Guard. The soldier then would spend nearly seven years in the Individual Ready Reserve, which requires no training and until recently was rarely mobilized, or serve in a program like the Peace Corps.
Rochelle said he was "cautiously optimistic" the active-duty Army, now 16 percent behind its year-to-date goal, would reach its goal of 80,000 recruits in fiscal 2005, which ends on Sept. 30. It has missed its recruiting targets the past three months, falling short by a whopping 42 percent in April.
He sounded less optimistic about the Army Reserve, currently 21 percent behind its year-to-date goal, saying achieving its annual goal was "not completely foreclosed."
Rochelle predicted a rough 2006 fiscal year. He said while the Army entered fiscal 2005 with about 18 percent of the year's goal met by recruits who had already committed to enlist, the figure will be about 9.9 percent next year, the lowest number in memory.
The Army has taken other steps to try to lure recruits, including increasing by 5 years to 39 the maximum age for enlisting in the Army Reserve and launching a new ad campaign.
The 15-month enlistment pilot program was in place in Albany, New York; Columbia, South Carolina; Miami; Raleigh, North Carolina, Cleveland, Ohio; Kansas City, Missouri; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Sacramento, California; Mission Viejo, California, and San Antonio, Texas.
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan - Thousands took to the streets of an eastern Uzbek city on Friday to protest the detention of 23 Islamic businessmen on extremism charges, witnesses said. The president rushes to the city amid reports an armed mob has attacked a prison and freed convicts.
Witnesses reported chaos in the streets of Andijan, but a government spokesman reached by telephone said administrative buildings remained under government control. Still, Uzbek President Islam Karimov and other leaders flew Friday to Andijan, 300 miles east of Tashkent, near Kyrgyz border.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko speaks to the media in Kiev, Ukraine, in this March 1, 2005 file photo. Viktor Yushchenko, speaking during a live, televised call-in show marking his first 100 days in office, urged Ukrainians to have patience with his new government, saying Thursday that three months in office isn't enough time to make sweeping changes. (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)
Yushchenko: Ukraine to Vote on EU Status
By NATASHA LISOVA, Associated Press Writer
Thu May 12, 6:45 PM ET
KIEV, Ukraine - President Viktor Yushchenko said Thursday Ukrainians will decide in referendums whether the former Soviet republic should try to join the European Union and NATO.
But Yushchenko, who has made it a priority to move the Ukraine toward the West, did not say when the voting would be held. The EU and NATO have said Ukraine has considerable work to do before a membership bid could be considered.
Yushchenko made clear he favored using referendums to determine whether to join both groups during a TV call-in show marking 100 days in office.
"The forming of a national position regarding such issues as membership in the EU is an issue that will be decided exclusively through a referendum," Yushchenko said.
Yushchenko, who won a court-ordered presidential repeat vote last year after mass protests over fraud dubbed the "Orange Revolution," stressed Ukraine must maintain good relations with its giant neighbor Russia despite seeking the economic benefits of EU membership.
"We need strategic relations with Russia and with the European Union and both are mutually connected," Yushchenko said.
Yushchenko, responding to grumbling about his fledgling administration, urged Ukrainians calling from four cities to have patience, saying three three months wasn't enough time to make sweeping changes.
Ukrainians had gathered in downtown squares in Kiev, Lviv, Simferopol and Donetsk to complain directly to Yushchenko about social problems. They also called in and sent e-mails with complaints and requests.
"Arm yourself with patience," Yushchenko said. "Let's allow the new government to work."
He pledged that his team "will not bury its head in the sand," will admit its mistakes and pledged his economic policy seeks to improve the lives of all of Ukraine's 48 million people from "the pregnant mother to the oldest retiree."
His presidency so far has brought an increase in pensions and raised Ukraine's international profile, but Ukrainians are also grumbling over currency changes and and rising inflation.
The opposition has alleged political persecution, and the business community has been rattled by the review of some post-Soviet privatization deals that Yushchenko's government claims gave valuable state businesses to Kuchma's cronies at rock-bottom prices.
First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoliy Kinakh said Thursday that the government wants to review the privatizations of 29 companies — far below the thousands that some investors had feared.
Yushchenko repeated allegations that billions were stolen by the previous regime, and said that the alleged thefts had to be investigated.
He also demanded that property on nature reserves along the Black Sea where many wealthy tycoons built their homes illegally during the ruler of his predecessor Leonid Kuchma be returned to the state within two months.
Mexico Says It Will Protest New U.S. Laws
By TRACI CARL, Associated Press Writer
Thu May 12, 9:18 PM ET
MEXICO CITY - President Vicente Fox said Thursday his government will formally protest recent U.S. immigration reforms, including the decision to extend walls along the border and make it harder for illegal migrants to get driver's licenses.
Fox didn't give details of Mexico's plan, but officials in his administration have raised the possibility of taking their case to the United Nations or other international organizations.
"We think it is useless to pursue walls, barriers, the use of force and violence," he said.
Speaking to foreign reporters later Thursday, Interior Minister Santiago Creel said Mexican officials would meet with the U.S. government before deciding what kind of action to take.
The new U.S. provisions threaten to unravel recently patched relations between the United States and Mexico. They include requiring states to verify that people who apply for a driver's license are in the country legally. They also make it harder for migrants to gain amnesty, and easier to override environmental laws to build a barrier along the Mexican border in California.
U.S. lawmakers argued the bill was necessary to protect the United States from terrorists.
President Bush and Fox began their administrations as close friends, but soon parted ways over the U.S.-led initiative in Iraq and the United States' failure to take up a migration accord that would have let more migrants cross legally into the United States.
Relations improved after Bush introduced a scaled-back migration plan that would have allowed Mexicans with U.S. job offers to work temporarily in the United States. But the proposal has stalled.
Fox said Mexico would fight the new initiatives by presenting "a formal and firm complaint against the option that has nothing to do with the harmonious development of relations between the United States and Mexico."
Over 115kg of pure heroin seized from within the roofing frame of two shipping containers. Australian police and Customs said the massive heroin haul they found was worth an estimated 60 million dollars (46.2 million US) and was hidden inside containers containing plastic chairs imported from China(AFP/HO/ACS)
Australian police find 46 million dollar heroin haul in shipping containers
SYDNEY, (AFP) - Australian police and Customs said they have found a massive heroin haul worth an estimated 60 million dollars (46.2 million US) hidden inside two shipping containers containing plastic chairs imported from China.
They said the seizure followed a year-long investigation also involving law enforcement authorities in Belgium, the Netherlands, China and Hong Kong.
The containers travelled through three states after arriving in Australia.
They arrived in the southern city of Melbourne from China in late February, were delivered to a warehouse in southeastern Adelaide and were then moved north to a Sydney warehouse, federal police and Customs said in a joint statement.
A 21-year-old Sydney man and a 26-year-old from Hong Kong were arrested Thursday when they allegedly tried to tamper with the containers, which had some 400 bags of heroin concealed in the roof.
Two other Sydney men were also arrested nearby and a 29-year-old man was detained in Hong Kong Thursday night.
Police said the Hong Kong man allegedly rented the warehouses in Sydney and Adelaide and lived in Australia on a student visa to arrange the importation before returning to Hong Kong recently.
During searches in Adelaide and Sydney Thursday night, a further 10 kilos of heroin was found -- bringing the total seized to more than 115 kilos (253 pounds).
Federal police "will allege in court that all the men are part of a sophisticated and well-organised drug syndicate of which other members have been arrested overseas," the statement said.
The drugs have a potential street value of more than 60 million dollars.
Mike Phelan, a senior federal police official, said the operation had neutralised the syndicate.
"We have been monitoring the activities of this group for some time now and we are confident that this well organised group is now out of business," he said.
An Afghan policeman takes cover as protestors throw stones in Logar province, about 40 km (25 miles) southwest of Kabul May 12, 2005. Demonstrations spread in Afghanistan on May 12th over a report that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated the Koran, and officials said three protesters were killed. (Ahmad Masood/Reuters)
3 More Die in Afghan Protest Over Quran
By STEPHEN GRAHAM, Associated Press Writer
Thu May 12,10:16 PM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghans enraged by the alleged desecration of Islam's holy book at a U.S. prison staged a third day of violent protests Thursday, burning an American flag in the capital and ransacking relief group offices to the south as demonstrations spread to neighboring Pakistan.
Afghans clean up burned debris inside the governor's office in Jalalabad, Afghanistan Thursday, May 12, 2005 after protesters set fire to the building the previous day . A day after riots in Jalalabad left four people dead, protests continued around Afghanistan for a third day as news of a reported abuse of Islam's holy book at the U.S. jail in Guantanamo Bay spread to the capital. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised "appropriate action" would be taken if the allegations are proven true, while key U.S. ally Saudi Arabia urged that any offenders be quickly disciplined.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gestures during testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Capitol Hill, in Washington May 12, 2005. Rice urged Muslims around the world on Thursday to resist calls for violence from people outraged by allegations that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated the Koran. REUTERS/Shaun Heasley
Three more demonstrators were shot and killed in clashes with police, officials said, bringing the death toll to at least seven in the biggest anti-American protests in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 — and presenting a fresh challenge to efforts to stabilize the country.
While most of the protesters were students, officials suggested that elements opposed to Afghanistan's U.S.-backed government were stirring the violence, which has also targeted American troops and the United Nations.
The demonstrations could complicate President Hamid Karzai's plans to ask for military aid on a trip to Washington this month, a prospect that has stoked a previously muted debate on how long U.S. troops should stay to secure the country, still riven by a Taliban-led rebellion. That debate may play out in parliamentary elections this year.
Afghan police run away as protestors attack with stones and sticks in Logar province, about 40 km (25 miles) southwest of Kabul May 12, 2005. Demonstrations spread in Afghanistan on Thursday over a report that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated the Koran, and officials said three protesters were killed. REUTERS/Ahmad Masood
The Afghan leader, on a trip to Europe, has played down the violence as the growing pains of Afghan democracy.
The trigger of the unrest was a brief report in the May 9 edition of Newsweek magazine that interrogators at the U.S. prison on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, placed Qurans in washrooms to unsettle suspects, and in one case "flushed a holy book down the toilet."
Desecration of the Quran is punishable by death in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, but diplomats and officials have been taken aback by the intense reaction — further enflamed by bloodshed in a police crackdown on anti-U.S. protesters in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on Wednesday that left four dead and over 70 wounded.
Afghan university students burn a U.S. flag during a protest in Kabul May 12, 2005. Several hundred students in the Afghan capital held a protest on Thursday to denounce the United States over a report that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated the Koran. REUTERS/Ahmad Masood
It was unclear why demonstrations broke out this week and not after previous media reports. In July 2004, for example, the Arab station Al-Jazeera ran an interview with a former Guantanamo detainee who claimed he saw a U.S. soldier stomp on the Quran and that another American soldier in the southern city of Kandahar threw a holy book into the toilet.
Pakistan protested to the U.S. government last weekend about the alleged abuse cited in the Newsweek report, giving the article wider play in the region's media than the Al-Jazeera interview may have received last year.
At the Pentagon, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that U.S. commanders in Afghanistan believe that local political factions — and not the reports about the alleged desecration — are driving the violence in Jalalabad.
Myers said the military is investigating the allegation but so far has not been able to confirm it. In one case, an inmate, in an act of defiance, ripped pages out of his Quran and stuffed them into the toilet in an attempt to back up the plumbing, Myers said, citing logs from the prison.
Afghan policemen fire from a rooftop during protest in Logar province, about 40 km (25 miles) southwest of Kabul May 12, 2005. Demonstrations spread in Afghanistan on Thursday over a report that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated the Koran, and officials said three protesters were killed. REUTERS/Ahmad Masood
In the first public comment by a Mideast nation, Saudi Arabia expressed deep indignation and asked Washington to quickly investigate and discipline any perpetrators.
Saudi Arabia "appeals to the concerned American authorities to carry out a quick investigation in the matter and stresses that in case the reports were true, deterrent measures should be taken against those perpetrators to prevent its recurrence and to protect the sentiments of Muslims all over the world," the Foreign Ministry said in a report carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.
An Afghan policeman (L) confronts a protestor (C) in Logar province, about 40 km (25 miles) southwest of Kabul May 12, 2005. Demonstrations spread in Afghanistan on Thursday over a report that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated the Koran, and officials said three protesters were killed. REUTERS/Ahmad Masood
U.S. officials tried again Thursday to calm tempers, promising a thorough probe and insisting all inmates at Guantanamo, many of them Pakistanis and Afghans captured after the Sept. 11 attacks, are given Qurans, prayer beads and time to pray.
"Disrespect for the Holy Quran is not now, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be tolerated by the United States," Rice said in a statement to a Senate appropriations subcommittee.
"Our military authorities are investigating these allegations fully," she said. "If they are proven true, we will take appropriate action. Respect for the religious freedom for all individuals is one of the founding principles of the United States. ... I am asking that all of our friends reject incitement to violence by those who would mischaracterize our intentions."
In Thursday's bloodiest incident, police fired on hundreds of anti-U.S. demonstrators in the town of Khogyani to prevent them from going to Jalalabad, 20 miles to the north, said police chief Maj. Gul Wali.
A vehicle burned by angry protesters is seen in the city of Jalalabad, Afghanistan, May 11, 2005. Afghan police opened fire on Wednesday as protesters rioted over a report that U.S. interrogators had desecrated the Koran, killing four people and hurting dozens, a health official said. REUTERS/Ajmal Baheer
Wali counted three deaths among the protesters, who he said were armed.
However, Interior Ministry spokesman Latufallah Mashal said two people died. Mashal said a third protester was killed in a separate clash with police in Wardak province, south of Kabul. He provided no details.
In neighboring Logar province, CARE International, one of the largest international relief groups in Afghanistan, said students attacked its office, thumping one staff member over the head with a piece of wood and trashing two computers. Another foreign relief group office next door was reportedly set ablaze.
"It's the symbols of this change in Afghanistan" that have been singled out, said Paul Barker, the country director for CARE. "There are probably people around the country inciting this."
In the capital, more than 200 young men gathered in front of Kabul University chanting "Death to America!" and carrying banners including one saying: "Those who insult the Quran should be brought to justice."
About two dozen students clambered onto the roof of a nearby building and burned an American flag to applause and cries of "God is great!" from the crowd below. Dozens of police — some armed with sticks, others with assault rifles — looked on.
Demonstrations also broke out in Pakistan, where more than 200 supporters of a radical Islamic group rallied in the northwestern city of Peshawar, and demanded that the United States offer an apology.
"This insulting of the Quran is a shameful act. It has torn to bits America's claims of being an enlightened country," said Abdul Jalil Jan, one of the organizers.
Peaceful demonstrations also have been reported in at least five other Afghan provinces and the Pakistani cities of Islamabad and Quetta. A larger demonstration in Pakistan was planned for Friday.
US troops to stay in Iraq for two years
07:52 AEST Fri May 13 2005
AP - US troops will remain in Iraq for two more years until the country's own army and security forces are strong enough to take over the role of securing the nation, said new Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
In an interview published in Sao Paulo newspaper O Estado de S Paulo, Talabani said he was confident Iraqi Sunni clerics would be able to convince the country's Sunni minority to participate in the new government and renounce their support for the insurgency.
"Terrorism isn't only from the Sunnis. Much of it is carried out by al-Qaeda and outsiders over whom the Sunni Arabs have no control," Talabani said.
The Sunnis, who comprise about a quarter of Iraq's population, lost their grip on power as a result of the US-led war to topple former President Saddam Hussein's regime. They also largely boycotted the January elections and, according to American and Iraqi officials, make up a sizeable portion of the homegrown insurgency working alongside other Arab fighters.
Over the past two weeks, insurgent violence around Iraq has killed more than 400 people, including at least 69 in a series of car bombings and attacks.
But Talabani, who was in Brazil attending the two-day Summit of South American-Arab countries, said he was convinced Sunni clerics would be able to "persuade them (Sunni Arabs) to return to the democratic process."
The newly-elected Iraqi leader, on his first foreign trip as head of state, praised the outcome of the summit.
"Regarding Iraq, the declaration was good, supporting elections, democracy, the government formed by the National Assembly, condemning terrorism, supporting sovereignty and the independence of Iraq," he said.
Talabani said he also met with the summit's host, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, for talks on increasing trade and political contacts between their countries,
"He expressed support for Iraq's struggle to regain total independence," Talabani told the newspaper. "We will send an ambassador here, and we asked Brazil to send one too."
Trade ministers from the two countries will meet next month in Jordan, Talabani said. Brazil is hoping to revamp a once-thriving defence industry that provided both Iraq and Iran with arms in the 1980s, but Talabani said Iraq is not looking to purchase weapons from Brazil.
"We don't want arms. We want other types of products," Talabani said.
Talabani's term ends this year, but he said he planned to remain in political office with the backing of his Kurd minority.
"The Kurdish leadership decided I should have one of the two chief positions, prime minister or president," he said.
Suicide bombers set off a wave of blasts in Iraq yesterday, killing at least 71 people and injuring more than 100. The blasts highlight a growing trend in which such attacks are becoming commonplace at Iraqi Army sites, police-recruitment centers, marketplaces, and crowded city streets. Most of those killed in the suicide bombings are innocent civilians, who live in constant fear of their lives and who increasingly distrust the new authorities’ ability to cope with the situation.
Prague, 12 May 2005 (RFE/RL) — Samiya lives in an area of central Baghdad that was considered relatively safe a year ago. Not any more.
The neighborhood’s tranquility was shattered recently when a suicide bomber rammed his automobile into a U.S. military vehicle just meters from Samiya’s home. The bomber struck in broad daylight while her entire family, including children, were home.
She described the aftermath of the attack as hell. “[There were] pieces of human bodies in [our] garden,” she said. “Our neighbors next-door were picking them [up] and putting [them] in a sack. I don’t know [to whom these remains belonged] — to an American soldier or the stupid one who did that [carried out the bombing]. I don’t know. Just pieces of meat, of human bodies in the garden.”
Samiya added that her home was badly damaged. “Not a single [piece of] glass was safe. Even the doors [were broken],” she said. “I mean it was a catastrophe. I mean, I cannot describe it. We were screaming as crazy people. We did not know where to go or what to do because all over around was just glass crushing; all over us. Even the water pipes — they have been broken.”
Samiya says suicide bombings are now an everyday occurrence in her neighborhood. She is afraid to let her daughter go to school. “I do not know if she will come [home] alive. Iraq was never such a hell as now,” Samiya said.
Jeremy Binnie, a Middle East analyst with Jane’s Sentinel in London, says suicide attacks are clearly on the rise and little can be done to stop them. Many believe foreign fighters intent on entering Iraq to confront U.S. forces are to blame for the attacks. Binnie says that U.S. forces are doing what they can to secure the country’s borders — particularly with Syria — but they are faced with an extremely difficult task.
This has led some to suggest that to quell the insurgency the United States should concentrate less on military operations and more on winning the hearts and minds of Iraqi civilians. But Binnie warns that greater popular support will not necessarily result in fewer suicide bombings.
“In Iraq, it is going to be very hard to prevent this continuing suicide bombing. Even if you win over the majority [of the] Sunni population, if there is still a hard-core left in there who can operate clandestinely they can still funnel bombers through and carry on attacks,” Binnie said.
Binnie says it doesn’t take a lot of people to carry out a successful suicide operation, making the threat very difficult to counter. The sophistication and scale of some of the attacks appears to be increasing, including the use of tandem bombings, in which one device is timed to go off soon after rescuers rush to the scene of an initial blast.
Despite the attention being paid to foreign fighters, Binnie says it would be wrong to believe that members of the former secular Iraqi regime are not somehow involved in the rise of suicide attacks. He says differences between the various resistance and ideological groups in Iraq are becoming blurred.
“A bit of information was revealed about this over the last week,” Binnie told RFE/RL. “They [U.S. troops] raided a safe house in Baghdad and found this letter from a Yemeni foreign fighter and he was sort of moaning about his commanders to [Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Mus’ab al-]Zarqawi. The way the whole cell worked was that this guy volunteered to fight with Zarqawi and then he has been channeled into Baghdad where he has been directed to a cell run by a Saudi militant who was specializing in building car bombs. But that Saudi guy was actually working for an Iraqi guy who was a former member of the regime.”
Binnie says that suicide bombing as part of Islamic militancy goes back to the 1980s, when Lebanese Hizballah members targeted U.S. and French military targets. The tactic gained notoriety following Palestine suicide bombers’ success in carrying out suicide attacks against Israel.
Efforts to curb the phenomenon are further complicated because suicide bombers have usually undergone religious indoctrination and have social approval of their mission. In some Muslim countries radical local imams encourage suicide missions and those who die fighting infidels are often greatly admired.
“There have been funerals in places, you know, like Jordan [where] there was a controversial funeral a few months back when the whole family come out and praise him as martyr, praise the guy who blew himself up — even though he killed lots of civilians. And so his family were generally proud of him. So, you can’t see it as necessarily being the work as madmen,” Binnie said.
The analyst says that while the occurrence of suicide attacks is not widespread in the West, it would be wrong to assume it is problem that is confined to the Middle East. He notes that the secular rebel group Tamil Tigers uses suicide attacks on a regular basis in Sri Lanka.
SRINAGAR: Two women died and at least 50 people, including 20 children, were hurt yesterday in a grenade attack by Islamic rebels outside a missionary school in Indian Kashmir’s summer capital, police said. The blast near the school in Srinagar’s commercial heart was the second rebel attack in two days in the city, the urban centre of a 15-year revolt against Indian rule.
“Two women have died of their injuries in hospital and at least 50 people, of whom 20 are school children, have been hurt in the grenade attack by rebels,” said a police spokesman.
Doctors, who appealed for blood donations, said at least two victims were in critical condition. On Wednesday, two people were killed and 34 injured when rebels detonated a powerful car bomb in another busy commercial area of Srinagar.
Militants threw the grenade yesterday at a slow-moving security vehicle near the all-boy Tyndale Biscoe school whose pupils range in age from four to 18, police said. It missed its target and exploded among parents, children and bystanders near the school gates just as classes were ending for the day, police said.
Children and adults fled in panic, dropping schoolbags on the ground. Parents shrieking their children’s names rushed to the school to look for their children. Shopkeepers, passersby and security personnel carried victims with bloodstained clothes to cars and ambulances to be taken to hospital.
“The area has been sealed off and searches launched to arrest the militants involved in the attack,” a paramilitary officer said.
July 2004 file photo showing Fort Monroe with the in Hampton, Va. As the country's military needs changed over the years, many of the country's 425 bases and several thousand smaller outposts have reinvented themselves and today fulfill far different roles. Those that haven't done so could find themselves on the government's new base-closing hit list. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is to submit his recommendations to the independent Base Realignment and Closure Commission on Friday, and that panel is required by law to submit its final report to President Bush by Sept. 8. (AP Photo/Daily Press, Buddy Norris, Files)
33 Major U.S. Bases Would Close Under Plan
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon will propose shutting 150 military installations from Maine to Hawaii, including 33 major bases, The Associated Press learned Friday, triggering the first round of base closures in a decade and an intense struggle by communities to save their facilities.
More than 100 other smaller facilities would also be closed, including scores of Reserve and National Guard installations. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld will announce the Pentagon's recommendations Friday morning. He has said the move would save $48.8 billion over 20 years while reshaping the military for America's expected 21st century adversaries.
Among the major closures is Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, home to 29 B-1B bombers, half the nation's fleet of the aircraft, and the state's second largest employer.
During the 2004 campaign, Republican John Thune told voters that if elected to replace then