Wednesday, March 14, 2007

For U.S. Troops at War, Liquor Is Spur to Crime - New York Times

For U.S. Troops at War, Liquor Is Spur to Crime - New York Times

March 13, 2007
For U.S. Troops at War, Liquor Is Spur to Crime
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

In May 2004, Specialist Justin J. Lillis got drunk on what he called “hajji juice,” a clear Iraqi moonshine smuggled onto an Army base in Balad, Iraq, by civilian contractors, and began taking potshots with his M-16 service rifle.

“He shot up some contractor’s rental car,” said Phil Cave, a lawyer for Specialist Lillis, 24. “He hopped in a Humvee, drove around and shot up some more things. He shot into a housing area” and at soldiers guarding the base entrance.

Six months later, at an Army base near Baghdad, after a night of drinking an illegal stash of whiskey and gin, Specialist Chris Rolan of the Third Brigade, Third Infantry Division, pulled his 9mm service pistol on another soldier and shot him dead.

And in March 2006, in perhaps the most gruesome crime committed by American troops in Iraq, a group of 101st Airborne Division soldiers stationed in Mahmudiya raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killed her and her family after drinking several cans of locally made whiskey supplied by Iraqi Army soldiers, military prosecutors said.

Alcohol, strictly forbidden by the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan, is involved in a growing number of crimes committed by troops deployed to those countries. Alcohol- and drug-related charges were involved in more than a third of all Army criminal prosecutions of soldiers in the two war zones — 240 of the 665 cases resulting in convictions, according to records obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Seventy-three of those 240 cases involve some of the most serious crimes committed, including murder, rape, armed robbery and assault. Sex crimes accounted for 12 of the convictions.

The 240 cases involved a roughly equal number of drug and alcohol offenses, although alcohol-related crimes have increased each year since 2004.

Despite the military’s ban on all alcoholic beverages — and strict Islamic prohibitions against drinking and drug use — liquor is cheap and ever easier to find for soldiers looking to self-medicate the effects of combat stress, depression or the frustrations of extended deployments, said military defense lawyers, commanders and doctors who treat soldiers’ emotional problems.

“It’s clear that we’ve got a lot of significant alcohol problems that are pervasive across the military,” said Dr. Thomas R. Kosten, a psychiatrist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston. He traces their drinking and drug use to the stress of working in a war zone. “The treatment that they take for it is the same treatment that they took after Vietnam,” Dr. Kosten said. “They turn to alcohol and drugs.”

The use of alcohol and drugs in war zones appears to reflect a broader trend toward heavier and more frequent drinking among all military personnel, but especially in the Army and Marine Corps, the two services doing most of the fighting, Pentagon officials and military health experts said.

A Pentagon health study released in January, for instance, found that the rate of binge drinking in the Army shot up by 30 percent from 2002 to 2005, and “may signal an increasing pattern of heavy alcohol use in the Army.”

While average rates of alcohol consumption in the Navy and Air Force have steadily declined since 1980, the year the military’s health survey began, they have significantly increased in the Army and Marine Corps and exceed civilian rates, the Pentagon study showed. For the first time since 1985, more than a quarter of all Army members surveyed said they regularly drink heavily, defined as having five or more drinks at one sitting.

The rate of illicit drug use also increased among military members in 2005, to an estimated 5 percent, nearly double the rate measured in 1998, a trend that the study called “cause for concern.”

The study also found other health problems in the military, from the growing popularity of chewing tobacco to a 20 percent increase during the past decade in service members who are considered overweight.

Lynn Pahland, a director in the Pentagon’s Health Affairs office, said the rising rates of heavy drinking and illegal drug use among active-duty military personnel are particularly troubling inside the Defense Department. “It is very serious,” Ms. Pahland said in an interview. “It is a huge concern.”

In the military, seeking help for psychological problems, including alcohol and drug abuse, is considered a taboo, especially among officers competing for promotions. Several officers interviewed for this article said the Pentagon was not doing enough to reduce that stigma.

Though the Pentagon has spent millions of dollars on several initiatives to reverse the trend, including a new Web site that deglamorizes drinking, financing to combat alcohol abuse has fallen over time, a Pentagon spokesman said. Spending on programs to reduce alcohol abuse, smoking and obesity dropped to $7.74 million in the current fiscal year from $12.6 million in fiscal year 2005 — a 39 percent decline.

Some military doctors and other mental health experts said the Army’s greater use of so-called moral waivers, which allow recruits with criminal records to enlist, may also be a factor in the increased drug and alcohol use.

Getting liquor or drugs in Iraq is not difficult. One of the most common ways to smuggle in brand name gin or clear rum is in bottles of mouthwash sent from friends back home, soldiers said. Blue or yellow food coloring makes the liquid look medicinal. Some Army medics have been known to fill intravenous fluid bags with vodka, Army officers said.

In Iraq, liquor of a distinctly more dubious quality can be purchased from Iraqi Army soldiers or civilian contractors working on American bases, and Iraqi soldiers have sold locally produced prescription drugs to American troops for a tidy profit.

Commanders have not always regarded drinking as a problem. The Army “was a culture in the 1970s that encouraged drinking,” said a retired Army colonel. “You’d go out drinking together and you’d find your buddy hugging the toilet at the officer’s club and think nothing of it.”

Command tolerance for such behavior began changing in the 1980s, and by the 1990s, “if you had more than a couple drinks at the club, people started looking at you strange,” the retired colonel said.

But at a time when the military is fighting two major ground wars, the often serious consequences of heavy drinking has emerged with increasing clarity as more troops return from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other mental health problems, military officials and mental health experts said.

“I think the real story here is in the suicide and stress, and the drinking is just a symptom of it,” said Charles P. O’Brien, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine who served as a Navy doctor during the Vietnam War. There is a high incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder among Iraq veterans, he said, adding that “there’s been a lot of suicide in the active-duty servicemen.”

More than 90 percent of sex crimes prosecuted by the military involve alcohol abuse, defense lawyers and military doctors said. Roughly half of the marines charged with crimes in Iraq exhibit clear signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, a Marine defense lawyer said.

“They turn to alcohol and drugs for an escape,” he said.

The health study released in January was produced for the Pentagon by RTI International, a nonprofit research organization. Robert M. Bray, the group’s project director, first agreed to be interviewed for this article but later declined after a Defense Department spokesman said he was not available to comment.

In the past two years, though, top military officials have begun talking publicly about the danger that excessive drinking among the troops.

In 2005, the Army’s deputy chief of staff at the time, Lt. Gen. Franklin L. Hagenbeck, wrote in an editorial in a magazine for Army leaders that the rising rate of heavy drinking and drug use “seriously impacts mission readiness.”

General Hagenbeck, now the superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point, said more than half of soldiers discharged for misconduct had also been disciplined for drug or alcohol use within the previous year.

“When one soldier has an alcohol or other drug incident, it impacts the whole unit,” General Hagenbeck wrote.

That kind of ripple effect has played out repeatedly in Iraq, military defense lawyers said, as soldiers who drink or use drugs commit crimes and hinder their unit’s combat and support missions.

Specialist Lillis, for example, was given a bad conduct discharge and sentenced to 10 years in prison as punishment for his drunken shooting spree; he is in a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan. A military judge sentenced Specialist Rolan, who testified that he drank to relieve depression in Iraq, to 33 years in prison for killing a fellow soldier.

Two of the soldiers charged in the Mahmudiya case pleaded guilty to murder, and a former Army private described as the ringleader, Steven D. Green, is awaiting trial for rape and murder in a federal district court.

Last year, the Pentagon spent $2 million to initiate its “That Guy” campaign, (www.thatguy.com), which recommends that service members “reject binge drinking because it detracts from the things they care about: family, friends, dating, sex, money and reputation.”

The Pentagon is poised to launch another Web-based antidrinking campaign this summer.

Capt. Robert DeMartino, a doctor with the United States Health Service who is coordinating the project, said the hope is that service members returning from Afghanistan and Iraq will use the site to find help coping with post-deployment problems, including alcohol dependency.

Andrew Lehren contributed reporting.

German Official Adds to Mystery of Iranian Missing in Turkey - New York Times

German Official Adds to Mystery of Iranian Missing in Turkey - New York Times

March 14, 2007
German Official Adds to Mystery of Iranian Missing in Turkey
By SEBNEM ARSU

ISTANBUL, March 13 — More than a month after a former top official in Iran’s Defense Ministry disappeared in Turkey, a German official on Tuesday stirred up the controversy over whether he had defected with the collusion of the West.

On an official visit to Ankara, the German defense minister, Franz Josef Jung, was asked about the whereabouts of the former Iranian deputy defense minister, Ali Reza Asgari, and whether he was in Germany undergoing questioning. Mr. Jung merely replied: “I cannot say anything on this issue.”

He made the cryptic remark at a news conference with his Turkish counterpart, Vecdi Gonul, the Anatolian News Agency reported.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said last week that the Turkish intelligence service was investigating the matter.

A Foreign Ministry official said Iranian officials had contacted the ministry through Interpol three weeks after Mr. Asgari’s entry into Turkey in early February to ask for information.

But the official, who declined to be identified because of diplomatic protocol, was not optimistic about finding him, saying, “Every year millions of Iranians enter Turkey, so it’s impossible to keep personal records.”

The official said accounts in the news media should be viewed “as pure speculation before our collective and comprehensive investigation is finalized.” He was referring to coverage in the mainstream newspaper Hurriyet that said Mr. Asgari arrived at the Istanbul airport on Feb. 7 after moving his family to safety in Damascus, Syria. The newspaper said he was given a passport under a new name, enabling him to flee Turkey over land.

Iranian officials, meanwhile, have said Mr. Asgari had been kidnapped, possibly by the West.

The head of Iran’s Security Forces, Ismail Ahmadi Moghadam, said that Mr. Asgari arrived in Istanbul from Damascus but that he disappeared after three days, according to the ILNA news agency.

“It is possible that Western intelligence services have kidnapped him because of his background in the Defense Ministry,” Mr. Moghadam said Tuesday.

An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, has denied reports that Mr. Asgari had defected to a Western country.

Members of Mr. Asgari’s family, who are now in Tehran, met with journalists this week. Ziba Ahmadi, Mr. Asgari’s wife, denied that her husband “would ever” ask for asylum in the West. She also said he had disappeared in December, which The Financial Times said was consistent with reporting it conducted in Tehran on Sunday with a former senior official and friend of Mr. Asgari.

“Personally I am sure that Iran’s main enemies, America and Israel, have kidnapped my father,” Mr. Asgari’s daughter Elham told state radio. “As a loyal servant of the revolution, my father had many enemies.”

Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Tehran.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | US moves to release N Korea funds

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | US moves to release N Korea funds

US moves to release N Korea funds
The US has announced steps that could give North Korea access to funds frozen in a Macau bank, one of its key demands for dismantling its nuclear programme.

The US Treasury has barred American banks from dealings with Banco Delta Asia (BDA), whom it accused of a role in North Korea-linked money laundering.

North Korean accounts worth $25m (£13m) have been frozen there since 2005.

But the move formally ends the US probe and could allow officials in Macau to release some of Pyongyang's money.

Last month, North Korea agreed to end its nuclear programme in return for large quantities of foreign aid.

Under the 13 February deal, Pyongyang has 60 days to shut and seal its Yongbyon nuclear reactor.

But one of its key demands has been the release of its funds from BDA.

'Illicit activity'

In September 2005 the US accused the bank of acting as a conduit for money earned by Pyongyang from counterfeit currency and drug smuggling.

Soon afterwards the Macau authorities took control of the bank and froze North Korea's accounts.


N KOREA NUCLEAR DEAL
N Korea to 'shut down and seal' Yongbyon reactor, then disable all nuclear facilities
In return, will be given 1m tonnes of heavy fuel oil
N Korea to invite IAEA back to monitor deal
Under earlier 2005 deal, N Korea agreed to end nuclear programme and return to non-proliferation treaty
N Korea's demand for light water reactor to be discussed at 'appropriate time'

US Treasury Under-Secretary Stuart Levey, announcing the US action, said that the 18-month probe had confirmed BDA's "willingness to turn a blind eye to illicit activity, notably by its North Korean-related clients".

The measures mean US banks and companies must sever all ties with the Macau-based institution.

But now, says the BBC's Jonathan Beale in Washington, it is up to the Macau authorities whether any of North Korea's assets can be released.

The US is expected to issue guidance to financial regulators to identify high-risk accounts.

That could pave the way for North Korea to gain access to some of its money.

But, our correspondent says, it is still not clear how North Korea will react to this announcement and what effect it might have on last month's deal.

The move came as the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, said North Korea was still "fully committed" to giving up its nuclear programme.

The IAEA leader was speaking in Beijing after holding talks in Pyongyang, which he described as "quite useful".

Delegates from the six countries involved in the multilateral talks on North Korea's nuclear programme will meet in Beijing next week for further discussions on implementing the 13 February deal.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/6452189.stm

Published: 2007/03/14 23:58:17 GMT

© BBC MMVII

Salazar 'troubled' but not calling for Gonzales to resign

rm NEWS
WASHINGTON — Sen. Ken Salazar said today he is troubled by allegations that have "blemished" the Department of Justice, but so far he is not joining the parade of Democrats calling for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign.

"I think we need to know the facts first," Salazar, D-Denver, told reporters during a conference call.

"I am troubled by the allegations here, that the arm of the law in the Department of Justice would somehow be used to further a particular political end," Salazar said. "That would be a misuse of the prosecutorial powers of the Department of Justice, in my view."

Several prominent Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., have called for Gonzales to follow his chief of staff's lead and resign over a series of prosecutor firings that critics claim were politically-motivated.

Gonzales is in the center of a firestorm over the way eight U.S. Attorneys were replaced late last year.

Some of the fired prosecutors have said that, prior to their firings, they received inappropriate communications from congressional Republicans pressing them to take action on investigating voter fraud allegations against Democrats.

Justice Department officials had denied that the White House was involved in the decisions. But Gonzales was forced to admit some mistakes on Tuesday, after the release of e-mails showing that his former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, had repeated communications with former White House legal adviser Harriet Miers over plans to replace U.S. attorneys.

Sampson resigned earlier this week. On Tuesday, Gonzales' acknowledged "mistakes were made" in the handling of the case, but he defended the president's right to replace U.S. attorneys and said he had no plans to step down.

Despite Gonzales' public explanations, the list of Democrats calling for his resignation continues growing, including Reid, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and others.

So far, Salazar has not joined the resignation calls, but he said he also is troubled by recent reports about federal investigators' widespread use of controversial "National Security Letters" to obtain information in terrorism investigations.

"I don't think things are looking very bright in the Department of Justice," Salazar said. "The DOJ at the end of the day should be the one department of our nation's government that really is viewed by the American people as standing up for the rule of law. Right now, it appears that the Department of Justice and its role in upholding the rule of law has been blemished."

Salazar has had close ties with Gonzales since his earliest days in the U.S. Senate. After taking the oath of office in January 2006, one of Salazar's first official acts was to escort Gonzales to his Senate confirmation hearing.

In introductory remarks, Salazar said they shared similar backgrounds as children raised in large, working class families. He called Gonzales, a former Texas Supreme Court Justice, "better qualified" than many recent attorneys general.

Salazar's endorsement angered Democrats who had just helped elect him, since they wanted to hold Gonzales accountable for his role in crafting the Bush administration's policies on torture prior to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

In the end, Salazar was one of only six Democrats to vote for Gonzales, and today the two men are among the highest-ranking Hispanics in U.S. government.

Last month, Gonzales joined Salazar and fellow Coloradans, Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Loveland, and Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs, on a tour of the Supermax prison in Florence.

Clinton sees ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ alive in N.H.


ap
WASHINGTON – Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday described past Republican political malfeasance in New Hampshire as evidence of a “vast, right-wing conspiracy.”

Clinton’s barbed comments revived a term she coined for the partisan plotting during her husband’s presidential tenure and echoed remarks she made last weekend in New Hampshire, which holds the nation’s first primary.

Her rhetorical red meat to a sympathetic audience of Democratic municipal officials comes as Clinton courts New Hampshire voters and squeezes donors for dollars ahead of a March 31 fundraising report deadline. She also continues to face criticism from the party’s liberal base for her failure to repudiate her vote authorizing military force in Iraq.

Clinton asserted Tuesday that the conspiracy is alive and well, and cited as proof the Election Day 2002 case of phone jamming in New Hampshire, a case in which two Republican operatives pleaded guilty to criminal charges, and a third was convicted.

“To the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s credit, they sued and the trail led all the way to the Republican National Committee,” Clinton said. “So if anybody tells you there is no vast, right-wing conspiracy, tell them that New Hampshire has proven it in court,” she said.

Former RNC operative James Tobin was convicted of telephone harassment and appealed his conviction. The investigation arose after Democratic organizers’ phones were overwhelmed by annoying hang-up calls hindering their get-out-the-vote efforts.

Clinton accused the GOP of a number of other anti-voter actions, including intimidating phone calls during the 2006 congressional elections.

New Hampshire Democratic Party chairwoman Kathy Sullivan said she absolutely agreed with the New York senator’s description of the case.

“People think we’re paranoid when we talk about the vast, right-wing conspiracy, but there is a real connection of these groups – the same names keep popping up,” Sullivan said. “They are the most disgusting group of political thugs that I have ever seen.”

RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt responded that Democrats “might be disappointed to learn that almost a decade later, the senator’s playbook consists of little more than a resurrection of Clinton-era talking points.”

Clinton made her charge of conspiracy in response to a question about her proposed bill that would make Election Day a federal holiday, and make it a crime to send misleading or fraudulent information to voters.

She also said the government should do more to end unusually long lines at certain polling places. “It just so happens that many of those places where people are waiting for hours are places where people of color are voting or young people are voting. That is un-American, and we’re going to end it,” Clinton said.

In January 1998, as the investigation into her husband’s affair with intern Monica Lewinsky probe engulfed the White House, Clinton appeared on NBC’s “Today” show and dismissed the allegations as part of a broader effort to smear her husband with groundless investigations.

“The great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast, right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president,” the first lady said at the time.

As evidence of the affair eventually came to light, the comment was ridiculed. But many Democrats have since insisted that Clinton was correct, pointing to the well-documented efforts by conservative financier Richard Mellon Scaife to fund a network of anti-Clinton investigations.

Clinton aides noted Tuesday that she also revisited the conspiracy comments back in 2003, when she said: “My only regret was using the word conspiracy, because there’s absolutely nothing secret about it.”

Iranians outraged over hit movie ‘300’ - Focus on Iran - MSNBC.com

Iranians outraged over hit movie ‘300’ - Focus on Iran - MSNBC.com

Iranians outraged over hit movie ‘300’

Blockbuster depicting Persian siege called an ‘obvious insult’

The Associated Press
Updated: 6:27 p.m. ET March 13, 2007

TEHRAN, Iran - The hit American movie “300” has angered Iranians who say the Greeks-vs-Persians action flick insults their ancient culture and provokes animosity against Iran.

“Hollywood declares war on Iranians,” blared a headline in Tuesday’s edition of the independent Ayende-No newspaper.

The movie, which raked in $70 million in its opening weekend, is based on a comic-book fantasy version of the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., in which a force of 300 Spartans held off a massive Persian army at a mountain pass in Greece for three days.

Even some American reviewers noted the political overtones of the West-against-Iran story line — and the way Persians are depicted as decadent, sexually flamboyant and evil in contrast to the noble Greeks.

In Iran, the movie hasn’t opened and probably never will, given the government’s restrictions on Western films, though one paper said bootleg DVDs were already available.

Still, it touched a sensitive nerve. Javad Shamghadri, cultural adviser to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said the United States tries to “humiliate” Iran in order to reverse historical reality and “compensate for its wrongdoings in order to provoke American soldiers and warmongers” against Iran.

The movie comes at a time of increased tensions between the United States and Iran over the Persian nation’s nuclear program and the Iraq war.

But aside from politics, the film was seen as an attack on Persian history, a source of pride for Iranians across the political spectrum, including critics of the current Islamic regime.

State-run television has run several commentaries the past two days calling the film insulting and has brought on Iranian film directors to point out its historical inaccuracies.

“The film depicts Iranians as demons, without culture, feeling or humanity, who think of nothing except attacking other nations and killing people,” Ayende-No said in its article Tuesday.

“It is a new effort to slander the Iranian people and civilization before world public opinion at a time of increasing American threats against Iran,” it said.

Iran’s biggest circulation newspaper, Hamshahri, said “300” is “serving the policy of the U.S. leadership” and predicted it will “prompt a wave of protest in the world. ... Iranians living in the U.S. and Europe will not be indifferent about this obvious insult.”

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17599641/