Afghan child deaths plummet

Amir Shah in Kabul and Associated Press
Monday November 5, 2007
The Guardian

Almost 90,000 Afghan children who would have died before their fifth birthday during Taliban rule will stay alive this year because of improved healthcare, President Hamid Karzai said yesterday.

The under-five child mortality rate in Afghanistan has declined from an estimated 257 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2001 to about 191 per 1,000 in 2006, the ministry of public health said, relying on a new study by Johns Hopkins University.

Mr Karzai, surrounded by children at a news conference in Kabul, thanked aid organisations and Afghan health workers for their work in raising health standards. But Afghanistan continues to face severe problems. The health minister, Mohammad Amin Fatimi, said 250,000 under-fives died every year, mostly from malnutrition, diarrhoea, TB and malaria.

more

AP, November 6

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A bomb blast targeted a group of lawmakers touring a factory north of Kabul on Tuesday, killing at least 20 people, including six parliamentarians, a lawmaker said.

The lawmakers were about to tour a sugar factory in the northern province of Baghlan when the blast went off. Six members of parliament were among at least 20 people killed, said Faizullah Zaki, a lawmaker from Jawzjan province.

Kamin Khan, a police official, said people "everywhere" were dead and wounded, including police, children, lawmakers and officials from the Department of Agriculture. Afghanistan's major television station, Tolo TV, reported more than 100 people killed and wounded.

Among the six lawmakers killed was Sayed Mustafa Kazimi, a former Afghan commerce minister and a powerful member of the Northern Alliance, said the lawmaker's secretary, Ahmadi, who gave only one name

Five US soldiers killed in Iraq

Fred Attewill and agencies
Tuesday November 6, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Five American soldiers have been killed in two roadside bomb attacks in Iraq, the US military said today. "We lost five soldiers yesterday in two unfortunate incidents, both involving IEDs [improvised explosive devices]," Rear Admiral Gregory Smith told reporters in Baghdad's heavily-guarded green zone.

more

MacKay escapes injury as rocket attack hits Canadian base

Kelly Cryderman, CanWest News Service
Published: Tuesday, November 06, 2007

FORWARD OPERATING BASE WILSON, Afghanistan -- A rocket exploded at a Canadian military base Tuesday morning as Defence Minister Peter MacKay toured the camp and spoke with troops.

Two rockets, just 15 minutes apart, whizzed overhead at Forward Operating Base Wilson in Zhari district. The second of the two rockets hit inside the base walls, landing with a loud boom and lightly injuring four Canadian soldiers.

Soldiers along with three visiting reporters dove for cover as the rocket hit 50 metres from where they stood conducting interviews.

Mr. MacKay, who was not injured in the attack, was quickly sequestered in an armoured vehicle. His tour of Canadian installations west of Kandahar city was halted and he was evacuated by helicopter within the hour.

"It means the enemy still has some freedom of movement," said Col. Stephane Lafaut, commander of Canada's operational mentor liaison teams, minutes after he and other soldiers took cover.

"We're always nervous, everyday, every time it happens because it's dangerous for our own troops. For sure, yeah, now that the minister is here, we are more concerned."

It is not known whether the minister's presence on the base precipitated the attack but officials say they have no evidence to suggest it.

Speaking to reporters hours later, Mr. MacKay said he was impressed by how quickly his security team reacted when the rocket hit.

"When it happened, we heard the explosion, we heard the whistle overhead. We were told to get down, we did," he said.

"My thoughts turned immediately to anyone who might be injured."

lol, I bet

more

Military May Ease Standards for Recruits

Tuesday November 6, 2007 7:46 PM

By LOLITA C. BALDOR

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Faced with higher recruiting goals, the Pentagon is quietly looking for ways to make it easier for people with minor criminal records to join the military, The Associated Press has learned.

The review, in its early stages, comes as the number of Army recruits needing waivers for bad behavior - such as trying drugs, stealing, carrying weapons on school grounds and fighting - rose from 15 percent in 2006 to 18 percent this year. And it reflects the services' growing use of criminal, health and other waivers to build their ranks.

Overall, about three in every 10 recruits must get a waiver, according to Pentagon statistics obtained by AP, and about two-thirds of those approved in recent years have been for criminal behavior. Some recruits must get more than one waiver to cover things ranging from any criminal record, to health problems such as asthma or flat feet, to low aptitude scores - and even for some tattoos.

The goal of the review is to make cumbersome waiver requirements consistent across the services - the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force - and reduce the number of petty crimes that now trigger the process. Still, some Army officers worry that disciplinary problems will grow as more soldiers with records, past drug use and behavior problems are brought in.

Lt. Gen. Michael Rochelle, the Army's deputy chief of staff for personnel, said the review is necessary. Now, he said, many recruits who were arrested as juveniles for what can be considered youthful indiscretions - minor fights or theft - are forced to get waivers even if they were never convicted of the crime.

``I do believe it needs to be done,'' Rochelle said of the waiver review. ``There are really anomalies out there.''

The waivers require more time, paperwork and investigation, from detailed health screenings and doctor referrals to testimonials about past bad behavior. Depending on the seriousness, the final decision can be made by senior recruiting officers or higher-ranking commanders.

In addition, many waiver requirements differ from service to service, and some officials and recruiters say the policies should be more uniform.

The starkest difference involves Marines and drug use. The Marines require a waiver for one-time marijuana use, while the other services don't, and 69 percent of conduct waivers for Marines who joined from October 2006 to June 2007 were for previous drug use. It was 12 percent for the Army.

The bulk of the Army's conduct waivers during that time - 71 percent - were for serious misdemeanors, which can include thefts worth more than $500, any incident involving a dangerous weapon on school grounds, or minor assaults and fights. A waiver is required even if the recruit was a juvenile and the charge was dismissed after restitution, community service or other conditions were met.

According to the Pentagon data, the bulk of all conduct waivers are for recruits involved in either drug offenses or serious misdemeanors. Over the past five years, the overall percentage of recruits involved in serious misdemeanors has grown.

A bit more than 75 percent of the Marine waivers from October 1996 through June 2007 were for conduct, compared with about 73 percent the previous two years. In both years, the bulk of the remaining waivers were for medical issues.

Similarly, about 77 percent of the waivers for Air Force recruits in 2003 were for conduct, compared with 80.8 percent through June 2007. The Navy was the only service that saw a decline, with 56.7 of waivers in 2003 for conduct, compared with 40.3 percent through June 2007.

Relaxing some of the waiver requirements may make it easier for the Army to meet increased pressure for recruits in the next few years.

more

Coroner condemns MoD obstruction after ruling that logistics failure led to unlawful killing of 19-year-old soldier Gordon Gentle.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2206730,00.html

Fusilier Gordon Gentle, who was killed on patrol in Basra on June 28, 2004. Photograph: MoD Crown Copyright/PA Wire

A coroner today condemned the Ministry of Defence for obstructing inquests into the deaths of British soldiers in Iraq.
The damning criticism by Selena Lynch, the assistant deputy coroner for Oxfordshire, came as she ruled that army logistics failures led to the unlawful killing of 19-year-old soldier Gordon Gentle in a roadside bomb attack in Iraq.

Ms Lynch said it had taken three years to conclude her investigation due to the MoD's "illogical" policy of disclosure in investigations of soldiers' deaths in Iraq.

Ms Lynch said bomb-disabling equipment that could have saved Gentle's life when his Land Rover was attacked had not been supplied to his regiment, the Royal Highland Fusiliers (RHF).

She said: "It is more likely than not that the bomb would not have detonated had Element B [a bomb jamming kit] been fitted."

Electronic counter-measures (ECMs), to be fitted to vehicles, were available for collection by the Royal Fusiliers on June 16, two weeks before Gentle's death on June 28 2004.

But a communications breakdown meant the kit was not collected until after he was killed.

The coroner said the army's in-theatre supply chain "appeared chaotic and lacking in clarity".

Ms Lynch said she had been obstructed in her efforts to tackle a backlog of military inquests, including Gentle's, because of problems getting information from the military.

She said: "The MoD have a policy of disclosure that I would argue is both illogical and based on faulty points of law."

The coroner said her investigation into Gentle's death had been one of her first priorities when she was appointed but it had taken three years to complete due to the MoD's attitude.

"Disclosure to the family has been unnecessarily limited," said Ms Lynch.

She complained that all the names of people mentioned in documents provided by the MoD had been blacked out and replaced with a code. But a key to the code was not provided until a week before the inquest.

She said: "This caused an enormous amount of wasted effort and money."

After the verdict, the dead soldier's mother, Rose, said: "Justice has been done. The truth has come out.

"I fought for that. I said I wouldn't give up and I didn't. My son should be here today. They have deprived me of a beautiful son and deprived two sisters of their brother.

"They say when you join the army, it's a brilliant career. At the same time, you should be looked after."

"My son died a hero - whether he died for his country or not, I don't know. I'm proud of Gordon, I actually miss him even more now."

An MoD spokesman said: "Our thoughts and sympathies remain with the family, friends and colleagues of Fusilier Gordon Gentle at this difficult time.

"We were immensely saddened at his loss through an attack by insurgents in Basra in June 2004 and we deeply regret the series of events that contributed to it."

The Scottish National Party defence spokesman, Angus Robertson, said the ruling exposed "serious failings" in the MoD and vindicated Mrs Gentle's three-year campaign.

He said: "It underlines the need for the MoD to take its duty of care to service personnel in conflict zones much more seriously.

"Our serving soldiers must have all the necessary equipment to keep safe and perform their duties. The secretary of state for defence must now make a statement on how he intends to remedy this situation and to ensure that this never happens again."

Iraq Plans to Confront Security Firms on Guns

By JAMES GLANZ
Published: November 8, 2007

BAGHDAD, Nov. 7 — The Iraqi interior minister said Wednesday that he would authorize raids by his security forces on Western security firms to ensure that they were complying with tightened licensing requirements on guns and other weaponry, setting up the possibility of violent confrontations between the Iraqis and heavily armed Western guards.

The tightening of the requirements followed a shooting in September by one of those firms, Blackwater, that Iraqi authorities said left 17 Iraqis dead.

“Every company will be subject to such examination, and any company that does not follow the law will lose its license,” the minister, Jawad al-Bolani, said of the planned raids. “They are called security companies. They are not called violate-the-law companies.”

During a tour of the Interior Ministry compound in eastern Baghdad, Iraqi government officials also said for the first time that they accepted estimates by American oversight officials that some 190,000 pistols and automatic rifles supplied by the United States to Iraqi forces in 2004 and 2005 were unaccounted for.

Iraqi officials have created an elaborate computerized database to help recover the weapons and ensure that no more are lost, and officials took great pains on Wednesday to show the system to this reporter and his interpreter.

“We have 190,000 lost weapons because they were not distributed properly,” said Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman. “So we built this database.”

Many of those weapons were distributed when Gen. David H. Petraeus, now the American commander in Iraq, was in charge of training and equipping Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005. General Petraeus has said that he decided to arm the Iraqi forces as quickly as possible, before tracking systems were fully in place.

On Wednesday, Iraqi officials delicately placed blame for the loss of the weapons on the American military, saying that it had been impossible for the Iraqis to account for the weapons when they were not given necessary tracking information, such as serial numbers.

Within Baghdad’s relatively safe and heavily guarded Green Zone, there have been early indications of a battle over who controls Iraqi streets. Private security guards say that Iraqi police officers have already descended on Western compounds and stopped vehicles driven by Westerners to check for weapons violations in recent weeks.

Any extension of those measures into the rest of the country, known as the Red Zone, could quickly turn into armed confrontation. Westerners are wary of Interior Ministry checkpoints, some of which have been fake, as well as of ministry units, which are sometimes militia-controlled and have been implicated in sectarian killings. Western convoys routinely have to choose between the risk of stopping and the risk of accelerating past what appear to be official Iraqi forces.

And because Western convoys run by private security companies are often protecting senior American civilian and military officials, the Iraqi government’s struggle with the companies has in some cases become a sort of proxy tug-of-war with the United States.

more

Witnesses Call Shooting From Justice Ministry Unprovoked, But State Dept. Cleared Its Security Team After a Brief Probe

Washington Post, By Steve Fainaru, November 8

BAGHDAD -- Last Feb. 7, a sniper employed by Blackwater USA, the private security company, opened fire from the roof of the Iraqi Justice Ministry. The bullet tore through the head of a 23-year-old guard for the state-funded Iraqi Media Network, who was standing on a balcony across an open traffic circle. Another guard rushed to his colleague's side and was fatally shot in the neck. A third guard was found dead more than an hour later on the same balcony.

Eight people who responded to the shootings -- including media network and Justice Ministry guards and an Iraqi army commander -- and five network officials in the compound said none of the slain guards had fired on the Justice Ministry, where a U.S. diplomat was in a meeting. An Iraqi police report described the shootings as "an act of terrorism" and said Blackwater "caused the incident." The media network concluded that the guards were killed "without any provocation."

The U.S. government reached a different conclusion. Based on information from the Blackwater guards, who said they were fired upon, the State Department determined that the security team's actions "fell within approved rules governing the use of force," according to an official from the department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Neither U.S. Embassy officials nor Blackwater representatives interviewed witnesses or returned to the network, less than a quarter-mile from Baghdad's Green Zone, to investigate.

The incident shows how American officials responsible for overseeing the security company conducted only a cursory investigation when Blackwater guards opened fire. The shooting occurred more than seven months before the Sept. 16 incident in which Blackwater guards killed 17 civilians at another Baghdad traffic circle.

More Reservists Report Job Problems

Thursday November 8, 2007 2:16 PM

By HOPE YEN

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Strained by extended tours in Iraq, growing numbers of military reservists say the government is providing little help to soldiers who are denied their old jobs when they return home, Defense Department data shows.

The Pentagon survey of reservists in 2005-2006, obtained by The Associated Press, details increasing discontent among returning troops in protecting their legal rights after taking leave from work to fight for their country.

It found that 44 percent of the reservists polled said they were dissatisfied with how the Labor Department handled their complaint of employment discrimination based on their military status, up from 27 percent from 2004.

Nearly one-third, or 29 percent, said they had difficulty getting the information they needed from government agencies charged with protecting their rights, while 77 percent reported they didn't even bother trying to get assistance in part because they didn't think it would make a difference.

``This is shameful because Iraqi bullets and bombs don't discriminate. Yet reservists face job discrimination here in America after serving in war,'' said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense.

Legal experts say the findings might represent the tip of the iceberg. Formal complaints to the Labor Department by reservists hit nearly 1,600 in 2005 - the highest number since 1991 - not counting the thousands more cases reported each year to the Pentagon for resolution by mediation.

And a bump in complaints is likely once the Iraq war winds down and more people come home after an extended period in which employers were forced to restructure or hire new workers to cope with those on military leave, they said.

Among the survey's findings:

-About 23 percent of reservists reported they did not return to their old jobs in part because their employer did not give them prompt re-employment or their job situation changed in some way while they were on military leave.

-Twenty-nine percent of those choosing not to seek help to get their job back said it was because it was ``not worth the fight.'' Another 23 percent said they were unsure of how to file a complaint. Others cited a lack of confidence that they could win (14 percent); fear of employer reprisal (13 percent), or other reasons (21 percent).

-Reservists reported receiving an average of 1.8 briefings about their job rights and what government resources were available. This is down slightly from the 2.0 briefings they reported getting in 2004.

``Most of the government investigators are too willing to accept the employer's explanation for a worker's dismissal,'' said Sam Wright, a former Labor Department attorney who helped write the 1994 discrimination law protecting reservists.

``Some of it is indifference, some of them don't understand the laws involved,'' Wright said. ``But the investigators establish for themselves this impossibly hard standard to win a case. As a result, reservists lose out.''

Under the law, military personnel are protected from job discrimination based on their service and are generally entitled to a five-year cumulative leave with rights to their old jobs upon their return. Reservists typically file a complaint first with a Pentagon office, the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR), which seeks to resolve the dispute informally.

If that effort fails, a person typically can go to the Labor Department to pursue a formal complaint and possible litigation by the Justice Department.

A report by the American Bar Association as early as 2004 noted problems in which the government was ``not seen as an aggressive advocate for the returning veteran.'' A presidential task force chaired by former Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson earlier this year found that agencies could do a better job of educating troops and veterans. The report did not address government enforcement of the law.

Just ask Ret. Marine Lt. Col. Steve Duarte, who won a court judgment of more than $430,000 from Agilent Technologies Inc. in March 2005 after turning to a private lawyer after losing his job. Duarte was a senior consultant when he was mobilized twice from October 2001 to April 2002 and from November 2002 to July 2003.

When Duarte returned from the second mobilization, Agilent did not reinstate his previous position but assigned him to a special project. He soon received a poor job evaluation that differed from previous positive reviews and was terminated four months later.

more

Is the military blowing up key evidence?

By Blake Morrison and Peter Eisler - USA Today
Posted : Thursday Nov 8, 2007 5:43:54 EST

During their last six months in Baghdad last year, Navy Lt. Sarah Wilson and her team of explosives ordnance disposal technicians said goodbye to each other more than 70 times.

Each time they were called to dismantle a roadside bomb, they’d bump fists. Then, Wilson says, “we’d all say we love each other because if we never got to say anything else” — if the bomb ended up exploding — “we wanted to be able to say goodbye.”

After they arrived at the scene, they would often begin a perilous, painstaking task: taking apart the bombs, bagging the components and sending the parts back to a unit that analyzes them, much as investigators do on the television show “CSI.”

They were willing to take such risks, Wilson said, because “it’s the best shot our guys on the ground have of catching the bad guys.”

If forensic teams can lift a fingerprint or identify materials used in a series of bombs, “we can now connect him,” said Wilson, 27. “We know he’s a bomb maker.”

When roadside bombs became the insurgency’s weapon of choice in Iraq, explosives disposal teams became increasingly important in efforts to protect U.S. troops and crack the bomb-making networks. But now, top military officials appear to be compromising efforts to catch bomb makers in favor of expedience and mobility, a USA Today investigation shows.

A classified order, issued May 30 and reviewed by USA Today, gives commanders the authority to forgo calling in explosives technicians like Wilson to glean intelligence from improvised explosive devices. Instead, commanders may use engineers traveling with their regular units to simply detonate the bombs without gathering evidence from them. Engineers receive about 10 percent of the explosives training of technicians, and they’re not allowed to dismantle bombs.

Commanders and others see the process, dubbed “blow and go,” as a way to keep convoys and combat teams moving and safe from snipers and ambushes.

But the Army’s new approach also runs counter to military doctrine — and to the Pentagon’s long-term goal of getting one step ahead of the insurgency by learning about the networks that build, plant and trigger IEDs. The weapon is responsible for at least 60 percent of U.S. casualties in Iraq.

“The blow-and-go strategy undermines and compromises those overall efforts by losing key biometrics and evidence needed to identify and capture the network of insurgents,” said Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and chairman of the subcommittee on military readiness.

“This is a huge step backward in the long-term effort to prevent IED attacks from occurring in the first place,” Ortiz said, “and puts the troops at risk of facing more IED attacks for a long time to come.”

The head of the Army Asymmetric Warfare Office, which helps Army combat forces counter IEDs, also is concerned.

“What are we accomplishing by blowing and going?” asked Col. Dick Larry. “You rid yourself of that one device, but the problem is, all you’re doing is what the bad guy wanted you to do anyhow. You have not gotten any kind of exploitative information off it.”

In July, a USA Today investigation showed that, until last year, the Pentagon balked at pleas from officers in the field for safer vehicles to protect against IEDs. One of the explanations offered by defense officials for not spending more money on the lifesaving armor: that the military’s focus was on stopping bomb-making networks before they planted the explosives.

In its annual report last year, the military’s Joint IED Defeat Organization, called attacking the networks “the linchpin of our success.” Its deputy director, Robin Keesee, estimated last month that as many as 160 such insurgent cells have been identified in Iraq.

And the organization’s report listed forensic analysis of bombs — determining how the devices were manufactured, and what parts and types of explosives were used — among the efforts that were providing “unprecedented” intelligence capability.

Among the successes touted by the Pentagon: linking Iran to a particularly dangerous incarnation of the IED, the explosively formed penetrator.

“Iranian TNT blocks removed from their packages have been seen on numerous occasions as IED components,” according to a Feb. 11 Pentagon PowerPoint presentation in Baghdad.

“I don’t want to give away the king’s secrets here, but yes, [forensic analysis] was fruitful,” said Paul Plemmons, a retired Army colonel who used to command a task force that dismantled bombs. “A bomber is a bomber, and they leave signatures. We saw patterns. We could track patterns.

“We know the engineers are not going to collect forensic data, and the way you defeat that weapon is getting at the forensics,” Plemmons said. ”We may lose the one device that will lead us to take a whole cell down if you blow and go.”

JIEDDO spokeswoman Christine DeVries would not characterize the importance of such analysis, saying that the group is wary about giving too much information to the enemy. But she did say it is “one of the tools that have enabled forces in theater to eliminate a significant number of IED cells.”

The need for mobility

When U.S. forces invaded Iraq in March 2003, few foresaw how prevalent or deadly roadside bombs would become. But by that fall, IEDs had emerged as the biggest threat to troops, and the teams that would dismantle the bombs — the explosives technicians — were stretched thin.

In the first months of the war, only a few dozen technicians were in Iraq. Today, including commanders, more than 500 are deployed, many embedded within units.

“When we were first there, the rules of engagement were, ‘Let’s just destroy all these IEDs,’” said Marine Master Sgt. Michael Burghardt, an explosives technician.

During the past two years, Burghardt said, that approach changed. When he was working in Ramadi, Burghardt said, he was collecting intelligence from about 90 percent of the IEDs he handled.

Today, explosives technician teams try to collect evidence from “every scene,” said Army Col. Karl Reinhard, who commands the Army, Navy and Air Force explosives disposal teams in Iraq. From December 2006 through September 2007, he said technicians have handled more than 6,000 IEDs. Since the war began, he said, records show about 80,000 such bombs were planted.

“Some of the information we would glean would be negligible. Other times, it would be important,” Reinhard said.

The danger of blowing and going, he said, is that “you never know which needle in the haystack is going to be an important needle.”

Military doctrine — specifically, a publication titled “Barriers, Obstacles and Mine Warfare for Joint Operations” and prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff — reinforces the unique role of explosives disposal teams. The document, dated April 26, characterizes the work of those teams as “an essential part of the overall effort to develop a detailed forensic database to target centers of gravity in the IED system.”

“In addition to developing actionable intelligence to support future operations,” the document says, reports from explosives disposal teams have “an immediate impact on refining unit level force protection-related tactics, techniques and procedures.”

Since 2006, the military has taken significant steps to get more explosives disposal teams throughout the war zone.

Col. Kevin Lutz, an explosives technician set to replace Reinhard next year, said the military has tripled the number of explosives disposal teams in Iraq during the past 18 months, going from about 50 to about 150 three-person teams. Even so, when the tech teams are called to an IED, getting them to the site and letting them gather the intelligence often takes time. Sometimes, the delay is 30 minutes. Occasionally, it extends for hours.

Engineers have been lobbying to take a more active approach in destroying roadside bombs for the past few years, Lutz and others said. The engineers’ traditional mission — to breach obstacles to keep units mobile — was arguably more important during the invasion of Iraq than it is now, given the military’s current role policing the country.

Nevertheless, officials set up a training course, taught by explosives technicians, to help prepare engineers to detonate IEDs. Reinhard said those engineers receive less than 100 hours of training. Explosives technicians train for more than 1,100 hours, he said.

On May 30, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, issued the order that empowers commanders to let engineers blow and go.

“The intent of the order was to allow qualified individuals to detonate explosives rather than waiting for others who may not be readily available,” said Brig. Gen. Michael Silva, an Army engineer, adding that he lobbied Odierno for the change. “It was a way to improve the efficiency of the route-clearing team operations so we were actually enabling the soldiers to do the job that they needed to get done.”

IEDs ‘just an obstacle’

An instructor who teaches engineers at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., said the order makes sense.

“If you look at IEDs as just an obstacle, one of the engineer functions is just to remove obstacles,” said Maj. Eric Goser, executive officer of the Counter Explosive Hazard Center. “Bottom line: The IED to an engineer is no different than a log obstacle,” Goser said. “A log is an obstacle. You deal with that obstacle in a certain way.”

Goser’s logic troubles explosives technicians.

“The difference is, the log obstacle won’t kill you,” said Reynold Hoover, a former explosives technician who worked as a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

“You’re gaining mobility, but what you’re losing is the ability to find the bomb maker and the supply chain,” Hoover said.

Moreover, the amount of time saved by blowing and going may not be much, Reinhard said, adding that a study done earlier this year by his task force estimates “the expected value of the time they could save would be 20 minutes, on average.”

“Nobody wants to sit out on the battlefield for three to four hours,” he said. “Two or three years ago, they were waiting that long. It’s definitely not like that anymore.”

Statistics on response times are classified, but Reinhard said explosives technicians are now able to arrive relatively quickly at IED sites.

“For instance, in the north, 85 percent of the responses in the last week of September were 90 minutes or less,” he said.

Lutz said a long wait for explosives technicians today is “an outlier.”

Silva, who is no longer on active duty, is skeptical. He said information released by the explosives technicians may be “skewed” against giving engineers more of a role.

“My belief is that there was a parochialism engaged there — parochial in the fact that they want to be the only ones blowing” IEDs, Silva said of explosives technicians.

Do risks outweigh benefits?

It’s unclear how often commanders have used the blow-and-go approach. Reinhard said records he reviewed showed engineers detonated “approximately 120” IEDs from June through mid-October — about one a day.

But Army Col. Peter DeLuca, commander of the 20th Engineering Brigade, estimated engineers he oversees blow and go at least three or four IEDs each day — far more than the records reviewed by Reinhard indicate.

“There’s been a ramp-up,” Reinhard said. “They may both be true.”

Others aren’t certain.

“No one is keeping good track of that,” said Larry, who heads the Army’s anti-IED efforts. “How do we know what [engineers are] doing if they don’t report it?”

Odierno’s order specifies that engineers can only detonate relatively simple IEDs, using devices such as robots and the robotic arm of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles — machines that keep troops out of harm’s way.

“We have very, very strict limitations about what we are and what we’re not supposed to blow up,” says Army Spc. Walter Hayden, the 1st Platoon team leader with the 1203rd Engineer Battalion. “If I ever have any kind of doubt,” he said, he calls in explosives technicians.

Silva said he can see the amount handled by engineers growing — and the limitations on engineers being lifted as training improves. To date, neither DeLuca nor Reinhard say he believes any engineers have been hurt while blowing and going.

Despite reservations, Reinhard said he doesn’t “object to the engineers doing this, provided that they can live within the bounds that sometimes you need to pause and take the time to exploit.”

But some explosives technicians fear that engineers will overstep their mission and make deadly mistakes.

Burghardt said he and his team dismantled more than 900 IEDs during his three tours in Iraq. The one that detonated — the one that left six holes in his body, cracked his tailbone, threw him 10 feet and knocked him unconscious in September 2005 despite the protective gear he wore — was unlike any he had seen.

“It was the first time we saw the tactic of where they double stacked it,” said Burghardt, 37, now stationed at Camp Fuji, Japan. “I was standing on top of the device when I was clearing it and they just leave enough earth in between” that the device beneath the other IED was difficult to spot.

Burghardt’s experience is what makes explosives technicians wary of the new order — particularly, the idea that engineers will be able to discern a simple IED from a more sophisticated one.

“What’s simple?” Burghardt asked rhetorically. “You’re not going to know that until it’s too late.”

Such mistakes put troops and civilians at risk. In a 2005 paper for the Marine Corps War College, Lutz chronicled cases in which mistakes by engineers cost lives.

Two different cases during the 1991 war “led to the massive chemical exposure and contamination of thousands of coalition forces and non-combatants, and the loss of seven United States soldiers,” Lutz wrote. The reason for one of the mishaps at As Salman Airfield in Iraq: “Engineers were clearing munitions they were unfamiliar with and that turned out to be some of the most deadly unexploded ordnance our inventory can produce.”

He wrote that “buried within the investigations, point papers, after-action reports, lessons learned from the various units [now in Iraq], one can find repetitive incidents where the improper destruction of [explosives] led to severe contamination of the surrounding area and caused injury, death and destruction of equipment and facilities to both United States Armed Forces and to the local Iraqi civilian population.“

Plemmons put it more tersely. He said the difference between an engineer and an explosives technician handling an IED is like the difference between ”your physician’s assistant” and “an orthopedic surgeon.”

9 Iranians Released in Iraq

By LAUREN FRAYER

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Nine Iranians were released Friday from U.S. custody in Iraq, the American military said.

The nine included two men - identified by the military for the first time as Brujerd Chegini and Hamid Reza Asgari Shukuh - who were among five people captured when U.S. forces stormed an Iranian government office in the northern city of Irbil in January.

At the time, U.S. officials accused them of being members of Iran's elite Quds Force, an arm of the Revolutionary Guards. Iran said the five were diplomats working in a facility that was undergoing preparations to be a consular office.

The building, along with another Iranian office in Sulaimaniyah, was shut after the Jan. 11 raid. Both reopened Tuesday as Iranian consulates, Iraqi and Iranian officials said.

The nine Iranians were released Friday to Iraqi officials, and were being transferred to the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement. They were expected to return to Iran later Friday, it said.

The U.S. statement said the Iranians were released after a "careful review of individual records to determine if they posed a security threat to Iraq, and if their detention was of continued intelligence value."

"All nine individuals were determined to no longer pose a security risk," it said.

more

Six NATO troops, 3 Afghan soldiers killed in ambush

KABUL, Nov 10 (Reuters) - Six troops from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and three Afghan soldiers have been killed in an ambush by insurgents in eastern Afghanistan, ISAF said in a statement on Saturday.

Eight ISAF troops and 11 Afghan soldiers were also wounded in the fighting which began when insurgents ambushed their patrol from multiple positions with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire, the statement said.

Most ISAF troops based in the east of the country are American, but the statement said the force was withholding the nationalities of the dead soldiers pending notification of next of kin.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SP165861.htm

6 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Afghan Battle

Saturday November 10, 2007 7:31 AM

By JASON STRAZIUSO

Associated Press Writer

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Six U.S. troops and three Afghan soldiers died when insurgents ambushed their foot patrol in eastern Afghanistan, one of the deadliest attacks on American forces this year, officials said Saturday.

The troops were returning from a meeting with village elders Friday afternoon in Nuristan province when militants attacked them with rocket propelled grenades and gunfire, said Lt. Col. David Accetta.

``They were attacked from several enemy positions at the same time,'' said Accetta, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force and the U.S. military. ``It was a complex ambush.''

Eight more Americans and 11 Afghans were wounded. The 14 total U.S. casualties was the highest number of wounded and killed from a battle in Afghanistan this year, Accetta said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-7066304,00.html

yada yada yada

U.S.: 4 released Iranians had Sunni links in Iraq
By Bobby Caina Calvan | McClatchy Newspapers

* Posted on Friday, November 9, 2007

* email
* |
* print

tool name
close
tool goes here

BAGHDAD — The United States followed through Friday on its promise to release nine Iranians held in Iraq, including two accused of helping smuggle weapons into Iraq.

The release wasn't without surprise, however. One of the captives had been in U.S. custody nearly three years, and at least four were picked up in military actions directed against Sunni Muslim insurgents and not the Shiite militias that Iran is generally accused of assisting.

U.S. officials said they were still holding 11 Iranians, but the Iranian ambassador to Iraq insisted that the number still held was 25, and he demanded that Iraq continue to press for their release.

"Since these diplomats were kidnapped by U.S. forces on Iraq's soil while performing their diplomatic duties and they enjoyed diplomatic immunity, the Iraqi government is obliged to do its best to hasten their release from illegal arrest," Ambassador Hassan Kazemi-Qomi said.

The nine were surrendered to Iraqi authorities, who then turned them over to Iranian officials.

The U.S. military took pains to characterize the releases as routine, noting that an average of 50 captives are freed daily. On Thursday, the military held a ceremony at its headquarters at Camp Victory to mark the release of 500 Iraqi detainees.

But the preoccupation over Iran, in Washington and Iraq, prompted speculation that the United States was under pressure to show a gesture of good will — though to whom wasn't clear.

The gesture might have been for the benefit of the Iraqi government, which has been trying to foster better relations with its neighbor.

A senior U.S. military official, while cautioning that the Iranian government shouldn't see the releases as a sign of improving relations, said nevertheless that he hoped they would encourage Iran to stick to its vow not to supply weapons to militias. The officer asked to remain anonymous because of the political sensitivity surrounding U.S.-Iranian relations.

Iraq's foreign minister still expressed hopes that the release might lead to something bigger.

"We have welcomed this development and this decision by the U.S. military. We hope it will enhance the relationship between Iran and the United States about Iraqi security," the foreign minister, Hoshayr Zebari, said. "Soon we will invite both sides for another round of talks in Baghdad."

Iran's Kazemi-Qomi was less optimistic.

"The release will not have a profound effect on the relations between Iran and America because the release was prompted by a request from the Iraqi government," he said. "They were inside Iraq on legitimate missions and all the detentions were not legal. . . . They must all be released; that would be the right thing to do."

The U.S. has accused Iran of undermining Iraq's security by supplying rebels with weapons, including assault rifles, grenade launchers and sophisticated roadside bombs known as EFPs, or explosively formed penetrators.

U.S. military casualties in Iraq have declined in recent months, however, as U.S. and Iraqi forces have reported seizing more than twice as many weapons caches this year as last.

Iraqi government officials, as well as leaders of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, had pressed the U.S. military for the release, saying the Iranians were in Iraq for legitimate reasons. At least six Iranians detained by the U.S. this year were captured in Iraqi Kurdistan.

For the first time, the United States provided the names of the Iranians and the details of their capture.

Brujerd Chegini and Hamid Reza Asgari Shukuh were arrested, along with three others still in U.S. custody, on Jan. 11 during what the military said was "an intelligence driven" raid of Iranian government offices in Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.

They were suspected of being members of Iran's elite Quds force, an arm of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the U.S. military says arms and finances Shiite Muslim militias in Iraq.

Seven others were captured in unrelated military operations, some dating back three years, and included at least two who the military said were affiliated with al Qaida in Iraq, a Sunni insurgent group. Two others were arrested in cities controlled at the time by Sunni insurgents.

more

Families accuse government of being 'ashamed' of victims of war in Afghanistan and Iraq as British Legion has to tell them guidelines do not allow serving soldiers to take part in Remembrance Day march past

Ned Temko and Mark Townsend
Sunday November 11, 2007
The Observer

Serving soldiers horrifically injured in the Iraq and Afghan conflicts have been refused permission to join today's main Remembrance Day parade, prompting angry accusations that the government is 'ashamed' to have them seen in public.

Jamie Cooper, 19, the youngest Briton seriously injured in Basra, had hoped to join the march past at the Cenotaph in Whitehall. He is one of a number of young soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan the Royal British Legion had wanted to include in Britain's centrepiece remembrance ceremony.

Article continues
But last week, the head of the Legion contacted Jamie's's father, Phillip, to say that government rules for participating in the parade stipulated that only veterans, not 'serving soldiers', could take part. Last year 1,500 civilians were among the 9,500 allowed by the government to participate in the official march past. 'I am absolutely outraged,' Cooper said. 'I would not have made an issue of it. But Jamie, who is thankfully recovering well from his latest major operation, said to me: "Dad, do you remember how we always used to go to Remembrance Day when I was younger? Do you think we could go this year?" He feels strongly about it, because he has lost friends on the battlefield and wants to pay tribute to them.'

It is also understood that several soldiers currently recuperating from serious injuries at Headley Court, the military rehabilitation centre near Epsom in Surrey, had wanted to attend, but were also not able to join the official parade.

Cooper said that when he raised the possibility with the Legion, the veterans' organisation was very supportive and initially suggested that he join the main ceremony at the Cenotaph.

But Peter Cleminson, chairman of the Legion, later phoned 'apologetically'. Cooper added: 'He said that he wished he could have arranged for Jamie to take part, as well as some of the others who are recuperating at Headley Court. But he said that the government is in charge of the parade guidelines, and the policy is that no serving soldiers can participate.

A spokesman confirmed: 'Current guidelines do not allow serving personnel to take part in the march past.' The Legion did not say whether it would be pressing either of the Whitehall departments involved in overseeing the event - the Ministry of Defence and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport - to change the rules in future.

Cooper said: 'It is outrageous. I know any father would say this, but I am just so, so proud of Jamie, of all he has sacrificed, and of how he has fought against all the odds to survive and get better. His government ought to be proud too - not ashamed of him.'
More