Most Dem candidates don't envision fast Iraq exit

By JEFF ZELENY and MARC SANTORAT

he New York Times

DES MOINES, Iowa — Even as they call for an end to the war and pledge to bring U.S. troops home, most Democratic presidential candidates are setting out positions that could leave the United States engaged in Iraq for years.

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards would keep troops in the country to intervene in an Iraqi genocide and be prepared for military action if violence spills into other countries. New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton would leave residual forces to fight terrorism and to stabilize the Kurdish region in the north. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama would leave a military presence of unspecified size in Iraq to provide security for U.S. personnel, fight terrorism and train Iraqis.

These positions and those of some rivals suggest the Democratic bumper-sticker message of a quick end to the conflict — however much it appeals to primary voters — oversimplifies problems likely to be inherited by the next commander in chief. Anti-war activists have raised little challenge to such positions by Democrats.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson stands apart. At a recent gathering of bloggers, he said: "I have a one-point plan to get out of Iraq: Get out! Get out!"

On the other side of the spectrum is Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden, who has proposed setting up separate regions for the three major ethnic and religious groups in Iraq until a stable central government is established before removing most U.S. troops.

Many Democratic candidates increasingly are taking the position that ending a war can be as complicated as starting one.

We've got to be prepared to control a civil war if it starts to spill outside the borders of Iraq," Edwards, who has run hard against the war, said at a Democratic debate in Chicago last week.

"And we have to be prepared for the worst possibility that you never hear anyone talking about, which is the possibility that genocide breaks out and the [Shiites] try to systematically eliminate the Sunni. As president of the United States, I would plan and prepare for all those possibilities."

Most Democratic candidates mention the significant military and logistical difficulties in withdrawing U.S. troops, which even optimistic experts said would take at least a year. The candidates are not only trying to retain flexibility for themselves in the event they become president, aides said, but are hoping to suppress any expectation that the war would end abruptly if they are elected.

Most have not proposed specific troop levels or rules of engagement for a presence in Iraq, saying the conditions more than a year from now remain too uncertain.

In political terms, their strategies are a balancing act. In public appearances, Clinton often says, "If this president does not end this war before he leaves office, when I am president, I will." But she has affirmed in recent months remarks she made in March, when she said there were "remaining vital national-security interests in Iraq" that would require a continuing deployment of U.S. troops.

The nation's security, she said then, would be undermined if part of Iraq turned into a failed state "that serves as a petri dish for insurgents and al-Qaida."

The candidates are wrestling with the possibility of a sustained military presence in Iraq, addressing questions about U.S. responsibility to Iraqi civilians and guarding against the terrorism threat in the region.

Among the challenges the next president could face in Iraq, three resonate the most:

• What to do if there is genocide?

• What to do if chaos in Iraq threatens to engulf the region in a wider war?

• What to do if Iraq descends into further lawlessness and becomes the staging ground for terrorist attacks elsewhere, including in the United States?

"While the overwhelming majority of Americans want to bring the troops home, the question is 'What is the plan beyond that?' " said Iowa Gov. Chet Culver, a Democrat. "The first candidate running for president, I think on either side, who can best articulate that will win."

The leading Republican candidates largely have chosen not to wrestle publicly with Iraq policy questions, instead deferring to President Bush and waiting until Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, delivers a progress report next month on Bush's troop buildup this year.

A review of the remarks made by Democrats during campaign stops in the past six months leaves little ambiguity in their message: If Bush refuses to end the war, they will.

To accomplish that goal, they discuss a mix of vigorous diplomacy in the region, intensified pressure on the Iraqi government and a phased withdrawal of troops to begin as soon as possible. But their statements in campaign settings often are silent on the problems of how to disengage and what trade-offs might be necessary.

"It is time to bring our troops home because it has made us less safe," Obama said at a campaign stop in New Hampshire last month.

Clinton has been equally vocal in making "bringing the troops home" a central theme. In February, she said her message to the Iraqi government would be simple: "I would say, 'I'm sorry, it's over. We are not going to baby-sit a civil war.' "

Obama and Clinton, in interviews or debates, have said they would not support intervening in a genocidal war should the majority Shiites slaughter Sunnis — and Sunnis retaliate — on a much greater scale than now takes place.

Edwards, who has suggested he would intervene in a genocide, has tried to position himself as the more forceful anti-war candidate by criticizing Clinton and Obama for not pushing hard enough in the Senate to bring the troops home.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd has called for the U.S. military to "begin redeploying immediately." In a debate last week in Chicago, he said: "We can do so with 2 ½ divisions coming out each month, done safely and reasonably well."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2003832818_dems12.html

Hackers slam US on UN website

New York - The official website of the United Nations appeared to have been hacked on Sunday and briefly displayed a message protesting American and Israeli policies in the Middle East.

The section of the site reserved for statements by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon showed a message, repeated several times, that read: "Hacked By kerem125 M0sted and Gsy. That is Cyber Protest. Hey Ysrail and USA, don't kill children and other people... Peace forever. No war."

The message also appeared on other Web pages that usually display quotes and speeches from the secretary general.

The pirate message disappeared from the UN website at about 9.15am (13h15 GMT).

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=22&art_id=nw20070812212426434C688744

Associated Press

Bush War Adviser Says Draft Worth a Look

By RICHARD LARDNER

08.10.07, 6:25 PM ET

WASHINGTON -
Frequent tours for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have stressed the all-volunteer force and made it worth considering a return to a military draft, President Bush's new war adviser said Friday.

"I think it makes sense to certainly consider it," Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said in an interview with National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."

"And I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table. But ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation's security by one means or another," Lute added in his first interview since he was confirmed by the Senate in June.

President Nixon abolished the draft in 1973. Restoring it, Lute said, would be a "major policy shift" and Bush has made it clear that he doesn't think it's necessary.

The repeated deployments affect not only the troops but their families, who can influence whether a service member decides to stay in the military, Lute said.

"There's both a personal dimension of this, where this kind of stress plays out across dinner tables and in living room conversations within these families," he said. "And ultimately, the health of the all-volunteer force is going to rest on those sorts of personal family decisions."

The military conducted a draft during the Civil War and both world wars and between 1948 and 1973. The Selective Service System, re-established in 1980, maintains a registry of 18-year-old men.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., has called for reinstating the draft as a way to end the Iraq war.

Bush picked Lute in mid-May as a deputy national security adviser with responsibility for ensuring efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are coordinated with policymakers in Washington. Lute, an active-duty general, was chosen after several retired generals turned down the job.

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/10/ap4010040.html

The Terror America Wrought

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070807_robert_scheer_august_8_a_bomb/
Posted on Aug 7, 2007
By Robert Scheer

During a week of mayhem in Iraq, in which terrorists have rightly been condemned for targeting schoolchildren, it is sobering to recall that this week is also the 62nd anniversary of a U.S. attack that deliberately took the lives of thousands of children on their way to school in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As noted in the Strategic Bombing Survey conducted at President Harry Truman’s request, when the bomb hit Hiroshima on April 6, 1945, “nearly all the school children ... were at work in the open,” to be exploded, irradiated or incinerated in the perfect firestorm that the planners back at the University of California-run Los Alamos lab had envisioned for the bomb’s maximum psychological impact.

The terror plot worked all too well, as Hiroshima’s Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba recalled this week: “That fateful summer, 8:15 a.m. The roar of a B-29 breaks the morning calm. A parachute opens in the blue sky. Then suddenly, a flash, an enormous blast—silence—hell on Earth. The eyes of young girls watching the parachute were melted. Their faces became giant charred blisters. The skin of people seeking help dangled from their fingernails. ... Others died when their eyeballs and internal organs burst from their bodies—Hiroshima was a hell where those who somehow survived envied the dead.”

Like most of the others killed by the two American bombs, neither the children nor the adults had any role in Japan’s decision to go to war, but they were picked as the target instead of an isolated but fortified military base whose antiaircraft fire posed a higher risk. The target preferred by U.S. atomic scientists—a patch in the ocean or unpopulated terrain—was rejected, because the effect of hundreds of thousands of civilians dying would be all the more dramatic.

The victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were available soft targets, much like the children playing in Iraq, suddenly caught in the crossfire of battles waged beyond their control. In “White Light/Black Rain,” a devastating HBO documentary released this week, there is an interview with the sole survivor of a Japanese elementary school of 620 students. The murder of the other 619, and the 370,000 overall deaths attributed to the bombings, 85 percent of which were civilian deaths, has never compelled a widespread examination of the “end justifies the means” morality of our own state-sanctioned acts of terror. Indeed, the horrifying footage taken by Japanese and American cameramen soon after the devastation, and shown in the HBO film, was long kept secret by the U.S. government for fear that an informed American public might question this nation’s incipient nuclear arms race.

Just exactly what distinguishes the United States’ use of the ever-so-cutely-named “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” atomic bombs on cities in Japan from the car bombs of Baghdad or the planes that smashed into the World Trade Center? To even raise the question, as was found in one recent university case, can be a career-ending move.

Of course, we had our justifications, as terrorists always do. Truman defended his decision to drop the atomic bombs on civilians over the objection of leading atomic scientists on the grounds that it was a necessary military action to save lives by forcing a quick Japanese surrender. He insisted on that imperative despite the objections of top military figures, including Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, who contended that the war would end quickly without dropping the bomb.

The subsequent release of formerly secret documents makes a hash of Truman’s rationalization. His White House was fully informed that the Japanese were on the verge of collapse, and their surrender was made all the more likely by the Soviets’ imminent entry into the fight.

At most, the Japanese were asking for the face-saving gesture of retaining their emperor, and even that modest demand would likely have been abandoned with the shift of massive numbers of Allied troops and firepower from the battlefront of a defeated Germany to a confrontation with its deeply wounded Asian ally. Instead, the U.S. played midwife to the birth of the nuclear monster, the ultimate terrorist weapon that presents a continuing and growing threat to the survival of human life on Earth.

This is a lesson to be pondered at a time when President Bush plays power games with a nuclear-equipped Russia while coddling Pakistan, the main proliferator of nuclear weapons to rogue regimes, and Congress authorizes an expansion of the U.S. nuclear program to better fight the war on terror by “improving” the ultimate weapon of terror, which the U.S. alone stands guilty of using.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070807_robert_scheer_august_8_a_bomb

190,000 US weapons feared missing in Iraq

Mark Tran

Monday August 6, 2007

Guardian Unlimited

More than 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols distributed to Iraqi forces by the US are missing, feared fallen into the hands of insurgents, a congressional watchdog warned today.

The highest previous estimate of missing weapons was 14,000, but a new report from the government accountability office (GAO) said US military officials did not know what had happened to 30% of the weapons the US had given to Iraqi forces since 2004.

"They really have no idea where they are," Rachel Stohl, a senior analyst at the Centre for Defence Information, told the Washington Post, which reported the GAO's findings. "It likely means that the United States is unintentionally providing weapons to bad actors."

The US has spent $19.2bn (£9.4bn) trying to develop Iraqi security forces since 2003, including at least $2.8bn on buying and delivering equipment, according to the GAO. However, the watchdog said, weapons distribution was rushed and failed to follow established procedures, particularly in 2004 and 2005. During that period, security training was led by General David Petraeus, now the top US commander in Iraq.

A senior Pentagon official told the paper some of the weapons were probably being used against US forces, pointing to the Iraqi brigade created at Falluja, which quickly disintegrated in September 2004 and turned its weapons against the Americans.

The GAO reached the estimate of 190,000 missing weapons -110,000 AK-47s and 80,000 pistols - by comparing the records of the Multi-National Security Transition Command for Iraq against records Gen Petraeus maintained of the arms and equipment he had ordered. Gen Petraeus's figures were compared with classified data and other records. In all cases the gaps were enormous, the Washington Post reported.

During the Bosnian conflict in the 1990s, the US provided about $100m of equipment to the Bosnian Federation Army. The GAO found no problems in accounting for those weapons.

Although the state department usually operates security assistance programmes, the Pentagon is managing the equipment programme for Iraqi forces.

The defence department said this allowed for more flexibility. But as of last month it was unable to tell the GAO which accountability procedures, if any, applied to arms distributed to Iraqi forces, the report found.

Much of the equipment provided to Iraqi troops, including the AK-47s, comes from former Soviet countries.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2142774,00.html

Iraq faces alarming humanitarian crisis

By David Loyn

BBC developing world correspondent

Iraq's people were poor and lacked most of the normal signs of development, even before the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Then it was possible to blame the problems of dictatorship and international sanctions, but since the US-led invasion continuing poverty in this oil-rich state has had other causes.

A new report by Oxfam says that the continuing failure to provide even the most basic services to many Iraqis will not only cause continuing suffering, but "serve to further destabilise the country".

Oxfam are unable to work on the ground in Iraq in the way that they would elsewhere, but working with the NGO Co-ordination Committee in Iraq (NCCI), their new survey finds "eight million people in need of emergency aid".

The survey recognises that armed violence is the greatest threat facing Iraqis, but finds a population "increasingly threatened by disease and malnutrition".

Savage divisions

Clear statistical analysis is difficult, but the Oxfam/NCCI report believes that more than two million people are now internally displaced within Iraq, as savage new lines are drawn between communities who were not at war before.

Delivering aid to them provides new challenges to a system that is coping even less well than it did in the year after the war.

Of the four million Iraqis who are registered to receive food assistance, 60% receive it. That is down from 96% in the year after the war.

Fewer people have access to clean water than did under Saddam Hussein, and 80% have no access to effective sanitation, a figure comparable to sub-Saharan Africa.

Most UN agencies have found it difficult to operate in Iraq since the devastating bomb that killed their special representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and many of his staff only six months after the invasion.

The invasion itself was not mandated by the UN, but the reconstruction effort has since won more international support and its backing.

Humanitarian needs neglected

The Oxfam/NCCI report finds that the immediate needs of Iraqis are being neglected by international funding, which is targeted at longer term development goals.

These goals will be hard to achieve given the major security challenges.

The report finds that funding for these longer-term projects went up by almost 1000% in the first two years after the invasion, but, despite the need, immediate humanitarian aid fell by about a half.

The report says that the right of the people of Iraq to humanitarian support "is being neglected".

But, while reminding the international community and the UN of their moral responsibility, it recommends a number of basic steps that the government in Baghdad could take to improve the plight of the people.

Most urgently, the report demands that government assistance should be devolved to local control.

That way, locally accountable bodies could inspect the warehouses and delivery systems for aid.

This report must represent a major challenge both to the international authorities and the Iraqi government, who are both found to be failing their people.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6921623.stm

Bill to give troops more time at home passes House

The Virginian-Pilot

© August 3, 2007

Last updated: 9:34 PM

WASHINGTON

The House voted Thursday to give U.S. troops guaranteed time at home between deployments to Iraq, the latest challenge to President Bush from Democrats determined to end an unpopular war.

Bush threatened to veto the measure, which passed on a vote of 229-194. Six Republicans broke ranks to support it, and three more voted "present" rather than take a firm position.

House Democrats staged the vote as Defense Secretary Robert Gates became the latest administration official to acknowledge miscalculations about Iraq and a national public opinion poll said support for a troop withdrawal exceeds 60 percent.

The House measure would require that regular military units returning from the war receive at least as much time at home as they spend in Iraq. Reserve units would get a home stay three times as long as they spend in the war zone.

The "dwell time" provisions that cleared the House are nearly identical to a plan championed all summer by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., but blocked on the Senate floor last month by Republicans.

Webb said Thursday he's hopeful the House bill can be steered to passage with a simple majority - 51 votes - rather than the 60 demanded for his plan last month by Senate Republicans.

Senate rules permit unlimited debate on any bill, unless 60 or more senators vote to cut off discussion. The minority party - Republican since January - routinely uses the rule to kill legislation it dislikes by simply extending debate indefinitely and blocking a vote on passage.

Republicans say the bill would be an unconstitutional intrusion on the president's authority as commander in chief.

This story was compiled from reports by staff writer Dale Eisman and The Associated Press.

**********************************************************

I realize that christians and, republicans and the Pres. don't like the idea of giving this break to the troops, but I would like my brother to get the break. But its hard to win against christians who want human blood.

http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=129632&ran=9635

Senate Votes To Expand Warrantless Surveillance

White House Applauds; Changes Are Temporary

By Joby Warrick and Ellen Nakashima

Washington Post Staff Writers

Saturday, August 4, 2007; A01

The Senate bowed to White House pressure last night and passed a Republican plan for overhauling the federal government's terrorist surveillance laws, approving changes that would temporarily give U.S. spy agencies expanded power to eavesdrop on foreign suspects without a court order.

The 60 to 28 vote, which was quickly denounced by civil rights and privacy advocates, came after Democrats in the House failed to win support for more modest changes that would have required closer court supervision of government surveillance. Earlier in the day, President Bush threatened to hold Congress in session into its scheduled summer recess if it did not approve the changes he wanted.

The legislation, which is expected to go before the House today, would expand the government's authority to intercept without a court order the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States who are communicating with people overseas.

As currently written, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act already gives U.S. spies broad leeway to monitor the communications of foreign terrorism suspects, but the 30-year-old statute requires a warrant to monitor calls intercepted in the United States, regardless of where the calls begin or end.

At the White House, where officials had voiced concern about that requirement, a spokesman praised the Senate vote and called on House leaders to quickly follow suit. The legislation will "give our intelligence professionals the essential tools they need to protect our nation," spokesman Tony Fratto said.

Democratic leaders expressed disappointment about the result, but they pointed to language that would require lawmakers to reconsider the key provisions in six months.

"My Republican colleagues chose to rubber-stamp a flawed administration proposal that fails to provide the accountability needed in the light of the administration's past mismanagement of key tools in the war on terror," said Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).

Sixteen Democrats and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) joined all 43 Republicans in supporting the measure, which is nearly identical to a proposal prepared by the Bush administration. "We're at war. The enemy wants to attack us," Lieberman said during the Senate debate. "This is not the time to strive for legislative perfection."

Privacy advocates accused the Democrats of selling out and charged that this bill gives the government more authority than it had under a controversial warrantless wiretapping program begun in secret after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Under that program, the government could conduct surveillance without judicial oversight only if it had a reason to believe that one party to the call was a member of or affiliated with al-Qaeda or a related terrorist organization. This bill drops that condition, they noted.

Democrats "have a Pavlovian reaction: Whenever the president says the word 'terrorism,' they roll over and play dead," said Caroline Fredrickson, Washington legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, predicted that the bill's approval would lead to the monitoring of ordinary Americans by the National Security Agency, which conducts most of the government's electronic surveillance. "If this bill becomes law, Americans who communicate with a person abroad can count on one thing: The NSA may be listening," he said.

Congressional Democrats and the White House clashed throughout the day not only over the scope of the changes in the law but also over whether the other side was bargaining in good faith. Democrats said they were convinced that their proposal met key the demands of Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, and House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) quoted him as saying that the bill "significantly enhances America's security."

But Republicans cited a letter from McConnell yesterday afternoon calling the proposal unacceptable and warning that it would prevent him from protecting the country adequately from terrorist attacks. That assertion in turn prompted charges by Democrats that the White House had overruled McConnell in an effort to gain political advantage by painting their party as weak on terrorism.

"We did everything he wants," Brendan Daly, spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said of McConnell, "and now he says he doesn't like the bill. They didn't move the goal post; they moved the stadium." Pelosi herself accused the Republicans of not caring "about the truth."

White House officials disputed Democrats' account of the tentative deal, and Republicans said McConnell's objections were justified by the Democrats' decision to subject more surveillance to oversight by a special intelligence court than the administration wants.

Adding to the drama was Bush's pressure on lawmakers to stay in Washington until a new measure is passed. The president said he opposes Congress's adjournment for its summer recess this weekend unless it approves "a bill I can sign." Presidents have the power to call Congress into emergency session to consider matters of national importance, although the power is rarely used.

"We have worked hard and in good faith with the Democrats to find a solution," Bush said at a news briefing after a meeting with counterterrorism officials at FBI headquarters yesterday morning. "But we are not going to put our national security at risk."

The administration and congressional Democrats agree on the need to update the FISA statute to reflect the realities of 21st-century telecommunications, including the ever-expanding digital world of e-mail, podcasts and text messages.

White House and intelligence officials have sought a broad overhaul of the act to allow spy agencies to listen in on terrorism suspects quickly, without having to apply for a court order, as is required for surveillance that targets U.S. residents. But Democratic leaders say the administration's proposals could lead to broad searches of phone calls and e-mails by ordinary Americans without judicial review.

"Given the experience of the last few years, we are reluctant to give blanket authority to any president, most especially this one," said a senior Senate aide familiar with negotiations on the surveillance bill.

White House officials complained that Democratic proposals do not give them a crucial tool: the ability to begin wiretapping without having to go to a court. "Every day we don't have [this wiretap authority], we don't know what's going on outside the country," a senior White House official said. "All you need is one communication from, say, Pakistan to Afghanistan that's routed through Seattle that tells you 'I'm about to do a truck bomb in New York City' or 'about to do a truck bomb in Iraq,' and it's too late."

The administration has been negotiating with Democrats for weeks over the issue, but talks intensified as Congress prepared to adjourn this week. Last year, the administration mounted a similar high-pressure campaign on the eve of a congressional recess, to revise legislation governing the interrogation and trial of detainees.

Adding to the urgency for the administration is a secret ruling by a FISA judge earlier this year that declared surveillance of purely foreign communications that pass through a U.S. communications node illegal without a court-approved warrant -- a requirement that intelligence officials have described as unacceptably burdensome.

Staff writers Josh White and Jonathan Weisman contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/03/AR2007080302296.html?hpid=topnews

Plymouth Marine sentenced in killing
Jury orders 15 years in Iraqi civilian death
By Anna Badkhen, Globe Correspondent August 4, 2007

Sergeant Lawrence G. Hutchins III had planned to spend his life in the Marine Corps, and before he left for Iraq last year, the Plymouth native gave his friends wallet-sized pictures of himself in Marine blues against a backdrop of an American flag.

Yesterday, a military jury at Camp Pendleton in California sentenced Hutchins, 23, to 15 years in prison for murdering an Iraqi civilian, reduced his rank to private, and dishonorably discharged him. The sentence was announced the day after the court-martial found Hutchins guilty of unpremeditated murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

His wife, Reyna, burst into tears as the verdict was read And in Massachusetts, friends and supporters of Hutchins wept after they learned about the sentence, their hopes that he would be released crushed.

"A terrible thing has happened," said Tom Bolinder, a retired Marine from Quincy, weeping quietly during a telephone interview. Bolinder is a member of the Quincy-based Military Combat Defense Fund, which helped raise money for Hutchins's defense, and a family friend.

"This is war and Larry was trying to do something to stop the Marines from being killed. He's going to be 38 years old when he gets out. His daughter will be 17," Bo linder said, referring to Hutchins's 2-year-old daughter, Kylie. "This is a sad day for him, and for us."

Members of Hutchins's squad testified under oath that on April 26, 2006, Hutchins became frustrated after his squad failed to find a suspected insurgent in the Iraqi village of Hamdaniya. Instead, prosecutors said, Hutchins masterminded and led the kidnapping and execution of Hashim Ibrahim Awad, 52, a retired policeman.

After shooting Awad three times in the head, the Marines placed a Kalashnikov rifle in Awad's hands and a shovel next to him, to make it appear as though the Iraqi had been planting a roadside bomb. Afterward, according to the testimony, Hutchins told his squad members: "Congratulations. We just got away with murder, gents."

The jury dropped the original charges of premeditated murder, which would have led to a life sentence.

Instead, jurors found Hutchins guilty of murder, conspiracy, making a false official statement, and larceny. He was acquitted of kidnapping, assault, and housebreaking.

Hutchins became the only member of the eight-man squad to be convicted of murder in the case. Five members have pleaded guilty to lesser charges and received sentences ranging from one to eight years.

The court-martial stripped two other Marines of their rank, and sentenced one to time he had already served while he awaited trial.

Hutchins's parents, Kathleen and Lawrence Jr., a retired Marine, and his younger brother, Kurt, were in California and declined to comment.

But Seth Lawrence, a friend of Hutchins in Plymouth, said Kurt called him as soon as the sentence was announced.

He was stunned and shocked and, like, 'I don't even know what to say,' " said Lawrence, 32, the owner of a youth dirt-bike racing team for which the Marine had competed as a teenager. "I was hoping to hear: 'He's free. He's out.' "

Lawrence remembered how Hutchins walked into his bicycle shop before leaving for Iraq and handed him a military-issue picture of himself.

"He was the proudest person to be a Marine," Lawrence said. "And now he's getting thrown in jail for 15 years for joining the Marines.

"Had they not sent him over there he'd be an ordinary, very productive person in this society."

Hutchins spent four months in Iraq before the killing. In an interview with the Globe last month, Hutchins's parents said their son's descriptions of the war painted a picture of relentless violence and deprivation, excruciating patrols of hostile villages, and nights spent sleeping on the floors of abandoned houses.

Earlier yesterday, a separate jury sentenced Marine Corporal Marshall Magincalda, 24, to the 448 days in custody that he has already served.

Magincalda, who was acquitted of murder but found guilty of larceny, housebreaking, and conspiring to murder an Iraqi civilian, was also reduced in rank to private.

"I was very happy that I got a fair trial," Magincalda said after the sentencing.

"I feel really good, and I feel proud to serve as a Marine."

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/08/04/plymouth_marine_sentenced_in_killing/

Joint Chiefs nominees see no limits on militants in Iraq
By David Stout
Tuesday, July 31, 2007

WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush's choices to lead the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the senior uniformed leadership of the armed services, said Tuesday that they were concerned about the seemingly inexhaustible numbers of Sunni Arab militant fighters in Iraq and about the Iraqi government's failure to take control of the country.

Admiral Michael Mullen, the nominee to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and James Cartwright, the marine general nominated for vice chairman, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that the United States could still win in Iraq - and that it cannot afford to lose there.

Perhaps the most sobering assessment of the campaign came during an exchange with committee members about the definition of victory in Iraq and the nature of the enemy.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, asked Cartwright if the recent increase in American troop strength in the country was "diminishing Al Qaeda's presence and viability in Iraq."

"We are challenging it," Cartwright replied. "And in that challenge, in areas we are diminishing it, for sure."

But the general went on: "They are resilient. They seem to have an unlimited pool from which to draw from if you're on the battlefield. In other words, as we defeat, others come in behind."

The increase in American strength, he said, "is challenging their ability to be resilient."

When Graham asked Mullen how he would define "winning in Iraq," the admiral said he worried about specific definitions. He said he hoped to see "a stable Iraq which can govern itself," reconcile the feuding factions within the country and not be a haven for terrorists.

Pressed to gauge the chances of an American victory, Mullen acknowledged that he was troubled about the Iraqis' failure to come together politically. "I would be concerned about whether we'd be winning or not," he conceded.

Cartwright said he thought victory was achievable. "It's going to be a challenge," he said.

A mid-September progress report from General David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, will offer a chance to determine whether the path "we're on is the right path or whether we want to make adjustments," he said.

The admiral said he saw the struggle in Iraq as one with global impact. Asked whether he believed that "this is a war really we can't afford to lose, when it's all said and done," as Graham put it, he replied, "Yes, sir."

The military leaders' testimony may have offered grist both for supporters and opponents of Bush's policy. The president himself has said that the war is one that must be won, not only for peace in the Middle East but for American security worldwide.

But Cartwright's comments about Sunni Arab militants' strength in Iraq may be seized upon by critics of the war, many of whom have said that Al Qaeda was not even present in Iraq before the American invasion of 2003 and that the invasion created an opportunity for terrorists.

Mullen, who would succeed General Peter Pace as Joint Chiefs chairman, and Cartwright appeared certain to win the committee's endorsement for confirmation by the full Senate. The panel's chairman, Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, who has been highly critical of the administration's Iraq policy, called the nominees "outstanding individuals with exceptional military backgrounds," and other committee members offered similar praise.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/31/news/military.php

Analysis says war could cost $1 trillion
Budget office sees effect on taxpayers for decade
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff August 1, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The war in Iraq could ultimately cost well over a trillion dollars -- at least double what has already been spent -- including the long-term costs of replacing damaged equipment, caring for wounded troops, and aiding the Iraqi government, according to a new government analysis.

The United States has already allocated more than $500 billion on the day-to-day combat operations of what are now 190,000 troops and a variety of reconstruction efforts.

In a report to lawmakers yesterday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that even under the rosiest scenario -- an immediate and substantial reduction of troops -- American taxpayers will feel the financial consequences of the war for at least a decade.

The calculations include the estimated cost to leave some US forces behind for at least several years to support the Iraqi government, but they also predict other long-term costs, such as extended medical care and disability compensation for wounded soldiers and survivor's benefits for the families of the thousands of combat-zone fatalities.

The cost of the war in Iraq and other military operations has soared to the point where "we are now spending on these activities more than 10 percent of all the government's annually appropriated funds," said Robert A. Sunshine, the budget office's assistant director for budget analysis.

Those costs -- both to sustain the current mission in Iraq and to pay longer-term "hidden" expenses like troop healthcare and replacement equipment -- are far more than US officials advertised when Congress gave President Bush the authority to launch the invasion in March 2003.

At the time, the White House and then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld predicted a quick, decisive victory and counted on Iraqi oil revenues to pay for the war. And when Lawrence Lindsey, one of Bush's top budget advisers, estimated in 2003 that the entire undertaking could cost as much as $200 billion, he was fired.

Even that estimate -- which the Bush administration described at the time as far too high -- was still well off the mark. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that as of June, up to $500 billion has been spent on combat operations in Iraq.

In the coming years, the price tag will be substantially higher. Testifying before the House Budget Committee yesterday, Sunshine told lawmakers that he used two scenarios -- an optimistic one in which most US troops are withdrawn, and another in which a sizable contingent remains for several years -- to calculate anticipated costs.

If the United States gradually reduced its troop level in Iraq to 30,000 by 2010, the US Treasury would still have to provide up to $500 billion more to sustain those troops, as well as pay other expenses, he said in the report.

In the alternative scenario -- in which 75,000 US troops remain stationed in Iraq over the next five years -- the nation would have to pay an additional $900 billion, according to the analysis.

Members of Congress welcomed the report, noting that the Pentagon has requested only annual expenditures and has refused to provide long-term estimates.

When the committee yesterday asked Gordon England, deputy secretary of defense, whether he agreed with the estimates, he maintained that "we don't have that degree of certainty" about the future costs of the war.

Representative John Spratt a South Carolina Democrat and the Budget Committee chairman, responded that the budget office numbers are "an extrapolation from existing costs. And we've got five years of experience, so they're . . . not building an assumption out of the air. They're extrapolating from known costs to what future costs are likely to be at certain force levels."

Some of the future costs will be incurred long after major combat operations end, according to the report.

The 16-page analysis estimated that the medical costs would be more than $9 billion if the United States stations 30,000 troops in Iraq, and would cost almost $13 billion if 75,000 troops remain there for the next several years.

The report estimates that training police and ground forces in Iraq and a relatively smaller number in Afghanistan over the next decade will require at least an additional $50 billion. Meanwhile, the government will have to spend at least $20 billion more for US diplomatic operations, to assist local governments, and to promote economic development in Iraq through 2017 -- regardless of how many US troops remain in the country.

Lawmakers expressed concern that the White House is not adequately preparing the country for the financial burden.

Representative James P. McGovern, a Worcester Democrat and a member of the budget panel, said that England couldn't give a firm answer when asked how much the Pentagon needed to pay for Bush's decision to dispatch 30,000 more troops to secure Iraq earlier this year. England said the costs the Pentagon anticipated a few months ago for military operations in fiscal year 2008 -- about $142 billion -- will no longer be enough.

The military will need more money because of the "surge" and the purchase of hundreds of armored vehicles capable of withstanding the roadside bombs responsible for most of the US combat deaths. England said the Pentagon will provide a revised 2008 cost estimate in September.

But McGovern said he is worried about the long-term financial impact of the war, adding that his primary concern is that the United States is borrowing money to pay for it. Some leading economists have predicted that, depending on how long troops remain in Iraq, the endeavor could reach several trillion dollars as a result of more "hidden" costs -- including recruiting expenses to replenish the ranks and the lifelong benefits the government pays to veterans.

"It is being paid for on the national credit card," McGovern said. "It is being put on their backs of our kids and grandkids. That is indefensible."

McGovern said he is considering proposing that a "war tax" be levied on all Americans to cover the ballooning expenses.

"We should find a way to pay for it so that when this war is over we are not bankrupt," he said.

Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.



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