American troops in Afghanistan losing heart, say army chaplains - Times Online

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American soldiers serving in Afghanistan are depressed and deeply disillusioned, according to the chaplains of two US battalions that have spent nine months on the front line in the war against the Taleban.

Many feel that they are risking their lives — and that colleagues have died — for a futile mission and an Afghan population that does nothing to help them, the chaplains told The Times in their makeshift chapel on this fortress-like base in a dusty, brown valley southwest of Kabul.

“The many soldiers who come to see us have a sense of futility and anger about being here. They are really in a state of depression and despair and just want to get back to their families,” said Captain Jeff Masengale, of the 10th Mountain Division’s 2-87 Infantry Battalion.

“They feel they are risking their lives for progress that’s hard to discern,” said Captain Sam Rico, of the Division’s 4-25 Field Artillery Battalion. “They are tired, strained, confused and just want to get through.” The chaplains said that they were speaking out because the men could not.

The base is not, it has to be said, obviously downcast, and many troops do not share the chaplains’ assessment. The soldiers are, by nature and training, upbeat, driven by a strong sense of duty, and they do their jobs as best they can. Re-enlistment rates are surprisingly good for the 2-87, though poor for the 4-25. Several men approached by The Times, however, readily admitted that their morale had slumped.

“We’re lost — that’s how I feel. I’m not exactly sure why we’re here,” said Specialist Raquime Mercer, 20, whose closest friend was shot dead by a renegade Afghan policeman last Friday. “I need a clear-cut purpose if I’m going to get hurt out here or if I’m going to die.”

Sergeant Christopher Hughes, 37, from Detroit, has lost six colleagues and survived two roadside bombs. Asked if the mission was worthwhile, he replied: “If I knew exactly what the mission was, probably so, but I don’t.”

The only soldiers who thought it was going well “work in an office, not on the ground”. In his opinion “the whole country is going to s***”.

The battalion’s 1,500 soldiers are nine months in to a year-long deployment that has proved extraordinarily tough. Their goal was to secure the mountainous Wardak province and then to win the people’s allegiance through development and good governance. They have, instead, found themselves locked in an increasingly vicious battle with the Taleban.

They have been targeted by at least 300 roadside bombs, about 180 of which have exploded. Nineteen men have been killed in action, with another committing suicide. About a hundred have been flown home with amputations, severe burns and other injuries likely to cause permanent disability, and many of those have not been replaced. More than two dozen mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles (MRAPs) have been knocked out of action.

Living conditions are good — abundant food, air-conditioned tents, hot water, free internet — but most of the men are on their second, third or fourth tours of Afghanistan and Iraq, with barely a year between each. Staff Sergeant Erika Cheney, Airborne’s mental health specialist, expressed concern about their mental state — especially those in scattered outposts — and believes that many have mild post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). “They’re tired, frustrated, scared. A lot of them are afraid to go out but will still go,” she said.

Lieutenant Peter Hjelmstad, 2-87’s Medical Platoon Leader, said sleeplessness and anger attacks were common.

A dozen men have been confined to desk jobs because they can no longer handle missions outside the base. One long-serving officer who has lost three friends this tour said he sometimes returned to his room at night and cried, or played war games on his laptop. “It’s a release. It’s a method of coping.” He has nightmares and sleeps little, and it does not help that the base is frequently shaken by outgoing artillery fire. He was briefly overcome as he recalled how, when a lorry backfired during his most recent home leave, he grabbed his young son and dived between two parked cars.

The chaplains said soldiers were seeking their help in unprecedented numbers. “Everyone you meet is just down, and you meet them everywhere — in the weight room, dining facility, getting mail,” said Captain Rico. Even “hard men” were coming to their tent chapel and breaking down.

The men are frustrated by the lack of obvious purpose or progress. “The soldiers’ biggest question is: what can we do to make this war stop. Catch one person? Assault one objective? Soldiers want definite answers, other than to stop the Taleban, because that almost seems impossible. It’s hard to catch someone you can’t see,” said Specialist Mercer.

“It’s a very frustrating mission,” said Lieutenant Hjelmstad. “The average soldier sees a friend blown up and his instinct is to retaliate or believe it’s for something [worthwhile], but it’s not like other wars where your buddy died but they took the hill. There’s no tangible reward for the sacrifice. It’s hard to say Wardak is better than when we got here.”

Captain Masengale, a soldier for 12 years before he became a chaplain, said: “We want to believe in a cause but we don’t know what that cause is.”

The soldiers are angry that colleagues are losing their lives while trying to help a population that will not help them. “You give them all the humanitarian assistance that they want and they’re still going to lie to you. They’ll tell you there’s no Taleban anywhere in the area and as soon as you roll away, ten feet from their house, you get shot at again,” said Specialist Eric Petty, from Georgia.

Captain Rico told of the disgust of a medic who was asked to treat an insurgent shortly after pulling a colleague’s charred corpse from a bombed vehicle.

The soldiers complain that rules of engagement designed to minimise civilian casualties mean that they fight with one arm tied behind their backs. “They’re a joke,” said one. “You get shot at but can do nothing about it. You have to see the person with the weapon. It’s not enough to know which house the shooting’s coming from.”

The soldiers joke that their Isaf arm badges stand not for International Security Assistance Force but “I Suck At Fighting” or “I Support Afghan Farmers”.

To compound matters, soldiers are mainly being killed not in combat but on routine journeys, by roadside bombs planted by an invisible enemy. “That’s very demoralising,” said Captain Masengale.

The constant deployments are, meanwhile, playing havoc with the soldiers’ private lives. “They’re killing families,” he said. “Divorces are skyrocketing. PTSD is off the scale. There have been hundreds of injuries that send soldiers home and affect families for the rest of their lives.”

The chaplains said that many soldiers had lost their desire to help Afghanistan. “All they want to do is make it home alive and go back to their wives and children and visit the families who have lost husbands and fathers over here. It comes down to just surviving,” said Captain Masengale.

“If we make it back with ten toes and ten fingers the mission is successful,” Sergeant Hughes said.

“You carry on for the guys to your left or right,” added Specialist Mercer.

The chaplains have themselves struggled to cope with so much distress. “We have to encourage them, strengthen them and send them out again. No one comes in and says, ‘I’ve had a great day on a mission’. It’s all pain,” said Captain Masengale. “The only way we’ve been able to make it is having each other.”

Lieutenant-Colonel Kimo Gallahue, 2-87’s commanding officer, denied that his men were demoralised, and insisted they had achieved a great deal over the past nine months. A triathlete and former rugby player, he admitted pushing his men hard, but argued that taking the fight to the enemy was the best form of defence.

He said the security situation had worsened because the insurgents had chosen to fight in Wardak province, not abandon it. He said, however, that the situation would have been catastrophic without his men. They had managed to keep open the key Kabul-to-Kandahar highway which dissects Wardak, and prevent the province becoming a launch pad for attacks on the capital, which is barely 20 miles from its border. Above all, Colonel Gallahue argued that counter-insurgency — winning the allegiance of the indigenous population through security, development and good governance — was a long and laborious process that could not be completed in a year. “These 12 months have been, for me, laying the groundwork for future success,” he said.

At morning service on Sunday, the two chaplains sought to boost the spirits of their flock with uplifting hymns, accompanied by video footage of beautiful lakes, oceans and rivers.

Captain Rico offered a particularly apposite reading from Corinthians: “We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; perplexed but not driven to despair; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.”

Turkey Sidesteps Obstacle to Armenia Pact - WSJ.com

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By MARC CHAMPION in Istanbul and NICHOLAS BIRCH in Kars, Turkey

Turkey has dropped a key condition to signing an agreement Saturday that would reopen its border with Armenia and establish diplomatic relations between the two nations, which have been divided for generations by a dispute over genocide.

"The agreement will be signed on Oct. 10," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told The Wall Street Journal -- provided, he said, that Armenia doesn't ask for changes to the text.

Supporters of the pact -- which include the U.S. and the European Union -- say they hope the change could trigger a virtuous cycle, opening up and stabilizing a region that is increasingly important for oil and gas transit and last year saw a war between Russia and Georgia.

But in Kars, the Turkish city closest to the Armenian border, skeptics point to a concrete monument to unity between the two peoples to show why an embrace between neighbors is far from certain.

The statue of two 100-foot tall human figures, standing face to face on a hill above the city, is incomplete: A giant hand that would join the figures was never attached.

It lies abandoned on the gravel below.

The monument, built last year, is now under threat of destruction.

"Small-minded people blocked the monument and they will block the peace process too," says Naif Alibeyoglu, who had the statue built when he was mayor of Kars. His 10 years in office ended in March. "You wait and see, [the deal] will end up like my statue: a statue without hands."

Supporters of the agreement, however, have sidestepped a significant hurdle: Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan said in an interview Sunday that the signing wasn't dependent on progress at talks this week between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan over their territorial conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.

It was because of Armenia's effective occupation of the ethnic Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan that Turkey closed the border in 1993.

An earlier attempt to sign the protocol in April stalled when Mr. Erdogan said it could go forward only after the Karabakh conflict was resolved.

The parliaments of Armenia and Turkey need to ratify the protocol for it to take force, something Mr. Erdogan said he couldn't guarantee, as parliamentarians in Ankara would have a free vote in a secret ballot.

Mr. Erdogan also said the two processes -- a resolution of the Karabakh conflict and rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia -- remain linked, and that a positive outcome at this week's talks, to be held in Moldova, would help overall.

Turkish officials have continued to indicate that the border could take longer to open than the three months set out in the three-page protocol.

The Turkish leader said the only obstacle to signing the deal Saturday would come if Armenia seeks to alter the text.

"This is perhaps the most important point -- that Armenia should not allow its policies to be taken hostage by the Armenian diaspora," Mr. Erdogan said. Much of Armenia's large diaspora opposes the protocol.

A spokesman for Armenian President Serge Sarkisian declined to comment on whether Armenia would seek changes to the protocol.

He said the government would soon make a statement on "steps" concerning the protocol.

Mr. Sarkisian has spent the week on a multination tour to explain his position to diaspora groups, some of which have protested the pact.

Opponents say it will be used by Turkey to reduce international pressure on it to recognize as genocide the 1915 slaughter of up to 1.5 million ethnic Armenians in what was then the Ottoman Empire.

The protocol would recognize the current frontier between Turkey and Armenia, and would set up a joint commission to review issues of history, likely to include the 1915 massacres. Turkey says they were collateral deaths during what amounted to civil war during World War I.

Mr. Alibeyoglu, the former Kars mayor, worked hard to improve relations between his city -- a former Armenian capital that changed hands and populations several times over centuries -- and its natural hinterland, the Caucasus.

He invited Armenian, Azeri and Georgian artists to festivals, signed sister-city agreements with cities across the region and, in 2004, gathered 50,000 signatures for a petition demanding the opening of the Turkish-Armenian border.

Kars would stand to benefit from the ability to trade across a border 25 miles away by train and truck.

But some 20% of the city's population are ethnic Azerbaijanis, who consider opening the border while Armenia remains in control of a fifth of Azerbaijan's territory a betrayal.

Sculptor Mehmet Aksoy says he abandoned his plan to run water down the statues to pool as tears, because nationalists complained these would be tears of Armenian rejoicing at reclaiming territory.

Indeed, one complaint of nationalist opponents of the protocol in Armenia is that the treaty's recognition of current borders would prevent any future claim to the swathe of Eastern Turkey that Armenia won in a 1920 treaty, only to lose it again in the 1921 Treaty of Kars between Russia and Turkey.

"Why is one figure standing with its head bowed, as if ashamed?" asks Oktay Aktas, an ethnic Azeri and local head of the Nationalist Action Party, or MHP, who wants the statue torn down. "Turkey has nothing to be ashamed of."

In fact, the two figures stand ramrod straight.

On the other side of the border, Armenian nationalists have taken to the streets to protest the pact with Turkey.

Turkey and Armenia are "like two neighbors who do not know each other," says Mr. Alibeyoglu, who in 2004 organized a petition to open the border. "Is he a terrorist? A mafioso? We needed to break the ice."

Nationalists applied to Turkey's Commission for Monuments to get construction of the monument stopped, on the basis that a viewing platform was built without permission.

In November, the commission ordered that it be demolished.

The monument's fate awaits a decision from the central government in Ankara.

U.S. Envoy Protests the Violence in Guinea - NYTimes.com

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By ADAM NOSSITER

CONAKRY, Guinea — The Obama administration has injected itself into the crisis in Guinea, taking the unusual step of sending a senior diplomat to protest the mass killings and rapes here last week.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called for “appropriate actions” against a military government that she said “cannot remain in power.”

“It was criminality of the greatest degree, and those who committed such acts should not be given any reason to expect that they will escape justice,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters in Washington. She said that the nation’s leader, Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara, and his government “must turn back to the people the right to choose their own leaders.”

The military seized power here last December, and pressure has been rising as Captain Camara, 45, backed off a pledge not to run in this country’s presidential elections in January. At a demonstration against him on Sept. 28, witnesses said soldiers opened fire on the crowds and raped and sexually assaulted female protesters. Human rights officials estimate that as many as 157 people were killed. The government has put the number at 56.

On Monday, William Fitzgerald, deputy assistant secretary of state, met with Captain Camara for two hours. He said he insisted, in strong language, that Captain Camara was responsible for the violence, despite the military strongman’s repeated denials. Mr. Fitzgerald said he also repeated that Captain Camara should not run in the elections, a key opposition demand.

“The message is, what happened on Sept. 28 is totally unacceptable, from every way you look at it — the killings, the gender violence,” Mr. Fitzgerald said in an interview at the United States Embassy here Tuesday. “I said, ‘Mr. President, whether you like it or not, it’s tied to you. You are responsible for Sept. 28. The buck stops with you.’ ”

The response from the captain was noncommittal, he said.

American pressure is limited in French-speaking West Africa, a region to which it has typically paid scant attention. But Mr. Fitzgerald’s meeting with Captain Camara is seen as significant by Africa experts as an example of President Obama’s push for good governance and human rights on the continent — the focus of a speech he gave in Ghana in July that is still widely commented on.

A month later, Mrs. Clinton traveled to eastern Congo to speak out against the systematic rape of girls and young women amid the sectarian strife there. She has made the fight against mass rape a major theme in a foreign policy that focuses on the plight of women in the developing world.

Mr. Fitzgerald’s visit comes after a week of international expressions of disgust over the violence at the Stade du 28 Septembre here. The stadium is named for the day in 1958 when Guineans voted against an offer of partnership from their colonial master, France, setting the stage for independence days later. Guinea was the first country in French-speaking Africa to declare independence.

The military government has claimed that many victims at the stadium were trampled. On Tuesday, The New York Times obtained photographs showing bodies in a pile and lined up, perhaps as many as 20, with no blood on them. But the bodies shown represent only a portion of the perhaps 160 dead, and scores of witnesses insist that most people were shot.

Days after the protest, the major hospital was still treating people suffering from gunshot wounds, and scores of people say they are still missing loved ones.

Sidya Touré, a former prime minister, who was at the stadium and was beaten by soldiers, said he saw the anonymously circulated pictures and speculated that the government allowed the bodies to be photographed to back their claims.

He said about 20 were indeed trampled in the frenzy of running from the bullets. But he, like many others, is adamant about the shooting.

“Absolutely,” he said in an interview Tuesday night. He said he was seated in the stands, with other opposition leaders.

“I saw people falling in front of me. I said, ‘Why are these people falling?’ ” Then, he said, he looked to his left. “I absolutely saw soldiers firing directly on people.”

France, a traditional partner of Guinea, has suspended military aid, and on Sunday its foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said, “It seems to me that today, one can no longer work with Dadis Camara, and there should be an international intervention.”

Captain Camara reacted angrily to these statements, telling reporters Monday that “Guinea is not a subprefecture, is not a neighborhood in France.”

The Economic Community of West African States, an alliance of West African nations, on Monday sent the president of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré, as a mediator between Captain Camara and the opposition. Diplomats and opposition figures here are skeptical, however, about Mr. Compaoré’s chances, as the opposition has insisted on a condition Captain Camara has not been willing to concede: that he not run for president.

American diplomats have previously refused to meet with Captain Camara. The special circumstances of last week’s massacre, however, dictated a meeting, diplomats suggested, and added urgency to their previous insistence that he not run.

“He’s a president in a bubble,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “I don’t think his advisers are telling him the truth about his popularity and his standing in the world.”

Captain Camara, known for a somewhat disjointed speaking style that is often hard to penetrate, nonetheless “was lucid,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.

“There was no evidence of drinking or drug-taking,” he said.

“In America’s view, Moussa Dadis Camara can’t be president, and we are going to hold him to that,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.

He acknowledged that “America’s leverage is not as strong here as it is in many parts of Africa,” but he said that sanctions, a visa ban and an asset freeze were all possibilities.

“I did say that he was becoming a pariah among world leaders, and that he had to think long and hard about possibly running for president, because the international community would not accept him as a leader,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.

Mark Landler contributed reporting from Washington and Steven Erlanger from Paris.

In Failed Strike on Saudi Prince, A New Fear of Al-Qaeda's Tactics - washingtonpost.com

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By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 7, 2009

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- The bomb was hidden inside the al-Qaeda assassin's body, and he arrived on his target's personal plane.

The target was Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, a senior member of Saudi Arabia's ruling family and head of the kingdom's counterterrorism operations. The bomber, who had crossed the border from Yemen, passed at least two security checks, then detonated himself less than a yard away from the prince. Somehow, the prince survived.

But the attack, on Aug. 27 during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, has sent tremors through Saudi Arabian and Western intelligence circles. The attack, the first serious assassination attempt against a member of the Saudi ruling family in decades, raised new concerns about al-Qaeda's tactics, strength, and its use of neighboring Yemen as a haven and training ground.

It also raised doubts about Saudi Arabia's program for combating terrorism, which focuses on rehabilitating militants and getting them to renounce al-Qaeda.

"It's an unbelievable stroke of luck that Prince Mohammed was little injured as he was," said a Western diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the topic's sensitive nature. "The whole Saudi approach to counter terrorism would have been challenged had he died."

Local reports described the attack unfolding during a traditional Ramadan gathering at the prince's palace in the coastal city of Jiddah. In interviews in the capital in recent days, Saudi Interior Ministry officials and Western diplomats provided information about the attack and the circumstances leading up to the prince's encounter with the al-Qaeda militant. Some details were reported by National Public Radio on Tuesday.

The assailant was Abdullah Hassan Tali Assiri, and he was No. 40 on a list of 85 terrorists that the Saudi government considered most dangerous. He was a Saudi but was based in Yemen, where al-Qaeda has been gaining strength. Saudi and Western officials said the attack was planned and launched from Yemen.

Al-Qaeda preyed on Mohammed's "soft approach" to combating terrorism. The prince is widely known to give personal assurances to militants and treat them with dignity if they renounce al-Qaeda. Those who enter an extremist rehabilitation program are given cars, houses and jobs upon graduation. When Saudi security forces kill terrorism suspects in raids, Prince Mohammed has been known to call the families to console them, according to Western diplomats and Saudi officials.

So it was no surprise that when Assiri contacted the prince, he was receptive.

Assiri informed the prince that he needed to meet him urgently, according to Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman Gen. Turki al Mansour. There were others who also wanted to renounce al-Qaeda and turn themselves in, Assiri told the prince.

The prince, said Mansour, brought up the case of Mohammed al-Awfi, a Saudi jihadist and former inmate at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who fled to Yemen after returning to the kingdom. But this year, Awfi gave himself up to Saudi authorities, and he now lives comfortably with his family in Riyadh. The prince told Assiri that he and any others who renounce militancy would be treated just as Awfi was, Mansour said.

But Assiri insisted on seeing the prince.

On the evening of Aug. 27, the prince sent his plane to the southern Saudi border city of Najran, where Assiri, who had crossed from Yemen, was waiting. He was taken by the prince's personal bodyguards to his house. Some officials said Assiri was never subjected to a security check.

At some point in the evening, Assiri handed his cellphone to the prince. Some of his comrades, he told the prince, wanted to hear his assurances that they would be treated well. That was the signal that the prince was standing close to Assiri. The bomb, which according to Western diplomats and local news reports was probably hidden inside Assiri's rectum, was triggered by the cellphone. Assiri was ripped apart -- pictures of his body were published in local newspapers and on Web sites.

The prince suffered minor injuries. Saudi television later showed King Abdullah, who is the prince's uncle, visiting him in the hospital and asking how the bomber could have gotten so close. "It was a mistake," Prince Mohammed replied, according to the broadcast.

U.N. Data Show Discrepancies in Afghan Vote - washingtonpost.com

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By Colum Lynch and Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 7, 2009

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 6 -- Voter turnout data kept confidential by the United Nations' chief envoy in Kabul after Afghanistan's disputed August presidential election show that in some provinces the official vote count exceeded the estimated number of voters by 100,000 or more, providing further indication that the contest was marred by fraud.

In southern Helmand province -- where 134,804 votes were recorded, 112,873 of them for President Hamid Karzai -- the United Nations estimated that just 38,000 people voted, and possibly as few as 5,000, according to a U.N. spreadsheet obtained by The Washington Post.

The disclosure of the data seems likely to worsen a credibility crisis for the U.N. special envoy, Kai Eide, who is already facing allegations that he sided with Karzai. In the past week, two U.N. political officers in Kabul have resigned because of a lack of confidence in Eide's leadership, according to U.N. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel issues.

The departures were triggered by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's decision last week to fire Eide's American deputy, Peter W. Galbraith, after he accused his boss of failing to provide Afghan and international officials with evidence of fraud, primarily by Karzai's supporters.

Galbraith pressed Eide to turn over to international monitors the United Nations' estimated turnout data, which indicated that many fewer voters cast ballots in certain provinces than the number of votes recorded by election officials. Galbraith said Eide refused to share this data with the internationally led Electoral Complaints Commission once it became clear that the information reflected poorly on Karzai.

In an interview last week, Eide acknowledged withholding the data, saying that the information could not be verified and that he required a formal request in order to share it. He said he was confronted by a "confusing situation" in which "a lot of information was coming from sources that had their own agenda. We can't just hand over a bunch of information if we haven't made a solid assessment of it."

Eide added that he "really feels offended" by allegations that he favored Karzai, saying he had taken a balanced approach that enjoyed the "unanimous" support of the international community.

The U.N. spreadsheet shows widespread discrepancies between turnout and results, particularly in the volatile southern and eastern provinces where Karzai won with large margins. There are also allegations of fraud by followers of Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's main competitor, but on a lesser scale.

Diplomats in Kabul have previously referred to such discrepancies, but the U.N. data have not been publicly disclosed until now.

In Paktika province, for example, where Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission has reported that 212,405 valid votes were cast, including 193,541 for Karzai, the United Nations estimated that 35,000 voters turned out. In Kandahar province, which recorded 252,866 votes, including 221,436 for Karzai, the United Nations estimated that 100,000 people voted.

In several provinces won by Abdullah, the United Nations estimated a larger turnout than election officials recorded. In Balkh province, for example, the organization estimated that 450,000 people voted, while the results showed 297,557 votes, 46 percent of them for Abdullah.

Although the estimates in some cases include a broad range of possible turnout, Galbraith said it was important information to share with Afghan officials and international monitors. "I favored turning it over to the Electoral Complaints Commission," he said. "I think we did an excellent job at collecting data. . . . We collected it with the idea of assisting the Afghan legal party that was investigating fraud, but Kai opposed turning it over."

Dan McNorton, the U.N. spokesman in Kabul, did not challenge the authenticity of the spreadsheet, but he said it should be read with caution. "The information that you have is unsubstantiated raw data and should be treated as such," he said.

McNorton said the Afghan and U.N.-backed electoral institutions are carrying out a "robust and methodologically sound" audit of the suspect ballot boxes that will be completed by the end of the week. "To suggest that UNAMA has supported one particular candidate over another is ludicrous," he said, using the acronym for the U.N. mission in Afghanistan.

U.N. officials have accused Galbraith of seeking to overturn the Afghan constitution in his zeal to thwart Karzai's election victory, saying he sought to "disenfranchise" large numbers of potential Karzai voters by closing 1,500 of 6,900 polling stations in volatile regions in southern and southeastern Afghanistan that are populated by members of the president's Pashtun ethnic group.

Senior U.N. officials also asserted that Galbraith urged Eide in a meeting in early September to consider annulling the elections because of fraud, to convince Karzai and Abdullah to step aside, and to set up a transitional government headed by Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank economist who finished in fourth place with 2.7 percent of the vote. Galbraith, according to these officials, offered to seek support for the plan from Vice President Biden.

"Here's a man, a U.N. representative, advocating an unconstitutional change of government," Vijay Nambiar, Ban's chief of staff, said of Galbraith. "Of course he was recalled. What would you have expected us to do?"

Galbraith declined to discuss the details of the meeting but said there had been no formal proposal for a new government or a mission to Washington. "It's a smoke screen to obscure the real issue, which was whether the U.N. should handle electoral fraud," Galbraith said. "There was no mission to Biden or anybody else because there was no plan to do this."

The disputed election results have complicated the Obama administration's efforts to persuade a skeptical American public of the need to prosecute a war on behalf of Karzai's government.

"There is nothing more important this year than the legitimacy and credibility of our Afghan partners," said J. Alexander Thier, director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the U.S. Institute of Peace. "The deepening skepticism in the United States about the entire engagement rests upon the idea that we don't have a credible partner in Afghanistan."

U.N. officials on both sides of the debate say Karzai -- who secured 54.6 percent of the first-round vote -- is ultimately expected to win the election, even without the help of fraudulent votes. But the reports of massive fraud have cast a cloud over Karzai's candidacy in Afghanistan, and Abdullah has stoked those suspicions by accusing Eide of bias toward the president.

On Saturday, Karl W. Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, sought to bolster international support for the U.N.-backed election, telling a gathering of two dozen diplomats that the United States has full trust in Eide. "The U.S. Embassy has full confidence in UNAMA and its leadership," said Caitlin Hayden, a U.S. Embassy spokeswoman.

Edmond Mulet, the U.N. assistant secretary general for peacekeeping, also defended the envoy. "Kai has the full support of the secretary general and of the most important stakeholders, the member states, including the United States, and all the ambassadors and special envoys sitting in Kabul," he said.

But Galbraith has received backing from some rank-and-file staffers, including one former subordinate who said Galbraith "was highly popular among the staff."

"The environment had become very toxic," said Tracey Brinson, Galbraith's assistant in Kabul, who also plans to leave her job this month. "There is a lot of anger, a lot of resentment, sort of hurt feelings, and people are a little disillusioned about what they are doing."

Partlow reported from Kabul.

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• Third of Afghan votes 'fraudulent' (guardian.co.uk)

Hamas's Resilience, Obstinacy Complicate Mideast Peace Bid - washingtonpost.com

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Islamist Group's Resilience and Obstinacy Frustrate Many

By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 7, 2009

GAZA CITY -- In the two years since it seized power here, the militant Hamas movement has undercut the influence of the Gaza Strip's major clans, brought competing paramilitary groups under its control, put down an uprising by a rival Islamist group, weathered a three-week war with Israel, worked around a strict economic embargo -- and through it all refused a set of international demands that could begin Gaza's rehabilitation.

That combination of durability and unwillingness to compromise has created a deep-seated stalemate that has left top Israeli intelligence and political officials perplexed about what to do, and it has posed a steep obstacle for U.S. peace envoy George J. Mitchell. Mitchell's work in Northern Ireland in the 1990s included intense negotiations to bring the most militant parties into the process, but his eight months of talks about Israeli-Palestinian peace have avoided any obvious effort to do the same with Hamas and have been conducted, in effect, with only one half of the Palestinian political leadership.

A separate Egyptian effort aims to reconcile Hamas and the pro-U.S., West Bank-based government of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, create a joint security force and pave the way for elections next year that could bring Palestinian society under a single political leadership. But Palestinian, Israeli and international diplomats and analysts give the process only a slim chance of success and see little sign that Hamas is ready to trade its clear control of the Gaza Strip for a seat at the negotiating table.

Barack Obama's election as U.S. president and his June speech in Cairo raised expectations among Hamas officials of a dialogue with the United States, but "people are starting to lose hope. There was a glimmer, but it is fading away," said Hamas deputy foreign minister Ahmed Yousef, adding that Mitchell's work has produced "no solution and no breakthrough."

A top Israeli security official said there has been a frustrated acknowledgment in Israeli intelligence and military circles that, as it stands, there is no obvious alternative to continued Hamas rule in Gaza. The Palestinian Authority is not strong enough to return to power there, Israel does not want to reoccupy an area it vacated in 2005, and there is concern that any collapse of Hamas rule might increase the influence of even more militant groups.

"We don't like them, but they have accountability," said the official, adding that Hamas is struggling to reconcile running a government and staying in power without losing its credentials as a resistance movement. At present, he said, the group is trying to maintain a policy of what the Israeli military refers to as "industrial quiet" -- suppressing most rocket fire into Israel as part of a pause in violence that is practical, for rearming, and strategic, to ensure its hold on power. How, when and whether Hamas might tip back toward fighting is uncertain. When diplomats, outside negotiators and others ask for ideas about how to cope with Hamas in the long term, the Israeli official said, the answer is: "We don't know. Good luck."

Hamas, which was founded as an Islamist alternative to the Palestine Liberation Organization and whose charter calls for Israel's destruction, is considered a terrorist group by the United States for its sponsorship of suicide attacks and the launching of thousands of missiles and mortar shells from Gaza into Israel. The group draws financial and material support from Iran and Syria. Hamas says its attacks on Israel are defensive and a legitimate tactic in Palestinian efforts to establish a homeland.

Mitchell faced a similar dilemma during the Northern Ireland peace process, when there was opposition to the inclusion of the Irish Republican Army in the talks and demands that the group disarm before becoming party to the discussions.

But as Mitchell and fellow peace envoy Richard N. Haass would later write, "It's hard to stop a war if you don't talk with those who are involved in it."

In the case of Northern Ireland, Mitchell argued as a senator for IRA leader Gerry Adams to be granted a U.S. visa. As a peace envoy, Mitchell took a controversial stand in favor of letting the IRA retain its weapons while joining the peace talks -- evidence of his belief that "preconditions ought to be kept to a minimum."

But the group had to endorse what came to be known as the "Mitchell principles" of democracy and nonviolence. Similarly, there has been a standing offer from the United States and other nations to reopen talks with Hamas if the group meets certain conditions, including a renunciation of violence, adherence to prior agreements made on behalf of the Palestinians and a recognition of Israel.

According to officials from Hamas and analysts of the group, those conditions are unlikely to be accepted, cutting as they do to the core of the group's ideology and strategy. Just as there is no sense that the language of Hamas leaders has come close to meeting those requirements, despite talk of a possible compromise, there has been no obvious effort by Mitchell's team to try to reshape the conditions.

"Nobody has really grabbed hold of the issue of what we do with Hamas," one Western diplomat said.

Members of Mitchell's team would not comment on the issue.

The assumption of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is that deteriorated conditions in Gaza will undercut Hamas's popularity, particularly as people learn of improvements in the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank. Gazans are isolated in a subsistence economy with large-scale unemployment. Membership in Hamas is considered a prerequisite for public jobs. The group's armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, proved ineffectual in last winter's Gaza war, unable to either protect the population or inflict enough Israeli casualties to score a propaganda victory. Disenchanted residents speak of "cutting off their thumb" -- a reference to the ink applied on voters' fingers to indicate they had cast ballots in the 2006 elections, in which Hamas trounced Abbas's Fatah party.

Still, there is little expectation that any sort of popular uprising will challenge Hamas, and recent events hint at why the group is biding its time.

"Yes, people are not satisfied because of the division. The economic situation is bad. They are looking for change," said Yousef, the Hamas official. But "they also understand why we are suffering."

In the past two weeks, Mitchell has scaled back U.S. demands for Israel to freeze West Bank settlements and persuaded a reluctant Abbas to attend a meeting with Netanyahu in New York.

A flare-up of violence around the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem has been trumpeted by Hamas as proof that the peace process won't protect Palestinian claims on the holy city. The Palestinian Authority's decision to back off of demands for investigating allegations of war crimes in the recent Gaza conflict, meanwhile, has created a deepening crisis for Abbas as he fends off criticism throughout the Arab world that he is protecting Israel without winning any political concessions.

Just as the "peace culture" that followed the signing of the Oslo accords in the early 1990s gave way to an intifada, or uprising, in 2000, Hamas officials say the current upbeat mood in the West Bank will at some point erode -- leaving groups that support armed action again in favor.

Fatah "considers peace a strategic choice. That is why they are always working on it," Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha said. After Oslo, "there was seven years of peace culture, and at the end everything turned upside down. And what is going on in the West Bank now is temporary."

It has been long-standing Hamas policy to consider a long-term ceasefire with Israel in return for establishment of a Palestinian state on the Gaza and West Bank land occupied by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

But that "is only a way to kick the occupation out," Taha said. "It is a staged or phased solution, which is the 1967 borders, and a strategic objective to bring back all the territory occupied in 1948," when the state of Israel was created.

"If the international community agrees to a full state on the borders of '67, then we will decide what to say at that point," he said. "It is still early."

Immigration Agency Weighs Less-Restrictive Detention Centers - washingtonpost.com

Image by sheilaz413 via Flickr

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 7, 2009

The United States will review the procedures under which it detains about 380,000 illegal immigrants a year, exploring the use of converted hotels and nursing homes as it seeks to transform a prison-based system into one tiered according to the risk posed by individual detainees, Obama administration officials said Tuesday.

Detailing an overhaul announced in August, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and John T. Morton, assistant secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the measures are intended to make the much-criticized, $2.6 billion-a-year immigration detention system safer and more efficient without adding to its costs.

The changes come as advocates for immigrants pressure President Obama to improve detention standards and legalize millions of illegal immigrants. At the same time, Obama has said tough enforcement policies are essential to winning approval from Congress for any deal to grant legal status.

"We accepted that we were going to continue to have -- and increase, potentially -- the number of detainees," Napolitano said. Among the review's goals, she said, is improving federal oversight of more than 300 local jails, state prisons and private facilities.

By next October, ICE will rank detainees on the basis of flight risk and public danger, set new requirements for detention facilities based on those risk levels and issue bids for two new-model detention centers, Napolitano said.

Morton will meet with contractors this month to explore converting residential facilities to house non-criminal and nonviolent detainees, such as asylum-seekers, which could be cheaper to operate and less restrictive for occupants.

On Sept. 1, ICE housed about 31,075 illegal immigrants. About half of them were felons, of whom 11 percent had committed violent crimes.

Morton said ICE will implement a medical classification system within six months to identify detainees with special health needs.

The agency also vowed to expedite efforts to provide an online detainee-locator system for lawyers, relatives and others, and to provide Congress this fall with a nationwide plan for less restrictive facilities.

In an interview after the news conference, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the focus on detention misguided, saying that about half of ICE detainees have no criminal record and await deportation for administrative violations.

"It would be more cost-effective to track these individuals with an electronic monitoring device than to build brand-new facilities to detain them," Schumer said.

Amnesty International, Human Rights First and the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project released statements saying that they were encouraged but that fundamental reforms were still needed, such as guaranteeing the right to a bond hearing.

Julie Myers Wood, who led ICE from 2006 to 2008, warned that less-restrictive detention facilities can be expensive and, because some illegal immigrants may flee, would not have the same deterrent value.

"I certainly want to be supportive of ICE, but it seems a little unrealistic," Wood said. ICE detention "is becoming the new drop house," she said, referring to the temporary quarters where some smugglers drop off their customers before they disperse into the country, and "that's what smugglers are going to plan on if you set up facilities that are less secure."

With White House Rally, Antiwar Protesters Hope to Spark Groundswell - washingtonpost.com

Image via Wikipedia

But Will D.C. Rally Spark Groundswell?

By Eli Saslow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 7, 2009

The protesters convened for a final planning meeting, already triumphant, convinced that nine months of preparation was about to pay off. Antiwar organizers who had come to Washington from 27 states exchanged hugs inside a Columbia Heights convention hall and modeled their protest costumes: orange jumpsuits, "death masks," shackles and T-shirts depicting bloody Afghan children. Then Pete Perry, the event organizer, stood up to deliver a welcome speech.

"This is a great moment for our movement," he said. "We are continuing an incredible tradition."

"Like Gandhi," said the next speaker.

"Like Martin Luther King," said another.

A Sunday meeting and a Monday protest -- that was the agenda planned in advance of Wednesday's eighth anniversary of the start of the Afghan war. There had been other protests in Washington over the course of the conflict, dozens of them, but this time organizers believed they could revive the beleaguered antiwar movement, once such a force in U.S. policy. The next 48 hours would put their optimism on trial.

With public opinion polls showing a majority of Americans opposing the war, organizers wanted at least 1,000 people to march through downtown, risk arrest by creating a ruckus at the White House and draw President Obama across the manicured North Lawn to meet with them.

"The goal of this action is to hand-deliver a letter to Obama," Perry reminded the group. "We want a meeting to demand an end to this senseless violence."

It would also set the stage for 42 rallies and protests scheduled to take place Wednesday around the country. After decades of decline in the antiwar movement -- from throngs of half a million to fringe rallies to almost nothing at all -- the job of organizers in Washington was to generate momentum for a historic week.

Their work started Sunday afternoon, when about 50 organizers met to discuss final plans for a rally with a scope to match their ambition. They included veterans and pacifists, hippies and anarchists, feminists and Catholic workers. In total, there were more than a dozen "affinity groups," and each had choreographed its own demonstration for Monday's event. Some protesters would be shackled inside a cage, in solidarity with prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Some would reenact the deaths of U.S. soldiers near the White House fence. Some would read the names of civilians killed in Afghanistan. Some would carry cardboard coffins.

"We have to be organized, or nobody will hear anything," Perry said.

As the meeting progressed, there were signs of discord. Some groups wanted to chant while they marched to the White House; others argued that a solemn, single-file procession would convey a "better sense of suffering," one protester said. Some wanted to take bathroom breaks during the protest; others argued that participants could wait until they were in jail, after their arrests. Some planned to misidentify themselves to police; others said they would simply refuse to answer questions.

"Lying is dumb," one protester shouted.

"Just because my resistance is different than yours doesn't mean I'm dumb," another yelled back, standing now, clenching his fist. "We are all traveling down our own paths to peace."

* * *

Every faction agreed on at least one goal for Monday's rally, knowing all too well that the survival of the movement depended on it: This was the time to attract new protesters, with the war in Afghanistan continuing to dominate the news and Obama debating his next move. After Sunday's meeting, Perry, the organizer, held a training session for first-time demonstrators in the sanctuary of a church. He arrived prepared for a crowd, with a co-teacher and a thick stack of handouts.

Instead, four people came. Three were experienced activists. Only one was a newcomer. Joan Wages, a mother of two, had driven five hours from Floyd, Va., to attend her first rally. She had voted for Obama but become disillusioned. Now she hoped to set an example for her children by "making my actions consistent with my beliefs," she said.

"I've done a few really little protest things, but that's it," Wages told the instructors. "I really don't know what to expect."

The instructors gave a brief lesson on the history of nonviolent resistance and then read motivational quotes from Buddhist monks. At the end of the class, they asked Wages to hold a make-believe vigil at the White House while the instructors mimicked angry right-wing activists and tried to bait her. Wages closed her eyes, set her hands in prayer and started singing.

"We should run you over with a big war tank!" the instructors yelled.

"We should shoot you with our guns!" they shouted.

Wages continued to sing, undaunted, until the instructors broke from character to applaud.

"You're ready," Perry said.

"Just remember that nonviolence is a way of life," said Susan Crane, the co-instructor.

"And that police officers are our brothers and sisters, too," Perry said.

Wages thanked them and left the training seminar, but she struggled to fall asleep later that night. The session had been helpful in a "philosophical kind of way," she said later, but she still had logistical concerns about Monday's protest. Like: "Who will pick me up from jail?" And: "After we all pretend to die in front of the White House, can I get up and move or does everyone have to stay totally still?"

* * *

The protesters met Monday morning in McPherson Square, a slab of grass in downtown Washington named after a war hero. They had hoped to fill the park, but instead 176 protesters gathered in one corner. The crowd was all familiar faces from the antiwar movement, except for a homeless man sleeping on a bench, a bicyclist eating a scone and a Street Sense newspaper salesman who saw a business opportunity in the gathering.

Eve Tetaz, 78, stood near a small sound stage and zipped up her orange jumpsuit. She had a trial pending from another protest, but she still planned to risk arrest Monday -- something she had done so often that preparing for jail was part of her routine. Phone numbers of fellow protesters were inked on her forearm so she could call from jail. A neighbor in Adams Morgan had agreed to watch her two cats. Her glaucoma medicine was packed underneath her jumpsuit. She wore a heavy sweatshirt that itched in the heat but would make for a fantastic pillow in a cell.

"Jail is a little uncomfortable," Tetaz said, "but so is the dentist."

On the stage in front of her, a rotation of speakers tried to excite the crowd. Two women strummed guitars and sang a folk song. Then a man recited a poem. Then a woman spoke about the persecution of blacks in Southeast Washington. Then another poet, and another singer, and a woman banging a tambourine, and a keynote speaker, and another folk song, this time performed in Hebrew.

"We should be going soon," Tetaz said.

Finally, an organizer stepped to the microphone and told the protesters to form a single-file line for the march to the White House. They were instructed to walk slowly, heads down, in absolute silence.

"A solemn march," the speaker said.

As the group departed, a few protesters smiled and chatted with nearby police officers.

"Please everybody, a solemn march," the speaker reiterated, louder this time. "Solemn. Solemn."

* * *

The protesters arrived at the White House and quickly realized they were entering into a ruckus, not just creating one. A construction crew was at work on Pennsylvania Avenue, removing excess water with two loud industrial vacuums. Smaller protest groups -- one demanding to see Obama's birth certificate, another enraged about health care -- shouted chants of their own. A maintenance worker used a chain saw to trim a tree on the White House grounds. Inside the building, press secretary Robert Gibbs was telling reporters that leaving Afghanistan was "not something that had ever been entertained."

The antiwar group launched into its demonstration, undeterred. One protester pretended to waterboard a war prisoner, screaming, "Tell me your secrets or else" as he poured distilled bottled water onto a friend's face. A woman wore shackles and a black bag over her head, the toenails on her bare feet painted a deep autumn red. Cindy Sheehan, a tireless protester, read from her International People's Declaration of Peace, and then, sensing an inattentive crowd, said, "I am going to skip a couple paragraphs and just go to the end."

The marchers marched, the singers sang, the chanters chanted. Tourists turned their cameras away from the White House to take pictures of the protest.

But there was a problem.

"Why aren't the police doing anything?" one demonstrator asked, referring to the 15 uniformed officers who stood casually in the distance.

The protesters wanted to engage them, so 15 activists wearing orange jumpsuits chained themselves to the White House fence. "Off the fence!" a police officer yelled, but the chains were locked. Five officers rode over on horseback.

Five more put on black gloves and came with wire cutters. Now the Secret Service was clearing the sidewalk, and the Park Police was issuing a warning for the protesters to disperse, then a second, then a third.

"We will have to arrest anyone who does not clear this area immediately," an officer announced over a megaphone.

Sixty-two protesters stood their ground, and the police walked over slowly with plastic handcuffs. Sheehan was arrested at 1:11 p.m., and she smiled as police frisked her. Tetaz, the 78-year-old, was arrested at 1:14, ready for another trip to jail. Wages, the newcomer, pretended to be a dying soldier and remained motionless as she waited for arrest, only to be forcibly removed instead.

Police loaded the protesters onto a Metro bus and drove them away from Pennsylvania Avenue.

Those who had avoided arrest tallied the rally's impact: 62 arrests, 23 others forcibly removed.

"A success," Perry said.

As the protesters walked away from the White House, they made plans to leave for other rallies across the country Wednesday. One was headed to an action in New York, another to Austin and another to San Francisco. Two planned to attend an event in Chicago, where the organizer, John Beacham, expected a big crowd and possibly more arrests. "We think this could be a turning-point kind of moment," he said.

Afghan Strategy Divides Lawmakers - washingtonpost.com

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Obama Tells Bipartisan Meeting He Has No Plans to Lower Troop Levels

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Congressional leaders left a rare bipartisan meeting with President Obama on Tuesday divided over what strategy the administration should adopt to fight an increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan and how quickly it must do so to protect U.S. forces already on the ground.

Obama called congressional leaders to the White House at a key moment in his Afghanistan policy review, which will determine whether the United States pushes deeper into a war that military officials have warned will probably be won or lost over the next 12 months.

Congress must approve any additional resources that Obama would need if he accepts the recommendations of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, who favors a broad expansion of the effort on the battlefield and the push to build a stable national government. But much of the president's party is resisting calls for more combat troops after eight years of war, forcing him to seek support from Republicans who favor McChrystal's strategy.

"I think a lot of senators and congressmen need to ask themselves how much money they are willing to put on the table, for how long and for what strategy," said Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who attended Tuesday's meeting. "This is a tough set of interrelated questions. And I think there have been some unfortunate straw men set up."

Obama told congressional leaders that he is not contemplating reducing troop levels in the near term under any scenario, according to several participants, and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs reiterated Tuesday that withdrawing from Afghanistan is "not an option." A complete U.S. troop withdrawal is one of the straw men to which Kerry -- and the president, in the meeting -- referred.

The partisan split evident after the meeting, which 30 lawmakers attended, illustrated the political challenge Obama faces in Congress over this conflict. Opinion polls show that only a minority of Americans believe the battle is worth fighting, and much of that opposition is rooted in the Democratic Party.

Although lawmakers sought after the meeting to express bipartisan support for Obama as he makes the most far-reaching foreign policy decision of his tenure, Democrats questioned whether the Afghan government remains a viable political partner after the flawed Aug. 20 presidential election, and Republicans challenged the administration's determination to defeat the Taliban.

In recent weeks, Obama has made clear that defeating al-Qaeda is the goal of his policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the group's leadership is believed to be operating in the largely ungoverned tribal areas. His national security team will assemble Wednesday at the White House for a meeting focused on Pakistan, whose nuclear-armed government has shown more willingness recently to take on the Taliban within its borders.

In a speech at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean earlier Tuesday, Obama said: "We will target al-Qaeda wherever they take root. We will not yield in our pursuit, and we are developing the capacity and the cooperation to deny a safe haven to any who threaten America and its allies."

The president completed an initial Afghan strategy review in March by deploying 21,000 additional troops to the country. By the end of the year, 68,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines are scheduled to be on the ground there.

Obama also named McChrystal as the commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, now numbering about 100,000. In his recent assessment of the war, McChrystal said the next 12 months would probably determine whether U.S. and NATO forces could regain the initiative from the Taliban. Although he has yet to submit a specific request, he is expected soon to ask for as many as 40,000 more troops.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) predicted that Obama's review would last "weeks, not months." But Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said, "It's pretty clear that time is not on our side," and he recommended that Obama give "great weight" to recommendations by McChrystal and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the regional commander.

"The president has made clear that no one has a greater sense of urgency about this than he does, and he underscored that in the meeting," said a senior administration official who participated in the session and discussed it on the condition of anonymity. "But that's not going to get in the way of the due diligence that he needs to do. The urgency is not to make a decision, but to make the right decision."

According to participants, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) asked whether the administration believed that a return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan would translate into a new sanctuary for al-Qaeda, as the country was before the 2001 U.S. invasion toppled the Taliban government.

Senior White House officials raised the same question last week in the first of several meetings planned to discuss McChrystal's assessment. Those officials are building a case internally for a narrower counterterrorism strategy in Afghanistan that would maintain roughly the current troop level and rely on expedited training of Afghan troops, stepped-up Predator drone strikes against al-Qaeda operatives and support for Pakistan's government in its fight against the Taliban.

"We all know that if the Taliban comes back, then al-Qaeda will come back," McCain said after the meeting Tuesday.

McCain said that Iraq, not Vietnam, should be the model for how to proceed in Afghanistan. He said "half-measures" would fail in Afghanistan as they did in Iraq, until Petraeus argued successfully for additional combat forces and a counterinsurgency strategy. Petraeus has endorsed McChrystal's plan.

But Democratic leaders raised questions that may help determine what course Obama will choose. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) asked whether "we have an able partner in President [Hamid] Karzai." Karzai's legitimacy is important because McChrystal's strategy relies in part on a national government that is more popular than the Taliban.

"There are areas that must be addressed as this decision" is made, Pelosi said. "Whether we agree with it or vote for it remains to be seen, depending on what the president puts forward."

Groups Test Waters on Discussion of Race in Health Care Debate - washingtonpost.com

Image by Michael in San Diego, California via Flickr

By Krissah Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 7, 2009 1:23 PM

In the debate over revamping the health-care system, there are the doctors and nurses, the insurance companies and industry lobbyists and the patients with preexisting conditions, among others. With so many interest groups, the noise is loud and getting louder.

Missing from the noise so far: the voices of minorities, who are disproportionately represented among the poor and uninsured and could profit the most from reform attempts, and who also represent the failures of the current system in that they are more likely than others to suffer from chronic illness such as diabetes.

Starting this week, however, those voices will become a larger part of the debate.

Leaders of black and Latino advocacy groups say they are becoming more forceful as the final drafts near because so many of their members favor reform, even though they had been reluctant to make race and ethnicity a central issue because the topic is so controversial.

"There are some people who would like to defeat this bill by tagging it to the issue of race," said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

Janet Murguía, president of the National Council of La Raza, agreed. "I tend to think that we could win this on the merits and the facts. I don't think we have to resort to race issues to get a common-sense and sound health-care reform," she said. "I think there are people who want to take it in that direction."

Their comments reflect an understanding among supporters of revamping the health-care system that focusing on racial disparities in health care could be a political loser, said Darrell M. West, director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution. "The White House seems to have shifted from the moral message to an economic one," he said. "Race always is a sensitive topic and . . . there's always a risk of misunderstanding and a backlash against it."

According to a recent Washington Post poll, there is already a wide racial gap in Americans' views on health-care reform, with minorities largely in favor of changing the health-care system and President Obama's handling of it. Fewer than four in 10 white people, however share each of those views, though much of this is probably because of partisan differences.

Those poll numbers are a reflection of the place race has had in the debate, said Anne Kim, director of economic programs at Third Way, a liberal policy think tank. Some of the traditional reasons Democrats have given for reforming health care, such as addressing racial disparities, "have been drowned out" by debate over big issues such as whether there should be a public option, Kim said. "There was just no bandwidth for those kinds of issues to be on the table."

But as the debate reaches its next phase, the minority advocacy groups are finding their place in the conversation by using their voter turnout operations to get supporters to put pressure on their members of Congress as a vote nears, said NAACP President Benjamin Jealous. "We're reminding [them] that we are here and that we will be at the polls next fall."

In recent weeks, his group has been highlighting the fact that African Americans and Latinos are also more likely to be uninsured than whites. According to 2008 Census figures, 10.8 percent of whites are uninsured, compared with 30.7 percent of Hispanics, 17.6 percent of Asians and 19.1 percent of African Americans. On Thursday night, the NAACP is launching a campaign called "880," referring to "the deaths of 880,000 people of color that would have been prevented if real health- care reform had been enacted in the last decade" with a town hall meeting in Washington. The 880,000 figure is from a study of health-care coverage in the 1990s by the American Journal of Public Health, Jealous said.

National Council of La Raza has also been upping its activity, pressing its members to call their congressional representatives and ask that all U.S. residents be covered by health-care reform. Some plans currently circulating wouldn't cover legal immigrants. Murguía said her group's members have made 5,000 calls in the past few weeks.

And La Raza, the NAACP National Voter Fund, the Campaign for Community Change, the United States Student Association and PowerPAC.org are rolling out a joint ad campaign this week -- the first directly targeting African Americans and Latinos. The print, radio and television ads will run in English and Spanish.

The African American narrator of the television ad says: "I'm not going to let special-interest politicians throw 46 million of us under the bus," using a common estimate of the number of uninsured Americans. "I'm not going to leave my grandkids' health in the hands of insurance companies that care more about profit than they do about everyday families. And as for the politicians, tell Senator Lincoln there needs to be room for all of us on this bus." As the narrator concludes a young Latina and her child attempt to board a bus that has closed its doors on them.

Senator Lincoln refers to Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), whom the groups are targeting along with senators in Florida, North Carolina and Louisiana, where the ads will air. The total buy for the ads in the four states will be between $250,000 and $500,000, a small fraction of the $82.5 million spent this year on health-care ads, according to TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG, which tracks political ad spending.

"Everything up until this point has really been preliminary skirmishes," said West, the Brookings Institution scholar. "Now is when the action really begins in terms of the House and the Senate."

Staff writer Ben Pershing and polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.