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Volume 1 Issue 131                  Today’s News and Views         Monday, May 8, 2006

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Our Sick Society
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Published: May 5, 2006

Is being an American bad for your health? That's the apparent implication of a study just published in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

It's not news that something is very wrong with the state of America's health. International comparisons show that the United States has achieved a sort of inverse miracle: we spend much more per person on health care than any other nation, yet we have lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than Canada, Japan and most of Europe.

But it isn't clear exactly what causes this stunningly poor performance. How much of America's poor health is the result of our failure, unique among wealthy nations, to guarantee health insurance to all? How much is the result of racial and class divisions? How much is the result of other aspects of the American way of life?

The new study, "Disease and Disadvantage in the United States and in England," doesn't resolve all of these questions. Yet it offers strong evidence that there's something about American society that makes us sicker than we should be.

The authors of the study compared the prevalence of such diseases as diabetes and hypertension in Americans 55 to 64 years old with the prevalence of the same diseases in a comparable group in England. Comparing us with the English isn't a choice designed to highlight American problems: Britain spends only about 40 percent as much per person on health care as the United States, and its health care system is generally considered inferior to those of neighboring countries, especially France. Moreover, England isn't noted either for healthy eating or for a healthy lifestyle.

Nonetheless, the study concludes that "Americans are much sicker than the English." For example, middle-age Americans are twice as likely to suffer from diabetes as their English counterparts. That's a striking finding in itself.

What's even more striking is that being American seems to damage your health regardless of your race and social class.

That's not to say that class is irrelevant. (The researchers excluded racial effects by restricting the study to non-Hispanic whites.) In fact, there's a strong correlation within each country between wealth and health. But Americans are so much sicker that the richest third of Americans is in worse health than the poorest third of the English.

So what's going on? Lack of health insurance is surely a factor in the poor health of lower-income Americans, who are often uninsured, while everyone in England receives health care from the government. But almost all upper-income Americans have insurance.

What about bad habits, which the study calls "behavioral risk factors"? The stereotypes are true: the English are much more likely to be heavy drinkers, and Americans much more likely to be obese. But a statistical analysis suggests that bad habits are only a fraction of the story.

In the end, the study's authors seem baffled by the poor health of even relatively well-off Americans. But let me suggest a couple of possible explanations.

One is that having health insurance doesn't ensure good health care. For example, a New York Times report on diabetes pointed out that insurance companies are generally unwilling to pay for care that might head off the disease, even though they are willing to pay for the extreme measures, like amputations, that become necessary when prevention fails. It's possible that Britain's National Health Service, in spite of its limited budget, actually provides better all-around medical care than our system because it takes a broader, longer-term view than private insurance companies.

The other possibility is that Americans work too hard and experience too much stress. Full-time American workers work, on average, about 46 weeks per year; full-time British, French and German workers work only 41 weeks a year. I've pointed out in the past that our workaholic economy is actually more destructive of the "family values" we claim to honor than the European economies in which regulations and union power have led to shorter working hours.

Maybe overwork, together with the stress of living in an economy with a minimal social safety net, damages our health as well as our families. These are just suggestions. What we know for sure is that although the American way of life may be, as Ari Fleischer famously proclaimed back in 2001, "a blessed one," there's something about that way of life that is seriously bad for our health.

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Air Force to Examine Fundraising E-Mail Sent by a General
Message Praised Candidate's Christianity

By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 6, 2006; A03

The Air Force is investigating whether a two-star general violated military regulations by urging fellow Air Force Academy graduates to make campaign contributions to a Republican candidate for Congress in Colorado, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

Maj. Gen. Jack J. Catton Jr., who is on active duty at Langley Air Force Base, sent the fundraising appeal on Thursday from his official e-mail account to more than 200 fellow members of the academy's class of 1976, many of whom are also on active duty.

"We are certainly in need of Christian men with integrity and military experience in Congress," Catton wrote.

Defense Department rules prohibit active-duty officers from using their position to solicit campaign contributions or seek votes for a particular candidate. An Air Force spokesman said yesterday that "appropriate officials are inquiring into the facts surrounding these e-mails."

Catton's e-mail was provided to The Washington Post by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit group founded last year by Michael L. "Mikey" Weinstein, White House counsel in the Reagan administration.

"This is not just a small thing," said Weinstein, who is suing the Air Force to halt what he contends is pervasive proselytizing in the armed forces. "It's evidence of a continuing attack on separation of church and state by evangelicals in the military."

Catton urged his classmates to support Bentley Rayburn, a recently retired Air Force general seeking the Republican nomination for a House seat being vacated this year by Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.). Hefley's district around Colorado Springs includes the Air Force Academy, several military bases and the headquarters of Focus on the Family, James Dobson's Christian broadcasting organization.

Both Catton's e-mail and an accompanying note from Rayburn portrayed him as a candidate who would represent the military and conservative Christians.

"The lack of any Air Force presence within the Congress was particularly telling over the last few years," Rayburn wrote, referring to controversy over proselytizing at the Air Force Academy and new Air Force regulations on religious expression. "For those of us who are Christians, there is that whole other side of the coin that recognizes that we need more Christian influence in Congress."

Rayburn, a 1975 graduate of the Air Force Academy, said yesterday that Catton's only mistake was sending the message out from his official e-mail account.

Catton said in a telephone interview that he realized after he sent the e-mail Thursday evening that it was "inappropriate" and attempted to recall it Friday morning.

"I'm traveling and I was going through e-mails last night, on the airplane, and very excited about one of my academy brothers running for Congress, and forwarded the e-mail to my classmates to share the excitement," he said.

"And when I got up this morning I had an e-mail from one of my classmates who said, 'Jack, do you realize you were on your work computer?' I went, 'Holy smokes!' And so I immediately sent out a recall of that e-mail, because I shouldn't have sent it out on my work computer, because it's inappropriate."

Pentagon lawyers declined to comment while the circumstances are under investigation. A former Air Force lawyer, retired Brig. Gen. James W. Swanson, said the use of an official e-mail address "is probably an aggravator, but it isn't the essence of the offense."

"Clearly this country wants and needs an apolitical military," he said. "It sounds like an excess of enthusiasm, but I'd be surprised if there is not some sort of disciplinary or administrative action in this case."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

 6But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

 7But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. -Matthew 6 (King James Version)

I heartily wish all these bible-thumping buffet Christians would actually read their bibles and try to follow the teaching of Christ. Time again these so-called Christians use the teaching of the Old Testament to justify their actions when Jesus specifically pointed out that the old ways were just that - the old ways and that to be true to good you must take the new path that Jesus showed to his disciples and followers. -Harold, ed.

Pollster Suggests Bush Moves Might Be Too Little, Too Late

By Eric Pianin and Chris Cillizza
Sunday, May 7, 2006; A05

The recent White House shake-up was an attempt to jump-start the administration and boost President Bush's rock-bottom approval ratings, but have those efforts come too late to salvage the presidency? A prominent GOP pollster thinks that may be the case.

"This administration may be over," Lance Tarrance, a chief architect of the Republicans' 1960s and '70s Southern strategy, told a gathering of journalists and political wonks last week. "By and large, if you want to be tough about it, the relevancy of this administration on policy may be over."

A new poll by RT Strategies, the firm headed by Tarrance and Democratic pollster Thomas Riehle, shows that 59 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush's job performance, while 36 percent approve -- a finding in line with other recent polls.

Tarrance said it would be extremely difficult for any president to bounce back this late in his administration and reassert influence on Capitol Hill when his approval rating barely exceeds his party's base support and half of all adults surveyed said they "strongly disapprove" of his performance. An overwhelming 73 percent of independents disapprove of Bush's performance, and two-thirds of those "strongly disapprove."

The new poll of 1,003 adults was conducted April 27-30 (after Bush had picked a new chief of staff, budget director and press secretary) and was released at a conference sponsored by the Cook Political Report. It contains plenty of other bad news for Bush and the Republican Party, and suggests that the growing unpopularity of the Iraq war may be turning this year's midterm congressional elections from local to national issues.

Forty-eight percent of respondents said they would like to see the Democrats back in control of Congress, while 37 percent want Republicans to remain in charge. The war looms large as a concern of voters, the poll shows, along with jobs, health care, gas prices and immigration. Combating terrorism -- long the president's strong suit -- is far less of a concern.

Thirty percent of those surveyed said they will vote for a candidate for Congress specifically to express opposition to Bush, while 16 percent said they will vote for a candidate to express their support for the president. Half said Bush will not be a factor in their voting.

"We will have a referendum on Iraq for the first time in '06, and the '08 election may be similar," Tarrance said. The two years "are going to be relatively bundled together because of Iraq."

Gore Displays a Midas Touch

White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten recently said the Bush administration is trying to get back its "mojo." The man President Bush defeated in 2000 has already found his -- at least when it comes to raising money.

Former vice president Al Gore sent an e-mail to Democratic donors recently to "commemorate" the final 1,000 days of the Bush administration.

"I am here to tell you that we simply cannot afford to wait 1,000 days to put the brakes on the Bush agenda," wrote Gore, adding that "the level of cynicism and crass political calculation . . . is truly breathtaking."

The goal of the appeal was to collect $150,000 for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee -- or $10,000 for each of the 15 seats the party needs to regain the House majority in November. Aides at the committee said the e-mail -- the first Gore had done on behalf of House Democrats this cycle -- brought in more than $200,000.

"He is the most successful signature on an e-mail that we have ever had," said DCCC Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.). Emanuel added that Gore, who many think still has presidential ambitions, has agreed to campaign for House candidates this fall as long as they favor measures to curtail global warming, long his pet issue.

Candidate Ford vs. 'Big Oil'

Tennessee Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. is betting that voters' discontent with rising prices at the gas pump will translate into a desire for change at the ballot box this fall.

Ford, the lone Democrat running for the seat of retiring Sen. Bill Frist (R), plans to launch television and radio ads Monday attacking the oil companies for getting rich off of the average American family.

In the television commercials, Ford is shown pumping gas at an Exxon station while detailing the $100 billion in profits "Big Oil" made in 2005, and the $400 million retirement package for former Exxon Mobil chairman Lee Raymond that "you and I paid for."

Ford goes on to propose an elimination of tax breaks for oil companies and an investment in alternative fuel technology while also making an appeal for change. "If you're fed up every time you fill up, send a new generation to the Senate," he says.

When Ford, a fifth-term congressman, announced his candidacy last May, he was given little chance of winning because in recent years Republicans have dominated open-seat elections in the South and because his family has had high-profile problems. (His uncle, John Ford, was arrested by the FBI on bribery charges the day after Harold entered the Senate race.)

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Written by Chris Floyd

Saturday, 06 May 2006

Here's news you won't see on the front page of the Washington Post or the New York Times, or scrolling across Fox News and CNN or being earnestly delivered between laxative ads on CBS or NBC: Iran will change policies if IAEA asks: Ahmadinejad

From AFP: BAKU -- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said Iran will change its policies if asked to do so by the UN nuclear monitor. Ahmadinejad told journalists in the Azeri capital that Iran would pursue its civilian nuclear programme within the framework of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and in coordination with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

"It is natural if they want to put limitations on us (that), corresponding with those limitations, we will change our policies," he said Friday, according to the English-language translator at the press conference. [End excerpt]

Remember, the entire Bush strategy toward Iran has paralleled the Iraq machinations: an attempt to "wrong-foot" the Iranians goading them into some kind of reaction that could plausibly be framed as a pretext for war. (See this great Buzzflash interview with Mark Danner on the Downing Street Memos.) Remember too that their entire UN sideshow was dependent on Saddam refusing to allow WMD inspectors into the country. He called their bluff, and Bush and Blair then had to launch a blatantly illegal war without any UN sanction whatsoever.

Similarly, they have been trying to ratchet up the pressure on Iran, making increasingly draconian demands for strictures far beyond the requirements of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of which Iran is a member. Again, the idea was to provoke the Iranians into taking steps that could be plausibly framed as attempts to build a nuclear weapon.

Now it looks as if the Iranians are about to call Bush's bluff. If they agree to accept IAEA limitations on their nuclear program, where will that leave the Bushist plan to use the Iranian "threat" as a political cudgel in the upcoming elections – and as the next logical step in their plan for "full spectrum dominance" of world energy sources? Once again, Bush (and most likely his now limping, three-legged lapdog, Blair) will be forced into an act of naked, barbaric agression.

But of course, they will be greatly aided, once again, by the American media's dutiful discarding of any inconvenient truths that undercut the warmongering scenario

© Copyright 2005 Chris Floyd

Rap sheets. Chief Bratton is referring to the infamous city "Red Squads" that targeted civil rights and antiwar groups in the 1960s and 1970s (Page 48). Veteran police officers say no one in law enforcement wants a return to the bad old days of domestic spying. But civil liberties watchdogs warn that with so many cops looking for terrorists, real and imagined, abuses may be inevitable. "The restrictions on police spying are being removed," says attorney Richard Gutman, who led a 1974 class action lawsuit against the Chicago police that obtained hundreds of thousands of pages of intelligence files. "And I don't think you can rely on the police to regulate themselves."

Good or bad, intelligence gathering by local police departments is back. Interviews with police officers, homeland security officials, and privacy experts reveal a transformation among state and local law enforcement.

At the state level, regulations on police spying vary widely, but a general rule of thumb comes from the Justice Department's internal guidelines that forbid intelligence gathering on individuals unless there is a "reasonable suspicion" of criminal activity. Since the reforms of the 1970s, the FBI says its agents have followed this standard; Justice Department regulations require local police who receive federal funding to do the same in maintaining any intelligence files. But there is considerable leeway at the local level, and since 2001, judges have watered down police spying limits in Chicago and New York. The federal regs, moreover, have not stopped a parade of questionable cases.

Suspicion of spying is so rife among antiwar activists, who have loudly protested White House policy on Iraq, that some begin meetings by welcoming undercover cops who might be present. "People know and believe their activities are being monitored," says Leslie Cagan, national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, the country's largest antiwar coalition. There is some evidence to back this up. Documents and videotapes obtained from lawsuits against the NYPD reveal that its undercover officers have joined antiwar and even bicycle-rider rallies. In at least one case, an apparent undercover officer incited a crowd by faking his arrest. In Fresno, Calif., activists learned in 2003 that their group, Peace Fresno, had been infiltrated by a local sheriff's deputy--piecing it together after the man died in a car crash and his obituary appeared in the paper.

The California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, a $7 million fusion center run by the state Department of Justice, also ran into trouble in 2003 when it warned of potential violence at an antiwar protest at the port of Oakland. Mike Van Winkle, then a spokesman for the center, explained his concern to the Oakland Tribune: "You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest. You can almost argue that a protest against [the war] is a terrorist act." Officials quickly distanced themselves from the statement. The center's staff had confused political protest with terrorism, announced California's attorney general, who oversees the office.

"Absurd" threats. But this expansive view of homeland security has at times also extended to union activists and even library Web surfers. In February 2006 near Washington, D.C., two Montgomery County, Md., homeland security agents walked into a suburban Bethesda library and forcefully warned patrons that viewing Internet pornography was illegal. (It is not.) A county official later called the incident "regrettable" and said those officers had been reassigned. Similarly, in 2004, two plainclothes Contra Costa County sheriff's deputies monitored a protest by striking Safeway workers in nearby San Francisco, identifying themselves to union leaders as homeland security agents.

Further blurring the lines over what constitutes "homeland security" has been a push by Washington for states to identify possible terrorists. In 2003, the Department of Homeland Security began requiring states to draft strategic plans that included figures on how many "potential threat elements" existed in their backyards. The definition of suspected terrorists was fairly loose--PTEs were groups or individuals who might use force or violence "to intimidate or coerce" for a goal "possibly political or social in nature." In response, some states came up with alarming numbers. Most of the reports are not available publicly, but U.S. News obtained nine state homeland security plans and found that local officials have identified thousands of "potential" terrorists. There are striking disparities, as well. South Carolina, for example, found 68 PTEs, but neighboring North Carolina uncovered 506. Vermont and New Hampshire found none at all. Most impressive was Texas, where in 2004 investigators identified 2,052 potential threat elements. One top veteran of the FBI's counterterrorism force calls the Texas number "absurd." Included among the threats cited by the states, sources say, are biker gangs, militia groups, and "save the whales" environmentalists.

"The PTE methodology was flawed," says a federal intelligence official familiar with the process, "and it's no longer being used." Nonetheless, these "threat elements" have, in some cases, become the basis for intelligence gathering by local and state police. Concern over the process prompted the ACLU in New Jersey to sue the state, demanding that eight towns turn over documents on PTEs identified by local police.

Another source of alarm for civil liberties watchdogs is the explosion in police computing power. Spurred by a 2004 White House directive ordering better information sharing, the Justice Department has poured tens of millions of dollars into expanding and tying together law enforcement databases and networks. In many respects, the changes are long overdue, yanking police into the 21st century and letting them use the tools that bankers, private investigators, and journalists routinely employ. From TV shows like 24 and CSI, Americans are accustomed to scenes of police accessing the most arcane data with a few keyboard clicks. The reality couldn't be more different. Law enforcement was slow to get on the technology bandwagon, and its information systems have developed into a patchwork of networks and databases that cannot talk to one another--even within the same county. Rap sheets, prison records, and court files are often all on different systems. This means that days or even weeks can pass before court-issued warrants show up on police wanted lists--leaving criminals out on the streets.

States and cities began linking up their systems in the 1990s, but since 9/11 their progress has been dramatic. At least 38 states are working on some 200 projects tying together their criminal justice records. Concerned over disjointed police networks around its key bases, the Navy's Criminal Investigative Service is funding projects in Norfolk, Va., and four other port cities, creating huge "data warehouses" stocked with crime files from dozens of law enforcement agencies. The FBI is also running pilot database centers in the St. Louis and Seattle areas in which the bureau makes its case files available to police. To local cops who have long complained about the FBI's lack of sharing, the development is downright revolutionary. "It made people nervous as hell, including me," says the FBI's Thomas Bush, who oversaw the initial program and now runs the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division. "The technical aspect is easy, but you need to have the trust of the community and the security to safeguard the system."

The benefits of all this are undeniable. Armed with the latest information, police will be better able to catch crooks and spot criminal trends. But in this digital age, with so much data available about individual Americans, the lines between what is acceptable investigation and what is intrusive spying can quickly grow unclear. Consider the case of Matrix. Backed by $12 million in federal funds, at its peak in 2004 the Matrix system tapped into law enforcement agencies from a dozen states. Using "data mining" technology, its search engine ripped through billions of public records and matched them with police files, creating instant dossiers. In the days after 9/11, Matrix researchers searched out individuals with what they called "high terrorist factor" scores, providing federal and state authorities a list of 120,000 "suspects."

Law enforcement officials loved the system and made nearly 2 million queries to it. But what alarmed privacy advocates was the mixing of public data with police files, profiling techniques that smacked of fishing expeditions, and the fact that all these sensitive data were housed in a private corporation. Hounded by bad publicity and concerned that Matrix might be breaking privacy laws, states began pulling out of the system. Then, early last year, the Justice Department quietly cut off funding.

Matrix no longer exists, but similar projects are underway across the country, including one run by the California Department of Justice. Having learned from Matrix's mistakes, users are employing what tech specialists call "distributed computing." Instead of creating a single, vast database, they rapidly access information from sites in different states, often with a single query. The effect is essentially the same. "If people knew what we were looking at, they'd throw a fit," says a database trainer at one prominent police department.

Hacker's discovery. Another concern is the quality--and security--of all that information. In Minnesota, the state-run Multiple Jurisdiction Network Organization ran into controversy after linking together nearly 200 law enforcement agencies and over 8 million records. State Rep. Mary Liz Holberg, a Republican who oversees privacy issues, found much to be alarmed about when a local hacker contacted her after breaking into the system. The hacker had yanked out files on Holberg herself, showing she was classified as a "suspect" based on a neighbor's old complaint about where she parked her car. "We had a real mess in Minnesota," Holberg later wrote. "There was no effective policy for individuals to review the data in the system, let alone correct inaccuracies." In late 2003, state officials shut down the system amid concerns that it violated privacy laws in its handling of records on juvenile offenders and gun permits.

Such problems threaten to grow as law enforcement expands its reach with increased intelligence and computing power. The key to avoiding trouble, say experts, is ensuring that concerns over privacy and civil liberties are dealt with head-on. In a recent advisory aimed at police intelligence units, the Department of Justice stressed that success in safeguarding civil liberties "depends on appointing a high-level member of your agency to champion the initiative." But that message apparently hasn't gotten through, judging from the response at a conference sponsored by the Justice Department a few weeks back on information sharing. Among the crowd of some 200 local and state officials were intelligence officers, database managers, and chiefs of police. When a speaker asked who in the audience was working with privacy officials, not a single hand went up.

As Washington doles out millions of dollars for police intelligence, its reliance on voluntary guidelines may backfire, warn critics, who worry that abuses could wreck the important work that needs to be done. "We're still diddling around," says police technology expert Wormeli. "We're not setting clear policy on what we put in our databases. Should a patrol officer in Tallahassee be able to look at my credit report? Most people would say, 'Hell, no.'" Current regulations on criminal intelligence, he adds, were written before the computer age. "They were great in their day, but they need to be updated and expanded."

Civil liberties watchdogs like attorney Gutman, meanwhile, want to know how efforts to stop al Qaeda have ended up targeting animal rights advocates, labor leaders, and antiwar protesters. "You've got all this money and all this equipment--you're going to find someone to use it on," he warns. "If there aren't any external checks, there's going to be an inevitable drift toward abuses." But boosters of intelligence-led policing say that today's cops are too smart to repeat mistakes of the old Red Squads. "We're trying to develop policies to build trust and relationships, not spy," says Illinois State Police Deputy Director Kenneth Bouche. "We've learned a better way to do it." Perhaps. But for now, at least, the jury on this case is still out.

With Monica M. Ekman and Angie C. Marek

Copyright © 2006 U.S.News & World Report, L.P.

Targeted Killings Surge in Baghdad

Nearly 4,000 civilian deaths, many of them Sunni Arabs slain execution-style, were recorded in the first three months of the year.

By Louise Roug
Times Staff Writer

May 7, 2006

BAGHDAD — More Iraqi civilians were killed in Baghdad during the first three months of this year than at any time since the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime — at least 3,800, many of them found hogtied and shot execution-style.

Others were strangled, electrocuted, stabbed, garroted or hanged. Some died in bombings. Many bore signs of torture such as bruises, drill holes, burn marks, gouged eyes or severed limbs.

Every day, about 40 bodies arrive at the central Baghdad morgue, an official said. The numbers demonstrate a shift in the nature of the violence, which increasingly has targeted both sides of the country's SunniShiite sectarian divide.

In the previous three years, the killings were more random, impersonal. Violence came mostly in the form of bombs wielded by the Sunni Arab-led insurgency that primarily targeted the coalition forces and the Shiite majority: balls of fire and shrapnel tearing through the bodies of those riding the wrong bus, shopping at the wrong market or standing in the wrong line.

Now the killings are systematic, personal. Masked gunmen storm into homes, and the victims — the majority of them Sunnis — are never again seen alive.

Such killings now claim nine times more lives than car bombings, according to figures provided by a high-ranking U.S. military official, who released them only on the condition of anonymity.

Statistics obtained at the Baghdad morgue showed a steady increase in the number of shooting deaths and other types of targeted killings over the last year, with a stunning surge in March, after the Feb. 22 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, one of the holiest Shiite Muslim shrines in the country.

The morgue logs every autopsied body, cataloging each with a folder and pictures. Two officials at the morgue, the director and the head of statistics, provided the numbers and descriptions for this report.

On a recent day, coffins were stacked against the wall outside the morgue, waiting to be filled. Every half hour or so, police officers arrived, unloading bodies from their pickup trucks. Each time, crowds of people rushed forward to see whether their missing relatives were among them.

But even the grim morgue statistics — 3,472 violent deaths in Baghdad from January through March — do not present the full picture of the violence in the capital.

That number does not include those killed in bombings or during gunfights between insurgents and security forces because they are generally are not brought in for autopsy at the central morgue. At least 351 civilians were killed in bombings across the capital during the first three months of the year, according to calculations based on daily reports by hospital and police officials.

Those reports, considered conservative, did not include slain Iraqi security forces, Iraqis killed by U.S. or Iraqi forces, and Iraqis killed outside the capital.

Obtaining accurate numbers from the Health Ministry or the 18 major hospitals serving Baghdad proved difficult, because officials at all tiers of government routinely inflate or deflate numbers to suit political purposes.

The figures obtained from numerous other sources, however, show the sectarian nature of a conflict that is increasingly targeting civilians.

Numbers obtained from officials at the cemetery in the holy Shiite city of Najaf, where the vast majority of Shiites are laid to rest, provided a benchmark to compare the numbers of Shiite and Sunni victims in Baghdad.

In the Najaf cemetery, 1,582 people from throughout the country were buried in the first three months of the year. Included in that figure are also unclaimed bodies — some of them probably those of Sunnis.

That number, compared with the 3,472 violent deaths in Baghdad, provides additional evidence that the majority of those killed have been Sunnis, because it is still less than half the total of civilian deaths in the capital.

In addition, there are far more Shiites in Iraq than Sunni Arabs — and so the deaths among Sunnis appear to be disproportionate to the population.

In the Sunni cemeteries serving Baghdad, a city of 5 million people, demand for tombs is so high that people are buried between old graves or at the edges of the burial grounds. Near the gate of one Sunni cemetery tucked inside the Ghazaliya neighborhood, a sign proclaims, "Fee for burial — only 175,000 dinar," or about $120.

Sunni leaders allege that police officers and special commandos, most of whom are Shiites, operate death squads that target Sunnis in a campaign of sectarian cleansing.

Shiite politicians say criminals steal or buy official uniforms, then terrorize the capital in the guise of security forces. U.S. military officials lay the blame on Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, saying he is trying to provoke a civil war.

After the bombing in Samarra, the U.S. military began an effort to track what it terms ethno-sectarian violence. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the top military spokesman in Iraq, said the military logged 152 such killings in the week ended April 22 — a decline, he said, from previous weeks. How the military arrived at the number is unclear.

Commanders on the ground say it is nearly impossible to determine motives for these killings. A request to interview officers in the unit that tracks ethno-sectarian violence was denied.

Although the number of civilian deaths has increased steadily since 2003 and the incidence of execution-style shootings began to rise last spring, the violence surged by 86% in the nine weeks after the Golden Mosque attack, according to the figures provided by the U.S. military official.

Targeted killings now account for most of the violence.

"That's a major change in paradigm," the official said.

At the central morgue, the freezers are stuffed with bodies, and forensic workers are overwhelmed.

"Our small institute just cannot keep up with the number of corpses we are receiving daily," said Dr. Abed Razzaq, acting morgue director. In March, he said, "I remember we did autopsies on more than 110 cadavers — all unidentified, all in one day."

On a daily basis, he said, the morgue receives about 40 bodies. "And this number is constant, if not increasing."

Gunmen operate throughout Baghdad — killing brazenly during daytime and moving with impunity during curfew. Because there is rarely any proper investigation of the deaths by either U.S. or Iraqi authorities, it is all but impossible to determine to what extent the killers are motivated by sectarian feuds or by revenge, money or tribal quarrels.

"I cannot say if the killers are trained professionals or just criminals, but the pattern we see is torture and beatings" before the victim is killed, "mostly by shooting or hanging," Razzaq said. Six of 10 bodies bear signs of torture, he said. Some appear to have been severely beaten; others have had one or more limbs cut off.

"There are no limits to the brutality," he said. He and his colleagues sew limbs and heads back onto corpses before burial.

On the day of the Samarra bombing, the Ubaidis, a Sunni family of teachers and students enjoying the lull of a midterm break, had just finished lunch when someone knocked on the door of their home in Shaab, a mixed Shiite-Sunni middle-class neighborhood in Baghdad. Six men wearing masks and dressed in black, demanded to see Ziad, 21, and his father, Tariq, 52. The men forced the two into the trunks of waiting cars as Ziad's mother, Muazzaz, watched from an upstairs window.

Four days later, their bodies were found in a Baghdad suburb.

At the central morgue, workers duly noted the deaths. Muazzaz's eldest son and her husband of 22 years became two more entries, numbers 30948 and 30952, respectively, in the morgue's byzantine record-keeping system.

"My husband and son were killed for sectarian reasons," said Muazzaz, a teacher who had lived in the neighborhood for 19 years. "In a while, this area will be 100% Shiite…. It's definitely sectarian cleansing."

On the other side of the sectarian divide, large numbers of Shiites fall victim to frequent suicide attacks. On April 7, three suicide bombers walked into the Bratha Mosque — one of the most important Shiite shrines in the capital — and detonated vests packed with explosives and ball-bearings, killing at least 78 people and maiming 150 during Friday prayers.

Yarub Sultan, 27, a mechanic from Sadr City, helped evacuate the wounded from the mosque. He then searched for his missing brother, Abdul, scouring hospitals where the dead lay stacked and wrapped in blankets. Sultan's hands were covered with blood by the time his family found Abdul's body.

Despite the attack, Sultan and hundreds of other Shiite worshipers flocked to Friday prayers a few weeks later.

"We were targeted even before 2003," Sultan said, referring to his fellow Shiites, who were brutally repressed under Hussein's regime. Still, he would never take arms against those who had killed his brother, he said.

"If everybody takes the law in his own hands, we will have a civil war."

Evidence of the toll is visible in the black banners draped on walls around the capital.

"We never thought that we would reach a day when we would see Shiites and Sunnis fighting," said Halale Ubaidi, a Shiite who married a Sunni. Her 29-year-old son, Haitham, raised Sunni, was kidnapped along with his younger brother, Othman.

"My two sons were taken in front of my eyes, and one of them is dead," said Ubaidi, who is not related to the other Ubaidi family.

One night, attackers charged into the cramped apartment where the family squatted among Shiite neighbors.

"You, the Sunnis," said the gunmen, taking Haitham and Othman, said their sister, Maryam.

The attackers took the brothers to a house where, during their torture and captivity, they could hear the sounds of children and a woman cooking in the room next door, Othman told her.

Haitham was beaten and tortured to death in that house, said Othman, who managed to escape while he was being taken to a deserted area where, his captors had told him, he, too, would be killed.

Haitham's mutilated body was found five days later in a dump near the vast Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City.

Halale Ubaidi said she had spent her adult life living and praying alongside Sunnis. "I didn't care," she said, still stunned by her son's death.

Haitham's captors had gouged one of his eyes, cut his face with a razor, smashed his skull, broken his jaw, slit his back and cut off his penis, his sister and mother said. A copy of Haitham's death certificate says he was shot 14 times.

"We are living in a state of panic and fear," his sister said. "Maybe they'll come again…. Nobody knows when his turn will come to be captured and killed by these gunmen."

Times staff writers Caesar Ahmed, Shamil Aziz and Suhail Ahmad in Baghdad contributed to this report.

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times

Poker, Hookers, and Spooks
 

By MAUREEN DOWD
The New York Times
Published: May 6, 2006

So much news was popping out all over Washington yesterday, it was hard to decide which way to look.

I felt I had no choice but to go with Dusty Foggo, Top Spook.

There was also the story of a Kennedy cover-up, moonlight car accident and drug abuse. Been there, done that.

And the story of a top U.S. official stuck in the cold war taunting the Russian bear. Been there, done that.

And the story of a delusional secretary of defense being confronted in public for lying about an unpopular war producing a steady stream of body bags. Been there, done that.

But Dusty Foggo? That's a name for a spy that tops Valerie Plame, or even Valerie Flame.

And when you add Dusty to Duke, you've really got something. Dusty was handpicked by Porter Goss in late 2004 to be the No. 3 C.I.A. official, astonishing many agency veterans, according to Newsweek.

Dusty turns out to be a friend of a defense contractor implicated in the federal corruption investigation of the imprisoned Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a former G.O.P. congressman. The contractor, Brent Wilkes, is now entangled in allegations of louche and lewd behavior involving limos, hookers, a poker player with a missing digit from the C.I.A. nicknamed "Nine Fingers," and Watergate hospitality suites where more was offered than just Scotch and pretzels.

Been to the Watergate, haven't done that.

Yesterday, Porter Goss lost the job he never should have had in the first place. After John Negroponte gave Mr. Goss the ax, W. went biking in Beltsville, Md.

When spooks get spiked, W. spins the spokes.

The C.I.A. missed 9/11 and W.M.D., so you'd think President Bush would want a superstar in the job. Instead, he put in a Cheney lackey whose first move was to warn agency employees to get in line, that their job was to "support the administration and its policies." Mr. Goss's last move was to fire a top C.I.A. officer, Mary McCarthy, who was accused of, but denied, leaking the secret C.I.A. prisons story.

Mr. Goss got the job even though the 9/11 commissioners had declared that Congressional oversight of intelligence was "dysfunctional" at a time he ran the House intelligence panel.

He got the job even though he tried to help the vice president suffocate the 9/11 commission. At the C.I.A., he relied on so many cronies, he made Brownie look professional.

The benign but still disturbing explanation for his abrupt termination — given all the home videos that Qaeda terrorists are brazenly sending out — is that he and John "10 Fingers" Negroponte were fighting over access to W., like teenage girls over the prom king. (Wasn't Mr. Negroponte's position created to quell turf battles?)

Even conservatives found yesterday's chain of events suspicious. Bill Kristol said on Fox News, "I think there were either serious disputes or some internal problem at the agency or some scandal conceivably involving an associate of Goss's."

The president is supposed to announce Mr. Goss's successor on Monday. It's clear that the White House is again making policy on the fly.

With all these loony threads, conspiracy theorists are having fun weaving dime-novel scenarios.

After all, Ms. McCarthy, the C.I.A. officer ousted by Porter Goss, worked in the agency's inspector general's office. That office — charged with investigating transgressions by C.I.A. employees, like questionable dealings with defense contractors in hotel rooms, with poker and perhaps even pajama games — is now examining Mr. Foggo's dealings with Mr. Wilkes.

Ms. McCarthy was known to be a supporter of John Kerry, not one of the Bush loyalists who could be counted on to see no evil.

She has been labeled a traitor by the right, just as Ray McGovern, a former C.I.A. analyst who challenges Rummy's veracity, is being Swift-boated as a nut case and partisan.

Mr. McGovern and other disgruntled retired spooks say the C.I.A. has been misused, abused and marginalized by the Bush hawks. Rummy even formed his own C.I.A. within the Pentagon to get the prewar intelligence that he and Dick "Trigger Finger" Cheney wanted to hear.

Are disgusted retired C.I.A. analysts colluding with disgusted retired generals to wreak revenge on Rummy, who ran roughshod over them all? Is W.'s dad sending him a message? Mr. McGovern, oddly enough, was a C.I.A. briefer for Poppy. Or are those just wild Potomac conspiracy theories?

Weirdest of all, Patrick Kennedy's car accident was just a block or so from Mr. Goss's Capitol Hill town house. Coincidence?

Hard to tell, in the Foggo of war.

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MichaelMoore.com

Latest News

May 6th, 2006 2:23 pm

Iraqis Cheer Crash of British Helicopter

Clashes Break Out Between British Troops, Shiite Militias

By Bushra Juhi / Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A British military helicopter crashed in Basra on Saturday, and Iraqis hurled stones at British troops and set fire to three armored vehicles that rushed to the scene. Clashes broke out between British troops and Shiite militias, police and witnesses said.

Police Capt. Mushtaq Khazim said the helicopter was apparently shot down in a residential district. He said the four-member crew was killed, but British officials would say only that there were "casualties."

British forces backed by armored vehicles rushed to the area but were met by a hail of stones from the crowd of at least 250 people, who jumped for joy and raised their fists as a plume of thick smoke rose into the air from the crash site.

The crowd set three British armored vehicles on fire, apparently with gasoline bombs and a rocket-propelled grenade, but the soldiers inside escaped unhurt, witnesses said.

British troops shot into the air trying to disperse the crowd, then shooting broke out between the British and Iraqi militiamen, Khazim said. At least four people, including a child, were killed, he said. Two of the victims were adults shot by British troops while driving a car in the area, Khazim said.

The crowd chanted "we are all soldiers of al-Sayed," a reference to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, an ardent foe of the presence of foreign troops in Iraq.

Later the crowd scattered after hearing explosion, but groups of men set fire to tires in the streets and the situation remained tense. The chaotic scene was widely shown on Iraqi state television and on the Al-Jazeera satellite station.

The attack on the helicopter came at a difficult time for the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair in Britain, where many people oppose the U.S.-led Iraq war.

After a poor showing by his Labour Party in local elections this week, Blair overhauled his Cabinet, ousting Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's following rumors that he and Blair had differed on issues including Iraq. Straw reportedly had expressed doubts about the Iraq war to his boss.

In violence elsewhere, a suicide bomber wearing an Iraqi army uniform entered an Iraqi base in Tikrit and detonated an explosives belt, killing an Iraqi lieutenant colonel, a major and a lieutenant and wounding a lieutenant colonel, said the Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen.Abdul-Aziz Mohammed Jassim.

The U.S. command also announced that an American soldier was killed by the roadside bomb in Baghdad on Friday.At least 2,417 members of the U.S.military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003.

Britain has about 8,000 soldiers based in the mostly Shiite Basra area.Southern Iraq has long been much less violent than Baghdad and western Iraq where Sunni Arab-led insurgents and al-Qaida in Iraq launch many attacks against Iraqi civilians and U.S.and Iraqi forces.

But Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shiite religious leader, hasn't always been able to keep growing anti-coalition fervor among Shiite radicals under control.

In September, British forces arrested two officials of the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia loyal to al-Sadr, raising tensions in Basra. About a week later, militiamen and residents clashed with British troops after two soldiers disguised as Arabs were detained by Iraqi authorities.

British forces launched a raid to free the men and an Iraqi judge issued a homicide warrant for their arrest. British officials said the warrant was illegal under Iraqi law and their personnel were immune to prosecution in Iraq.

The bomber in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit targeted a group of Iraqi army recruits who had just finished their training and were being dispatched to another area of Iraq, Jassim said. Officials in Tikrit said the bomber apparently told guards that he wanted to see one of the officers and was admitted to the base without being searched.

The attack in the Sunni Arab city 80 miles north of Baghdad appeared to be part of a campaign by Sunni-led insurgents to discourage Sunnis from joining Iraqi security forces. The Bush administration hopes that newly trained Iraqi soldiers and police can one day improve security in Iraq enough to begin withdrawing U.S.forces from the country.

 In a bid to counter the U.S.efforts, Sunni militants have targeted Sunnis who cooperate with the government, including Iraqi army and police.

A roadside bomb also exploded Saturday near a Polish convoy in Diwaniyah south of Baghdad, wounding three soldiers, Poland's Defense Ministry said. Poland has about 900 soldiers in south-central Iraq, where it commands an international force.

In other developments Saturday:

A bomb in a parked car exploded, killing two policemen and an Iraqi soldier and wounding four civilians about 30 miles north of Baqouba, police said.

Suspected insurgents kidnapped seven Iraqis, including three paramilitary policemen, south of Baghdad in an area where a roadside bomb killed three U.S. service members the day before.

Roadside bombs hit two Iraqi police patrols in Baghdad, killing one officer and wounding two policemen and six civilians.

Two rockets or mortar shells were fired in northern Baghdad, one hitting a home and killing two children and wounding a woman.

Police in Baghdad found the bodies of 13 Iraqi men, five of them relatives from Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, who had been kidnapped and brutally killed, police said.

A drive-by shooting killed two brothers in Baghdad, police Capt. Firas Queti said.

A roadside bomb in the northern city of Mosul wounded two Iraqi policemen. Police also found the bullet-ridden bodies of a father and son who had been kidnapped earlier in the day.

Iraqi and U.S.forces searched shops for weapons and imposed a curfew in Rawah, a Sunni city 175 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.

MichaelMoore.com

Latest News

May 5th, 2006 8:28 pm

Rove thanks local GOP, talks tough on war

By Ad Crable / Lancaster Online

LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - On the night of Nov. 2, 2004, Karl Rove sat in a private dining room in the White House, sweating bullets over whether his boss, whose campaign he had masterminded and whose policies he had shaped, would remain president of the United States.

More than once, as George W. Bush ran neck-and-neck with John Kerry, Rove punched up the numbers for Lancaster County for a boost of confidence. Sure enough, the county delivered Bush 144,000 key votes — the most ever cast for a Republican in this county.

“(The votes) were quite a sweet number that night. I thank you,” the president’s top adviser told nearly 500 members of the Lancaster County Republican Party Thursday night on the occasion of their 150th anniversary celebration at the Lancaster Host Resort. Rove was grateful for the support, even though it wasn’t enough to help Bush carry the state.

As some 130 raucous but orderly protesters outside the auditorium lined Route 30 protesting the Iraq war and the man (Rove) they think played a hand in it, Rove exhorted the faithful to stand behind “complete and utter victory in the fight against terrorism. We were right to remove Saddam Hussein from power. America and the world are safer for it.”

Democrats’ chorus for “cut and run” now, Rove said forcefully, would only embolden terrorists the world over and signal that America cannot be trusted to keep its word.

“To retreat before victory is won would be a reckless act, and it will not happen on the watch of this president,” thundered Rove, who was the first to inform the president of the first hijacked plane hitting the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

“America is at war with a brutal and merciless enemy. 9/11 changed everything. (The president) understands we must run the killers into the ground.”

It was almost as if the president himself was speaking. Indeed, many have inferred that Rove, sometimes called “Bush’s brain” and “the Architect,” is the source of many Bush policies.

Over a 33-year relationship, the man who holds no college degrees has masterminded Bush’s ascension to the governorship of Texas and two terms in the Oval Office.

Rove’s fame as a potent and canny behind-the-scenes policy maker has taken a different turn in recent months. Rove has testified five times before a federal grand jury as part of an investigation into the source of an administration leak that outed CIA agent Valerie Plame. Plame’s diplomat husband had said Bush was lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

No one has identified Rove as the source of the leak, but a special prosecutor is expected to decide any day now whether to exonerate or indict Rove on a perjury charge for failing to reveal he had talked to a Time magazine reporter about Plame.

A jovial and confident Rove made no mention of the cloud over his head before the party loyalists in Lancaster.

Instead, he hammered on a theme that the Republican party has become the party in power at a crucial time in America because it is a party of ideas and optimism.

The party’s successes in the economy, getting two justices on the Supreme Court who strictly interpret the Constitution, and national security prove that, he said.

But Republicans can’t grow tired or timid, he warned.

It was believed Rove’s appearance here was partly to give a boost to U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum and his anticipated tooth-and-nail contest with Democrat front-runner Robert Casey Jr. And early Lancaster County GOP press releases said Santorum would be a featured speaker at the event.

But a local GOP spokesman said Santorum could not attend because of legislative matters. Rove only mentioned Santorum in passing, saying he and gubernatorial candidate Lynn Swann were “great candidates.”

Local Republicans paid $100 a head to hear Rove, former U.S. Rep. Bob Walker and others before the party’s annual spring fund-raising dinner. Some 150 paid $500 for a reception with the president’s deputy chief of staff.

Before hearing Rove’s pep talk on the war, local Republicans had to drive through a phalanx of people unhappy with their party, Rove and the conflict.

Many motorists honked in support or disgust at the display.

Almost all the 130 or so protesters held homemade signs, such as “Lancaster Says No To War, Greed And Lies,” and “Honk If You Hate Rove.”

Sherry Wolfe, 48, of Lancaster, held one end of an anti-war slogan fashioned on a sheet, while her daughter, Linda, 16, of Lancaster Catholic High School, held the other end.

Sherry Wolfe says she is “angry and ashamed” that county residents, especially in an area that embraces Christian values, would pay to bring a man like Karl Rove to speak.

“People are dying every day (in the Iraq war). He enabled this war on lies,” she said.

Standing next to two cardboard coffins draped in American flags, William Adams III, of Millersville, stood quietly with this sign: “Mr. Rove, your doctrine of pre-emptive war led to my son’s death.”

Adams’ son, 40-year-old National Guard Sgt. 1st Class Brent Adams, was killed in Iraq in December when a rocket struck his vehicle.

The father says he feels the war “is squandering men like Brent who believed in their commitment. I just feel a sense of disappointment with the direction the country’s heading.”

Matthew Smucker, who headed the protest and vigil for the Lancaster Coalition for Peace and Justice, said, “We want to send a clear message that not everyone in Lancaster agrees with Mr. Rove’s policies. He was instrumental in selling the war to the American people on falsehoods.”

MichaelMoore.com

Latest News

May 6th, 2006 6:33 pm

An Army of one wrong recruit

Autism - The signing of a disabled Portland man despite warnings reflects problems nationally for military enlistment

By Michelle Roberts / Oregonian

Jared Guinther is 18. Tall and lanky, he will graduate from Marshall High School in June. Girls think he's cute, until they try to talk to him and he stammers or just stands there -- silent.

Diagnosed with autism at age 3, Jared is polite but won't talk to people unless they address him first. It's hard for him to make friends. He lives in his own private world.

Jared didn't know there was a war raging in Iraq until his parents told him last fall -- shortly after a military recruiter stopped him outside a Southeast Portland strip mall and complimented him on his black Converse All Stars.

"When Jared first started talking about joining the Army, I thought, 'Well, that isn't going to happen,' " said Paul Guinther, Jared's father. "I told my wife not to worry about it. They're not going to take anybody in the service who's autistic."

But they did. Last month, Jared came home with papers showing that he not only had enlisted, but also had signed up for the Army's most dangerous job: cavalry scout. He is scheduled to leave for basic training Aug. 16.

Officials are now investigating whether recruiters at the U.S. Army Recruiting Station in Southeast Portland improperly concealed Jared's disability, which should have made him ineligible for service.

Jared's story illustrates a growing national problem as the military faces increasing pressure to hit recruiting targets during an unpopular war.

Tracking by the Pentagon shows that complaints about recruiting improprieties are on pace to approach record highs set in 2003 and 2004. The active Army and the Reserve missed recruiting targets last year, and reports of recruiting abuses continue from across the country.

A family in Ohio reported that its mentally ill son was signed up, despite rules banning such enlistments and the fact that records about his illness were readily available.

In Houston, a recruiter warned a potential enlistee that if he backed out of a meeting he would be arrested.

And in Colorado, a high school student working undercover told recruiters he had dropped out and had a drug problem. The recruiter told the boy to fake a diploma and buy a product to help him beat a drug test.

Violations such as these forced the Army to halt recruiting for a day last May so recruiters could be retrained and reminded of the job's ethical requirements.

The Portland Army Recruiting Battalion Headquarters opened its investigation into Jared's case last week after his parents called The Oregonian and the newspaper began asking questions about his enlistment.

Maj. Curt Steinagel, commander of the Military Entrance Processing Station in Portland, said the papers filled out by Jared's recruiters contained no indication of his disability. Steinagel acknowledged that the current climate is tough on recruiters here and elsewhere.

"I can't speak for the Army," he said, "but it's no secret that recruiters stretch and bend the rules because of all the pressure they're under. The problem exists, and we all know it exists."

Diagnosis and struggle

Jared lives in a tiny brown house in Southeast Portland that looks as worn out as his parents do when they get home from work.

Paul Guinther, 57, labors 50 to 60 hour weeks as a painter-sandblaster at Sundial Marine Tug & Barge Works in Troutdale. His wife, Brenda, 50, has the graveyard housekeeping shift at Kaiser Permanente Sunnyside Medical Center in Clackamas.

The couple got together nearly 16 years ago when Jared was 3. Brenda, who had two young children of her own, immediately noticed that Jared was different and pushed Paul to have the boy tested.

"Jared would play with buttons for hours on end," she said. "He'd play with one toy for days. Loud noises bothered him. He was scared to death of the toilet flushing, the lawn mower."

Jared didn't speak until he was almost 4 and could not tolerate the feel of grass on his feet.

Doctors diagnosed him with moderate to severe autism, a developmental disorder that strikes when children are toddlers. It causes problems with social interaction, language and intelligence. No one knows its cause or cure.

School and medical records show that Jared, whose recent verbal IQ tested very low, spent years in special education classes. It was only when he was a high school senior that Brenda pushed for Jared to take regular classes because she wanted him to get a normal rather than a modified diploma.

Jared required extensive tutoring and accommodations to pass, but in June he will graduate alongside his younger stepbrother, Matthew Thorsen.

Last fall, Jared began talking about joining the military after a recruiter stopped him on his way home from school and offered a $4,000 signing bonus, $67,000 for college and more buddies than he could count.

Matthew told his mother that military recruiting at the school and surrounding neighborhoods was so intense that one recruiter had pulled him out of football practice.

Recruiters in Portland and nationwide spend several hours a day cold-calling high school students, whose phone numbers are provided by schools under the No Child Left Behind Law. They also prospect at malls, high school cafeterias, colleges and wherever else young people gather.

Brenda phoned her two brothers, both veterans. She said they laughed and told her not to worry. The military would never take Jared.

The Guinthers, meanwhile, tried to refocus their son.

"I told him, 'Jared, you get out of high school. I know you don't want to be a janitor all your life. You work this job, you go to community college, you find out what you want. You can live here as long as you want,' " Paul said.

They thought it had worked until five weeks ago. Brenda