August 15, 2010

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is encouraging California to consider reversing a policy that prevents some of the state's poorest and most vulnerable residents from applying for food stamps, even though ending the policy could cost some current recipients their benefits.

The suggestion has raised concern among some advocates for the poor who were hoping that federal authorities would allow the state to open the food stamp program only to recipients of cash assistance for impoverished elderly and disabled people who would not be adversely affected.

"We really do want to make sure that we protect those households with disabled children and low-income seniors that benefit from the current policy," said George Manalo-LeClair, senior director of legislation for California Food Policy Advocates.

In an Aug. 6 letter to the California Department of Social Services, the USDA said federal law prohibits the state from changing the rules for some Supplemental Security Income recipients and not others.

California is the only state that does not allow its 1.2 million Supplemental Security Income recipients to apply for federal food stamps. When the federal cash assistance program was created in 1974, the state decided to increase its matching grant — known as the State Supplementary Payment — by $10 a month in place of administering food stamps for them.

At the time, many recipients qualified only for the minimum food stamp allotment, then $10. Augmenting cash payments by that amount helped the state reduce its administrative costs and relieved elderly and disabled people from having to apply for food stamps.

However, a recent increase in food stamp benefits and cuts to California's cash assistance grants have raised concerns that some Supplemental Security Income recipients are being shortchanged by the policy.

According to state officials, Supplemental Security Income recipients who live alone or with another recipient would now be eligible for more benefits if allowed to apply for food stamps. But officials caution that some would suffer if the state reversed the food stamp cash-out policy.

Currently, households that include members who are not receiving Supplemental Security Income may apply for food stamps without the aid recipient's income counting against the rest of the family's eligibility or benefit levels. If California allows Supplemental Security Income recipients to apply for food stamps, that could reduce or eliminate their household benefits.

John Wagner, director of the California Department of Social Services, wrote to the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service in April to ask if California could open the food stamp program only to households that depend solely on Supplemental Security Income.

"While [the agency] is unable to grant your request to partially end cash-out, I encourage you to consider the idea of ending cash-out completely," Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services Kevin Concannon responded last week.

Citing a February study by the independent Mathematica Policy Research organization, Concannon said opening the food stamp program to all Supplemental Security Income recipients "would have a lesser impact on mixed households than in prior years."

When Mathematica estimated the effects in 2002, it found that changing the policy would add more than 52,000 households to the food stamp rolls but reduce the total amount of benefits received in California by 12%. Under current circumstances, an estimated 54,000 households would be added to the rolls and benefits would drop 1%. Participation in the program would be higher if newly eligible households were automatically enrolled, the studies noted.

Jean Daniel, a USDA spokeswoman, said it was up to California to decide how it wants to proceed.

Social Services spokeswoman Lizelda Lopez said state officials remain concerned about the 99,000 households they estimate would lose some or all of their benefits.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0812-food-stamps-20100815,0,1578636,print.story

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L.A. County expects more federal aid to fund health services for the poor

The money, part of a $26.1-billion state aid measure, will prevent further cuts in health and mental healthcare services for patients on Medi-Cal and support in-home care for the frail and elderly.

By Rong-Gong Lin II, Los Angeles Times

August 15, 2010

Los Angeles County expects more than $60 million from Washington to fund health services for the poor after President Obama signed into law a $26.1-billion state aid measure.

The money will prevent further cuts in health and mental healthcare services for patients on Medi-Cal, the government insurance program for the poor, and will support in-home care for the frail and elderly.

The Department of Health Services, which runs the county public hospital system, will receive $22 million, and the Department of Public Social Services, which manages the in-home care program for the elderly, will receive $26 million. The Department of Mental Health will receive more than $12 million.

Many state and county officials across the nation were hoping for the aid package, which passed the House of Representatives on Tuesday and was quickly signed by Obama.

State and local governments began receiving extra federal money to fund healthcare services for the poor after Congress in 2009 passed the $787-billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a stimulus package aimed at preventing the nation from falling deeper into recession.

Tuesday's action extends the additional funding into the first six months of 2011, which is expected to be the last such installment from Washington. The aid, however, will be lower than that in 2009 and 2010.

During those two years, for every $1 California and its local governments paid for the health programs, the federal government paid $1.60. But from January to March, the federal matching rate will drop to $1.41, and from April to the end of June it will decrease even further to $1.30.

Beginning July 1, the federal matching rate will revert to the previous rate of $1.

Nonetheless, L.A. County officials were relieved Tuesday as they had already counted on extra federal help when they approved their most recent budget. The officials had become nervous as some members of Congress raised concerns about the rising deficit, jeopardizing passage of additional federal aid.

"This has been the county's No. 1 federal fiscal priority item," said Ryan Alsop, an assistant chief executive for Los Angeles County.

The funding package does not fully resolve the Department of Health Services' nearly $600-million deficit. The county is still talking with the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services regarding additional funding for that agency.

John Tanner, executive director of Service Employees International Union Local 721, which represents about half the county's workers — including many in health services — said they are working with county health officials to obtain the additional funding. He was optimistic that state and federal officials will respond.

"This is the largest public safety net in America. It needs to be preserved and strengthened," he said. "It needs to be ready for national health reform, it needs to be strengthened for that to succeed and I think that's recognized by the leadership" in Sacramento and at the White House.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-county-health-20100815,0,2487124,print.story

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Obama again defends right to put mosque near ground zero

Explaining his remarks, the president focuses on America's commitment to religious freedom.

By Peter Nicholas and Nicole Santa Cruz, Los Angeles Times

August 15, 2010

Reporting from Panama City Beach, Fla., and New

Standing up for the right to put a mosque near the site of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, President Obama on Saturday warned that the country risks losing its distinct identity if it ignores basic American values such as religious freedom.

Obama spoke about the proposed mosque for the second time in two days, breaking a long silence on the controversy.

He told reporters after an event in Florida that his purpose in speaking out was to "simply let people know what I thought."

He added that "it's very important, as difficult as some of these issues are, that we stay focused on who we are as a people and what our values are about."

Explaining why Obama kept silent until this point, White House aides said he wanted to wait for the right occasion and did not wish to influence New York City officials evaluating the project.

On Aug. 3, a New York commission cleared the way for an Islamic community center to be built two blocks north of where the World Trade Center once stood. Obama made his first comments on the matter Friday night at a Ramadan celebration hosted by the White House.

In his remarks Friday, Obama referred to the trauma of the Sept. 11 attacks as unimaginable. "So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders," he said. "Ground zero is, indeed, hallowed ground." But he added that America's "commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable."

Obama was in the Florida Panhandle on Saturday for a one-day trip with his wife, daughter Sasha and dog Bo, who roamed the aisles of Air Force One during the two-hour flight from Andrews Air Force Base. Daughter Malia is away at summer camp.

In remarks to the public, Obama noted progress in efforts to clean up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and encouraged tourists to vacation in the region as his family was doing. Later, during a round of miniature golf, Sasha carded a hole-in-one on the first hole. Her father gave her a high-five. "That's how you do it, right there!" he said.

But as much as the president tried to keep the focus on the gulf, he got questions on the mosque.

He emphasized that he was standing up for a basic principle, not endorsing the idea of putting a mosque at that specific location. But the distinction seems an academic one. At no point has Obama said it's a bad idea to put a mosque at that site even if the owners have the right to do so.

"I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there," he said. "I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That's what our country is about."

New Yorkers interviewed Saturday were divided about the mosque and the president's position.

Valerie Kowal, 63, a city worker from the Bronx, said that she doesn't share Obama's views. "Personally, I don't think we need it here," she said of the mosque.

A lifelong New Yorker, she works a couple of blocks from the World Trade Center site.

"We had to wear masks because all you smelled was fluid and death," she recalled.

The memory of that day is still fresh in her mind, which is why she opposes the center.

"I'm not a bitter person," she said. "But it's there. Personally, I don't think we need it here."

Michael Lozano, a financial planner who lives in Brooklyn, said he sees no problem with the mosque location.

"What's the difference between a mosque here and a mosque midtown?" Lozano, 42, asked. "I'm not against it."

House Republican Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio took issue with Obama's remarks. "The fact that someone has the right to do something doesn't necessarily make it the right thing to do," Boehner said in a statement. "That is the essence of tolerance, peace and understanding. This is not an issue of law, whether religious freedom or local zoning. This is a basic issue of respect for a tragic moment in our history."

The Muslim Public Affairs Council put out statement applauding Obama and New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who also has defended the proposed mosque.

"The president's made a historic speech in favor of religious freedom. He and Mayor Bloomberg have set the standard for other political leaders to preserve America's open society," said council President Salam Al-Marayati. "The president landed a major blow against Al Qaeda's false narrative that America is at war with Islam."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-mosque-20100815,0,7140190,print.story

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OPINION

'Housing first' and helping the homeless

Initial findings on 'housing first' programs, such as Project 50 in Los Angeles, show that they may be a solution to chronic homelessness and possibly save taxpayer money.

By Jon Morgenstern

August 15, 2010

In its recent series on a controversial program for the homeless, The Times described a project called Project 50 that seeks to put a roof over the heads of substance abusers without requiring them to undergo substance-abuse treatment, while still offering them as many services as they would use.

The new approach, known as "housing first," has been heralded in communities across the nation as a promising solution to end homelessness and save taxpayer money. Skeptics have asserted that the program is both wasteful and immoral because it simply warehouses substance abusers, enabling them to continue their self-destructive lifestyles with the support of taxpayer dollars.

The best answers to this debate will come through careful research. My colleagues and I are evaluating a similar program in New York City, which three years ago began the effort to house 500 chronically homeless individuals with alcohol and drug-abuse problems. While the results of this study are forthcoming, our initial findings on this and similar programs can help inform the current debate.

As with any social program, questions about the success of housing first depend on the expectations. Here are three useful measurements: Does it reduce homelessness, save taxpayer dollars and help rehabilitate individuals compared with other programs?

Certainly, the program has done a good job of providing stable housing. In New York City, 84% of the active alcohol and drug-user population remained in housing 18 months after the start of the program, a figure that was higher than another housing program that required clients to get substance-abuse treatment. These results are consistent with other research on the subject.

Housing first programs are thought to save money because homeless substance abusers are perpetually in crisis and, as a result, use such expensive services such as emergency rooms, ambulances and hospital detoxification services. The cost of these crisis services can run well over $100,000 a person in one year, far greater than the cost of a housing first program.

Is that actually what happens in practice? Early findings are promising. In one study, chronically homeless alcoholics in Seattle were selected on the basis of their extensive use of crisis services in the prior year and placed in a housing first program. After one year, the cost of services was $13,400 a client, a savings of more than $42,000 a client.

These results cannot be extrapolated to suggest that housing first will uniformly save money. More studies are needed. However, they illustrate that the current system incurs large costs to care for homeless substance abusers with little tangible gain for them or the public, and that housing first may offer a better option.

Finally, do housing first programs successfully rehabilitate clients, or do they simply allow self-destructive behaviors to continue? Unfortunately, there is substantially less data to answer this question. Given the lack of firm information, housing first should neither be denounced as immoral nor extolled as the single best answer. What is known is that, based on the science, most addiction treatment professionals support programs that make few or no demands on the homeless as one useful strategy for working with vulnerable or disabled clients. Accumulated evidence indicates that for the chronically homeless, refusal to seek treatment may reflect a deep sense of hopelessness and distrust of all social institutions, as well as a myopic preoccupation with daily survival on the streets that overwhelms the ability to consider the future.

Findings in our study support this perspective. More than half of the clients entering housing first expressed the desire to quit drinking or using drugs altogether. At the same time, most of them rejected treatment for their problem as well as other help such as medical care, suggesting that hopelessness and mistrust of help appear to be bigger issues than a desire to drink or use drugs at all costs.

As often happens around hot-button social issues, rhetoric on each side of the issue threatens to eclipse informed debate. Though more studies are needed, evidence to date supports housing first for active substance abusers as a helpful solution to chronic homelessness and a possible cost-saver.

Jon Morgenstern is a vice president at the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University and a professor of clinical psychology in psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-morgenstern-homeless-20100815,0,4092092,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Secret Assault on Terrorism Widens on Two Continents

by Scott Shane, Mark Mazzetti and Robert F. Worth.

WASHINGTON — At first, the news from Yemen on May 25 sounded like a modest victory in the campaign against terrorists: an airstrike had hit a group suspected of being operatives for Al Qaeda in the remote desert of Marib Province, birthplace of the legendary queen of Sheba.

But the strike, it turned out, had also killed the province’s deputy governor, a respected local leader who Yemeni officials said had been trying to talk Qaeda members into giving up their fight. Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, accepted responsibility for the death and paid blood money to the offended tribes.

The strike, though, was not the work of Mr. Saleh’s decrepit Soviet-era air force. It was a secret mission by the United States military, according to American officials, at least the fourth such assault on Al Qaeda in the arid mountains and deserts of Yemen since December.

The attack offered a glimpse of the Obama administration’s shadow war against Al Qaeda and its allies. In roughly a dozen countries — from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics crippled by ethnic and religious strife — the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists.

The White House has intensified the Central Intelligence Agency’s drone missile campaign in Pakistan, approved raids against Qaeda operatives in Somalia and launched clandestine operations from Kenya. The administration has worked with European allies to dismantle terrorist groups in North Africa, efforts that include a recent French strike in Algeria. And the Pentagon tapped a network of private contractors to gather intelligence about things like militant hide-outs in Pakistan and the location of an American soldier currently in Taliban hands.

While the stealth war began in the Bush administration, it has expanded under President Obama, who rose to prominence in part for his early opposition to the invasion of Iraq. Virtually none of the newly aggressive steps undertaken by the United States government have been publicly acknowledged. In contrast with the troop buildup in Afghanistan, which came after months of robust debate, for example, the American military campaign in Yemen began without notice in December and has never been officially confirmed.

Obama administration officials point to the benefits of bringing the fight against Al Qaeda and other militants into the shadows. Afghanistan and Iraq, they said, have sobered American politicians and voters about the staggering costs of big wars that topple governments, require years of occupation and can be a catalyst for further radicalization throughout the Muslim world.

Instead of “the hammer,” in the words of John O. Brennan, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, America will rely on the “scalpel.” In a speech in May, Mr. Brennan, an architect of the White House strategy, used this analogy while pledging a “multigenerational” campaign against Al Qaeda and its extremist affiliates.

Yet such wars come with many risks: the potential for botched operations that fuel anti-American rage; a blurring of the lines between soldiers and spies that could put troops at risk of being denied Geneva Convention protections; a weakening of the Congressional oversight system put in place to prevent abuses by America’s secret operatives; and a reliance on authoritarian foreign leaders and surrogates with sometimes murky loyalties.

The May strike in Yemen, for example, provoked a revenge attack on an oil pipeline by local tribesmen and produced a propaganda bonanza for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. It also left President Saleh privately furious about the death of the provincial official, Jabir al-Shabwani, and scrambling to prevent an anti-American backlash, according to Yemeni officials.

The administration’s demands have accelerated a transformation of the C.I.A. into a paramilitary organization as much as a spying agency, which some critics worry could lower the threshold for future quasi-military operations. In Pakistan’s mountains, the agency had broadened its drone campaign beyond selective strikes against Qaeda leaders and now regularly obliterates suspected enemy compounds and logistics convoys, just as the military would grind down an enemy force.

For its part, the Pentagon is becoming more like the C.I.A. Across the Middle East and elsewhere, Special Operations troops under secret “Execute Orders” have conducted spying missions that were once the preserve of civilian intelligence agencies. With code names like Eager Pawn and Indigo Spade, such programs typically operate with even less transparency and Congressional oversight than traditional covert actions by the C.I.A.

And, as American counterterrorism operations spread beyond war zones into territory hostile to the military, private contractors have taken on a prominent role, raising concerns that the United States has outsourced some of its most important missions to a sometimes unaccountable private army.

A Proving Ground

Yemen is a testing ground for the “scalpel” approach Mr. Brennan endorses. Administration officials warn of the growing strength of Al Qaeda’s affiliate there, citing as evidence its attempt on Dec. 25 to blow up a trans-Atlantic jetliner using a young Nigerian operative. Some American officials believe that militants in Yemen could now pose an even greater threat than Al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan.

The officials said that they have benefited from the Yemeni government’s new resolve to fight Al Qaeda and that the American strikes — carried out with cruise missiles and Harrier fighter jets — had been approved by Yemen’s leaders. The strikes, administration officials say, have killed dozens of militants suspected of plotting future attacks. The Pentagon and the C.I.A. have quietly bulked up the number of their operatives at the embassy in Sana, the Yemeni capital, over the past year.

“Where we want to get is to much more small scale, preferably locally driven operations,” said Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington, who serves on the Intelligence and Armed Services Committees.

“For the first time in our history, an entity has declared a covert war against us,” Mr. Smith said, referring to Al Qaeda. “And we are using similar elements of American power to respond to that covert war.”

Some security experts draw parallels to the cold war, when the United States drew heavily on covert operations as it fought a series of proxy battles with the Soviet Union.

And some of the central players of those days have returned to take on supporting roles in the shadow war. Michael G. Vickers, who helped run the C.I.A.’s campaign to funnel guns and money to the Afghanistan mujahedeen in the 1980s and was featured in the book and movie “Charlie Wilson’s War,” is now the top Pentagon official overseeing Special Operations troops around the globe. Duane R. Clarridge, a profane former C.I.A. officer who ran operations in Central America and was indicted in the Iran-contra scandal, turned up this year helping run a Pentagon-financed private spying operation in Pakistan.

In pursuing this strategy, the White House is benefiting from a unique political landscape. Republican lawmakers have been unwilling to take Mr. Obama to task for aggressively hunting terrorists, and many Democrats seem eager to embrace any move away from the long, costly wars begun by the Bush administration.

Still, it has astonished some old hands of the military and intelligence establishment. Jack Devine, a former top C.I.A. clandestine officer who helped run the covert war against the Soviet Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s, said his record showed that he was “not exactly a cream puff” when it came to advocating secret operations.

But he warned that the safeguards introduced after Congressional investigations into clandestine wars of the past — from C.I.A. assassination attempts to the Iran-contra affair, in which money from secret arms dealings with Iran was funneled to right-wing rebels in Nicaragua known as the contras — were beginning to be weakened. “We got the covert action programs under well-defined rules after we had made mistakes and learned from them,” he said. “Now, we’re coming up with a new model, and I’m concerned there are not clear rules.”

Cooperation and Control

The initial American strike in Yemen came on Dec. 17, hitting what was believed to be a Qaeda training camp in Abyan Province, in the southern part of the country. The first report from the Yemeni government said that its air force had killed “around 34” Qaeda fighters there, and that others had been captured elsewhere in coordinated ground operations.

The next day, Mr. Obama called President Saleh to thank him for his cooperation and pledge continuing American support. Mr. Saleh’s approval for the strike — rushed because of intelligence reports that Qaeda suicide bombers might be headed to Sana — was the culmination of administration efforts to win him over, including visits by Mr. Brennan and Gen. David H. Petraeus, then the commander of military operations in the Middle East.

The accounts of the American strikes in Yemen, which include many details that have not previously been reported, are based on interviews with American and Yemeni officials who requested anonymity because the military campaign in Yemen is classified, as well as documents from Yemeni investigators.

As word of the Dec. 17 attack filtered out, a very mixed picture emerged. The Yemeni press quickly identified the United States as responsible for the strike. Qaeda members seized on video of dead children and joined a protest rally a few days later, broadcast by Al Jazeera, in which a speaker shouldering an AK-47 rifle appealed to Yemeni counterterrorism troops.

“Soldiers, you should know we do not want to fight you,” the Qaeda operative, standing amid angry Yemenis, declared. “There is no problem between you and us. The problem is between us and America and its agents. Beware taking the side of America!”

A Navy ship offshore had fired the weapon in the attack, a cruise missile loaded with cluster bombs, according to a report by Amnesty International. Unlike conventional bombs, cluster bombs disperse small munitions, some of which do not immediately explode, increasing the likelihood of civilian causalities. The use of cluster munitions, later documented by Amnesty, was condemned by human rights groups.

An inquiry by the Yemeni Parliament found that the strike had killed at least 41 members of two families living near the makeshift Qaeda camp. Three more civilians were killed and nine were wounded four days later when they stepped on unexploded munitions from the strike, the inquiry found.

American officials cited strained resources for decisions about some of the Yemen strikes. With the C.I.A.’s armed drones tied up with the bombing campaign in Pakistan, the officials said, cruise missiles were all that was available at the time. Drones are favored by the White House for clandestine strikes because they can linger over targets for hours or days before unleashing Hellfire missiles, reducing the risk that women, children or other noncombatants will fall victim.

The Yemen operation has raised a broader question: who should be running the shadow war? White House officials are debating whether the C.I.A. should take over the Yemen campaign as a “covert action,” which would allow the United States to carry out operations even without the approval of Yemen’s government. By law, covert action programs require presidential authorization and formal notification to the Congressional intelligence committees. No such requirements apply to the military’s so-called Special Access Programs, like the Yemen strikes.

Obama administration officials defend their efforts in Yemen. The strikes have been “conducted very methodically,” and claims of innocent civilians being killed are “very much exaggerated,” said a senior counterterrorism official. He added that comparing the nascent Yemen campaign with American drone strikes in Pakistan was unfair, since the United States has had a decade to build an intelligence network in Pakistan that feeds the drone program.

In Yemen, officials said, there is a dearth of solid intelligence about Qaeda operations. “It will take time to develop and grow that capability,” the senior official said.

On Dec. 24, another cruise missile struck in a remote valley called Rafadh, about 400 miles southeast of the Yemeni capital and two hours from the nearest paved road. The Yemeni authorities said the strike killed dozens of Qaeda operatives, including the leader of the Qaeda branch in Yemen, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, and his Saudi deputy, Said Ali al-Shihri. But officials later acknowledged that neither man was hit, and local witnesses say the missile killed five low-level Qaeda members.

The next known American strike, on March 14, was more successful, killing a Qaeda operative named Jamil al-Anbari and possibly another militant. Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch acknowledged Mr. Anbari’s death. On June 19, the group retaliated with a lethal attack on a government security compound in Aden that left 11 people dead and said the “brigade of the martyr Jamil al-Anbari” carried it out.

In part, the spotty record of the Yemen airstrikes may derive from another unavoidable risk of the new shadow war: the need to depend on local proxies who may be unreliable or corrupt, or whose agendas differ from that of the United States.

American officials have a troubled history with Mr. Saleh, a wily political survivor who cultivates radical clerics at election time and has a history of making deals with jihadists. Until recently, taking on Al Qaeda had not been a priority for his government, which has been fighting an intermittent armed rebellion since 2004.

And for all Mr. Saleh’s power — his portraits hang everywhere in the Yemeni capital — his government is deeply unpopular in the remote provinces where the militants have sought sanctuary. The tribes there tend to regularly switch sides, making it difficult to depend on them for information about Al Qaeda. “My state is anyone who fills my pocket with money,” goes one old tribal motto.

The Yemeni security services are similarly unreliable and have collaborated with jihadists at times. The United States has trained elite counterterrorism teams there in recent years, but the military still suffers from corruption and poor discipline.

It is still not clear why Mr. Shabwani, the Marib deputy governor, was killed. The day he died, he was planning to meet members of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch in Wadi Abeeda, a remote, lawless plain dotted with orange groves east of Yemen’s capital. The most widely accepted explanation is that Yemeni and American officials failed to fully communicate before the attack.

Abdul Ghani al-Eryani, a Yemeni political analyst, said the civilian deaths in the first strike and the killing of the deputy governor in May “had a devastating impact.” The mishaps, he said, “embarrassed the government and gave ammunition to Al Qaeda and the Salafists,” he said, referring to adherents of the form of Islam embraced by militants.

American officials said President Saleh was angry about the strike in May, but not so angry as to call for a halt to the clandestine American operations. “At the end of the day, it’s not like he said, ‘No more,’ ” said one Obama administration official. “He didn’t kick us out of the country.”

Weighing Success

Despite the airstrike campaign, the leadership of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula survives, and there is little sign the group is much weaker.

Attacks by Qaeda militants in Yemen have picked up again, with several deadly assaults on Yemeni army convoys in recent weeks. Al Qaeda’s Yemen branch has managed to put out its first English-language online magazine, Inspire, complete with bomb-making instructions. Intelligence officials believe that Samir Khan, a 24-year-old American who arrived from North Carolina last year, played a major role in producing the slick publication.

As a test case, the strikes have raised the classic trade-off of the post-Sept. 11 era: Do the selective hits make the United States safer by eliminating terrorists? Or do they help the terrorist network frame its violence as a heroic religious struggle against American aggression, recruiting new operatives for the enemy?

Al Qaeda has worked tirelessly to exploit the strikes, and in Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric now hiding in Yemen, the group has perhaps the most sophisticated ideological opponent the United States has faced since 2001.

“If George W. Bush is remembered by getting America stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s looking like Obama wants to be remembered as the president who got America stuck in Yemen,” the cleric said in a March Internet address that was almost gleeful about the American campaign.

Most Yemenis have little sympathy for Al Qaeda and have observed the American strikes with “passive indignation,” Mr. Eryani said. But, he added, “I think the strikes over all have been counterproductive.”

Edmund J. Hull, the United States ambassador to Yemen from 2001 to 2004, cautioned that American policy must not be limited to using force against Al Qaeda.

“I think it’s both understandable and defensible for the Obama administration to pursue aggressive counterterrorism operations,” Mr. Hull said. But he added: “I’m concerned that counterterrorism is defined as an intelligence and military program. To be successful in the long run, we have to take a far broader approach that emphasizes political, social and economic forces.”

Obama administration officials say that is exactly what they are doing — sharply increasing the foreign aid budget for Yemen and offering both money and advice to address the country’s crippling problems. They emphasized that the core of the American effort was not the strikes but training for elite Yemeni units, providing equipment and sharing intelligence to support Yemeni sweeps against Al Qaeda.

Still, the historical track record of limited military efforts like the Yemen strikes is not encouraging. Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations, examines in a forthcoming book what he has labeled “discrete military operations” from the Balkans to Pakistan since the end of the cold war in 1991. He found that these operations seldom achieve either their military or political objectives.

But he said that over the years, military force had proved to be a seductive tool that tended to dominate “all the discussions and planning” and push more subtle solutions to the side.

When terrorists threaten Americans, Mr. Zenko said, “there is tremendous pressure from the National Security Council and the Congressional committees to, quote, ‘do something.’ ”

That is apparent to visitors at the American Embassy in Sana, who have noticed that it is increasingly crowded with military personnel and intelligence operatives. For now, the shadow warriors are taking the lead.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/world/15shadowwar.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

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The Increasing Role and Influence of Military Spouses

By TIM HSIA

I am leaving active duty this month, and the biggest fan of this change is my wife. The decision to leave the military did not come easily. During required counseling sessions with my battalion and brigade commanders, these senior officers sought to persuade me to stay on active duty.

Peers and subordinates also sought to persuade me, many citing the troublesome economy as a good reason to keep a steady job. But the counsel of commanders and soldiers, despite their good intentions, did not equal my wife’s influence and her recommendation that I leave. She no longer wants to deal with the hardships associated with deployments and training missions.

As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have continued, the military has become more attuned to the concern of the families of service members.

The first lady, Michelle Obama, has sought to provide more support for military families, and the vice president’s wife, Jill Biden, has played a cameo role in the television show “Army Wives.”

There is also a highly readable blog by and for military spouses, SpouseBuzz.

In today’s military, military spouses play an active role not just in their spouses’ decisions but also in decisions that affect their spouses’ military unit. They are involved not only with the local military community, but also within the military command structure.

Family Readiness Groups

Each unit has a Family Readiness Group (F.R.G.), which is composed of the spouses of soldiers. The role of the F.R.G. is to help families adapt to the military lifestyle and to provide spouses with information regarding their loved ones during deployments.

The F.R.G. not only sponsors picnics, coffee hours, weekend trips, and video chats to loved ones overseas but also liaises with commanders in order to keep up the information flow to military families. One of the main responsibilities of F.R.G. leaders is to provide guidance to commanders to ensure their policies take into account not just the soldier, but also the concerns of their families.

Initially F.R.G.s were simply informal wives clubs, but the military has moved to institutionalize these groups in order to better serve military families, and also to ensure these groups encompassed every military family within a unit.

My wife and I found the F.R.G. to be of great assistance when I was assigned to a base in a remote part of Germany. The F.R.G. helped to prepare our move there by providing a slew of information such as what we would need upon arrival, currency exchange rates and travel tips.

When the F.R.G. is inclusive, it thrives. However, there are instances when the F.R.G. can serve as a detriment to a unit, and also hinder the military operations of a deployed unit.

In one F.R.G. there was so much division among the spouses that it threatened the cohesion within the rank and file of the unit. One commander’s wife threatened to have a subordinate fired during a heated phone conversation. Because of this threat and other issues posed by the F.R.G. leader, the commander said, “the need to deal with challenges involving the unit’s family support group nearly every other day” took away time he “could have been using to focus on the war.”

The advice of military spouses is not just limited to the realm of the unit. For example, the military chain of command from the Joint Chiefs of Staff has embraced Greg Mortenson’s educational efforts in Afghanistan partly because “of the popularity of ‘Three Cups of Tea’ among military wives who told their husbands to read it.”

Social Pressure

A supportive spouse has almost become a prerequisite for soldiers who aspire to a high rank. I have yet to serve under any officer or senior noncommissioned officer who is single. The vast majority of career officers and NCOs are married, and being single can actually be detrimental to one’s career because one’s subordinates and their wives can unfairly cast the single service member as being out of touch with the demands and needs of the military family.

For married service personnel, it is often frowned upon when one’s spouse is not closely affiliated and identified with the family readiness group. As a soldier rises in the ranks, the roles and responsibilities s expected of his or her spouse also greatly increase.

There is an expectation that spouses married to someone in a senior leadership position should also be leaders within the F.R.G. and military community. Spouses who hold down demanding nonmilitary career jobs have told my wife and me that they felt they have been pushed outside of a unit’s social circle when they did not devote enough time to their F.R.G.

I have tremendous empathy for military spouses because of the demands placed on them by a military that has been constantly at war.

These spouses must bear not only frequent deployments but also being stationed in remote bases. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal in his retirement ceremony best summarizes the demands of being in the military, professionally and personally:

“Service in this business is tough and often dangerous,” he said. “It extracts a price for participants, and that price can be high. It is tempting to protect yourself from the personal and professional cost of loss by limiting how much you commit, how much you believe and trust in people, and how deeply you care.”

The military lifestyle is not easy on marital relationships. I can easily recall my wife’s birthdays because they are marked by significant military events: the day before we moved to Germany, the day before a deployment, or during a deployment.

Additionally, while the suicide rate of service members has received much attention, another troubling rate is the increasing divorce rate of couples in the military. One of the saddest things to witness during a deployment is witnessing a fellow soldier’s marriage fall apart.

My wife made me promise during the last deployment that I would never again be separated from her for such a long period. I am thankful that I am living up to this promise.

I am keenly aware and grateful for the thousands of other military spouses who are patiently and anxiously awaiting their loved one’s return from a deployment. Many Americans are grateful for the troops serving overseas, they should also be thankful for the spouses who support these troops. These military spouses also deserve our thanks.

-------------------

This is Capt. Tim Hsia’s last regular post for At War. An active duty U.S. Army infantry captain, he launched A Soldier Writes in August 2009 after a chance meeting with Times correspondent Stephen Farrell in January 2008 during a military operation in the Iraqi province of Diyala.

The captain, a 2004 West Point graduate, was on his second deployment to Iraq, with 3rd Squadron, Second Stryker Cavalry Regiment, and has since returned to the United States, via Germany. His first, and very popular, At War post was Unexamined Civil Military relations, exploring the issue of whether the creation of an all volunteer force has dissolved society’s relationship with the military.

Capt. Hsia provided a valuable non-journalist’s perspective on events in Iraq and Afghanistan, supplementing our regular team of
correspondents, photographers and videographers.

We would like to thank Capt. Hsia for his professionalism, integrity and enthusiasm, and we wish him, his wife and his new-born son every
success in their new life together outside the military.

Following his lead, other officers and soldiers have since contributed to At War, including Capt. Henry Brewster, First Lt. Rajiv Srinivasan, Capt. Eric Rudie and Sgt. Azar Boehm.

We hope to carry more such posts. We welcome submissions from active service officers and soldiers, to atwar@nytimes.com. We are also planning to run contributions from humanitarian workers in the field, and welcome submissions from others with a non-military view of combatants on the frontlines of these conflicts, and the civilians caught in the middle.

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense or the United States government.

http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/the-increasing-role-and-influence-of-military-spouses/?pagemode=print

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Japan, Checking on Its Oldest, Finds Many Gone

By MARTIN FACKLER

TOKYO — Japan has long boasted of having many of the world’s oldest people — testament, many here say, to a society with a superior diet and a commitment to its elderly that is unrivaled in the West.

That was before the police found the body of a man thought to be one of Japan’s oldest, at 111 years, mummified in his bed, dead for more than three decades. His daughter, now 81, hid his death to continue collecting his monthly pension payments, the police said.

Alarmed, local governments began sending teams to check on other elderly residents. What they found so far has been anything but encouraging.

A woman thought to be Tokyo’s oldest, who would be 113, was last seen in the 1980s. Another woman, who would be the oldest in the world at 125, is also missing, and probably has been for a long time. When city officials tried to visit her at her registered address, they discovered that the site had been turned into a city park, in 1981.

To date, the authorities have been unable to find more than 281 Japanese who had been listed in records as 100 years old or older. Facing a growing public outcry, the country’s health minister, Akira Nagatsuma, said officials would meet with every person listed as 110 or older to verify that they are alive; Tokyo officials made the same promise for the 3,000 or so residents listed as 100 and up.

The national hand-wringing over the revelations has reached such proportions that the rising toll of people missing has merited daily, and mournful, media coverage. “Is this the reality of a longevity nation?” lamented an editorial last week in The Mainichi newspaper, one of Japan’s biggest dailies.

Among those who officials have confirmed is alive: a 113-year-old woman in the southern prefecture of Saga believed to be the country’s oldest person, at least for now.

The soul-searching over the missing old people has hit this rapidly graying country — and tested its sense of self — when it is already grappling with overburdened care facilities for the elderly, criminal schemes that prey on them and the nearly daily discovery of old people who have died alone in their homes.

For the moment, there are no clear answers about what happened to most of the missing centenarians. Is the country witnessing the results of pension fraud on a large scale, or, as most officials maintain, was most of the problem a result of sloppy record keeping? Or was the whole sordid affair, as the gloomiest commentators here are saying, a reflection of disintegrating family ties, as an indifferent younger generation lets its elders drift away into obscurity?

“This is a type of abandonment, through disinterest,” said Hiroshi Takahashi, a professor at the International University of Health and Welfare in Tokyo. “Now we see the reality of aging in a more urbanized society where communal bonds are deteriorating.”

Officials here tend to play down the psychosocial explanations. While some older people may have simply moved into care facilities, they say, there is a growing suspicion that, as in the case of the mummified corpse, many may already have died.

Officials in the Adachi ward of Tokyo, where the body was found, said they grew suspicious after trying to pay a visit to the man, Sogen Kato. (They were visiting him because the man previously thought to be Tokyo’s oldest had died and they wished to congratulate Mr. Kato on his new status.)

They said his daughter gave conflicting excuses, saying at first that he did not want to meet them, and then that he was elsewhere in Japan giving Buddhist sermons. The police moved in after a granddaughter, who also shared the house, admitted that Mr. Kato had not emerged from his bedroom since about 1978.

In a more typical case that took place just blocks from the Mr. Kato’s house, relatives of a man listed as 103 years old said he had left home 38 years ago and never returned. The man’s son, now 73, told officials that he continued to collect his father’s pension “in case he returned one day.”

“No one really suspects foul play in these cases,” said Manabu Hajikano, director of Adachi’s resident registration section. “But it is still a crime if you fail to report a disappearance or death in order to collect pension money.”

Some health experts say these cases reflect strains in a society that expects children to care for their parents, instead of placing them in care facilities. They point out that longer life spans mean that children are called upon to take care of their elderly parents at a time when the children are reaching their 70s and are possibly in need of care themselves.

In at least some of the cases, local officials have said, an aged parent disappeared after leaving home under murky circumstances. Experts say that the parents appeared to have suffered from dementia or some other condition that made their care too demanding, and the overburdened family members simply gave up, failing to chase after the elderly people or report their disappearance to the police.

While the authorities have turned up a large number of missing centenarians, demographic experts say they doubt that discoveries of the living or the dead would have much impact on Japan’s vaunted life expectancy figures; the country has the world’s highest life expectancy — nearly 83 years — according to the World Bank. But officials admit that Japan may have far fewer centenarians than it thought.

“Living until 150 years old is impossible in the natural world,” said Akira Nemoto, director of the elderly services section of the Adachi ward office. “But it is not impossible in the world of Japanese public administration.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/world/asia/15japan.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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With Remarks on Mosque, Obama Enters Risky Debate

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

PANAMA CITY, Fla. — Faced with withering Republican criticism of his defense of the right of Muslims to build a community center and mosque near ground zero, President Obama quickly recalibrated his remarks on Saturday, a sign that he has waded into even more treacherous political waters than the White House had at first realized.

In brief comments during a family trip to the Gulf of Mexico, Mr. Obama said he was not endorsing the New York project, but simply trying to uphold the broader principle that government should “treat everybody equally,” regardless of religion.

“I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there,” Mr. Obama said. “I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.”

But Mr. Obama’s attempt to clarify his remarks, less than 24 hours after his initial comments at a White House iftar, a Ramadan sunset dinner, pushed the president even deeper into the thorny debate about Islam, national identity and what it means to be an American — a move that is riskier for him than for his predecessors.

From the moment he took the oath of office, using his entire name, Barack Hussein Obama, as he swore to protect and defend the Constitution, Mr. Obama has personified the hopes of many Americans about tolerance and inclusion. He has devoted himself to reaching out to the Muslim world, vowing, as he did in Cairo last year, “a new beginning.”

But his “new beginning” has aroused nervousness in some, especially those who disagree with his counterterrorism policies, or those more comfortable with a vision of America as a white and largely Christian nation, and not the pluralistic melting pot Mr. Obama represents.

The debate over the proposed Islamic center in Manhattan only intensified on Saturday, as the conservative blogosphere lighted up with criticism of Mr. Obama, and leading Republicans — including Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker; Representative John A. Boehner, the House minority leader; and Representative Peter T. King of New York — forcefully rejected the president’s stance.

Mr. Gingrich accused the president of “pandering to radical Islam.” Mr. Boehner said the decision to build a mosque so close to ground zero was “deeply troubling, as is the president’s decision to endorse it.” And Mr. King flatly said the president “is wrong,” adding that Mr. Obama had “caved in to political correctness.”

Indeed, the criticism was so intense that the White House ultimately issued an elaboration on the president’s clarification, insisting that the president was “not backing off in any way” from the comments he made Friday night.

“As a citizen, and as president,” Mr. Obama said then, “I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.”

The local issue of the mosque and the wider issues of Islam and religious freedom are just part of a divisive cultural and political debate that is percolating in various forms during this hotly contested election season. On Capitol Hill, for instance, some Republicans advocate amending the Constitution to bar babies born to illegal immigrants from becoming citizens — a move the president also opposes.

“I think it’s very important, as difficult as some of these issues are, that we stay focused on who we are as a people and what our values are all about,” the president said here on Saturday.

Mr. Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, also held annual Ramadan celebrations and frequently took pains to draw a distinction between Al Qaeda and Islam, as Mr. Obama did Friday night. But Mr. Obama, unlike Mr. Bush, has been accused of being a closet Muslim (he is Christian) and faced attacks from the right that he is soft on terrorists.

“For people who already fear the worst from Obama, this only confirms their fears,” said John Feehery, a Republican consultant who spent years as a top party aide on Capitol Hill. “This is not a unifying decision on his part; he chose a side. I understand why he did this, but politically I think it’s a blunder.”

White House aides say Mr. Obama was well aware of the risks. “He understands the politics of it,” David Axelrod, his senior adviser, said in an interview.

Few national Democrats rushed to Mr. Obama’s defense; party leaders, who would much prefer Mr. Obama to talk about jobs, were mostly silent. Two New York Democrats, Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand and Representative Jerrold Nadler, however, did back Mr. Obama. But Alex Sink, the Democratic candidate for governor here, distanced herself, while Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican-turned-independent, defended the president.

“I think he’s right,” Mr. Crist told reporters during an appearance with the president at a Coast Guard station here.

Mr. Obama has typically weighed in on such delicate matters only when circumstances have forced his hand, as he did during his campaign for president, when he gave a lengthy speech on race in America in response to controversy swirling around his relationship with his fiery former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

Debate about the Islamic center had been brewing for weeks, yet Mr. Obama had studiously sidestepped it.

But the Ramadan dinner seemed to leave the president little choice. Aides said there was never any question about what he would say.

“He felt that he had a responsibility to speak,” Mr. Axelrod said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/us/politics/15mosque.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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OPINION

Preaching About a Mosque

By TOBIN HARSHAW

The personal is still political. “Michael R. Bloomberg is a former Wall Street mogul with a passion for the rights of a private property owner,” reports The Times’s Michael Barbaro. “He is a Jew whose parents asked their Christian lawyer to buy a house and then sell it back to them to hide their identity in an unwelcoming Massachusetts suburb. And he is a politician who regards his independence as his greatest virtue.”

Where is this taking us? To ground zero, of course:

That potent combination of beliefs and history, those closest to Mayor Bloomberg say, has fueled his defense of the proposed Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan — a defense he has mounted with emotion, with strikingly strong language and in the face of polls suggesting that most New Yorkers disagree with him. “Something about this issue just really hooked into him,” said Howard J. Rubenstein, the powerful public relations executive, who is a friend of Mr. Bloomberg. “It deeply upset him.”

For many, the issue of the Islamic cultural center near ground zero has become personal. This hasn’t helped with the “dialogue” the project was supposed to start.

The mayor, of course, is not alone in taking an emotional stance on an issue that could be fairly described as a debate over “the rights of a private property owner.” Here’s The Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer:

A place is made sacred by a widespread belief that it was visited by the miraculous or the transcendent (Lourdes, the Temple Mount), by the presence there once of great nobility and sacrifice (Gettysburg), or by the blood of martyrs and the indescribable suffering of the innocent (Auschwitz). When we speak of Ground Zero as hallowed ground, what we mean is that it belongs to those who suffered and died there — and that such ownership obliges us, the living, to preserve the dignity and memory of the place, never allowing it to be forgotten, trivialized or misappropriated …

It’s why, while no one objects to Japanese cultural centers, the idea of putting one up at Pearl Harbor would be offensive.And why Pope John Paul II ordered the Carmelite nuns to leave the convent they had established at Auschwitz. He was in no way devaluing their heartfelt mission to pray for the souls of the dead. He was teaching them a lesson in respect: This is not your place; it belongs to others. However pure your voice, better to let silence reign.

The issue of the Cordoba Initiative’s cultural center a couple of blocks from the site of the World Trade Center has been the summer’s slow-burning political issue, with a white-hot culture war at its center. (President Obama’s decision Friday night to support the mosque certainly won’t cool any tempers.) So, is it a “monument to tolerance” or to terrorism? That’s a question that, as The Times’s Ann Barnard discovered through some good reporting, the center’s planners were initially unprepared to answer. In fact, advance preparation seems to be a weak spot at the Cordoba Initiative; when asked on a radio talk show last week whether he considered Hamas a terrorist group, the group’s leader, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, responded, “I’m not a politician, I try to avoid the issues. The issue of terrorism is a very complex question.” Fortunately, there’s nothing the blogosphere loves better than complexity.

(It’s worth pointing out that many on the left were angered by the Barnard article: “There is a constant temptation to publish articles like this that delve into the lesser known details of a topic or look at the small ways in which the mosque organizers, naively, brought some of the trouble on themselves,” wrote Josh Marshall at TPM. “But there’s nothing subtle or probing about glossing over who actually led the scurrilous jihad against this project in the first place.”)

In any case, the mosque debate is also a personal issue for Time’s Joe Klein: “I knew people who died in those attacks; nine people in my suburban town didn’t come home that night. I also have Muslim friends–some of whom live in that town, some of whom knew and maybe even were friendly with those who were killed–who are appalled by what they consider Al Qaeda’s perversion of their religion.” O.K., that’s an easy passage to mock (“some of my best friends are black …”), but he aims for a bit more substance in rebutting Krauthammer:

Krauthammer raises a second shoddy argument: You wouldn’t want the Japanese to build a memorial or cultural center at Pearl Harbor. This is conflating ethnicity with religion. But I’d also be open to a Japanese monument that honored those who died on December 7, 1941, apologized for the attack and expressed the desire for continued close friendship between our two countries. The Polish government’s gesture of allowing Israeli jets to be photographed flying over Auschwitz–which Jeff Goldberg describes in his Atlantic cover story this month–is sort of like that. And so is the Cordoba Center: as planned, it is a celebration of American diversity, a monument to those who died (including the Muslims who died) and a rejection of the extremist theology of those who carried out the attacks.

The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait uses a broad brush to accuse Krauthammer of using a broad brush: “We’re left with a stark contrast in strategic approaches to fighting islamic radicalism. One approach is to attempt to divide extremist Islam from the rest of Islam, demonstrating American openness to the latter in order to isolate the former. The other approach — Krauthammer’s approach — is to treat all Muslims as potential terrorists. After all, who is to say that any Muslim organization won’t hire a radical?You certainly can’t prove a negative, especially in advance.”

Speaking of proving negatives, Betsy Newmark thinks the mosque’s detractors are being asked to do so, on the charge of bigotry: “Our betters such as the Mayor and the White House which posted his remarks all think that the only reason that people would oppose such a mosque is due to unthinking prejudice against Muslims. Because, in their view, only someone of deep-seated bigotry would be against such a mosque. Well, then the majority of Americans are bigots. People don’t oppose this iman’s building of a mosque, but just one in that location. If he was truly interested in cross-cultural openness and discussions, he would pick another site. Instead, he is deliberately choosing a site to exacerbate relations.”

For Tapped Adam Serwer, it’s not exactly bigotry, but pure politics:

The reason this became a national controversy is because Republicans see a political advantage in harnessing anti-Muslim sentiment, particularly if that forces Democrats to defend an unpopular minority group. Rauf and Khan are merely collateral damage in a larger political battle in which the rights of Muslims are forfeit as long as Republicans see some political interest in curtailing them or forcing their opponents to defend them. But just as no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people, no Republican ever went broke underestimating the political cowardice of the Democratic Party.

So what we’re left with is a largely uncontested notion that any observant Muslim is a potential national-security threat, a view that was once confined to the conspiratorial right-wing fringe but is now, thanks to Republican demagoguery, Democratic cowardice, and mainstream media know-nothingism, an entirely respectable, mainstream view. This isn’t just a setback for religious tolerance and individual freedom; it’s a setback for the fight against terrorism, which demands that the United States marginalize violent extremists, not embrace their narrative and worldview.

Barbara O’Brien at the Mahablog doesn’t see what’s so sacred about ground zero:

Over the past several days here on this blog I have documented that within a three-block radius of the area called Ground Zero there are at least two strip clubs plus a number of bars (one popular with lesbians). This morning through googling I found a lingerie and porn video shop about two blocks south of Ground Zero that a reviewer calls “grimy” and “sleazy.” Those establishments have existed in close proximity to Ground Zero lo these many years, and no one seemed to care.

Yet talk about putting up a cultural center within this same area, one that won’t even be visible from the Ground Zero site, and suddenly people start squawking about “hallowed ground” and “sacrilege.” Give me a break.

It’s a different liberal’s view on the importance of the site, however, that’s garnering the most attention from the right at the moment. “Yes, the 9/11 attacks were horrific, but they were more about optics than actual harm,” wrote the diarist Something the Dog Said at Daily Kos. “The economy was already taking a hit before the Twin Towers fell. The reaction of the nation to seeing two major buildings in New York fall on T.V. has boosted the attack out of proportion. While the loss of even a single life is to be condemned and the devastation these deaths caused the families of those killed, more than this number of teens are killed every year in car crashes. These are also tragic losses but we do not make the kind of high profile issue of it that the 9/11 attacks are.”

While not everyone will reject this equivalence argument out of hand, it seems unlikely to start the sort of dialogue among faiths that the Islamic cultural center’s backers are so keen on. Of course, neither will opening a gay bar next door to the mosque, although Greg Gutfield is at least providing a dog-days diversion. And in a week in which one of Feisal Abdul Rauf’s more influential supporters in the blogosphere made a convincing case that Israel is within a hair’s-breadth of bombing Iran, perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/preaching-about-a-mosque/?pagemode=print

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OPINION

As Arizona Went, So Goes Virginia

Virginia has long had localized tensions over immigration: places like Prince William County and towns like Herndon where influxes of day laborers and other immigrant Latinos have been followed by police crackdowns, anti-solicitation ordinances and laws empowering the police to check people’s immigration status.

But now that Arizona has gone to unconstitutional extremes in its anti-immigration campaign, Virginia’s highest officials are trying to take their whole state farther down that dark road.

Gov. Robert McDonnell and the attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, both Republicans, are leading the charge. Mr. McDonnell is pushing to expand the authority of the state police to enforce federal immigration laws. Mr. Cuccinelli — who signed on to an amicus brief supporting Arizona’s immigration law — recently said that Virginia’s law enforcement officers may check the immigration status of anyone they stop for any reason.

The opinion does not say such checks are required, which the American Civil Liberties Union pointed out in a letter urging local police departments to ignore it. The A.C.L.U. said the opinion cited no Virginia statute or any other state’s law, and was an invitation to racial profiling and equal-protection violations by officers who should be doing what they were trained to do — like catching criminals.

Leave aside the question of how a police officer is supposed to tell whether a person being questioned has committed a crime (crossing the border without papers) or a civil violation (overstaying a legal visa) or is just an American citizen without ID. A bigger question is why police departments would want to be roped into immigration enforcement with every stop they make. A police officer’s job is not foreign policy or border control. It’s community safety.

Police chiefs and officers across the country, particularly those who work along the border, recognize that you can’t easily protect a community that fears and shuns you. To fight crime, law enforcement needs help. It needs willing witnesses, and victims who tell the truth. It needs time and resources, which it shouldn’t waste chasing peaceable immigration violators and detaining brown-skinned citizens.

In Virginia — and in other states like Florida, where officials and candidates have been aping Arizona — creating a local dragnet for illegal immigrants is a popular slogan. It is not a solution.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/opinion/15sun2.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From the Chicago Sun Times

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The Drew Peterson letter: My life in jail

August 15, 2010

BY MICHAEL SNEED Sun-Times Columnist
He says he sleeps on a lawn-chair mattress in a cold cell, where he is being housed in isolation and is frequently strip searched.

Besides his lawyers, the only human contacts for Drew Peterson -- who is awaiting trial in the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio -- are prison guards and an inmate who brings him meals, clean clothes and linen "passed through a chuckhole," Peterson says in a handwritten letter to Chicago Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed.

Drew Peterson has described his day-to-day life while incarcerated in a handwritten letter to Michael Sneed.

In the 10-page letter received by Sneed last week, the 56-year-old Peterson describes in detail his life in the Will County Jail since his May 2009 arrest. Peterson -- a former Bolingbrook cop who has also been named a suspect in the disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy -- is facing even more time in prison while prosecutors appeal a ruling that blocked them from using hearsay evidence in his upcoming trial.

"It almost took an act of God to get a second blanket and a thermal shirt,'' he writes. "I haven't figured out yet if I'm being protected from the other inmates or are they being protective from me."

The letter from Peterson was given to Sneed by a confidential source, who removed parts of the missive. The Sun-Times also edited the letter for space, but Peterson's words were left largely verbatim.

While Peterson writes about the restrictions of prison life -- and at times jokes about what he has gone through -- the Sun-Times is aware of the pain the Savio family has endured while waiting for justice in the murder of their loved one.

In the second installment of the letter to Sneed, to be published in Monday's Sun-Times, Peterson writes about what he misses on the outside, the letters he has received from sympathizers and his trademark jail humor.

The arrest

I find myself with a lot of time these days where I have looked back on my life and many trials and tribulations.

I recall the day I was arrested 5-7-9. It was a beautiful sunny spring day and as I moved about during my daily chores caring for my family I noticed a buildup of press in front of my house. I've been harassed by the press for the past 19 months but this day was different. They parked down the street leaving the front of my home clear for something. Something's up. It was late afternoon all my anti-Drew neighbors were outside as if they were waiting for something to happen.

I needed to run to the bank so I told my children I would be right back. As I traveled to the bank I was stopped for a traffic light with a marked ISP [Illinois State Police] vehicle pulled right behind me. I was cut off and blocked in by an unmarked pickup truck and was then surrounded by plain clothes ISP patrolmen with guns drawn. I remember looking out my car passenger window and a senior ISP officer standing there looking confused finally drawing his weapon. I gave him the middle finger salute and yell to him, "shoot me asshole."

As I exited my car I was met by an ISP officer who resembled Pee Wee Herman to me. He put his firearm in his left hand and picked me off the ground with his right arm & Hip. I laughed and said to him, "I'm not fighting you." He looked confused and I repeated, "I'm not fighting you," "put me down." I was set down, I put my hands on my car where I was pat down and handcuffed. In an insulting manner my sunglasses were torn from my face and tossed into the backseat of my car.

I was put in the backseat of an unmarked SUV and transported to the ISP dist 5 Headquarters between two very large sweaty plainclothes officers. One called the Chief of Police of Bolingbrook and boasted, "WE GOT DREW." I laughed at the officers and their sloppy felony traffic stop thinking of how unsafe it was. I also commented how rattled they were and thought how I was the one who should have been shaken up.

I told the ISP and the Will Co. States attorney's office on many occasions all they had to do was call me and I would turn myself in if it ever came to that point. I guess with all their efforts and obsession they needed their show. I asked why I was being arrested and what was my bond. They responded "For the murder of Kathleen Savio" and bond was 20 million dollars.

As I joked with them they asked why I didn't ever try to become an Illinois State Policeman. I think I angered them when I responded I couldn't because my parents weren't brother and sister.

The warrant was signed and bond set by Judge Rosak [Will County Judge Daniel Rozak] whom I have known for many years and viewed as a cop in robes. He had signed many of the search warrants for my home with about the same amount of probable cause as you would need to get a free car wash.

At ISP HQ they again tried to question me but were met with me simply stating "I want my lawyer." I learned later my home was again searched by the souvenir-hunting ISP picking through my belongings for about the 6th time. They did get another shot at terrorizing my children removing them from my home under a blanket hiding them from the press. Our hero's. My girlfriends kids also got to experience the terror.

Life in jail

I was taken to the Will County Jail where I was processed, strip searched and given a spiffy jail uniform. I was told that I was in "protective custody" and I was taken to a POD and placed in a small cell alone. I realized what was happening to me and I remember this feeling of anger coming over me being mad that the people responsible to putting me there were getting away with it knowing that I have done nothing wrong.

The next day I was allowed to contact my family and found out my kids were OK and with my older son. I was ready for anything. I was then taken to the Medical Part of the jail where I have been housed ever since.

My cell is larger than most and it has a reverse air flow system designed to hold someone with an airborne contagious disease. It's new and I keep it clean and I have my own shower. Its always very cold.

It almost took an act of god to get a second blanket and a thermal shirt.

I sleep on a lawnchair mattress on a cement slab. I'm kept in solitary confinement on the reflective side of two way glass. My only human contact is with the guards who view me regularly and the inmate pod worker who bring me my meals, clean clothes and linen passed through a chuckhole.

I haven't figured out yet if I'm being protected from the other inmates or are they being protective from me. My telephone privileges have been limited to only my lawyers and my family after my 30 minute calls to both NBC TODAY SHOW MATT LAUYER which was broadcast live and to MANCOW broadcast live to chicagoland where I gave my standup comedy jailhouse routine. Someone is afraid of what I have to say. With few exceptions I have been treated professionally by the staff here sometimes even with kindness.

By the way the food in here really isn't that bad. A step down from Army food. I thank Cecil for his efforts.

Cell search

My cell is searched regularly. Very special times in here is when my cell is raided in the middle of the night by ten or so very large men dressed in black swat type uniforms (ERTs). The first time I was handcuffed as my cell was searched.

I was then strip searched, as in each raid, while all ten watched. I hummed the stripper song as I tossed them my clothes one piece at a time. When I got down to my underpants I told them if they tried to put dollars in my pants we were gonna fight. I was later told that they were trying to humiliate me but I don't think they got the response they were looking for as I left them laughing.

I'm here to tell you I have been looked at naked here more than I care to remember. If you are modest at all this is the place to avoid.

It would really bother me if I ever learned that while they were making love to their women that they were thinking of me naked.

My only source of entertainment is television and all the televisions work off the same cable box so every dayroom T.V. has the same thing on. The officers normally ask me what I want to watch and I try to select something everyone will enjoy like movies or sitcoms. I don't like to read but I have read about different religions.

I'm in the medical section so my health is being cared for by a very professional staff. I've been treated for everything from heartburn to high blood pressure.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/sneed/2598896,CST-NWS-SNEED15.article

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Heroin use among young white women shows dramatic increase

August 15, 2010

Young white women are using heroin more than ever before, a Chicago-based study has concluded.

The 10-year study, published this year by the Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy, found heroin-related deaths in Cook County decreased by 16 percent between 1998 and 2008.

However, the study found that heroin-related deaths of white women in Cook County increased 40 percent over that same period, to 43 deaths, and that use of the drug is increasing dramatically.

During that period, heroin moved from No. 4 to No. 2 on the list of illegal drugs for which individuals enter treatment in Illinois, behind only alcohol.

That increase has been fueled by the appetites of mostly young, mostly white suburbanites, with the increased heroin use taking place largely in suburban Cook County and the five collar counties.

White users are more likely to be young and suburban -- 15 to 35 years old; African Americans are more likely to be older and urban.

Throughout the state, the number of whites entering publicly funded treatment increased from 720 admissions in 1998 to 4,513 in 2008 -- an increase of 527 percent. The total amounted to 26 percent of all admissions, up from 18 percent ten years ago.

http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/health/2600570,CST-NWS-heroin15side.article

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So many of us are blind to anti-Muslim bigotry

August 15, 2010

BY NEIL STEINBERG Sun-Times Columnist

Last spring, I spoke at the Dante luncheon of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans.

It was fun, to talk about the Divine Comedy. I concluded by pointing out how Dante, describing his elaborate paradise, pauses to mention that half of heaven is occupied by Jews.

"Not only that," I said. "But it's the better half."

I explained that, being Jewish myself and having soldiered through thousands of lines of Dante's often-abstruse terza rima verse, I felt rewarded by this gesture, an extraordinarily generous act for an Italian poet in 1300 -- an unexpected nod to a widely despised minority -- and how today it represents a challenge to us all.

"There is a lesson there," I said, explaining that it is easy to deal sympathetically with your own kind, to demand others treat you with the respect and humanity that you deserve.

The hard part is to do this with other people, to treat them the way you yourself expect to be treated.

This isn't profound. It's just a wordier version of the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." Everyone endorses it in theory. But try to apply it to a specific case, and it just vanishes, crumbling to nothing at a touch, like ash, as if it weren't a timeless moral code at all, but mere words, empty of meaning.

'Why can't they be sensitive?'

"I don't understand!" said the caller, a reader from Morton Grove, summarizing a column I wrote earlier this month about the Islamic community center planned for two blocks from Ground Zero in New York City.

I let him talk -- fielding complaints is like fishing. Never try to reel them in too soon; play out some line and first let them tire themselves, flapping around.

Three thousand dead! 9/11! The feelings of the families trampled by inconsiderate Muslims!

"Couldn't they just put it a few blocks away!?!" he said, genuinely baffled.

"No," I said, "and here's why ..."

But he was off again. He was a lawyer, he said, and himself Jewish.

I waited, with a fisherman's patience, and tried again.

"Do you own a house?" I asked. At first the question didn't register.

"What?" he said.

"Do you own a house?"

"Yes ..." he said, reluctantly; lawyers tend to be circumspect.

"What color is it?" I asked.

"Blue ..." he said, puzzled.

"OK," I continued. "Let's say you want to paint it white. You file whatever notice you need with Morton Grove that you're painting your house white. But your neighbors complain -- they don't want you to paint it white. White's the color of purity, and you're a Jew, and Jews killed Christ. So no white for you. It offends them. How much weight do you put on their feelings?"

He didn't see the connection at all. This was not a matter of rights. It was simple. Build the mosque elsewhere.

Yes, and if only that were the end of it. But it isn't -- it's just the beginning of what is going to be a painful process in this country, particularly between now and November, as Republicans gleefully fall upon another tiny minority they can demonize to whip up their eager base.

Seven out of 10 Americans agree with my Morton Grove reader, which means that 7 out of 10 Americans believe that all Muslims shoulder collective blame for 9/11 -- because that's the only thing opposing the mosque can possibly mean.

I've had this same conversation half a dozen times this past week -- on the train, with co-workers, with my own mother. It's maddening.

For some reason, they do not see this as the classic textbook example of bigotry that it so obviously is. I try to find metaphors to cut through their fearful certainty.

Make the Islamic community center into a Catholic seminary -- parents oppose it, arguing that their children will be at risk, since everyone knows that priests are pedophiles.

Do we respect the concerns of the parents? I'd say no.

Why not? Some priests are pedophiles. Would not considering all as suspect be a reasonable precaution for a responsible parent?

No, because all groups have criminal members. There are lots of white Protestant pedophiles, for instance, but nobody protests the construction of a golf course because it might draw the WASP element.

This guilt by association is a sham smoke screen employed to indict people who are already feared because they are different.

The sad fact is, mosques are being protested not just in Manhattan, but all across the country, and for the same reason. Some people are afraid of them. In that sense, it is inevitable, maybe even good, that this is happening now, so we can examine and treat this festering wound in the American spirit.

It is too easy to lazily suspect mosques as nests of nascent terror, and too hard to understand that not only is barring them un-American and morally wrong, but dangerous too, in that it risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy -- if you tell people long enough that they are potential terrorists who don't belong here, some fraction might eventually believe you.

It's always too easy to brush away someone else's rights as trivial and intrusive. Why do they have to sit at the lunch counter? Why does she have to go to the prom? Why build it there? Imagine the question were posed to you, based solely on who you are: Why are you here, when we're so afraid of you? Why don't you go somewhere else?

If it were being done to you, you'd understand in a heartbeat.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/steinberg/2598876,CST-NWS-stein15.article

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