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From the Los Angeles Times

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Mexico fires 3,200 federal police officers

Hundreds of others face charges or disciplinary action as the government attempts to modernize the force and eliminate corruption, part of its war against drug cartels.

By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times

August 31, 2010

Reporting from Mexico City

About 3,200 Mexican federal police officers, nearly a tenth of the force, have been fired this year under new rules designed to weed out crooked cops and modernize law enforcement, officials said Monday.

The housecleaning is part of President Felipe Calderon's crackdown on drug cartels, which includes overhauling the 34,500-strong federal police force.

An additional 465 federal officers have been charged with breaking the law, and 1,020 others face disciplinary action after failing screening tests, officials said.

Facundo Rosas, a senior federal police official, said in a radio interview that the 3,200 dismissed officers were removed for substandard performance.

Rosas said the 1,020 officers who failed vetting fell short for a variety of reasons, including suspected criminal links and medical problems. He said failure rates were within "operable limits."

Among the 465 arrested officers were four commanders fired Aug. 7 in Ciudad Juarez after 250 subordinates publicly accused them of corruption.

The new police standards, which took effect in May, are aimed at cleaning up Mexico's graft-plagued police force through lie detector tests, financial disclosure statements and drug testing. The government has sought to improve the caliber of federal officers by boosting wages and requiring that recruits have college degrees.

Eliminating police corruption is a pillar of Calderon's nearly 4-year-old war against drug cartels. Crooked officers tip off drug lords and often moonlight as hit men.

The problem is considered worst at the local level, where fear or low wages prompt many officers to help drug gangs. State and local forces account for the vast majority of Mexico's 427,000 police officers.

The cleanup is to take place nationwide and began with the federal police, the law enforcement agency mainly responsible for fighting the powerful cartels.

The United States has backed the reform push by helping evaluate officers and supplying trainers for a state-of-the-art police academy in the city of San Luis Potosi.

Calderon has rapidly expanded the federal police force, hiring about 10,000 officers during the last two years.

Experts applaud the cleanup as long overdue. Mexicans so mistrust police that they often refuse to report crimes.

But firing suspect or substandard officers also carries risks that they might jump to another department or join the traffickers. Rosas said a new computerized public safety database, called Platform Mexico, would make it easier to monitor former officers.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-police-fired-20100831,0,326589,print.story

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Suspected drug lord captured in Mexico state

Edgar Valdez Villarreal, also known as 'La Barbie,' was seized by federal police agents, the government says.

By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times

August 30, 2010

Reporting from Mexico City

Mexico announced the capture Monday of one of its most wanted alleged drug lords, a Texas-born figure accused of unleashing a wave of brutal slayings near Mexico City as part of a ruthless battle with rivals.

Edgar Valdez Villarreal, also known by the improbable nickname "La Barbie," was seized by federal police in the state of Mexico, the region surrounding Mexico City, the Public Security Ministry said in a statement.

Valdez allegedly served as the top enforcer for Arturo Beltran Leyva, a major kingpin killed by Mexican marines in December. Since Beltran Leyva's death, police say, Valdez had been locked in a vicious war with Beltran Leyva's brother Hector for control of the cartel's business.

The fighting brought gangland-style executions and the hanging of beheaded corpses to Cuernavaca, a once-tranquil playground for the elite outside Mexico City that turned out to be headquarters for part of the Beltran Leyva gang.

The U.S. government had offered a $2-million reward for Valdez's capture after indicting him for allegedly smuggling tons of cocaine into the United States. It is possible Valdez will be extradited to the U.S.

The capture of Valdez is an important victory for beleaguered President Felipe Calderon, whose offensive against drug cartels has suffered a string of setbacks in recent weeks, including the slaying of two mayors, a rash of car bombings and the massacre of 72 immigrants, apparently because they refused to work for the traffickers who kidnapped them.

But arresting Valdez will not necessarily quell the violence since others may rise to fight for control of the Beltran Leyva operations.

Authorities released a photograph of Valdez, plumper than he appeared in earlier pictures and surrounded by police officers, some with their guns drawn. He was wearing a green shirt emblazoned with a large logo of a polo player, a coat of arms and the word "London." He appeared to be kneeling, a police agent's hand planted on his shoulder.

Valdez has been linked to numerous heinous crimes, including the mutilation of enemies in Cuernavaca and the slaughter of the family of a Mexican marine who was slain in the operation that killed Beltran Leyva.

His alleged battle with Hector Beltran Leyva pushed the bloodletting from Morelos state, where Cuernavaca is located, westward through Guerrero state to Acapulco. Bodies and body parts now turn up regularly in the popular resort city, often with messages scrawled in warning to one faction or another.

The Public Security Ministry announcement said Valdez was pursued in an intelligence operation that began in June 2009. In major operations, such as the killing of Beltran Leyva, Mexican authorities have been buoyed by intelligence from U.S. law enforcement authorities. It was not clear what role the U.S. might have played in Monday's capture.

Security forces are believed to have been close to trapping him in the affluent Bosques de las Lomas neighborhood of Mexico City a couple of months ago, but came up empty.

Valdez, who turned 37 this month, was known as "La Barbie" because of his blondish hair and what some considered good looks, plus his reputation as a party boy who frequented the bars, discos and nightclubs of Mexico City and Acapulco.

"Edgar Valdez Villarreal is a highly dangerous criminal," the government's security spokesman, Alejandro Poire, told reporters late Monday. He took no questions.

Valdez headed the division of gunmen within the cartel, Poire said, and helped expand its drug-running operations into Central and South America.

Poire said authorities mounted operations in six Mexican states to search for Valdez.

"This is positive for Calderon and a blow to the trafficking organization," security expert Raul Benitez said. However, "there well could be a backlash of violence."

Calderon confirmed the arrest in a Twitter message, announcing that Mexico had "trapped La Barbie, one of the most wanted criminals in Mexico and abroad."

Valdez's capture also has value for Mexican and U.S. authorities because of the tactical knowledge of trafficking operations they believe he has. He is the third major figure taken down in the last nine months. But the other two, Beltran Leyva and Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel Villarreal, a major leader of the Sinaloa cartel, were killed.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-barbie-20100831,0,6423874,print.story

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Mysterious killings spread panic in Iraq

Iraqis say a postelection political deadlock has given free rein to terrorists, but no one knows who they are or how they choose their victims.

By Usama Redha and Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times

August 30, 2010

Reporting from Baghdad

It has been a month now and still there are no answers. There is just a father gripping the photographs of his son.

In one, 21-year-old Ali Mohammed Fakher is in Japan, dressed in his white judo robe; in another, he's on a boat in Turkey with his coach and teammates. Fakher had gone further than any of his family imagined, rising from the rough streets of west Baghdad to become the star player on Iraq's national judo team.

On the day before he was to leave Iraq to train for tournaments, he was shot to death as he walked down the main street of his neighborhood. State television broadcast video of his family and supporters weeping as they carried his coffin.

"The hero is gone!" one mourner cried in the street. "The bad men have killed him."

But like other killings and assassinations in a wave of violence that has crept up on Iraq during an unnerving political stalemate, no one really knows who the "bad men" are. Was Fakher killed by a Sunni Arab insurgent group like Al Qaeda in Iraq, or a Shiite Muslim militia like the one that once controlled the neighborhood, or did the attack stem from a personal feud?

Iraqis are left muttering one word, vague yet ominous: Terrorists, the television announcer intoned about Fakher's killers. Terrorism, police recorded in their books. It was terrorists, his parents say.

Fakher's killing is a chilling echo of the early years after the U.S.-led invasion, a time when people were gunned down without explanation or logic and killers faded into the woodwork. The stealthy decimation of communities caused a ripple effect, sowing dissension and discrediting the workings of the new state and the U.S military, until the deluge of sectarian bombings and killings tipped the country into civil war.

U.S. military and civilian officials have hailed Iraq's step back from the abyss since 2008 and the tentative return of normality, with a capable army and police force and a major drop in violence.

But as the U.S. ends combat operations in the country and politicians seem unable to break a deadlock over forming a new government nearly six months after national elections, every attack rattles the general population and fans the panic that the "bad men," the "terrorists," are back.

Dozens of security officers, ministry officials, judges and clerics have been killed or wounded this year. From March through the end of June, at least 354 people across Iraq died from explosives planted on their cars.

"2010 is worse than 2008 and 2009. We hope and pray to God that security will improve," said Ghazi Abdul Aziz Essa, director-general of Baghdad's main power plant.

He bristles at the notion that he and others in his ministry aren't in danger. "Of course there is a threat," he said, adding he has again taken to switching cars to throw off would-be hit men.

Some Iraqis whisper that anyone can be killed now because no one is in charge, no questions will be asked, the evidence will be long gone by the time a government is finally in place. People can use the cover of political deadlock to make power plays and settle personal scores.

"Of course this situation is because the government has not been formed," said Kamil Kanjar, head of the local council in Baghdad's Sadr City district. "Probably the security forces are not obeying instructions and orders in a proper way because they feel there is no government."

U.S. military officers suspect at least a portion of the violence is tied to efforts to influence the shape of the next government. They caution that the targeted killings and assassinations are driven by factors that transcend strict sectarian hatreds.

"It's very hard to attribute some of those assassinations," said Army Brig. Gen. Kevin Mangum, one of the deputy commanding generals for Baghdad. "It could be political, could be tribal, could be economic; it could be criminal."

Fear grips officials and rank-and-file state employees in Iraq, where every day brings news of a new death or botched attack. Last week, a member of the Sadr City council opened his door and was shot dead by two men just 100 yards from parked Iraqi army Humvees and 200 yards from a police checkpoint.

Each killing and ambush resonates, spreading panic and destroying people's faith that the future will be better.

Ali Fakher's father, Mohammed, weeps readily. He remembers how his son was always gifted. He started judo when he was 11, shortly after the family moved to Shula, a Shiite neighborhood in west Baghdad. Agile and clever, he could always tackle the bigger boys wrestling on the street. His older brother often ended up crying to his parents after Ali, three years younger, routinely pinned him.

Mohammed recalls his son's last day alive. Ali said he might stay overnight by the sports club because his team was leaving early the next day, and Mohammed wished him a safe trip, like he always did.

His son was walking down the street when a man, his face covered by a head scarf, rode up on a motorcycle and fired at Ali's head and chest. The young man lifted his hand to ward off the bullets, and three went through it.

"Ali became well known," his father said, lingering over his son's image. "For that he was killed."

His family said Ali had recently talked about buying a gun because he was worried he might be targeted. His mother, Umm Ali, began crying, saying some people might have been jealous. But asked who would have done it, both parents had the same answer: terrorists.

"Nowadays there is no stability in this country," Mohammed said. "If the government was formed, it would provide security and generally this would not have happened.'

He worries for his three remaining sons. "I don't want my sons to go out," he says. "If I had money, I would send them abroad. But I don't have the means."

Outside, a few boys run near where Ali Fakher slumped to the ground. Laughing, they play with water guns, pointing them at one another's heads in their own miniature version of Baghdad's turbulent season.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq-assassinations-20100831,0,7209095,print.story

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Yemeni men arrested in Amsterdam on terror fears after flight from U.S.

Suspicious items — including cellphones taped together and a phone taped to a bottle of Pepto-Bismol — are found in the pair's luggage, which was on a different flight.

By Paul Richter, Tribune Washington Bureau

August 31, 2010

Reporting from Washington

Two Yemeni men arriving in Amsterdam on a flight from Chicago were arrested Monday on suspicion of preparing a terrorist attack after peculiar items turned up in their luggage, Dutch officials said.

U.S. authorities asked the Dutch to make the arrests after discovering that one of the men had checked his luggage from Chicago to Dulles International Airport in Virginia, then taken a flight to Amsterdam, said a Dutch official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the case.

The luggage sent to Virginia on Sunday night contained a cellphone taped to a bottle of Pepto-Bismol, three cellphones taped together and several watches taped together, Dutch and U.S. officials said.

The owner of the luggage, Ahmed Mohamed Nasser al Soofi, a Yemeni citizen who lives in Detroit, also was carrying $7,000 in cash, said the Dutch official.

After sending his luggage to Dulles, Al Soofi was joined at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport by a second man, Hezem al Murisi, and the pair took United Airlines Flight 908 to Amsterdam. Air marshals were aboard that flight, according to a U.S. law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

Al Soofi's luggage went to Virginia, apparently without officials realizing he was not aboard that flight. From there, his luggage had been scheduled to go to Dubai, then Yemen. But once authorities learned Al Soofi had taken a different plane, federal officials in Virginia ordered the aircraft back to the gate and removed Al Soofi's baggage. An inspection revealed no explosives.

In a statement Monday night, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that authorities found "suspicious items" in checked luggage belonging to two passengers aboard a United flight from Chicago to Amsterdam on Sunday night.

"The items were not deemed to be dangerous in and of themselves, and as we share information with our international partners, Dutch authorities were notified of the suspicious items," the Homeland Security statement said.

U.S. officials said the matter was under investigation because of the types of items found taped together.

The arrests were first reported by ABC News.

Authorities' suspicions were aroused in Birmingham, Ala., where federal airport screeners stopped Al Soofi for an additional security check because he wore bulky clothing in the summer heat. Officials found the watches and the Pepto-Bismol taped to the cellphone, but because those were not banned items, he was permitted to board a flight to O'Hare. It was unclear what he was doing in Birmingham or how long he had been there.

In Chicago, the two men were searched and their luggage inspected. Again, officials found no banned items and allowed them to board the flight to Amsterdam.

Dutch authorities questioned the men Monday. The luggage that went to Dulles remained in the possession of U.S. officials, the Dutch official said.

No court appearance is expected for several days, the Dutch official said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-tsa-amsterdam-20100831,0,7003283,print.story

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Seven Mexican nationals caught attempting to enter U.S. illegally by boat

Five women and two men -- all Mexican nationals -- were caught aboard an 18-foot Chris Craft Cavalier trying to enter the U.S. illegally, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Monday.

The incident, which occurred Sunday afternoon about three miles off San Diego's Point Loma, is just the latest in a trend of smugglers using boats instead of overland routes.

Since Oct.1, there have been 93 seizures of boats and 745 suspected illegal immigrants apprehended, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In the 12 months before Oct. 1, there were 49 seizures and 400-plus people apprehended.

The seven apprehended Sunday ranged in age from 22 to 56. They were taken to a Border Patrol station for possible processing back to Mexico, unless they have outstanding warrants in the United States.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/

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Blowback

Some marijuana tax revenue is better than none

The drug czar says that, like duties on alcohol and tobacco, the Prop. 19 marijuana tax wouldn't offset the substance's societal costs. He ignores the fact that cannabis is a safer drug.

By Paul Armentano

August 27, 2010

It is no surprise that America's present and former drug czars oppose the passage of Proposition 19 , the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Initiative of 2010. After all, the drug czar is required by law "to oppose any attempt to legalize the use of a substance that is listed in schedule I of section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act." In other words, it would actually be illegal for President Obama's drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, to voice an opinion that didn't publicly condemn the measure.

Nevertheless, Kerlikowske's opposition to Proposition 19 is still worth addressing, as his claim is a fairly common one. In a nutshell, Kerlikowske et al argue that, if legalized, marijuana's perceived social costs would outweigh the economic benefits reaped by regulation. They base this allegation largely on the premise that present taxes on alcohol and cigarettes fail to adequately pay for the societal costs associated with those drugs' use and abuse. True enough, but here's why this sound bite is irrelevant to the present marijuana debate.

Marijuana is safer than alcohol.

Alcohol is toxic to healthy cells and organs, a side effect that results directly in about 35,000 deaths a year from illnesses such as cirrhosis of the liver, ulcers, cancer and heart disease. Heavy alcohol consumption can depress the central nervous system — inducing unconsciousness, coma and death — and is strongly associated with increased risks of injury. According to federal statistics, alcohol plays a role in about 41,000 fatal accidents a year and in the commission of about 1 million violent crimes annually.

By contrast, the active compounds in marijuana, known as cannabinoids, are remarkably nontoxic. Unlike alcohol, marijuana is incapable of causing a fatal overdose, and its use is inversely associated with aggression and injury. In fact, the recently released Rand Corp. report found that in 2008, there were fewer than 200 "admissions to hospitals in which marijuana abuse or dependence was listed as the primary reason for the hospitalization." By comparison, there are more than 70,000 hospitalizations in California annually related to the use of alcohol.

Marijuana is far safer than tobacco.

According to a 2009 report by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, health-related costs per user are eight times higher for drinkers than they are for those who use cannabis, and are more than 40 times higher for tobacco smokers. It states: "In terms of (health-related) costs per user: tobacco-related health costs are over $800 per user, alcohol-related health costs are much lower at $165 per user, and cannabis-related health costs are the lowest at $20 per user."

A previous analysis commissioned by the World Health Organization agreed, stating, "On existing patterns of use, cannabis poses a much less serious public health problem than is currently posed by alcohol and tobacco in Western societies." So then why is the drug czar so worried about adults consuming it in the privacy of their own home?

Some tax revenue is better than no tax revenue.

According to a 2007 George Mason University study, U.S. citizens each year spend about $113 billion on marijuana. Under prohibition, all of this spending is directed toward an underground economy and goes untaxed. That means state and local governments are presently collecting zero dollars to offset societal and health costs related to recreational marijuana use. Therefore, the imposition of any retail tax or excise fee would be an improvement over the current situation.

In short, the drug czars' assessment that present taxes on alcohol and tobacco — two deadly products — do not raise sufficient funding to offset their related social costs is not an argument in favor of maintaining the status quo, particularly when one recognizes that the social and health costs related to cannabis use are far less than those associated with the use of other intoxicants.

Despite more than 70 years of federal prohibition, marijuana is here to stay. It's time to acknowledge this reality, and to cease ceding control of the commercial marijuana market to unregulated, untaxed criminal enterprises and put it in the hands of licensed businesses. Proposition 19 is a first, significant step in this direction.

Paul Armentano is the deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and is the coauthor of the book "Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? (Chelsea Green, 2009).

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-oew-armentano-prop19-marijuan-20100827,0,1243880,print.story

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Winding down the Iraq war, and avoiding civil war

Civil conflicts like those we have seen in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion often recur when parties to a conflict fail to dedicate themselves to a peace process. Scholars call this the 'commitment problem.'

By Irena L. Sargsyan

August 30, 2010

Most Americans seem ready to consign the Iraq war to history. They've watched tank convoys leave Baghdad, and they've heard the president underscore his campaign promise to draw down U.S. forces, leaving roughly 50,000 in the country as of Aug. 31. Moreover, Iraq and the U.S. have agreed that the remaining U.S. troops will be gone by December 2011. But history suggests that unless the U.S. is willing and able to remain committed to Iraq's security and prosperity — and Iraqis know it — the country is at risk of spiraling back into civil war.

Civil conflicts like those we have seen in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion often recur when parties to a conflict fail to dedicate themselves to a peace process. Scholars call this the "commitment problem." If a state is without effective political institutions or professional armed forces, and if no warring faction has been able to achieve a decisive military victory, only an impartial outside power can enforce the belligerents' demobilization and political power-sharing to prevent conflict from flaring up again.

Although Iraq has made remarkable progress toward stability, the commitment problem persists. Since the January elections, Iraqi political leaders have been unable to form a government, and localized violence has reignited civilians' fears of becoming the target of attacks. Unless America is effective in its new peacekeeping role, even moderate Iraqis could lose faith in demobilization and disarmament and turn to violence.

To prevent this, the United States must demonstrate its commitment to peacekeeping by maintaining a substantial military presence in Iraq. Credible commitment requires a large number of ground troops and a demonstrated readiness to use military force decisively and quickly. The U.S. has at least a good beginning: 50,000 troops are probably adequate to the task.

Many stability operations have failed because of insufficient resources. A case in point is the United Nations' attempt to stabilize the island of Cyprus in 1964 by replacing British counterinsurgency forces with peacekeepers. Largely due to the shortage of combat troops, civilian personnel and technical expertise, U.N. forces were unable to prevent renewed civil conflict, the 1974 coup by the Cypriot National Guard or Turkey's invasion of Cyprus and the division of the island into Greek and Turkish sectors. The violence escalated into ethnic cleansing when the United Nations, facing a financial crisis, reduced its forces by roughly 70%.

If America's remaining troop numbers are likely to be adequate, its timetable is not. The United States must accept that building a sustainable peace requires years of meaningful involvement. In 1999, an international peacekeeping mission began in East Timor, after a long battle for independence. That mission is expected to continue beyond 2012. And during this effective peacekeeping and nation-building effort, the Australian-led International Stabilization Force had to take quick action to suppress a 2006 crisis that erupted in East Timor's military — an argument for maintaining U.S. troops in Iraq, close to the source of any uprising.

While the U.S. must demonstrate its strong commitment in Iraq, it must also make clear that its involvement is not unconditional. In general, an external power's leverage decreases as its stake in another country's security and prosperity increases. The deeper the U.S. involvement in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, the less influence the United States had over the South Vietnamese government and its security forces. The reason is clear: South Vietnam recognized that because the U.S. had put so much on the line to thwart communist expansion, the Americans would not abandon the country despite its dysfunctions.

However, insufficient and inconsistent involvement can be just as bad. Between 1980 and 1992, the United States provided El Salvador assistance to fight the insurgents of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front. U.S. security assistance was conditional on improvements in the human rights record of the Salvadoran security forces, and economic aid was contingent on El Salvador's adoption of democratic principles. But the presence of only 55 American advisors on the ground meant, among other problems, that the U.S. conditions could not be enforced effectively.

Another key to the United States' maintaining its leverage in Iraq is avoiding narrow mandates and unnecessarily restrictive rules of engagement. In seeking to boost their legitimacy and consolidate political power, Iraqi leaders have on a number of occasions — such as during the negotiations that led to the 2008 security agreement — used nationalist rhetoric and taken tough positions to demonstrate to their constituents that they can stand up to the United States. The Obama administration should not accept any restrictive terms that could cripple America's peacekeeping effort and undermine the security and efficacy of U.S. military and civilian personnel in Iraq.

That was the case with the U.N. mission in Rwanda in the mid-1990s. In April 1994, the Security Council narrowed its peacekeepers' already restrictive mandate and reduced their numbers by about 90%. The result was that the remaining troops could not prevent the genocide of nearly 800,000 people and the displacement of 3 million more.

Finally, the United States must undertake multidimensional peacekeeping to help Iraq reconstruct its economy. As scholars of civil war have found, a strong economy can help prevent outbreaks of violence in conflict-prone countries because opposing factions typically evaluate the economic cost of returning to violence. Experienced peacekeepers seek to not only establish security but also to facilitate economic reconstruction, social reform and democratization.

What happened in Malaya 60 years ago is evidence of that link. The Korean War caused an increased demand for Malaya's two principal commodities — natural rubber and tin — and for labor across the Malay peninsula. Insurgents in the country found it increasingly difficult to mobilize support among civilians because the people were experiencing the benefits of economic prosperity.

Ending a civil war is a daunting task, and maintaining peace is even more difficult. But history has shown that the involvement of an impartial external power makes a lasting peace significantly more likely. There will be strong domestic pressures on the administration to withdraw all U.S. troops by the end of 2011. President Obama has a consequential decision to make about renegotiating that deadline and resetting America's commitment to Iraq, a decision that will have a crucial impact on Iraq's future stability and the United States' strategic interests in the Persian Gulf.

Irena L. Sargsyan is a research analyst at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-sargsyan-iraq-20100830,0,2725059,print.story

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Editorial

Healthy move

The Legislature has approved two bills that would establish the California Health Benefits Exchange no later than Jan. 1, 2014.

August 30, 2010

While other states have been passing meaningless bills to nullify the federal healthcare reform law, California lawmakers have moved swiftly to implement one of its key features: a new marketplace for individuals and small groups to buy health coverage. Last week, the Legislature gave final approval to two bills that would establish this market, dubbed the California Health Benefits Exchange, no later than Jan. 1, 2014. The measures — AB 1602 and SB 900 — are good for consumers and competition, although not necessarily for every competitor in the market today. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was an early backer of insurance exchanges, should cement his support by signing these bills.

Consumers buying individual policies and small companies buying coverage for their employees pay significantly higher rates in part because the risks covered aren't spread across a large pool of customers. Another factor, though, is that they don't have the bargaining power with insurers that big groups do. The federal healthcare law authorized states to create exchanges to help close that gap, as well as to make it easier for people to evaluate the policies being offered.

The two bills, which the Schwarzenegger administration helped develop with top Democrats in the Legislature, shouldn't be controversial — they don't require anyone to buy insurance or any insurers to participate in the exchange. Nor would the exchange be the only source of individual or small-group policies in California, although it would be the only place where working-class Californians could buy insurance subsidized by federal taxpayers.

Nevertheless, Anthem Blue Cross and the California Chamber of Commerce have led the fight to stop the measures. Their main complaint is that the bills would empower the exchange to pick which insurance plans to make available, rather than requiring it to offer every plan that met the minimum standards set by the federal government. Under the latter approach, market forces would eventually drive low-quality and excessively costly plans out of the exchange. But giving the exchange the power to negotiate for better terms should move that process along faster. That's one of the main reasons to have an exchange.

Other welcome provisions would deter insurers from trying either to push the riskiest customers into the exchange or to skim the cream of the customers there. It's also worth noting that the costs of the exchange would be covered by federal grants and fees on participating insurance plans, not the state's overburdened general fund. Many details would remain to be worked out by the exchange's governing board, but that's all the more reason to get started now. Schwarzenegger has called on California to be in the forefront of healthcare reform; signing these bills will put it there.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-exchange-20100830,0,6177839,print.story

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Editorial

Abdullah Kidd's day in court

The Obama administration is wrong in trying to block a lawsuit against former Atty. Gen. Ashcroft. Abdullah Kidd should have a chance to prove whether Ashcroft formed a policy he knew to be illegal.

August 30, 2010

An American citizen is arrested at an airport, shuttled between detention facilities and treated as a suspected terrorist, all under the pretense of securing his appearance as a witness at someone else's trial. That's allegedly what happened to Abdullah Kidd , who convinced a federal appeals court that he should be allowed to proceed with a lawsuit against former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft.

But the Obama administration would deny Kidd that relief. It's asking the Supreme Court to review the ruling in his favor by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The justices should allow Kidd's suit to go forward.

An individual can be arrested on a material-witness warrant if his testimony is important to a pending case and his appearance can't be guaranteed by a subpoena. In March 2003, Kidd, a convert to Islam, was arrested under such a warrant at Dulles International Airport as he was preparing to travel to Saudi Arabia to study Arabic and Islamic law. According to Kidd, the FBI obtained the warrant by falsely suggesting to a magistrate that he had a one-way ticket and omitting the fact that he was a U.S. citizen who had cooperated with the FBI in the past.

Kidd was held for two weeks and, according to his complaint, shackled and forced at one point to sit naked in a cell. He was finally released into his wife's custody, deprived of his passport and subjected to limitations on his travel within the United States. In June 2004, a court lifted the restrictions and dismissed Kidd as a material witness. He was never called to testify at the trial for which he was to be a witness.

In asking the Supreme Court to review the decision in Kidd's favor, the administration invokes the principle that officials, and former officials like Ashcroft, are generally entitled to immunity from lawsuits seeking damages. But the 9th Circuit concluded that Ashcroft wasn't entitled to immunity if, as alleged, he developed and set in motion a policy of misusing material-witness warrants to arrest and investigate individuals who couldn't be held on probable cause that they committed a crime. The court also held that the illegality of such a "pretextual" use of material-witness warrants was clearly established at the time — a requirement if Ashcroft is to be held personally liable for a violation of Kidd's civil rights.

As a general proposition, it makes sense to protect public officials from being sued personally for decisions made in their official capacity. But when an official engages in actions he knows are clearly illegal, the law rightly makes an exception. Kidd is entitled to an opportunity to prove that Ashcroft falls into that category. The Supreme Court shouldn't deprive him of it.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-material-20100830,0,3678281,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Restoring Names to Iraq War's Unknown Casualties

BAGHDAD — In a pastel-colored room at the Baghdad morgue known simply as the Missing, where faces of the thousands of unidentified dead of this war are projected onto four screens, Hamid Jassem came on a Sunday searching for answers.

In a blue plastic chair, he sat under harsh fluorescent lights and a clock that read 8:58 and 44 seconds, no longer keeping time. With deference and patience, he stared at the screen, each corpse bearing four digits and the word “majhoul,” or unknown:

No. 5060 passed, with a bullet to the right temple; 5061, with a bruised and bloated face; 5062 bore a tattoo that read, “Mother, where is happiness?” The eyes of 5071 were open, as if remembering what had happened to him.

“Go back,” Hamid asked the projectionist. No. 5061 returned to the screen. “That's him,” he said, nodding grimly.

His mother followed him into the room, her weathered face framed in a black veil. “Show me my son!” she cried.

Behind her, Hamid pleaded silently. He waved his hands at the projectionist, begging him to spare her. In vain, he shook his head and mouthed the word “no.”

“Don't tell me he's dead,” she shouted at the room. “It's not him! It's not him!”

No. 5061 returned to the screen.

She lurched forward, shaking her head in denial. Her eyes stared hard. And in seconds, her son's 33 years of life seemed to pass before her eyes.

“Yes, yes, yes,” she finally sobbed, falling back in her chair.

Reflexively, her hands slapped her face. They clawed, until her nails drew blood. “If I had only known from the first day!” she cried.

The horror of this war is its numbers, frozen in the portraits at the morgue: an infant's eyes sealed shut and a woman's hair combed in blood and ash. “Files tossed on the shelves,” a policeman called the dead, and that very anonymity lends itself to the war's name here — al-ahdath, or the events.

On the charts that the American military provides, those numbers are seen as success, from nearly 4,000 dead in one month in 2006 to the few hundred today. The Interior Ministry offers its own toll of war — 72,124 since 2003, a number too precise to be true. At the morgue, more than 20,000 of the dead, which even sober estimates suggest total 100,000 or more, are still unidentified.

This number had a name, though.

No. 5061 was Muhammad Jassem Bouhan al-Izzawi, father, son and brother. At 9 a.m., on that Sunday, Aug. 15, his family left the morgue in a white Nissan and set out to find his body in a city torn between remembering and forgetting, where death haunts a country neither at war nor peace.

There is a notion in Islamic thought called taqiya, in which believers can conceal their faith in the face of persecution. Hamid's family, Sunnis in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of New Baghdad, engaged in their own.

As sectarian killings intensified in 2005 and Shiite militias stepped up attacks, they hung two posters of Shiite saints near the apartment's windows, shattered in car bombings and patched with cardboard. To strangers, they changed their tribal name from Izzawi to Mujahadi, hoping to blend in. They learned not to say, “Salaam aleikum” — peace be upon you — in farewell, as more devout Sunnis will do.

Burly and bearded, Muhammad was the most devout in the family, and perhaps the least discreet. He allowed himself American action films, “Van Damme and Arnold,” his brother recalled. But his routine was ordered by the call to prayer, bringing him five times a day to the Arafat Mosque.

“We said, ‘Listen to us, just pray at home,' ” Hamid recalled begging him.

“It's in God's hands if I'm killed,” he said his brother replied.

On July 1, 2005, at 5 a.m., guns clanged on their metal front door like brittle bells. Muhammad's mother opened it, and men dressed as police officers forced her back. Barely awake, Muhammad clambered down the stairs in a white undershirt and red pajamas. The men bundled him into a police pickup and drove off, leaving his 2-month-old daughter, Aisha, and his wife and mother, who cried for help as the headlights disappeared into the dawn.

In all, 11 men joined the ranks of the missing that morning.

Willing to Help, for $20,000

Shadowed by militias, the family found that going to the morgue was often too dangerous, but as the weeks passed, Muhammad's brother-in-law went anyway. He found nothing. The family gave nearly $650 to a relative who had a friend who knew a driver for a Shiite militiaman. A month later, he came back with no word, but kept $100 for his time. Another acquaintance offered to help for $20,000.

“Where were we going to get that kind of money?” Hamid asked.

A chance encounter in August brought the family to the morgue. A neighbor had found his father among the pictures in the Missing room. He was one of the 11.

Hamid is a quiet man in a city that does not embrace silence. Modest, even bashful, he is full of abbreviated gestures, questions becoming stutters when faced with authority.

Gingerly, he clutched a note from the morgue. No. 5061, it said, along with the name of the police station, Rafidain, that had recovered his brother's body. He drove his family to the vast Shiite slum Sadr City , past a gas station named for April 9, the date of Saddam Hussein 's fall, and a bare pedestal where the dictator's statue once stood.

Police officers in mismatched uniforms sprawled in chairs at the entrance, near a barricade of razor wire laced through tires, a car seat and a fender that suggested the city's impermanence. “What do you want?” one of them barked at Hamid.

The family needed a letter from the police station, the first step in claiming Muhammad's death certificate and finding out where he was buried. With Hamid beside her, the mother pleaded to let them inside. For five years they had looked for him, she said.

The policeman glared at her suspiciously. “If you're lying, I'll put you all in jail right now,” he shouted.

“My son is dead, and this is what you say to us?” the mother answered.

The policeman turned his head in disgust.

“Dog,” he muttered under his breath.

Slogans litter Baghdad. They are scrawled on the blast walls that partition this city of concrete. They proclaim unity from billboards over traffic snarled at impotent checkpoints. The more they are uttered, it seems, the less resonant they become.

“Respect and be respected,” read the one the family passed, entering the police station.

They followed Kadhem Hassan, the weary 60-year-old police officer in charge of records, whose office was around the corner from toilets piled with excrement.

“They keep throwing rocks at us at night,” he said, kicking shards of bricks away from the entrance to his office, near a slogan that read, “Heroes.”

His office was bare but for a rickety desk and cabinets piled with curled, yellowing files. A fan circulated the heat; Officer Hassan had bought it for $20. Sitting in his chair, he endlessly shuffled files. In words slurred by missing teeth, he told Hamid's nephew to go buy paper if they wanted a letter.

Eventually, he found the police report of Muhammad's death.

Dated July 3, 2005, it read: “We discovered 11 unidentified bodies, their hands bound from behind, their eyes blindfolded and their mouths gagged. The bodies bore signs of torture.”

“All of us were victims,” Officer Hassan told Hamid, in an attempt at sympathy. “Who was the exception? No one was. Not the martyrs, not the policemen, no one.”

“If they just shot them, O.K.,” Hamid said. “But they beat them, tortured them and then they burned them. Why? And those guys” — the politicians, he meant — “ are just watching.”

“Power and positions, that's all they're worried about,” Officer Hassan said.

“Let me be honest,” Hamid said, flashing rare anger at no one in particular. “Just to tell the truth. It would have been better if we had stayed under Saddam Hussein.”

The policeman shrugged and stayed silent.

A Bureaucratic Odyssey

From the Rafidain police station, carrying a letter on paper he had paid for, Hamid went to the morgue. His letter, said a clerk there, Ihab Sami, was incomplete.

“The police don't understand and neither do you!” Mr. Sami shouted at him.

Quiet, Hamid shook his head and returned to Sadr City.

“Come tomorrow morning,” Officer Hassan told him.

He did. Sometimes with his mother, sometimes his nephew, he went back to the morgue, the police station again, the courthouse in Sadr City and the morgue. Over seven days, he collected papers, each with the number 5061.

“We lost someone,” Hamid said as he drove. “They should take it easy on us.” He grew quiet. “I guess nothing ends easily,” he whispered, “for the living or the dead.”

In a cauterized country caught between its haunted past and uncertain future, death seems to shape life in Baghdad. As Hamid drove patiently through its crumpled landscape, he passed the cemeteries whose tombstones read like an inventory of war, one built on the day after the fall of Saddam Hussein, at a riverside park, near pomegranate trees too desiccated to bear fruit.

“Whoever reads the Koran for me, cry for my youth,” read the marker for Oday Ahmed Khalaf. “Yesterday I was living, and today I'm buried beneath the earth.”

Across the Tigris River was the Jawad Orphanage, where Hussein Rahim, who does not know his age, played with other children whose parents had been killed in the violence. An explosion entombed his family in their home in July 2008. He lived because he was playing soccer. His father's name, he thinks, was Ali. But he can't recall the name of his 6-month-old sister, nor his mother. They are the past, he said, and “no one wants to talk about it.”

“I can't forget,” Hamid said, on the eighth day of his odyssey.

A roadside mine had closed the street, and Hamid parked nearly a mile away. With his nephew, he walked toward the office for unclaimed death certificates and past a billboard that read, “Hand in hand, we'll build Iraq together.” Government offices under construction had grown dilapidated even before they were finished. The carcasses of car bombs were piled on the side of the street.

“I don't consider this my country anymore,” Hamid said. “Really, I feel like a stranger. Not just me. Everyone does.”

The office — a flattering term for a ramshackle tan trailer with brown trim — was down a dirt road, across from a nursery lined with unplanted pots. Here, even the nursery was coiled in barbed wire.

“They don't even put a sign out front,” Hamid complained.

Perky, with good-natured cheer that seemed at odds with her work, Maysoun Azzawi sat inside with her harried and haggard assistant, Hajji Saleh. She dispatched him to plumb the 100 notebooks — stacked upright and on their side, some with binders missing, all with pages torn — to find the death certificate for 5061.

“Come on, hurry up!” she yelled at him. “Look for the old records! 2005!”

She turned to Hamid. “Are you a Sunni or Shiite?” she asked.

“Mixed,” he answered.

She nodded knowingly, then yelled again. “Hajji, are you going to find it or do I have to come in there?”

He shuffled in, and she pored over the ledger, line after line of unidentified dead, its pages blown by an air-conditioner propped up on two broken cinder blocks.

“Whatever happened to us?” she asked, as she turned the pages, looking for 5061. “There are good people here, brother, but God damn this country.”

“It's here,” she said finally, and asked for a pen.

She pulled out the death certificate, written in red and numbered 946777. The morgue had sent Muhammad's body south for burial on July 22, she told Hamid, and the undertaker was Sheik Sadiq al-Sheikh Daham. She handed him the onionskin paper certificate.

“You have everything you need now,” she said. “You can go to Najaf.”

She kept the pen.

In the Valley of Peace

Najaf, the spiritual capital of Shiite Islam, is a city of the dead.

For more than a millennium, the deceased have arrived at its cemetery, the Valley of Peace, seeking blessings in their burial near the golden-domed tomb of Imam Ali, the revered Shiite saint. There are moments of beauty here — finely rendered calligraphy on turquoise tiles, domes of a perfect symmetry that life cannot share. But shades of ocher predominate, the tan brick of headstones stretching to the horizon like supplicants awaiting an audience.

The cemetery receives the unknown, whether Sunni or Shiite.

Before the sun rose, on the ninth day after identifying his brother's picture, Hamid drove his three sisters, Muhammad's wife and daughter and his mother past Baghdad's outskirts. American jets whispered through the sky. As the sun rose gingerly, Hamid's car passed the tomb of the Prophet Job.

In Hamid's hand was his brother's death certificate.

“Corrected,” it read simply.

Only the caretaker knew where Muhammad's grave was; he had sketched its location on a hand-drawn map in a red leather book bound by yellow tape. Three stacks of bricks covered in hastily poured concrete marked it. “Unknown, 5061, July 2, 2005,” it read. Next to it was 5067, 5060 and so on, hundreds more, stretching row after row, so cluttered that some of the dead shared a grave.

The women stumbled toward it, throwing sand on their heads in grief. Their chorus of cries intersected with the Shiite lamentations of a nearby funeral. Muhammad's wife grasped the marker, as though it was incarnate. His sister kissed the cement.

“How long have we looked for you, my son?” his mother screamed, tears turning the sand on her face to mud. “All this time, and you've been suffering under the sun.”

She shouted at Hamid and the others.

“Please dig him out! Let me see him. It's been five years. Hamid! We haven't seen him. Show him to me, just show him to me for a little while.”

She turned to Muhammad's daughter, Aisha.

“This is your child!” she yelled.

Wearing pink, Aisha paid no attention. Too young to know grief, she played with dusty red plastic carnations, glancing at the rest of the dead, anonymous like her father.

Hamid stayed back, his tears turning to sobs.

“There is nothing left to do,” he said, shaking his head.

An hour later, the family pulled away in Hamid's car, his mother's cries still audible. “Let me take your place,” she moaned. It turned onto a ribbon of black asphalt. For a moment, the car caught the glint of the sun, then disappeared behind the countless tombs.

Behind them was 5061. With a brick, they had furrowed a line into the marker. With a bottle of water, they had washed it, revealing a newly white tile in a sea of brown.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/world/middleeast/31legacy.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

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New U.S. Sanctions Aim at North Korean Elite

WASHINGTON — The latest target for the United States, as it tries to tighten the screws on North Korea , is a shadowy party organization, known as Office 39, which raises hard currency to buy fine liquor, exotic food and luxury cars for cronies of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il .

The Obama administration on Monday singled out Office 39 as one of several North Korean entities that it says are engaged in illicit activity — fleshing out new sanctions that were first announced in July by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during a visit to South Korea.

Under a new executive order, the United States will try to choke off the flow of luxury goods into North Korea, which officials say Mr. Kim uses to buy the loyalty of the political elite, as well as the sale of conventional weapons by the North. The Treasury Department also designated entities suspected of trafficking in nuclear technology, using existing authority.

“We need to send a signal to the North that provocative behavior will not go unpunished,” said Robert J. Einhorn , the State Department's special adviser on arms control and nonproliferation issues. “They are not directed at the people of North Korea, but at their leaders.”

The administration finds itself at something of a crossroads in its North Korea policy : determined to keep up the pressure on the North, while starting to question whether and when to engage the government. A wide range of outside experts have counseled Mrs. Clinton to restore some contact, contending that the sanctions have done little to change North Korea's behavior and that the impasse is becoming increasingly dangerous.

The administration's moves came as Mr. Kim returned from a mysterious visit to China last week , during which he met with President Hu Jintao .

The North Korean leader passed up an opportunity to meet former President Jimmy Carter , who was in Pyongyang, the North's capital, to win the release of a jailed American citizen . Mr. Kim's decision puzzled administration officials and North Korea experts.

Among the possible explanations, said one official: North Korea is now so economically and politically dependent on China that Mr. Kim felt that he could not afford to delay a planned visit to China. Then, too, Mr. Carter was not carrying any diplomatic message from the Obama administration, which may have made it easier for Mr. Kim to skip the meeting.

In a letter to Congress on Monday, President Obama said the new sanctions were justified after North Korea's “unprovoked attack” in March on a South Korean warship, the Cheonan , which killed 46 sailors; as well as its nuclear and missile tests, and a variety of other illicit activities.

Eager to demonstrate solidarity with South Korea, Mrs. Clinton previewed the measures during a visit to Seoul with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates , in which he announced joint American-South Korean military exercises. At the time, though, officials had few details.

On Monday, the Treasury filled in the blanks, designating five entities and three individuals linked to weapons of mass destruction. Some of these entities, like the Korea Taesong Trading Company, have already been sanctioned, either by the State Department or the United Nations Security Council .

Mr. Obama, in his new executive order, identified two entities and one individual suspected of involvement in conventional arms sales. The best known is the Reconnaissance General Bureau, an intelligence agency. The order also designates the commander of the agency, Gen. Kim Yong Chol.

The focusing on Office 39 builds on longstanding efforts to deprive the North Korean elite of luxury goods. Sometimes known as Room 39, Office 39 is a branch of the Korean Workers' Party that raises and manages a slush fund of hard currency for Mr. Kim's family and friends.

While some of Office 39's dealings are believed to be legitimate — it exports exotic mushrooms, ginseng and seaweed, for example — the organization is suspected of being involved in the counterfeiting of American currency and drug trafficking.

The Treasury Department said Office 39 had been involved in methamphetamine distribution and the production of heroin and opium.

Office 39, which answers directly to Mr. Kim and has its headquarters not far from his villa, also procures luxury goods for the leadership. Last year, American officials said, the Italian government foiled its attempt to buy two Italian-made luxury yachts worth more than $15 million for Mr. Kim.

Critics say that most of North Korea's luxury goods flow through China, which is unenthusiastic about sanctions. Mr. Einhorn said that he would travel to Beijing soon to encourage the government to enforce the measures rigorously.

Stuart A. Levey, the undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, said the designations of entities would have global impact because “there is already a real wariness” among foreign banks and companies about doing business with North Korean enterprises.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/world/asia/31diplo.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Incidents at Mosque in Tennessee Spread Fear

ATLANTA — After a suspected arson and reports of gunshots at an Islamic center in Tennessee over the weekend, nearby mosques have hired security guards, installed surveillance cameras and requested the presence of federal agents at prayer services.

Muslim leaders in central Tennessee say that frightened worshipers are observing Ramadan in private and that some Muslim parents are wary of sending their children to school after a large fire on Saturday that destroyed property at the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro. Federal authorities suspect that the fire was arson.

The Islamic center has attracted national attention recently because its planned expansion into a larger building in some ways parallels a controversial proposal to build an Islamic center two blocks from the site of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York.

The Murfreesboro center, which has existed for nearly 30 years, suddenly found itself on front pages of newspapers this month and on “The Daily Show.” It became a hot topic in the local Congressional race, with one Republican candidate accusing the center of fostering terrorism and trying to link it to the militant Palestinian group Hamas .

Then, on Saturday, the police say, someone set fire to construction equipment at the site where the Islamic center is planning to move, destroying an earthmover and three other pieces of machinery. And on Sunday, as CNN was filming a news segment about the controversy, someone fired at least five shots near the property.

“We are very concerned about our safety,” said Essam Fathy, head of the center's planning committee. “Whatever it takes, I'm not going to allow anybody to do something like this again.”

No people were injured in either incident. The cases are being investigated by the police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives .

In a statement on the center's Web site, a spokeswoman called the fire an “arson attack” and an “atrocious act of terrorism.”

In Nashville, 30 miles northwest, local imams met with representatives of the United States attorney's office on Monday to discuss the risk of further anti-Islamic violence. Several mosques have requested police surveillance, they said, especially with the end of Ramadan this year nearly coinciding with the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

“We're worried that these attacks could spill over into Nashville,” said Mwafaq Mohammed, president of the Salahadeen Islamic Center there. “We don't want people to misunderstand what we're celebrating around Sept. 11. It would be better to take precautionary measures.”

Another mosque, the Islamic Center of Nashville, has installed indoor and outdoor surveillance cameras, hired round-the-clock security guards and requested that F.B.I. agents be on site during worship services, according to the imam, Mohamed Ahmed.

“Whoever did this, they are terrorists,” Mr. Ahmed said. “What's the difference between them and Al Qaeda ?”

But in other parts of Tennessee, including Chattanooga, Knoxville and Memphis, Muslim leaders reported that they had experienced no hostility and saw no reason to increase security.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/us/31mosque.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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We Owe the Troops an Exit

At least 14 American soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan over the past few days.

We learned on Saturday that our so-called partner in this forlorn war, Hamid Karzai, fired a top prosecutor who had insisted on, gasp, fighting the corruption that runs like a crippling disease through his country.

Time magazine tells us that stressed-out, depressed and despondent soldiers are seeking help for their mental difficulties at a rate that is overwhelming the capacity of available professionals. What we are doing to these troops who have been serving tour after tour in Afghanistan and Iraq is unconscionable.

Time described the mental-health issue as “the U.S. Army's third front,” with the reporter, Mark Thompson, writing: “While its combat troops fight two wars, its mental-health professionals are waging a battle to save soldiers' sanity when they come back, one that will cost billions long after combat ends in Baghdad and Kabul.”

In addition to the terrible physical toll, the ultimate economic costs of these two wars, as the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and his colleague Linda Bilmes have pointed out, will run to more than $3 trillion.

I get a headache when I hear supporters of this endless warfare complaining about the federal budget deficits. They're like arsonists complaining about the smell of smoke in the neighborhood.

There is no silver lining to this nearly decade-old war in Afghanistan. Poll after poll has shown that it no longer has the support of most Americans. And yet we fight on, feeding troops into the meat-grinder year after tragic year — to what end?

“Clearly, the final chapters of this particular endeavor are very much yet to be written,” said Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, during a BBC interview over the weekend. He sounded as if those chapters would not be written any time soon.

In a reference to President Obama's assertion that U.S. troops would begin to withdraw from Afghanistan next July, General Petraeus told the interviewer: “That's a date when a process begins, nothing more, nothing less. It's not the date when the American forces begin an exodus and look for the exit and the light to turn off on the way out of the room.”

A lot of Americans who had listened to the president thought it was, in fact, a date when the American forces would begin an exodus. The general seems to have heard something quite different.

In truth, it's not at all clear how President Obama really feels about the awesome responsibilities involved in waging war, and that's a problem. The Times's Peter Baker wrote a compelling and in many ways troubling article recently about the steep learning curve that Mr. Obama, with no previous military background, has had to negotiate as a wartime commander in chief.

Quoting an unnamed adviser to the president, Mr. Baker wrote that Mr. Obama sees the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as “problems that need managing” while he pursues his mission of transforming the nation. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking on the record, said, “He's got a very full plate of very big issues, and I think he does not want to create the impression that he's so preoccupied with these two wars that he's not addressing the domestic issues that are uppermost in people's minds.”

Wars are not problems that need managing, which suggests that they will always be with us. They are catastrophes that need to be brought to an end as quickly as possible. Wars consume lives by the thousands (in Iraq, by the scores of thousands) and sometimes, as in World War II, by the millions. The goal when fighting any war should be peace, not a permanent simmer of nonstop maiming and killing. Wars are meant to be won — if they have to be fought at all — not endlessly looked after.

One of the reasons we're in this state of nonstop warfare is the fact that so few Americans have had any personal stake in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no draft and no direct financial hardship resulting from the wars. So we keep shipping other people's children off to combat as if they were some sort of commodity, like coal or wheat, with no real regard for the terrible price so many have to pay, physically and psychologically.

Not only is this tragic, it is profoundly disrespectful. These are real men and women, courageous and mostly uncomplaining human beings, that we are sending into the war zones, and we owe them our most careful attention. Above all, we owe them an end to two wars that have gone on much too long.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/opinion/31herbert.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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In Korea, a Model for Iraq

Washington

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN, who traveled to Iraq this week to mark the formal end of United States combat operations there, has claimed that peace and stability there could be “one of the great achievements” of the Obama administration. Of course, the largest share of credit belongs to the brave men and women of the American military, who have sacrificed so much and persevered through so much difficulty. Credit also goes to the Iraqi Army and police forces who have fought bravely and increasingly well, and to Iraq's people, who have borne a heavy burden. But it is good that President Obama and his administration also claim credit, because success in Iraq will need their support.

My hope is that the president understands that success in Iraq will be defined not by what we withdraw, but by what we leave behind. At a minimum, we need Iraq to be a stable country, at peace both within its borders and with its neighbors. And we should help Iraq to one day become a leader of political and economic progress in the Middle East.

The aftermath of another American war is instructive. Fifty-seven years ago, an armistice ended the fighting in Korea — another unpopular conflict, far bloodier than the Iraq war, although shorter. Civilian casualties were horrendous, and the United States and its allies suffered more than half a million military casualties. The South Korean Army took the heaviest losses, but the United States also paid a high price: 33,739 killed or missing in battle and 103,284 wounded.

Gen. Dwight Eisenhower won the 1952 presidential election, in part, on a promise to end the war. According to a poll taken in April 1953, three months before the armistice was signed, 55 percent of the American public thought the war had not been worth fighting, whereas only 36 percent thought that it had.

Yet when the war was over, the United States did not abandon South Korea. We had done so in 1949, when our post-World War II occupation of Korea ended, opening the door to North Korea's invasion the following year. This time, instead, we kept a substantial military force in South Korea.

The United States stuck with South Korea even though the country was then ruled by a dictator and the prospects for its war-devastated economy looked dim. With all its failings, South Korea was nevertheless a haven of freedom compared with the bleak and brutal despotism of North Korea.

We also understood that stability on the Korean Peninsula was critical for the peace of an entire region — a region that involved Japan as well as the Soviet Union and China. Most important, abandoning South Korea would have risked squandering all that had been gained.

Although South Korea has assumed the principal responsibility for its own defense, there are still 28,500 American troops on the peninsula. Our continued commitment prevented another war and today South Korea is a remarkable economic success story. A series of democratic elections, starting in 1987, have made it a political success story as well.

Some similar considerations apply to Iraq today. First, Iraq occupies a key position in the Persian Gulf, a strategically important region of the world — a position that is all the more important because of the dangerous ambitions of Iran's rulers.

Second, whatever the failings of Iraq's democracy, it bears no comparison to the regime that other hostile elements would impose. With all its imperfections, Iraq today is more democratic than South Korea was at the end of the Korean War, and more democratic than any other country in the Arab Middle East (with the possible exception of Lebanon).

We have withdrawn so many of our troops and relinquished a combat role because Iraqi security forces have been able to take on most of the security burden. Their numbers have grown from about 320,000 in December 2006 to more than 600,000 at the end of last year; they are also becoming more capable.

Of course, numbers are only part of the story, and Iraqi security forces still need assistance from the American military. Not surprisingly, the enemy has increasingly focused its attacks on Iraqi soldiers and police officers as the United States withdraws, although Iraqi losses are still far below what they were earlier in the war. Since June 2003, about 10,000 Iraqi security forces have been killed, twice the total of the United States and the entire international coalition.

Even as our combat commitment ends, our commitment to supporting Iraq must continue. That means continued political support, including offering our help in resolving the current stalemate over forming a government. (It's worth remembering that much of the difficulty the Iraqis are encountering arises from a Constitution and electoral system that the international community helped design. Moreover, this example of peaceful negotiations to create a government is something new in the Arab world.)

Our commitment must also include continued material support, particularly in the form of military and technical assistance. And though we have agreed to withdraw all our troops by the end of next year — a pledge that we must honor if the Iraqi government so desires — we need to remain open to the possibility of a mutually agreed longer-term security commitment or military presence for deterrence and support.

It is well worth celebrating the end of combat operations after seven years, and the homecoming of so many troops. But fully abandoning Iraq would damage the interests of the United States in the region and beyond. Maintaining a long-term commitment, albeit at greatly reduced cost and risk, is the best way to secure the gains that have been achieved with so much sacrifice.

Paul D. Wolfowitz, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, was the deputy secretary of defense from 2001 to 2005.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/opinion/31wolfowitz.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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Who Else Will Speak Up?

The hate-filled signs carried recently by protesters trying to halt plans to build an Islamic center and mosque in Lower Manhattan were chilling. We were cheered to see people willing to challenge their taunts and champion tolerance and the First Amendment. But opportunistic politicians are continuing to foment this noxious anger. It is a dangerous pursuit.

Already New Yorkers have seen a troubled young man slash a Muslim taxi driver with a knife. A zealot in Florida is threatening to burn a stack of Korans on the anniversary of Sept. 11. Where does this end?

The country needs strong and sane voices to push back against the hatred and irrational fears. President Obama made a passionate defense of the mosque, but only once. Most Democratic politicians are ducking. So far, the leader with the courage to make the case repeatedly is Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

He has said firmly that the developers have a right to build and that New York needs a powerful memorial to those who died, surrounded by a living city. He has rejected efforts to move the mosque, noting that for opponents no distance will be far enough. At a Ramadan iftar dinner last week, Mr. Bloomberg declared that “Islam did not attack the World Trade Center — Al Qaeda did.”

Later, the mayor invited the wounded taxi driver, Ahmed Sharif, to City Hall. Then he went on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” to remind non-New Yorkers that “there's already another mosque down there within four blocks of the World Trade Center. There's porno places; there's fast-food places. It's a vibrant community. It's New York.” Surely, Mr. Bloomberg isn't the only politician left out there with courage and good sense.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/opinion/31tue4.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From the White House

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Agent Orange and Veterans: A 40-Year Wait

With the unwavering support of President Obama, VA is transforming to meet its 21st Century responsibilities.  Advocacy, on behalf of every generation of Veterans, is central to this transformation.

Agent Orange was a blend of herbicides used by the U.S. military, during the Vietnam conflict, to deny concealment to enemy forces.  More than 19 million gallons of herbicides were sprayed to remove foliage and undergrowth.  The most common, Agent Orange, was sprayed in all four military zones of South Vietnam.

Heavily sprayed areas included the inland forests near the Demilitarized Zone; inland forests at the junction of the borders of Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam; inland forests north and northwest of Saigon; mangrove forests on the southernmost peninsula of Vietnam; and mangrove forests along major shipping channels southeast of Saigon.

The issue of Agent Orange's toxic effects on Veterans, who served in Vietnam, has simmered for decades.  Its insidious impact on those exposed to it has become increasingly apparent.  That growing awareness has resulted in the Congress', this Department's, and the Institute of Medicine's previous validations of some 12 diseases, which, to date, have been granted presumption of service connection for those exposed to Agent Orange.

Last October, based on the requirements of the Agent Orange Act of 1991 and the Institute of Medicine's report, “Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 2008,” I determined that the evidence provided was sufficient to support presumptions of service connection for three additional diseases: Parkinson's Disease, Hairy Cell and other Chronic B-Cell Leukemia, and Ischemic Heart Disease.  After a public rulemaking process, we are now issuing a final regulation creating these new presumptions.

This action means that Veterans who were exposed to herbicides in service and who suffer from one of the “presumed” illnesses do not have to prove an association between their medical problems and their military service.  This action helps Veterans to overcome the evidentiary requirements that might otherwise make it difficult for them to establish such an association in order to qualify for healthcare and other benefits needed as a result of their diseases.  The “Presumption” simplifies and accelerates the application process and ensures that Veterans will receive the benefits they deserve.

As many as 150,000 Veterans may submit Agent Orange claims in the next 12 to 18 months. Additionally, VA will review approximately 90,000 previously denied claims from Vietnam Veterans for service connection for these three new diseases. All those who are awarded service-connection, and who are not currently enrolled in the VA health care system, will become eligible for enrollment.

Veterans who served in the Republic of Vietnam, including its inland waterways, between January 9, 1962 and May 7, 1975, are presumed to have been exposed to herbicides.  If you know a Veteran who may have been exposed to herbicides in service and who suffers from one of the diseases that may be presumptively service connected, the Veteran or the Veteran's family can visit our website to find out how to file a claim for presumptive conditions related to herbicide exposure, as well as what information is needed by VA to determine disability compensation or survivors' benefits.  Additionally, VA's Office of Public Health  can answer questions about Agent Orange and VA's services for Veterans exposed to it.

This rule is long overdue.  It delivers justice to those who have suffered from Agent Orange's toxic effects for 40 years.  I have been invited to testify before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee on 23 September to explain these decisions, and I am happy to do that.  It was the right decision, and the President and I are proud to finally provide this group of Veterans the care and benefits they have long deserved.

VA is committed to addressing the health care needs of Veterans from all eras.  Forty years from today, a future Secretary of VA should not be adjudicating presumptive disabilities associated with our current conflicts.  Change is difficult for any good organization, but we are transforming this Department to advocate for Veterans.  We will not let our Veterans languish without hope for service-connected disabilities resulting from their service.

Eric K. Shinseki is Secretary  of Veterans Affairs

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/08/30/agent-orange-and-veterans-a-40-year-wait

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Landmark: Number of Donut Hole Rebate Checks Passes One Million

Cross-posted from HealthCare.gov

On August 10th, you may have seen Jenny Backus' post on HealthCare Notes noting that the third round of donut hole rebate checks went into the mail.

Recently, we hit a major milestone: the millionth check was sent out over the weekend.

If you haven't heard about the rebate checks before, they are the first step in closing the prescription drug coverage gap under the Affordable Care Act. This gap is commonly referred to as the ‘ donut hole .' We know that many people with Medicare have tight budgets and some may skip or alter the medicines their doctors recommend they take in order to save money in the donut hole. That is dangerous and unacceptable. And that's why the Affordable Care Act takes steps to close this coverage gap.

This year, as qualifying people with Medicare enter the ‘donut hole,' Medicare will send them a tax-free, one-time rebate check for $250 .  Next year, if you reach the ‘donut hole,' you will receive a 50 percent discount when buying covered brand-name prescription drugs. 

If you are eligible for this assistance, remember, you don't need to do anything special to receive the check. People who qualify for the one-time check do not need to sign up, since their checks are mailed automatically when they enter the donut hole. So just make sure to check the mailbox.

Just a reminder: you should never give out personal information to anyone who is not a trusted source. If anyone asks for your personal information you are encouraged to contact 1-800-MEDICARE and report the inquiry. You can also visit www.stopmedicarefraud.gov for more information.

We hope that the latest round of checks will ease the burden on individuals recently entering the donut hole. This is just one of several ways that the Affordable Care Act strengthens Medicare so make sure you check out Medicare.gov and other areas of HealthCare.gov for more information.

Don Berwick is Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/08/30/landmark-number-donut-hole-rebate-checks-passes-one-million

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From the Department of Homeland Security

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Progress in Implementing New Security Measures Along the Southwest Border

Release Date: August 30, 2010

Washington, D.C. - U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano announced today that Predator Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) flights will begin out of Corpus Christi, Texas, beginning on Wednesday, Sept.1. With the deployment of an UAS in Texas, DHS unmanned aerial capabilities will now cover the Southwest Border—from the El Centro Sector in California all the way to the Gulf of Mexico in Texas—providing critical aerial surveillance assistance to personnel on the ground.

The new, border-wide use of the Predator aircraft, comes on the heels of the recently passed Southwest border security supplemental legislation, which will provide two additional UASs that will bolster these newly expanded operations.

These UAS efforts are just the latest steps in the historic approach—and unprecedented amount of resources – that the President and this Administration have directed to the southwest border since launching the Southwest Border Initiative in March 2009. Since then, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has doubled the number of personnel assigned to border enforcement security task forces; tripled the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers working along the U.S.-Mexico border; quadrupled deployments of border liaison officers; and begun screening 100 percent of southbound rail shipments for illegal weapons, drugs, and cash.

In addition, the President has authorized the deployment of an additional 1,200 National Guard troops to the border to provide intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance, and immediate support to counternarcotics enforcement while Customs and Border Protection recruits and trains additional officers and agents to serve on the border. The Administration is dedicating $600 million in new funding to enhance security technology at the border, share information and support with state, local, and tribal law enforcement, and increase federal law enforcement activities at the border. That effort will include the deployment of more agents, investigators, and prosecutors as part of a coordinated effort with states and cities to target illicit networks trafficking in people, drugs, illegal weapons, and money.

Among the progress achieved to date:

1 – Expand Unmanned Aircraft Systems operations to cover the entire Southwest Border.

Results: On Sept. 1 st , CBP will expand Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) flight operations, covering all Southwest border states and providing critical aerial surveillance assistance to personnel on the ground.

2 – Dedicate historic levels of personnel to the Southwest border.

Results: The Border Patrol is better staffed than at any time in its 86-year history, having nearly doubled the number of agents from approximately 10,000 in 2004 to more than 20,000 today – including more “boots on the ground” in Arizona than ever before. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has also deployed a record number of agents to the Southwest border with more than a quarter of its personnel deployed in this region, doubling the number of agents assigned to Border Enforcement Security Task Forces and tripling the number of ICE intelligence analysts working along the U.S.-Mexico border. Further, President Obama has ordered the deployment of 1,200 National Guard troops to the Southwest border to contribute additional capabilities and capacity to assist law enforcement agencies.

3 – Deploy additional technology and complete fencing construction along the Southwest border.

Results: Over the past 17 months, CBP has deployed additional Z-Backscatter Van Units, Mobile Surveillance Systems, Remote Video Surveillance Systems, thermal imaging systems, radiation portal monitors, and license plate readers to the Southwest border. DHS has also completed 646.5 miles of fencing out of nearly 652 miles mandated by Congress, including 298.5 miles of vehicle barriers and 348 miles of pedestrian fence, with the remaining construction scheduled to be complete by the end of 2010.

4 – Increase outbound inspections to interdict illegal weapons, drugs, and cash leaving the United States.

Results: In addition to placing an increased emphasis on screening southbound vehicle traffic, CBP began screening 100 percent of southbound rail shipments for illegal weapons, drugs, and cash – for the first time ever. These enhanced outbound inspections have yielded more than $39.2 million in southbound illegal currency – an increase of more than $29.4 million compared to 2008.

5 – Increase seizures of drugs, weapons, and currency to disrupt the operations of transnational criminal organizations.

Results: In 2009, DHS seized more than $103 million in illegal currency, more than 1.7 million kilograms of drugs and more than 1,400 firearms – increases of more than $47 million, more than 450,000 kilograms of drugs and more than 300 firearms compared to 2008.

6 – Deter illegal immigration through unprecedented investments in border security.

Results: Illegal border crossings have been significantly reduced, as apprehensions of illegal aliens decreased from 723,825 in FY2008 to 556,041 in FY2009, a 23 percent reduction, in part as the result of increased security along the southwest border.

7 – Increase employer audits to deter violations of employment verification laws and protect American workers.

Results: Since Jan. 2009, DHS has audited more than 2,785 employers suspected of hiring illegal labor, debarred more than 100 companies and 80 individuals, and issued more than $6.4 million in fines—more than the total amount of audits and fines issued in the entire previous administration.

8 – Deploy Secure Communities technology to all southwest border communities.

Results: The Obama Administration has expanded the Secure Communities initiative—which uses biometric information to identify criminal aliens in state prisons and local jails to expedite removal proceedings—from 14 to 567 locations, including all jurisdictions along the Southwest border. DHS expects to expand this program nationwide by 2013. As of July 31, 2010, this program had identified more than 287,500 aliens in jails and prisons who have been charged with or convicted of criminal offenses, including more than 43,000 charged with or convicted of major violent or drug offenses (level 1 offenses). Through Secure Communities, over 37,900 convicted criminal aliens have been removed from the United States, including more than 10,800 convicted of major violent or drug offenses (level 1 offenses).

9 – Target criminal aliens who pose a threat to public safety.

Results: The Obama Administration has fundamentally reformed immigration enforcement, focusing on identifying and removing criminal aliens who pose a threat to public safety. Overall, criminal removals/returns increased by almost 22,000 between FY 2008 and FY 2009, a 19 percent increase. So far this fiscal year, ICE has removed a record 170,000 criminals from the U.S. DHS will continue to increase focus on removing those convicted of crimes who pose a threat to the safety of communities.

10 – Boost funding for Southwest border infrastructure, technology, and law enforcement.

Results: The recent passage and signing of Southwest border security supplemental legislation will provide critical additional capabilities to secure the Southwest border at and between our ports of entry and reduce the illicit trafficking of people, drugs, currency and weapons. This law provides $14 million for improved tactical communications systems along the Southwest border and $32 million for two additional CBP unmanned aircraft systems – in addition to $176 million for an additional 1,000 Border Patrol agents to be deployed between ports of entry; $68 million to hire 250 new Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers at ports of entry and to maintain 270 officers currently deployed to ports of entry; and $6 million to construct two forward operating bases along the Southwest Border to improve coordination of border security activities.

DHS and the General Services Administration (GSA) are also directing more than $400 million in Recovery Act funding to the Southwest border, including funds for:

• Port and other infrastructure projects in Otay Mesa, California; Antelope Wells, New Mexico; Los Ebanos, Amistad Dam, Falcon Dam and Corpus Christi, Texas; and Nogales, Arizona.
  
  
• Non-Intrusive Inspection Equipment at Southwest border ports of entry, including both low energy and large-scale systems;
  
  
• Modernized tactical communications equipment for the El Paso and Rio Grande Valley Sectors; and
  
  
• Tested, commercially available security technology including thermal imaging devices, ultra-light detection, backscatter units, mobile radios, cameras and laptops for pursuit vehicles, and Remote Video Surveillance System enhancements.

Further, DHS has increased the funds state and local law enforcement can use to combat border-related crime through Operation Stonegarden—a DHS grant program designed to support state, local, and tribal law enforcement efforts along our nation's borders. Based on risk, cross-border traffic and border-related threat intelligence, nearly 83 percent of 2009 and 2010 Operation Stonegarden funds – more than 124 million dollars – went to Southwest border states, up from 59 percent in 2008.

http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1283203926494.shtm

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From ICE

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ICE seizes more than 900 pounds of marijuana in Nogales, AZ

NOGALES, Ariz. - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents locally arrested four suspected drug smugglers and seized more than 900 pounds of marijuana Thursday.

While conducting surveillance of a suspected stash house, agents observed several vehicles, including a Ford F-350 pickup truck and Chevrolet Malibu sedan, arrive at the residence. Agents moved closer to the house on foot and witnessed suspected smugglers load packages visually consistent with marijuana bundles into the pickup truck's bed, and then conceal the packages with a bed liner.

After the truck was loaded, the vehicles left the residence with HSI agents covertly in pursuit. Agents conducted a traffic stop at the intersection of Grand Avenue and Camino del Vista Cielo and discovered 929 pounds of marijuana concealed in the pickup truck's bed. The pickup truck's driver, Jose Garcia-Diaz, 26, and passenger, Bonito Burgos-Villareal, 38, were both arrested on charges related to possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute. Agents also arrested the driver and passenger of the Malibu, Gerardo Gutierrez-Garcia, 34, and Carlos Moron-Zepeda, 37, on similar charges. All four suspects are Mexican citizens.

"Through hard work and generous amounts of shoe leather, ICE agents are identifying the criminal organizations smuggling narcotics through the Nogales area and are holding them responsible for their illicit activities," said Kevin Kelly, assistant special agent in charge of ICE-HSI in Nogales. "We will continue to target their workers, their vehicles and their stash houses until these smuggling organizations have no place left to operate in Nogales."

All four suspects will have their initial appearance in federal court in Tucson on Friday. A criminal complaint is simply the method by which a person is charged with criminal activity and raises no inference of guilt. An individual is presumed innocent until competent evidence is presented to a jury that establishes guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1008/100827nogales.htm

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ICE unit recognized for combating gangs in North Carolina

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) gang unit in Charlotte, N.C., recently received law enforcement's Special Achievement Award by the North Carolina Gang Investigators Association (NCGIA).

NCGIA recognized the ICE gang unit - officially called the Operation Community Shield Task Force - in the Resident Agent in Charge Office in Charlotte for its success in combating and reducing gang activity throughout the state, and for developing innovative gang enforcement strategies.

"We are honored to receive this award from NCGIA, and we will continue to work with our federal, state and local law enforcement partners to disrupt gang activities, and seek aggressive criminal prosecution of gang members in the state and federal court systems for gang-related crimes," said Delbert Richburg, assistant special agent in charge of ICE's HSI office in North Carolina.  "We also use our unique investigative authorities to enforce administrative immigration law to place into removal proceedings gang members and their associates who are illegally residing in the United States."

On Oct. 1, 2009, the Operation Community Shield Task Force was established within the ICE-HSI office in Charlotte.  This office has investigative authority over 38 counties in western North Carolina to specifically address violent criminal and transnational gangs and firearms violations associated with violent criminal gang activity.

Since that date, the unit has arrested more than 186 gang members, gang associates, and immigration violators encountered in the company of gang members or in residences of gang members at the time of their arrests.

In addition to the arrests, ICE HSI special agents have seized eight handguns with magazines and ammunition (including one handgun used in a gang shooting), two SKS assault rifles, one .22-caliber rifle, seven 12-gauge shotguns (five with sawed off barrels), one machete, one pair of brass knuckles, marijuana, cocaine and false identification.

The Operation Community Shield Task Force has identified numerous transnational gangs operating within the area and linked them to significant violent crimes and narcotics distribution activities in North Carolina and the surrounding states.

The local gang unit has disrupted activity of the following gangs:  Malditos, Mara Salvatrucha 13, Blythe, Bosnian Folk Nation, Crips, Bloods, Surenos 13, Vatos Locos, Destroy Everything in Sight, Asian Boyz, Down to Do It, 42nd Little Criminals, Brown Pride, M Zone Rydas, the Mexican Mafia (La Erne), Sugar Loaf Clique 31, and the Wickedside SUR-13 criminal street gangs.

As stated in the award nomination, "The HSI gang unit special agents have made themselves available to assist state and locals with whatever means in which they can be most effective. In addition, the gang unit special agents have been integral in assisting local homicide and robbery divisions and other federal investigative agencies targeting gang members and other violent criminals."

In February 2005, ICE launched Operation Community Shield, a national law enforcement initiative that brings HSI's broad law enforcement authorities to bear in the fight against violent street gangs. Operation Community Shield is part of a comprehensive approach, working with law enforcement partners at the federal, state, local and international levels.

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1008/100827charlotte.htm

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From the FBI

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A vanload of drugs confiscated near the border.

ON THE SOUTHWEST BORDER A Drug Buy in El Paso 08/30/10 It may look like any other afternoon along this busy shopping strip outside El Paso, Texas, with people walking in and out of stores and restaurants and traffic moving at a steady clip. But inside a particular establishment, one of our sources is waiting to buy nearly $20,000 worth of cocaine from a local gang member. The operation represents one of the many ways we are fighting the drug trade along the Southwest border . From small street-level drug buys to major cases targeting the highest levels of cartel and gang leadership, our agents and law enforcement partners attack the problem from every angle to gain intelligence and to disrupt and dismantle trafficking organizations. On this day, agents from our criminal enterprise/gang squad are working with local and state officers to build a case against the gang. Members of the team—all in plain clothes and driving unmarked vehicles—are inconspicuously and strategically parked near the site of the establishment. The source inside is wearing a wire, and his conversations can be heard on car-to-car radios. If anything goes wrong, the source will say a code word and the team will quickly be inside.

At a final briefing before the operation began, the team leader—one of our veteran agents—spoke to the group in a parking lot behind a nearby municipal building. He went over the plan again in detail, stressing the danger involved and the need for extreme caution to make sure everyone stayed safe. Then, like a basketball coach before a game, he gathered the team in a circle and read aloud the Bureau's policy on the use of deadly force.

An hour later, the source was inside, but the target wasn't—he called to say he would be late . While they waited in their car and listened to the radio chatter, two of our agents on the operation—we'll call them Smith and Johns—explained the economics of the drug trade in El Paso and across the border in Juarez.

“Where you have gangs,” Smith said, “you have drugs. And in El Paso, all the drugs are coming from across the border.” A kilo of cocaine in El Paso costs about $20,000, but can be sold in Chicago, Atlanta, New York, or Miami for more than $30,000. There is a lot of money to be made.

Finally, the target arrived, but without any drugs and only vague promises to produce them that day. The team leader sent a text message to the source to leave, and then canceled the operation. “We'll try again tomorrow,” he said.

False starts and dead ends are typical in such drug cases, Agents Smith and Johns said later. But the work is important. Even though small drug buys won't break the backs of the cartels, Johns explained, “We gain a lot of intelligence from these operations, and sometimes we develop new sources as a result. And every kilo of coke we take off the streets is one that doesn't make its way to American kids.”

Next: Going After the Major Players

By the Numbers The Southwest border crime problem measured in numbers. - View infographic

Border Corruption Criminal Investigative Division  chief describes issues. - Read comments

Video The FBI works closely with other agencies to fight border crime. - Watch video

http://www.fbi.gov/page2/august10/border_083010.html

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