Anti-Military Recruiting Campaigns Heats up At Seattle Schools


On Monday, four US military recruiting offices in Seattle were shut down when students blocked the entrances to protest recruitment practices and to oppose the occupation of Iraq. Meanwhile the Parent Teacher Student Association at one school has passed a resolution recommending that military recruiters be barred from the campus. [includes rush transcript] Students from nine local universities, community colleges and high schools joined in simultaneous demonstrations. A military recruiting office near the University of Washington and another near Garfield High School were also blockaded by groups of students.

Garfield High School also made news recently when the school's Parent Teacher Student Association passed a resolution recommending that military recruiters be barred from the campus. The resolution, passed on May 9th, was the first of its kind in the state. Seattle school district officials then released a statement stating that under President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, it was illegal to ban only military recruiters - they must be granted the same access to students as college or job recruiters at schools that receive federal money.

Garfield High School is no stranger to speaking out against the war. In 2002, the school passed a resolution opposing the invasion in Iraq.

* Amy Hagopian, is the president and co-chair of the Parent Teacher Student Association at Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

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AMY GOODMAN: Joining us on the phone from Seattle is the co-chair of the Parent Teacher Association, Amy Hagopian. She is the mother of a senior at Garfield High. Welcome to Democracy Now!

AMY HAGOPIAN: It’s good to be with you.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m sorry we only have a few minutes. Can you quickly explain how did your P.T.A. vote to kick out the recruiters? And what will happen now?

AMY HAGOPIAN: Our P.T.A. has a mission to promote the welfare of children and youth and to support and speak out on their behalf. That's the mission of P.T.A.s everywhere in America. And we would encourage other P.T.A.s to act on behalf of their mission and also look seriously at the recruitment happening in their schools and the nature of that recruitment, the frequency, the intensity, and the hard pressure tactics.

AMY GOODMAN: Your school is almost a third African American?

AMY HAGOPIAN: It is. It's a inner city school that's large and very diverse. It's a magnet school, so there's many high achieving kids and there's many kids who can’t read.

AMY GOODMAN: What will happen if No Child Left Behind Act says you lose federal funding? Will the school actually stop recruiters from coming on campus?

AMY HAGOPIAN: We can’t physically stop them, and we can’t legally stop them, but we can stand at the doors and explain that they're not welcome, as can every high school in the country. Somebody obviously needs to challenge this legally, but that's a hard task to ask of public schools that are strapped for money.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much for being with us, Amy Hagopian, co-chair of the Parent Teacher Association at Garfield High. Another issue we have dealt with in the past is that kids' names are given to the Pentagon automatically by schools, part of the No Child Left Behind Act, unless parents proactively tell the school they don't want those names sent, or the student does, and then those names will not be sent, a story we have covered here.

Massacres, corruption accompany Plan Colombia
By Berta Joubert-Ceci


During her whirlwind trip through Latin America in late April, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stopped in Bogotá to give Colombian president Álvaro Uribe assurance that her government is firmly behind his policies and will continue funding his counterinsurgency programs. In fact, President George W. Bush is asking Congress for $741.7 million in aid for Colombia for the 2006 fiscal year. This is in spite of the 2005 time limit for Plan Colombia, and mounting criticism both nationally and internationally.

An article by Associated Press writer Andrew Selsky, carried on May 7 by many U.S. newspapers, was entitled “Backing for Colombia Drug War Criticized.”

It began: “Resilient rebels. Rebounding drug crops. Rogue American soldiers, snared in plots to smuggle cocaine and funnel stolen ammunition to paramilitary death squads. The bad news has been piling up fast, almost five years after the United States began spending $3 billion under its Plan Colombia aid program to wipe out cocaine and heroin production and crush a long-running leftist insurgency.”

Selsky refers to criticism of Plan Colombia in the U.S. and quotes from a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial saying that Colombia “has turned into a sinkhole of money and military resources over the past five years.” It adds, “The Congress should scrap Plan Colombia now, rather than throw more good money after bad.”

In another paragraph Selsky wrote, “John Walsh, a senior associate at the Wash ington Office on Latin America think tank, said recently that ‘the drug war is failing to achieve its most basic objectives.’”

‘Rogue soldiers’—
what’s unique is publicity

The “rogue American soldiers” refers to three incidents reported recently in the media. Shortly after midnight on May 3, an anonymous caller alerted police in Cundinamarca, the municipality where the capital Bogotá is located, to a “big” event in the region—the delivery of a shipment.

When the police arrived, they found 29 metal boxes with 32,900 rounds of ammunition and three men—one Colombian plus a colonel and a sergeant from the Special Forces of the U.S. Army. The last two were shooting instructors at the nearby National Army Training Center of Tolemaida.

The booty was reportedly going to be sold to right-wing paramilitaries.

This incident comes after two others: one on March 29, when five U.S. soldiers who were part of the “anti-drug” operations in the south of Colombia were arrested for carrying 16 kilograms of cocaine in a U.S. military plane, and a recent case of a U.S. soldier being investigated for the hit-and-run death of two Colombian soldiers last year.

These episodes are not unique nor isolated incidents. In fact, as part of Plan Colombia the Colombian government had to, at Washington’s request, sign a treaty that grants immunity to the 800 U.S. military personnel and 600 U.S. contractors operating in that country.

What is unique is that these incidents became news in the Colombian media, which reflects the opinion of part of the oligarchy. It is still early to ascertain their real meaning.

Realignment of Colombian
ruling class?

The governing Liberal Party is having its convention in June amidst a polarization of its membership. One sector is fully behind Uribe and the other, to which popular Sen. Piedad Cordoba belongs, seems to want to take a more populist route. Does this reflect a realignment of the Colombian ruling class?

Uribe has also raised the possibility of forming a new party on his own. Some Colombian analysts suggest that this could be insurance in case the Supreme Court invalidates a ruling allowing him to run for reelection. His election campaign promise of ending violence, which should read as “ending the guerrillas,” has not been fulfilled and he is seeking a second term to “finish his goal.”

Let it not be forgotten that the paramilitaries control more than 30 percent of the Congress, have regional and local government positions and increasingly administer important services, including health care. And that so-called negotiations between Uribe and the paras in Santa Fe de Ralito, supposedly to demobilize and disarm them, are described by the president’s opponents as “monologues” or “conversations of me with me.” They are in fact a smokescreen for an attempt to legalize the paramilitaries.

As a result of the “demobilization,” these criminals are being hired in Uribe’s programs of “Peasant Soldiers” and are used as secret informants to accuse, indict, imprison and murder leaders of the progressive, unarmed popular social movement. These “demobilized paramilitaries” are then set free in the communities, both rural and urban, constituting an ever present danger. Uribe’s links with the paramilitaries since before he became president are well documented.

Uribe is clearly putting all the pieces together for a fascist state. Are all the mem bers of the ruling class behind this effort? Is there a part that feels that its economic and financial interests are not being served well under these circumstances? Particularly when the Latin American masses are in uprising and the Bolivarian president from Venezuela is rapidly advancing a proposal for the region’s integration and increasing the possibilities of significant trade with other countries besides the United States?

Conservatives are criticizing Plan Colombia for its failure, both in its stated goal of eradicating the drug industry and its intention of destroying the armed insurgency, which can no longer be hidden. But progressive organizations in Colombia and around the world blame it for causing terrible human rights abuses that have taken the lives and the freedom of thousands of Colombians.

Yet on April 27, during a media conference with Colombian Foreign Minister Carolina Barco in the Casa de Nariño—the presidential palace—Condoleezza Rice had said: “I‘ve just had a very productive meeting with President Uribe. It was a meeting in which we could discuss the impressive progress that the government of Colombia has made in improving security, in strengthening democracy, and indeed its commitment to protecting human rights.”

Toll of Plan Colombia, Patriot Plan

That “protection” was absent for Gisella, a 19-month-old girl who was murdered by paramilitaries in the village of Cerro Azul in northeast Colombia on the same day as Rice’s speech. Her house came under fire as they fired indiscriminately, supposedly against guerrillas. The residents—peasants who had warned the local government about the paramilitaries’ presence in their region—were ignored by the authorities. They say that 15 or more people were killed.

Crimes like this happen daily in Colombia. But under Uribe they have tremendously increased, particularly in the year since he secretly launched a new component of Plan Colombia, the counter-insurgency Patriot Plan. It is his and the U.S.’s effort to destroy the leadership of the revolutionary army, the FARC-EP, in the south of the country, where its “headquarters” are supposedly located.

In spite of the doubling of U.S. military personnel and contractors and an infusion of highly sophisticated equipment, the guerrillas have not been decimated. On the contrary, the armed insurgency since last February has intensified its guerrilla warfare on all fronts, reminiscent of the courageous North Vietnamese army. And despite the extradition to the U.S. of two alleged FARC leaders, Simon Trinidad and Sonia, and the kidnapping in Vene zuela of Rodrigo Granda, none of the top leadership of the FARC has been caught.

The repression has turned ferocious against the unarmed social movement, which is regarded by Uribe and the paramilitaries as the guerrillas’ base of support and as such stands accused as “guerrilla sympathizers.” This assumption, based only on the desire for social justice of both the armed and unarmed population, is enough for the regime to carry out mass detentions, selective assassinations, massacres and many other violent acts against labor, Afro-Colombian, Indigenous, peasant, student and human rights advocate leaders and anybody who opposes the state’s violence.

The listing of crimes committed by the state and the paramilitaries, particularly while the “demobilization” process is taking place, is extensive.

As illustration, here are just a few cases that took place in April and May.

In the beginning of April the Colombian Army indiscriminately machine-gunned a peasant community from helicopters. In another community, the Army closed a small gold mine where 20 families worked, with the excuse that the mine belonged to the guerrillas. In a neighborhood in southern Putumayo, five people were assassinated by paras.

In Bogotá, Italian reporter and teacher Cristiano Morsolin has been threatened and persecuted by paramilitaries after writing articles, particularly for European media, denouncing the massacre in February of residents of the Peace Com munity San José de Apartado. Morso lin works closely with Gloria Cuartas, former mayor of San José de Apartado and current general secretary of the progressive Social and Political Front. He also works with Jes uit priest Father Javier Giraldo, a respected human rights advocate who works with CINEP, the Center for Inves tigation and Popular Education, which has been documenting the abuses in a data bank accessible at http://www.nocheyniebla.org. Both Cuartas and Giraldo are under death threats.

On April 21 in the Cauca Valley, 12 Afro-Colombian children were found massacred and 12 others are still missing and feared dead.

On May 1, a 15-year-old boy was shot by police in Bogotá during a May Day event.

That same day, this writer received an email from a friend in Barranquilla, on the northern coast, saying that “while 15,000 of us workers demonstrated on the streets under a searing sun against Uribe’s reelection, the closing of hospitals, the privatization of the university and the violations of human rights, another crime was committed. While waiting to join the demonstration, two friends were killed at point blank. One was killed, and the other, a member of the Colombian Communist Party, was seriously injured in the head.”

Communists, members of the Patriotic Union and leftists are particularly singled out in this witch hunt. The following day, on May 2, the Colombian office of prosecution was inspecting mass graves in the north of Bogotá where the mutilated and tortured bodies of 40 people were found. These were union members from the left assassinated by paramilitaries since the year 2000.

While the brutal repression increases in Colombia, so does the perseverance and will of the people to defeat it. However, international solidarity is of enormous importance. It will make a difference in shortening the time until the victory of the masses.

Here is a photo of Ms. Valerie Plame.
I assume this photo is now all over, given
the "wildfire" nature of internet photos.
http://www.nathanslunch.com/Nathans04%20079.JPG

Officers Plot Exit Strategy
Many young lieutenants and captains, key leaders in combat, are deciding against Army careers in light of the open-ended war on terrorism.
By Mark Mazzetti
Times Staff Writer



KILLEEN, Texas — Army Capts. Dave Fulton and Geoff Heiple spent 12 months dodging roadside bombs and rounding up insurgents along Baghdad's "highway of death" — the six miles of pavement linking downtown Baghdad to the capital city's airport. Two weeks after returning stateside to Ft. Hood, they ventured to a spartan conference room at the local Howard Johnson to find out about changing careers.

Lured by a headhunting firm that places young military officers in private-sector jobs, the pair, both 26, expected anonymity in the crowded room.

Instead, as Fulton and Heiple sipped Budweisers pulled from Styrofoam coolers next to the door, they spotted nearly a dozen familiar faces from their cavalry battalion, which had just ended a yearlong combat tour in Iraq.

The shocks of recognition came as they exchanged quick, awkward glances with others from their unit, each man clearly surprised to see someone else considering a life outside the military.

"This is a real eye-opener," said Fulton, a West Point graduate who saw a handful of cadets from his class. "It seems like everyone in the room is either from my squad or from my class."

More than three years after the Sept. 11 attacks spawned an era of unprecedented strain on the all-volunteer military, it is scenes like this that keep the Army's senior generals awake at night. With thousands of soldiers currently on their second combat deployment in Iraq or Afghanistan and some preparing for their third this fall, evidence is mounting that an exodus of young Army officers may be looming on the horizon.

It is especially troubling for Pentagon officials that the Army's pool of young captains, which forms the backbone of infantry and armored units deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, could be the hardest hit.

Last year, Army lieutenants and captains left the service at an annual rate of 8.7% — the highest since 2001. Pentagon officials say they expect the attrition rate to improve slightly this year. Yet interviews with several dozen military officers revealed an undercurrent of discontent within the Army's young officer corps that the Pentagon's statistics do not yet capture.

Young captains in the Army are looking ahead to repeated combat tours, years away from their families and a global war that their commanders tell them could last for decades. Like other college grads in their mid-20s, they are making decisions about what to do with their lives.

And many officers, who until recently had planned to pursue careers in the military, are deciding that it's a future they can't sign up for.

The officers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan just wrapped up a year of grueling counterinsurgency operations — a type of combat the U.S. largely avoided after its struggle in Vietnam and that many in the Pentagon believe is the new face of war. They were in Iraq during last spring's uprisings in Fallouja and Najaf, June's transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government and block-to-block fighting during the retaking of Fallouja in November.

These officers have, in most cases, more counterinsurgency experience than any of their superiors. And they are the people the Army most fears losing.

The officers interviewed for this article are proud of what they accomplished in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they are generally optimistic that the two nations can eventually emerge as functioning, if unstable, democracies.

Those just returning from Iraq ended their combat tours on a positive note with successful parliamentary elections in January, which had been the singular focus of their deployment.

Yet their pride is tempered by uncertainty about what lies ahead in an unconventional war in which victory may never be declared.

"The undefined goals of the war on terror are making it really hard for the Army to keep people right now," Fulton said.

By the time they make captain, young officers are usually approaching the end of their four- or five-year commitment. Army spokesman Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty said the attrition rate for junior officers was not yet alarming, and the Army had several initiatives in place to help retain those deciding whether to make a career out of the military.

The Pentagon hopes that by next year, a significant troop reduction in Iraq will allow the Army to slow the pace of troop deployments, giving soldiers two years at home for every year in battle.

Yet Pentagon officials admit it is uncertain that this can happen by 2006.

"I still don't know if we can make it," said a senior Army officer at the Pentagon. "You tell me what Iraq is going to look like next year."

Meanwhile, the Army is dispatching combat units to Iraq and Afghanistan after soldiers have had just one year at home, a pace that is taking a toll around the country.

Timothy Muchmore, a civilian Army official at the Pentagon and a retired tank officer, said he was worried about an exodus of young officers. He summed up the problem this way:

"You take a junior officer, you send them overseas for a year. They win a lot of medals, and they're a hero. But when you send them back a second time, the odds go up that they won't make it home alive and it becomes even harder on their family. Are they any more of a hero for having served a second time? No.

"The guys returning from Iraq and Afghanistan believe they have done at least the minimum for the security of their country, and they are proud of their service," he said. "But the world is now their oyster."

Private-sector pitch

Inside the overheated conference room at the Howard Johnson in Killeen, Fulton and Heiple listened to a well-rehearsed pitch about what the world might have to offer.

At the front of the room, Andrew Hollitt, a beefy, gregarious former Army officer turned headhunter spoke in marketing terms about how eager private-sector employers were for young, combat-tested officers and senior noncommissioned officers.

"You are a commodity that brings a tremendous amount to the table," he told the packed room, sipping from a can of Budweiser. "I can sell something that I believe in. And it's people like you."

The Lucas Group was not trying to persuade them to leave the Army, Hollitt said, only to present them with another set of options.

"I am red, white and blue on the inside," the recruiter assured the capacity crowd.

In a telephone interview after the recruiting session, Hollitt said he had yet to see the same volume of young soldiers contact the Lucas Group as he did during the late 1990s, when the military drawdown forced the Pentagon to slash its numbers and push young officers out of the service.

At the same time, he said, the pace of Army deployments was clearly having an effect — and that the quality of those leaving was very high. "I am seeing the highest caliber of candidates now that I have seen in five years of doing this," he said. "The companies we work with are absolutely, unbelievably impressed."

Employers such as General Electric Co., Home Depot Inc. and others are always on the lookout for managerial talent, Hollitt said, and mid-level commanders tested in war are considered experienced leaders.

By the time they make captain, he said, the officers usually have command experience leading an infantry or armor company, which forces them to make life-and-death decisions on a daily basis.

After the session was over, Heiple and Fulton were wary about what they had just heard. And it was not that the average starting salaries of $50,000 to $70,000 were much more than they had earned in Iraq when combat pay and bonuses were included.

Instead, one of their biggest concerns about working in the civilian world was that it was "cheesier" and less serious than what they currently do for a living.

"I kind of worry that the corporate world is a lot like 'Office Space,' " said Heiple, referring to the 1999 movie that parodied American office park culture.

Combat experience

The 1st Cavalry Division was considered for the assault on Baghdad in 2003 but ended up staying stateside as commanders in Washington and the Middle East decided to pare down the invasion force.

When the division was notified that it would be heading to Iraq in 2004, a year after the fall of Baghdad, the 1st Cav's officers thought they had missed out on the action.

"I thought we were going to be the third string of the JV," Heiple said.

Far from being over, the war in Iraq had entered its bloodiest stage, and Heiple and Fulton's battalion was in charge of patrolling Baghdad's restive Al Rashid district. Their unit had the Sisyphean task of trying to secure Baghdad's airport highway, the road many in the battalion called the "shooting gallery" because of the constant attacks against U.S. troops.

Over time and through grim experience, they learned the brutal rules that govern counterinsurgency warfare.

They point with a certain amount of pride to a January incident that occurred soon after the battalion's most respected and indispensable Iraqi interpreter, Ethar, was assassinated.

Ethar had been lured to an insurgent safe house by another Iraqi interpreter who had been paid off by insurgents. There, Ethar was brutally beaten and shot in the head. Soldiers found his body while on patrol.

News of the death hit the battalion hard, and they planned their revenge. Acting on information from an Iraqi source, the battalion hit multiple targets around west Baghdad in a single night, which some of the battalion's officers only half-jokingly called "the night of justice."

"We took down the whole cell" in a night, Fulton recalled, capturing or killing all the insurgents on their target list.

"It was personal, and it felt really good," he added.

Heiple, a native of Jonestown, Pa., said he would not have traded for anything the experience of leading troops in combat or of earning the 1st Cavalry's trademark Stetson hat and gold spurs — given to cavalry soldiers when they have served in a combat zone.

Yet, with these achievements behind him, the Notre Dame graduate said he was looking for a life with more stability. Heiple decided while he was in Iraq that he would leave the Army when his commitment expires next month. He plans to move with his girlfriend to Austin, where he hopes to attend law school at the University of Texas.

Heiple's decision to leave the Army did not come suddenly. At 26, he felt his window of opportunity to change careers was closing. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that he wanted to follow a different path.

"I can only wait so long," Heiple said.

Fulton spent eight years of his youth in the Congo, where his father worked as a bush pilot. His family relocated to Haiti in 1990 and spent three years there before they were evacuated before U.S. troops landed on the island in 1994.

Fulton then moved to Redlands, Calif. When he was in high school there, the military piqued his interest and he visited an Army recruiting station. His test scores led one recruiter to suggest that he instead apply to West Point. During his senior year, the late Rep. Sonny Bono (R-Palm Springs) nominated Fulton for his military commission to the armed forces academy in New York state.

Fulton returned from Iraq in March and went on a cruise to Mexico with his wife during his 30-day leave. His wife, Fulton said, wants him to leave the military more than anything.

In June, the two will move with their 3-year-old son to Ft. Knox, Ky., where Fulton will begin a six-month course on commanding armored units.

He will still have a year left of his Army commitment when the course is completed, yet Fulton admits that given the Army's current pace of deployments, he is leaning toward leaving the service.

"If West Point didn't have a five-year commitment," he said, "I'd probably be pursuing something else right now. I know my wife would like me to choose something else immediately."

Careers in the balance

A college graduate with an Army ROTC scholarship usually owes four years of active duty to the military, along with a period in the Army Reserves or National Guard. A West Point graduate owes five.

Army officials know that if they are able to persuade captains to remain in uniform a few years past their initial commitment, the odds are good they will eventually commit to a full 20-year military career.

But in the words of one Army captain, a West Point graduate who spent 10 months in Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004 and plans to leave the Army next year: "A lot of guys making their decision at the five-year mark are not making their decision for [just] the next three years. They are making their decision about whether to make a career out of the military.

"The guys in my age group are looking ahead and deciding that's not a life they want to live."

Mid-level officers around the country are confronting the same choice. The 1-34 armor battalion of the 1st Infantry Division returned last year to Ft. Riley, Kan., after a year in Iraq's so-called Sunni Triangle, the region of heaviest conflict. The battalion is expecting to return to Iraq later this year, and many young officers are choosing to get out before then.

Capt. Eric Emerling, the battalion's fire support officer, is one of three captains who decided to leave after returning from Iraq. Emerling said he initially looked forward to a career in the Army. When he returned, his superiors offered him command of an artillery battery, a milestone promotion for a career officer.

But he and his wife decided in January that they did not want to commit to a future of "repeated deployments for the next 13 years."

"What tipped the scale is that I have a 2-year-old daughter. I want more stability for her," Emerling said by telephone, his little girl in the background competing for her father's attention. "I missed the first half of her life. I'm not willing to do that again."

The 27-year-old captain is moving to Connecticut, where he has a job with a landscaping company. He said he was concerned about the Army's future, with many of the military's young leaders planning their exits.

"I see how many people are getting out here at my local unit level. It's a bit of a worry," he said. "We lost a lot of lieutenants and captains."

Life outside the zone

Heiple and Fulton live in an apartment complex in Georgetown, Texas, an Austin suburb 30 miles south of Ft. Hood's main gate. When searching for housing after they returned from Iraq, they specifically sought apartments some distance from the base.

Killeen, with its infrastructure catering to thousands of soldiers and their families, provides constant reminders of military life. But in Georgetown, a soldier walking the streets in desert camouflage is a rarity.

The young officers are coming to the end of their post-deployment "reintegration" period — several weeks of administrative briefings and counseling sessions before they are allowed to leave post for 30 days to visit friends and family.

With their feet propped up on a coffee table piled high with newspapers, DVD cases and back issues of the Economist, Heiple and Fulton watch "Matrix Revolutions" on the recently purchased 50-inch flat screen television in the living room of their neighbor — Capt. Vincent Tuohey, another member of their battalion just back from Iraq.

With distractions such as basketball, bars and new electronic equipment, there is plenty for the young officers to focus on besides their time in Iraq, or on the steady stream of violent news out of the country.

Said Heiple: "You don't purposefully avoid the news. But you don't go out of your way to find it, either."

Tuohey, a Harvard graduate from Annapolis, Md., who earned a master's degree from Cambridge University in Britain, served the last year as an executive officer for a cavalry unit in west Baghdad.

Like all of the soldiers of the 1st Cavalry Division who just returned to Ft. Hood, Tuohey is readjusting to life outside a combat zone.

He is edgy sitting in traffic, having taught himself in Iraq to maneuver his Bradley fighting vehicle to avoid city traffic and the inevitable insurgent attacks. The first time he got into a car when he returned to Ft. Hood, his heart began racing and he broke out in a sweat.

Tuohey was a lieutenant during his deployment in Iraq and is proud that most of the decision-making for counterinsurgency missions fell to the Army's youngest officers.

"At no time before has the Army had LTs [lieutenants] who have made decisions like that on a daily basis," he said.

As he sees it, the military now has an entire generation of young officers who are battle-hardened and knowledgeable about battling insurgencies.

Even in Iraq, he said, senior commanders were keenly aware of those officers who might be considering leaving the military and applied various degrees of pressure to persuade them to remain in uniform.

They appeal to the sense of mission, Tuohey said, and the sense of purpose of military life that doesn't exist in the outside world. And they usually bring up an example of a friend who left the Army only to regret the decision.

Yet Tuohey, who was promoted to captain upon returning to Ft. Hood, said he was not sure whether he would stay in the Army when his commitment ended next year. He said he was tempted to work on Wall Street.

It's not the money he's after. It's the fact that an Army that was gutted after the Cold War was promising him a future of perpetual deployments fighting a war that could last for decades.

That is not a future he is sure he can commit to.

"What's the end point?" he asked. "When do you declare victory?"

So I hear George Lucas is accused of taking a jab or two at the president. The character that becomes Darth Vader echoes Bush with an "if you're not with us you're against us." Lucas states that he
wrote the script many years ago.
In any case Lucas has gone on recently to say
some interesting things about the tendencies of
great Democracies to degenerate into Tyranny.

"When I wrote it, Iraq (the US-led war) didn't exist . . . but the parallels of what we did in Vietnam and Iraq are unbelievable."

[He acknowledged an uncomfortable feeling that the United States was in danger of losing its democratic ideals, like in the movie.]

"I didn't think it was going to get this close. I hope this doesn't come true in our country."

SMALL PLANE 'OFF COURSE' CAUSES RAW ALARM IN WASHINGTON... WHITE HOUSE, CAPITOL WERE EVACUATED; VP CHENEY RACES OFF IN LIMO, STAFF RUNS FOR THEIR LIVES; Guard in West Wing of White House shouted at reporters, 'Go down into the basement'...'Leave, run' security officers shouted to staff and reporters at the Capitol Building. 'This is not a drill,' guards shouted forced people away from the building... Officers rushed through Supreme Court told staff to get into the basement...

THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Iraq to Purge Corrupt Officers
Commandos may also be used in a crackdown on insurgents and their allies. The Shiite leaders' plans are further unsettling Sunnis.
By Patrick J. McDonnell and Solomon Moore
Times Staff Writers


BAGHDAD — Iraq's Shiite Muslim leadership, alarmed by a surge in attacks as the new government prepares to take office, plans to crack down on Sunni-led insurgents and purge suspected infiltrators and corrupt officers from the nation's security forces, officials and lawmakers say.

A likely tactic, authorities say, is unleashing well-trained Iraqi commandos in Baghdad and other trouble spots. The special forces units have a reputation for effectiveness and brutality.

Whether additional Iraqi troops can tame an insurgency that has not withered in the face of massive U.S. military might remains to be seen. But Shiite leaders express confidence that determined Iraqi forces, with U.S. backup, can use their superior knowledge of the culture, language and terrain to gather intelligence, infiltrate cells and defeat the guerrillas.

The plan for Iraqi commandos' wider deployment is indicative of how the raging guerrilla conflict here is increasingly a war pitching Iraqis against Iraqis, leading to a decline in U.S. casualty rates as the number of Iraqi dead soars.

The prospect of stepped-up counterinsurgency efforts is greatly unsettling to a Sunni Arab minority that already considers itself besieged and disenfranchised in the new Iraq. Most Sunni Arabs boycotted the Jan. 30 election, and their political representation is scant.

Shiite leaders insisted on controlling the Interior Ministry during marathon talks to form the new government. Their plan is to oust guerrilla informants and sympathizers of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and go after insurgents in a more concerted fashion than the regime of outgoing Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, whose political slate was shut out of the new Cabinet.

Allawi, a secular Shiite who was himself a Baathist turned foe of Hussein, tried with little success to coax insurgents into the government through talks with Sunni tribal leaders and other intermediaries.

Although Allawi did sign off on the U.S.-led attack on the former Sunni rebel bastion of Fallouja in November, the Shiite Islamists about to assume power here are clearly signaling a much harder line.

"Our policy will be to develop the security forces and uproot the terrorist cells," Jawad Maliki, a prominent member of the dominant Shiite coalition in the new National Assembly, said in an interview here.

"They [Allawi's appointees] should have dealt with this situation from the beginning," added Maliki, a member of the political bureau of Dawa, the Islamist party of incoming Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari. "We will not let this grow."

The incoming interior minister also took a tough stance. "The recent acceleration in terrorist attacks is posing a serious challenge on the ground," Bayan Jabber told Al Hayat newspaper a day after the new government was approved. "We must take immediate action."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials have warned that a large-scale purge could sweep out capable officers as well as compromised ones. U.S. authorities also fear a backlash among Sunni Arabs who might otherwise join the evolving political process and renounce armed struggle.

"If they [Iraqi authorities] want to reduce the level of the insurgency, having competent people and avoiding unnecessary turbulence is a high priority," Rumsfeld said in Washington last week.

But representatives of the new Shiite administration have harshly assailed the outgoing Interior Ministry, which is in charge of internal security, as riddled with insurgent informants and sympathizers of Hussein's former Baathist regime.

The names of new policemen are being sold to "terrorists" bent on assassination, the new interior minister said, and suspects pay bribes to be sprung from custody.

"I could not sleep when I heard about this," Jabber said in an interview with a television station run by his Shiite political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. "We know many of these violators and we plan to discover the rest. We will take measures and people will see the changes in two months."

Shiites have agreed to allow a Sunni Arab to run the Defense Ministry but have already vetoed at least one candidate because of past Baathist ties. In the absence of a Sunni candidate acceptable to the Shiite majority in the National Assembly, Prime Minister Jafari assumed the top defense post on a temporary basis.

The new Shiite leadership appears determined to use its control of the Interior Ministry as a spear point in coming offensives. Tens of thousands of police officers and other troops are under its command.

Authorities plan increased deployment of the Interior Ministry's special commandos, known as Maghawir (Fearless Warrior) brigades.

The units are largely composed of well-trained veterans of Hussein's military who worked closely with U.S. forces during pitched battles last year in Najaf, Fallouja and the northern city of Mosul. Their loyalty to the new Iraq has been tested, officials say, despite their service as commandos in Hussein's regime.

"We get involved once the police are helpless [against insurgents] and unable to do their job," Maj. Gen. Rasheed Flayih Mohammed, commander of the 12,000-strong Maghawir, said in an interview here.

Although he acknowledged U.S. logistical and technical support, Mohammed insisted that his forces were all-Iraqi and largely free of the U.S. taint that has marred many Iraqi units. "The Iraqi people treat us with respect," Mohammed said. "They love us because we are wearing our own Iraqi uniforms, and because we are doing our work by ourselves."

The special forces units sport provocative titles — including the Wolf, Scorpion, Tiger and Thunder brigades. Many Sunni Arabs view the squads suspiciously as largely composed of Shiite and Kurdish rivals eager to exact revenge for decades of suppression under Hussein, a Sunni Arab.

"I blame the Maghawir for this outrage," Sheik Abdul-Salam Kubaysi, a leading Sunni cleric in Baghdad, said of predawn raids and arrests early Friday at half a dozen Sunni mosques in Baghdad and Baqubah, northeast of the capital. At least one Sunni imam was killed.

"All of these people arrested are not terrorists: They are wise, simple and humble people," said Kubaysi, spokesman for the Muslim Scholars Assn., a leading Sunni Arab group.

In a recent interview at the heavily guarded Interior Ministry here, an already legendary Iraqi commander known only as Maj. Gen. Abu Walid pointed at a sprawling wall map of Baghdad to indicate future targets.

"We are studying Baghdad now, to be ready for any mission we are assigned," said Abu Walid, who heads the Wolf Brigade, which helped control Mosul after most of the police force abandoned their posts late last year during an insurgent uprising.

"Baghdad is filled with terrorists," declared Abu Walid, a native of Shiite-dominated southern Iraq and whose real name remains a secret for security reasons.

The Wolf Brigade commander became a national celebrity after he began serving as host for taped "confessions" of alleged insurgents that were aired on television here. Sunni critics charge that many of the confessions were coerced through beatings, torture and other extra-legal means. Abu Walid denies mistreatment.

In recent days, blue-and-white pickups ferrying Wolf Brigade commandos have been seen about Baghdad. As is customary, the commandos were outfitted in Hussein-era garb: green-and-beige uniforms and red berets, the latter often adorned with their parachute wing medallion pins. They toted heavy machine guns, Dragunov sniper rifles and, in one case, rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

The planned counterinsurgency campaign comes as U.S. forces are increasingly turning over security to Iraqi forces, and attacks with sectarian overtones continue on almost a daily basis.

On Saturday, a car bomb went off outside a recently formed Sunni political organization that favored participation in the new government, killing at least one bystander and injuring 17. The night before, officials said, someone had sprayed automatic-weapons fire at the office.