USNS Spearhead, Navy's 1st high-speed catamaran, deployed to Africa

By Ali Rockett

The (Newport News, Va.) Daily Press (TNS)

Published: January 1, 2015

The Navy deployed its first high-speed catamaran earlier this week to the western coast of Africa.

The send-off took place Sunday at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek, Va., for the USNS Spearhead, a troop and cargo transporter.

This isn't the ship's first deployment: It returned to Norfolk, Va., in May after its maiden five-month tour of Europe and Africa. But the joint high-speed vessel is the first of its kind.

One of 10 intended for the Navy, the 338-foot-long aluminum catamaran is propelled by water jets, similar to the propulsion of a personal watercraft. It has a 20,000-square-foot mission bay that can be configured for a variety of tasks. It can carry up to 312 passengers and reach a top speed of 40 knots.

Military Sealift Command operates the Spearhead. It is a Navy organization that controls most of the supply and transport ships that serve the U.S. military.

©2014 The (Newport News, Va.) Daily Press. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

‘Unbroken’ tells half of Japan’s war story

In the just-released film “Unbroken,” as in real life, U.S. Army Air Corps Lt. Louis Zamperini was beaten, starved and forced to work as a slave laborer by his Japanese captors.

Things could have been worse. Like some other war prisoners held by the Japanese, Zamperini could have been used in biological warfare experiments. Or vivisected. Or beheaded, with parts of his body then eaten by his captors. As the historian Daqing Yang notes, 9 out of 10 U.S. POWs who died in captivity in World War II did so at the hands of the Japanese.

In Japan, where “Unbroken” does not yet — and may never — have a release date, right-wing nationalists have protested the film as racist and inaccurate. “It’s pure fabrication,” asserted a representative of one such pressure group, the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact. Online petitions have described director Angelina Jolie as a “demon” and called for her to be banned from Japan.

Unfortunately, the attacks on Jolie’s film, which is really much less about Japanese brutality than the resilience of the human spirit, are part of a revisionist recrudescence under the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Several of his Cabinet members and appointees have pushed to whitewash or deny the Japanese military’s forced wartime recruitment of women as prostitutes, the 1937 Nanjing Massacre of Chinese civilians by Japanese troops and other wartime atrocities, targeting journalists and scholars who dare to disagree.

Such behavior has roiled Japan’s relations with China and South Korea and undermined its alliance with the United States. And it has cast an ugly shadow over the impending 70th anniversary of World War II’s end. Yet that occasion also offers an opportunity for both Japan and the U.S. to relearn lessons about the uses and abuses of history, beginning with the folly of trying to cover it up.

In the two weeks following the end of hostilities on Aug. 15, 1945, and the arrival of the first U.S. troops on Aug. 28, Japan’s military engaged in a wholesale destruction of its files. Some Japanese historians estimate, for instance, that as much as 70 percent of the army’s wartime records were lost. Although the Americans, British, Chinese, Dutch, Filipinos and Russians each held separate war-crimes trials of Japanese defendants, their documentation has never been gathered in one place, making it harder to access. Meanwhile, Japanese rightists have sought to discredit the remembered accounts of Korean “comfort women” as anecdotal or concocted memory. They have also exploited inaccuracies in sensationalist best-sellers such as Iris Chang’s “The Rape of Nanking” to try to discredit larger truths.

Yet not only have many Japanese contributed unflinching histories of Japan’s wartime behavior — many available in English — but voluminous, and damning, official records exist that have yet to be fully exploited. In 2006, the U.S. government’s National Archives and Records Administration published “Researching Japanese War Crimes,” a guide to U.S. intelligence reports, captured Japanese documents and contemporary news accounts contained in various U.S. public archives.

It’s not the kind of stuff you want to read on a full stomach: In the National Archives, for instance, you can find the transcript of the trial of Japanese officers who ordered the execution, and then the cooking, of four U.S. Navy airmen downed in raids on Chichi-Jima — a fate that Lt. George H.W. Bush, who was also shot down on the raid, barely avoided.

To their credit, many Japanese scholars have drawn on such materials in their own work: U.S. documents on Japan’s biological warfare experiments on Chinese prisoners, for instance, helped to blunt the 1980s attempt by Japan’s Ministry of Education to censor references to such crimes in history textbooks.

Any forthright exploration of Japan’s wartime cruelties, of course, must be matched by an acknowledgment of the battlefield savagery of U.S. troops in the Pacific, where some members of the Greatest Generation pried gold teeth out of the mouths of still-living Japanese soldiers, strafed airmen in their parachutes, shot surrendering soldiers and sent Japanese skulls home to their sweethearts as table ornaments. Compared with the European theater, it was not exactly the Good War: “Subhuman, inhuman, lesser human, superhuman — all that was lacking in the perception of the Japanese enemy was a human like oneself,” observed the historian John Dower.

Moreover, U.S. archives lay bare another troubling aspect of U.S. wartime history: the willingness to collaborate with Japanese war criminals in the name of larger strategic interests. As Michael Petersen documents, Gen. Charles Willoughby, a die-hard anticommunist who was Douglas MacArthur’s intelligence chief, oversaw a (remarkably feckless) postwar spy network that included Masanobu Tsuji, the Imperial Army officer who helped organize the Bataan Death March that killed so many of the U.S. soldiers that MacArthur abandoned in the Philippines.

Still missing are documents showing what happened to data from the human experiments by Unit 731, the notorious Japanese chemical and biological warfare outfit headed by Gen. Shiro Ishii, who was never prosecuted by the Allies. The records also shine a light on the expedient clemency policies toward suspected war criminals such as Nobusuke Kishi, a postwar prime minister who also happens to be Abe’s grandfather.

That raises a final historical irony worth pondering over the coming anniversary year: the U.S. responsibility for shielding the progenitors of Japan’s latter-day revisionists from accountability and prosecution. Even as late as the 1990s, the U.S. State Department was arguing against releasing information on early Cold War payments by the CIA to right-wing politicians from Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Such behavior helps explain why “Unbroken” describes not just Louis Zamperini’s spirit, but the resilience of Japan’s rightists.

James Gibney writes editorials on international affairs for Bloomberg View.

Kabul’s eerie and dangerous, and it feels like deja vu

Many winters ago, I stood in a vast, empty intersection of central Kabul. The only sounds were the jingle of passing horse carts and the ticking spokes of old bicycles. There were no other Westerners on the streets, and all eyes were upon me. Despite being wrapped in many layers of modest clothing, I felt naked.

Much has changed in the Afghan capital since those haunted days under Taliban rule. Bombed-out ruins have been replaced by multi-story apartment buildings and ornate mansions. The populace has quintupled and traffic jams are constant. Cellphone and computer shops with picture windows line the streets, and beauty parlor signs feature women with pouting lips and geisha makeup.

But this winter, even as a frequent foreign visitor to Kabul, dressed modestly and with my head covered, I feel naked once again. Almost every Westerner I once knew here has left the country for good, their missions suspended or shut down, and several of my longtime Afghan acquaintances and colleagues have fled abroad and sought asylum.

The few old friends who remain stationed here, mostly professionals from international agencies, are either away for the holidays or shuttered inside guarded compounds, ordered by security consultants to avoid public places and unable to visit the projects they sponsor.

The Taliban are back — this time not as the wary but proper official hosts who periodically issued visas to Western journalists and officials during their five-year rule from 1996 to 2001. Now they are cold-blooded insurgents who have been preying aggressively on the capital since a new civilian government took office in late September.

In the past two months, the militants have bombed or stormed foreign symbols and sanctuaries around the city — aid agencies, guest houses, even a performance at a French cultural center, while warning that they will treat Western civic activities exactly like military enemies. Among the targets were three compounds where I had once shared meals and laughter with friends — now long gone — who cared about Afghanistan and had no plans to leave.

Despite the superficial urban bustle, the atmosphere in the capital is tense and eerie. In the past several weeks, I have not seen a single Western face on the streets. Not in the brightly lit supermarkets where shelves are stocked with corn flakes, cat litter and blue cheese to accommodate foreign customers’ quirks.

Not in the antique shops where international visitors once came to sip green tea and bargain over lapis lazuli earrings, brocaded nomad costumes and prayer rugs stitched with military scenes from the Afghan holy war against Soviet Russia. And not in the capital’s legendary bookstore specializing in English-language works — though the owner, in a true act of faith, is currently remodeling and expanding his cave-like quarters into a spacious modern emporium and cafe with WiFi.

For the first time since ATMs were installed here several years ago, there is no one in line to use them, and they are not constantly running out of dollars. The once-thriving radio cab business is so dead that when I called for a taxi to ferry me to a U.N. office, the dispatcher was asleep and the driver said I was his first customer in days. I have not had the courage to drive by the Lebanese restaurant that was my cherished retreat for years, until it was destroyed in a Taliban siege last January that killed the owner and every patron inside.

I have spent other Christmases in Afghanistan, always a private occasion in a strict and insular Muslim society where converting to Christianity is both a capital crime and a sign of presumed mental derangement. But this holiday season seems especially desolate. There is no hint of festive cheer in the air, and even the snow, which usually blankets Kabul’s drab gray streets by mid-December, has stayed away.

The only Nativity scene I have encountered was in a refugee settlement on the outskirts of the city, where I ventured on Christmas to interview people. I poked my head into a mud-walled cave and beheld a mother with a baby swaddled in a cradle. A goat and a calf were keeping warm in the same room, and two buffalo were lowing in the next enclosure. I tried to explain to the camp leaders what this sight meant to me, but they were politely baffled.

New Year’s is another hopeless cause. In Afghanistan, which still observes the ancient solar calendar, this is the year 1393, and Naw Roz, the Persian new year, will be celebrated several months from now when the spring equinox and the planting season arrive. In years past, there would have been various raucous New Year’s Eve parties among the resident haraji, as all foreigners here are called, but this year? Fewer, more muted, and held under lock and key.

That’s probably just as well, and not only because such gatherings would be a natural target for the Taliban. Although a few officials here are trying to put up a good front, there is little to celebrate at the moment. As the clock runs out on 2014, the new American-brokered government has failed to produce a Cabinet, the last NATO combat forces officially depart at midnight Thursday, and the insurgents are howling at the gates of the city. Perhaps the spring will bring signs of change, but for now it seems wise to remain circumspect, lie low, and huddle under thick winter clothing as invisibly as possible.

35 dead in stampede during New Year's celebrations in downtown Shanghai

SHANGHAI — Thirty-five people died in a stampede during New Year's celebrations in Shanghai's historic waterfront area, city officials said Thursday — the worst disaster to hit one of China's showcase cities in recent years.

A Shanghai government statement said another 46 people were receiving hospital treatment, including 14 who were seriously injured, following the chaos about a half-hour before midnight. Two other injured had already left hospital.

The microblog of the People's Daily, which is run by the ruling Communist Party, said that 25 women and 10 men had died, aged between 36 and 16. The injured included 3 Taiwanese and one Malaysian, it said.

The official Xinhua News Agency quoted an unnamed witness as saying people had scrambled for coupons that looked like dollar bills that were being thrown out of a third-floor window. It said the cause of the stampede was still under investigation.

At one of the hospitals where the injured were being treated, police brought photos out of dead victims who they had not been able to identify, causing dozens of waiting relatives to crowd around the table. Not everyone could see, and young women who looked at photographs someone had taken on a cellphone broke into tears.

A saleswoman in her 20s, who refused to give her name, said she had been celebrating the New Year with three friends. "I heard people screaming, someone fell, people shouted 'don't rush,'" she said, adding she could not reach one of her friends. "There were so many people and I couldn't stand properly."

Xia Shujie, vice president of Shanghai No. 1 People's Hospital, told media that some of the people brought to them were suffering from serious suffocation.

Xinhua said the deaths and injuries occurred at Chen Yi Square, which is in Shanghai's popular riverfront Bund area, an avenue lined with art deco buildings from the 1920s and 1930s when Shanghai was home to international banks and trading houses. The area is often jammed with spectators for major events.

On Thursday morning, dozens of police officers were in the area and tourists continued to wander by the square, a small patch of grass dominated by a statue of Chen Yi, the city's first Communist mayor.

Police stood guard at Shanghai No. 1 People's Hospital, where many of the injured were being treated. Earlier, relatives desperately seeking information had tried to push past guards at a hospital, state media photos showed. Guards had to use a bench to hold them back. Later, police were allowing family members into the hospital.

People who couldn't contact friends or family members went to the hospital. A man, who gave only his surname, Wu, said he had traveled to Shanghai from a province in the south, Jiangxi, Thursday morning to look for his 23-year-old friend. She had gone to Shanghai to celebrate on the Bund with another friend, but one of their phones was powered off and the other had been lost and handed in to police, Wu said.

CCTV America, the U.S. version of state broadcaster China Central Television, posted video of Shanghai streets after the stampede, showing piles of discarded shoes amid the debris.

One photo from the scene shared by Xinhua showed at least one person doing chest compressions on a shirtless man while several other people lay on the ground nearby, amid debris. Another photo showed the area ringed by police.

Steps lead down from the square to a road across from several buildings.

"We were down the stairs and wanted to move up and those who were upstairs wanted to move down, so we were pushed down by the people coming from upstairs," an injured man told Shanghai TV. "All those trying to move up fell down on the stairs."

Last week, the English-language Shanghai Daily reported that the annual New Year's Eve countdown on the Bund that normally attracts about 300,000 people had been cancelled, apparently because of crowd control issues. The report said a "toned-down" version of the event would be held instead but that it would not be open to the public.

The stampede appeared to be near that area.

"Some people have fallen," Shanghai police soon warned on Weibo, a Twitter-like service, and they urged people to obey police and leave the scene without pushing.

The Shanghai city government released photos online showing the mayor hurrying into a local hospital to visit victims.

Meanwhile, Xinhua's top story on its website was not the stampede but President Xi Jinping's New Year's message. Xinhua's story in Chinese remained just two paragraphs long hours after the disaster.

The China Daily newspaper in February reported that the city's population was more than 24 million at the end of 2013.

Associated Press reporter Louise Watt in Beijing and news assistant Fu Ting in Shanghai contributed to this report.

Syrian rebels say US ignored their early plan to stop Islamic State

ISTANBUL (Tribune Content Agency) — Two months before Mosul and other cities in northern Iraq fell to the Islamic State last June, representatives of a Syrian rebel group called on the new U.S. special envoy for Syria with an outline of a plan to stop the extremists.

The group urged the U.S. to shift its focus to eastern Syria, where the Islamic State had emerged from Raqqa and other towns under its control and begun military operations to capture Deir el Zour province.

If Islamic State fighters seized the region’s oil and gas resources, they would gain enough power to destroy the U.S.-backed rebel forces across northern Syria and link the territory they held in Syria to that under their control in Iraq’s restive Anbar province, they asserted.

“Ultimately,” they said in a written memo, using a common abbreviation for the Islamic State, “this will lead to an expansion of ISIS to reach neighboring countries as well ... bringing it closer to establish the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.”

But the presentation April 17 to special State Department envoy Daniel Rubinstein was stillborn. The plea for immediate financial support for moderate forces in the east, backing for a rebel offensive in Aleppo that would divert Islamic State forces, and relief and medical supplies in the east went unanswered.

“Two or $3 million would have changed the whole thing,” said a rebel official who was at the meeting and spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing a diplomatic exchange. “But we never heard back from them.”

That’s been the pattern. Moderate rebels, despite their battlefield setbacks, have unique assets, such as ground-level intelligence about the locations and movements of the Islamic State, a grasp of local politics and the drive to expel foreign-led forces from their country. But they have failed to gain traction with the Obama administration for their plans to fight the terrorist groups, and recently they have had trouble even getting a hearing.

The Islamic State didn’t follow quite the path that Syrian rebel officials had predicted, conquering Mosul before Deir el Zour. But the rebels were right that the extremists’ takeover of eastern Syria would speed the demise of the moderates by radicalizing the battlefield, opening the border with Iraq to free movement of arms and manpower, and providing the Islamic State with income from the sale of oil and gas.

Syrian opposition leaders doubt that the U.S.-led intervention can defeat the extremists.

“You cannot defeat terrorism by airstrikes alone,” said Hadi al Bahra, the president of the Syrian Opposition Coalition. “There must be a strategy in place.”

It should entail “full coordination” between U.S.-led airstrikes and ground forces, military pressure on the Bashar Assad regime and a commitment to enable moderates to establish a governing system in Syria, Bahra said.

“They listen,” he said of U.S. officials. “But they do not respond.”

The State Department had no comment on the April meeting. “We do not discuss details of our diplomatic contacts and outreach,” spokesman Michael Lavallee said.

The administration also has tried to choke off complaints from rebel officials and commanders, threatening a total aid cutoff if they are quoted in the news media, rebel officials said. For this reason, McClatchy isn’t naming its rebel sources. (A State Department official said: “We have not heard of such a warning.”)

The meeting with Rubinstein, an intelligence expert who took over from Ambassador Robert Ford in March, was only one of numerous such efforts.

In early May, the then-president of the opposition coalition, Ahmad Jarba, made a presentation about fighting the Islamic State to Michael Lumpkin, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict.

Jarba emphasized that the battle for eastern Syria was “important to Iraq as well” and called for “real alliance ... to fight this common cancer,” according to notes of the meeting made available to McClatchy.

“We need a strategic partnership to fight terrorism,” he said at the meeting. “We need logistical support and weapons to help the Free Syrian Army fight the Islamic State on the Iraqi border as well.” The Free Syrian Army is an umbrella group of moderate forces fighting the Assad regime.

Lumpkin replied that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was supported the coalition efforts against the Syrian regime and al-Qaida, and predicted there would be many more meetings “as we work together to end this challenge to us both,” according to the visitors’ notes.

The Pentagon confirmed that the meeting took place May 8 and addressed the “threat of extremists groups” such as the Islamic State. It said Lumpkin had affirmed U.S. support for Jarba’s efforts to build the capacity of the moderate opposition.

But there was no further response, Syrian opposition officials said.

One attendee at the meeting expressed surprise that Lumpkin didn’t ask about rebel strategy.

The former chief of staff of the Free Syrian Army — a post stripped of most power because the U.S. disburses covert aid to individual rebel commanders rather than through a general staff — said he’d taken maps and a five-page outline of the first phase of a strategic plan with him as well as a separate file for the battle against the Syrian regime. “But no one asked me for any of these,” Gen. Abdul-Ilah Albashir said.

Interviewed in late September, he said the Americans had shown no interest and that he didn’t volunteer his plans: “They don’t even say hello to us. How can we share these things with them?”

On May 14, Jarba and other rebel officials spent a half-hour with President Barack Obama at the White House, but the Islamic State threat didn’t appear to be a priority. The White House said they reviewed the “risks posed by growing extremism in Syria and agreed on the need to counter terrorist groups on all sides of the conflict.”

Even after the fall of Mosul on June 10, the U.S. showed little interest in rebel plans. Nour Kholouf, a defected Syrian army general who served as Syrian Opposition Coalition defense minister until recently, said in early July that he developed plans to expel the Islamic State in stages from Syrian territory, but he couldn’t get an appointment with American officials.

The most detailed strategy proposal of all was produced by one of the most effective of the rebel groups during the summer and given in August to U.S. and other intelligence officials in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli. But it has yet to be presented formally to the rest of the U.S. government.

The 30-page plan, which centers on the use of mobile strike forces, proposes to clear the Islamic State from Syria within 12 to 18 months, rebel officials said. It calls for air, ammunition, logistics and other support, including intelligence.

It would require communications equipment to replace the walkie-talkies now obtained from Best Buy or RadioShack. And it requires stepped-up support in the rebels’ battle to defend their control over much of Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city, from which they would draw much of their manpower.

“It lays out city by city the force movements and the different tactics: which cities to enter first, how to enter each city, how to overcome the IS resistance at checkpoints and from suicide bombers,” said a rebel official.

Rebel officials said they hadn’t been able to get an appointment with U.S. defense officials.

One obvious candidate for a meeting would be U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Michael Nagata, in charge of training and equipping a force of 5,000 Syrian rebels under a $500 million program.

But Nagata has yet to meet a commander of the Free Syrian Army, according to a rebel official. White House spokesman Alistair Baskey said Nagata and his team were “free to meet with members of the moderate Syrian opposition as they deem fit in order to advance their train and equip program.”

Has any such meeting taken place? The U.S. Central Command task force that deals with the new program “is taking a deliberate and careful approach toward direct engagement with members of the Syrian opposition,” said Maj. Tiffany Bowens, a spokeswoman.

The Central Command turned down a request for an interview with Nagata.

Though Rubinstein is one U.S. official who’s always available to meet, rebel officials said they saw him as a dead end. Rubinstein, whom several rebel officials nicknamed “the complaint box,” listens to all and never responds, they said. “I think they empty it into the trash at the end of every day,” said a rebel official.

In November, after the Nusra Front, the al-Qaida affiliate in Syria, pushed rebel forces out of their bases in Idlib province, Rubinstein gave a cool reception to rebel officials, according to three who met with him.

“It was an absolutely horrifying meeting,” said one attendee.

“How did it happen?” this official quoted Rubinstein as asking. “The tone was not one of ‘This is an emergency,’ but more, ‘How did you guys get beat?’” the official added.

The official said an aide to the envoy then asked them: “So what’s your strategy now? Is everything lost?” When told that the forces needed to regroup and obtain more resources, “No, that’s not a smart strategy,” the aide was quoted as saying. “Your strategy is to look at what your resources are and plan accordingly.”

With even the most effective fighting groups saying they’re receiving a tenth the ammunition they need to sustain their two-front battle, the message seemed to be that the rebels should prepare to abandon the fight.

In December, the U.S. government cut salaries for a large part of the rebel forces, McClatchy has reported. The U.S. government has refused to comment.

The State Department turned down a request for an interview with Rubinstein.

“Unfortunately, the current strategy being implemented results in the increase of terrorism,” said Bahra, the businessman who heads the Syrian Opposition Coalition. “Some battalions are not being supplied with anything: food, clothing, fuel, what they need for survival. You are pushing them to be the prey to any extreme terrorist organization that offers assistance.”

He added: “But no one is listening.”

McClatchy special correspondent Mousab Alhamadee contributed to this report.

©2014 McClatchy Washington Bureau. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Despite rebrand, Afghanistan still at war

Imagine President Franklin Roosevelt announcing at the end of 1944, after the liberation of France but before the final defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, that World War II was over and that U.S. forces were ending combat operations. Instead we would support our allies, from Britain to China, in their fight against the Axis powers.

Hard to imagine, but that’s roughly what happened Sunday when the International Security Assistance Command held a ceremony in Kabul to mark the “end” of the war in Afghanistan. “The longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion,” President Barack Obama trumpeted in a statement from Hawaii, where he is vacationing.

If only it were possible to end a war unilaterally. But it’s not. As the military likes to say, the enemy gets a vote. And there is no sign that the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, al-Qaida and other militant Islamist groups have any intention of ending their armed struggle to seize power in Kabul. Indeed, 2014 was the deadliest year of the war so far, with nearly 10,000 civilian casualties and some 5,000 deaths among the Afghan security forces — far more than the 2,356 Americans killed in Afghanistan in more than 13 years of combat operations since October 2001.

It’s true that the Taliban have suffered significant losses since the start of a U.S. surge launched by Obama in 2010. The losses were most severe in the Taliban heartland of Helmand and Kandahar provinces in southern Afghanistan. But given the limitations of forces (Obama arbitrarily capped U.S. troop levels at 100,000) and time (Obama arbitrarily limited the surge to 18 months), the American offensive never had a serious chance of ending the insurgency, which continues to receive sanctuary and support in Pakistan.

And now the U.S. drawdown — troop levels have fallen to 10,500 — is likely to give the Taliban a fresh burst of energy. At least Obama has not pulled out all U.S. troops as some of his advisers urged. But he has pulled out enough to imperil the ability of the Afghan security forces to control their country. Particularly worrisome is the complete pullout of all coalition personnel from Helmand province, where U.S. Marines fought so hard to roll back the Taliban.

A small number of coalition forces will remain in the south, but they will be at Kandahar Airfield, not in Helmand. Kandahar is one of only a handful of coalition bases that will remain, hundreds having already been closed. There will be one base in the east, one in the south, one in the center, one in the west and one in the north, and their designations will change. Regional Command-East (RC-E, in military shorthand), for example, now becomes Train, Advise, Assist Command-East, TAAC-E.

This is part of a general rebranding of what can no longer be called a war effort. Goodbye, Operation Enduring Freedom, as the U.S. mission in Afghanistan had been known since 2001. Hello, Operation Resolute Support.

This transition is meant to convey the impression that the Afghan forces are self-sufficient, even though everyone knows they are not. This rhetorical legerdemain was similar to the way Obama rebranded the U.S. operation in Iraq in 2010, from Operation Iraqi Freedom to the Orwellian Operation New Dawn. Back then, too, U.S. combat forces were rebranded as “advise and assist” forces. This change was harmless enough, because far more U.S. forces remained in Iraq (52,000) than now remain in Afghanistan.

But the situation in Iraq took a perilous turn at the end of 2011 when Obama pulled out the remaining U.S. forces after having failed to negotiate a status-of-forces agreement with the Iraqi government. That cleared the way for Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to launch a sectarian crackdown on Sunnis, which, in turn, led many Sunnis to embrace the Islamic State. The situation in Iraq has become so disastrous, in fact, that Obama has now sent back a small number of U.S. troops (some 3,000 so far authorized) and launched airstrikes on the Islamic State.

The Iraq situation shows the danger of a premature, unilateral withdrawal in the face of an undefeated enemy. Yet Obama appears set to repeat that mistake in Afghanistan. He has announced that by the end of 2015 U.S. forces in Afghanistan will be down to 5,000 and that by the end of 2016 they will be withdrawn altogether.

Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan’s reformist new president, has asked the administration to reconsider that timeline and to keep more U.S. forces in Afghanistan longer. That will seem to many Americans as a commitment to “endless” war but, in fact, the danger to U.S. forces will be relatively limited (they will not be on the front lines) and the good they can do will be vast by keeping the Taliban and other Islamist militant groups from retaking control of the country from which the 9/11 attack was launched.

Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. This column first appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

Ebola outbreak may have started with 2-year-old boy playing in tree

NEW YORK — A team of researchers think they may have pinpointed how the Ebola epidemic in West Africa started — with a small boy playing in a hollowed-out tree where infected bats lived.

The researchers explored an area in southeastern Guinea where 2-year-old Emile Ouamouno fell ill a year ago and died. Health officials think he was the first case in the epidemic, which wasn't recognized until spring.

The Ebola virus wasn't found in the bats they tested, so they weren't able to prove the source, the scientists reported in a study published Tuesday. But they think the boy got Ebola from the furry, winged creatures that had lived in the hollow tree.

"As a scientist, I can say it's a possible scenario," said one of the study's authors, Fabian Leendertz of the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin.

An outside expert said the researchers' work was thought-provoking.

"They didn't find smoking guns" but perhaps broadened the thinking about what sparked the epidemic, said Stephen Morse, a Columbia University infectious disease expert.

The Ebola epidemic is the worst in world history, blamed for killing almost 8,000 people across West Africa this year, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The epidemic's exact origin has never been determined, but the virus is thought to spread to people from some sort of animal. Many experts have suspected some species of fruit bat, though some wonder whether West Africa's epidemic started through another animal — such as a chimpanzee or small antelope — that was perhaps infected by bats and then eaten by people.

The researchers saw no signs that Ebola had affected larger animals around the boy's small village of Meliandou. But they learned that a large colony of small, smelly bats with long tails lived in a hollow tree near the boy's home.

Villagers told the researchers that the tree caught fire in March, causing a "rain of bats" to pour out of the tree. The bats were destroyed or gone before the researchers arrived in mid-April — a bad break for the researchers, Leendertz said.

The researchers tested 169 bats, including fruit bats and a few from the species that lived in the tree. None tested positive for Ebola, but that doesn't disprove the hypothesis, because experts think the virus may dwell in only a small minority of bats. The researchers are trying to collect more of the bats for testing.

The study was published Tuesday in EMBO Molecular Medicine.

Also on Tuesday, Liberia's government announced it will allow families to bury Ebola victims in a special plot of land instead of requiring that the bodies be cremated so as not to spread the virus.

Ciatta Bishop, head of Liberia's national Ebola burial team, said the government has secured 25 acres where Ebola victims can now be buried. More than 2,000 suspected Ebola victims have been cremated since the cremation decree was ordered at the height of the crisis in Liberia several months ago.

The corpses of Ebola victims are highly contagious, and many of those who washed or touched bodies before the burials contracted the disease.

The cremation decree is highly unpopular in Liberia, where funeral traditions are carefully followed and are considered a sacred obligation to the deceased.

Air Force lawyer scolded for Facebook post about sexual assault cases

With just a few weeks left in her Air Force career, Capt. Maribel Jarzabek decided to vent a little. She posted a few messages on a U.S. senator's Facebook page, supporting the lawmaker's push to overhaul the military justice system for sexual-assault cases.

Not long afterward, Jarzabek received an email from a higher-ranking officer, informing her that she was under criminal investigation. The allegations? That she had wrongfully advocated "a partisan political cause" and expressed opinions online that could undermine public confidence in the Air Force.

Jarzabek is a military lawyer assigned as part of a new program to represent victims of sexual assault. Although the Defense Department has promoted the program as a success story and part of a broader campaign to crack down on sex crimes within the armed forces, Jarzabek had grown disillusioned and said she felt the Air Force was papering over deeper problems.

"Changes are needed, and it's time that the public knew about the military's true dirty little secrets!" she wrote Dec. 2 in a long comment posted on the Facebook page of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.

Under military regulations, uniformed personnel are prohibited from publicly participating in overt political causes. Appearing at a rally in uniform or endorsing a candidate is forbidden.

In her Facebook posts, Jarzabek identified herself as an active-duty Air Force lawyer, which apparently is what drew the attention of her superiors and prompted the investigation.

On Dec. 23, after a brief investigation, Jarzabek said she was notified by the investigating officer that she had been found guilty of the allegations. The punishment was decidedly mild: She was given "verbal counseling," or a warning not to do it again.

Although the outcome won't appear as a black mark on her official military record, Jarzabek called the investigation a thinly veiled attempt to retaliate against her for advocating too strongly for sexual-assault victims. In an interview, she also questioned the timing, noting that her departure from the service was imminent. After a five-year career, Wednesday is her last day in the Air Force.

"I told the truth," said Jarzabek, 34, who is stationed at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. "I do believe they are trying to silence me and also send a message to other special-victim counsels who agree with me but are afraid to speak up."

Air Force Col. Kristine Kijek, the investigating officer who upheld the allegations against Jarzabek, did not respond to an email seeking comment. Lt. Col. Christopher Karns, an Air Force spokesman at the Pentagon, said he could not discuss details of Jarzabek's case because of privacy restrictions.

In a statement, Karns said the Air Force "is strongly committed to combating sexual assault" and has "actively listened to feedback and suggestions concerning military justice improvements."

He said any Air Force members who — like Jarzabek — believe that they have been retaliated against have the right to file a complaint with the Defense Department's inspector general. Jarzabek said she decided not to go that route because such cases typically "go nowhere."

The military's record of investigating and prosecuting sexual-assault cases has been a sensitive subject at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. Members of Congress and President Barack Obama have demanded reforms amid a surge in reported incidents of rape and sexual abuse.

Military commanders have adopted a host of administrative and legal changes and have made clear to their troops that the issue is a top priority. But some lawmakers have been pressing for more radical changes.

Foremost has been a bill introduced by Gillibrand that would strip commanders of the authority to oversee investigations into sexual assaults and other serious crimes, giving those powers to uniformed prosecutors. Pentagon leaders have lobbied heavily against her proposal, saying it would undermine commanders and diminish their ability to maintain order and discipline.

A majority of senators voted in favor of Gillibrand's measure in March, but the bill fell five votes short of the 60 necessary to clear a procedural hurdle. Gillibrand had been pushing for another vote in early December when Jarzabek posted her supportive comments on the senator's Facebook page.

"I admire her bravery in speaking her mind, because I have heard from many other active-duty service members who have encouraged me privately to keep moving forward but are afraid to say it publicly out of fear of retribution or retaliation," Gillibrand said in a written statement. "I think the message being sent here is very clear — unless you are going to toe the company line, shut up, or we will punish you."

Jarzabek and her supporters said she had raised her superiors' hackles previously by zealously advocating for sexual-assault victims. She was a key player in a case that led to the retirement of a three-star general a year ago after he was criticized for his oversight of an investigation of a rape suspect.

Don Christensen, a former chief prosecutor in the Air Force, now serves as president of the advocacy group Protect Our Defenders, which backs Gillibrand's bill. He said the criminal investigation into Jarzabek would resonate within Air Force legal circles.

"It's clear that if you support the current system and you do so publicly, then that's something that's considered praiseworthy and can get you promoted," he said. "But if you oppose it and say so, you'll get criminally prosecuted."

Officer dissents from sex assault policy, faces repercussions

With just a few weeks left in her Air Force career, Capt. Maribel Jarzabek decided to vent a little. She posted a few messages on a U.S. senator's Facebook page, supporting the lawmaker's push to overhaul the military justice system for sexual-assault cases.

Not long afterward, Jarzabek received an email from a higher-ranking officer, informing her that she was under criminal investigation. The allegations? That she had wrongfully advocated "a partisan political cause" and expressed opinions online that could undermine public confidence in the Air Force.

Jarzabek is a military lawyer assigned as part of a new program to represent victims of sexual assault. Although the Defense Department has promoted the program as a success story and part of a broader campaign to crack down on sex crimes within the armed forces, Jarzabek had grown disillusioned and said she felt the Air Force was papering over deeper problems.

"Changes are needed, and it's time that the public knew about the military's true dirty little secrets!" she wrote Dec. 2 in a long comment posted on the Facebook page of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.

Under military regulations, uniformed personnel are prohibited from publicly participating in overt political causes. Appearing at a rally in uniform or endorsing a candidate is forbidden.

In her Facebook posts, Jarzabek identified herself as an active-duty Air Force lawyer, which apparently is what drew the attention of her superiors and prompted the investigation.

On Dec. 23, after a brief investigation, Jarzabek said she was notified by the investigating officer that she had been found guilty of the allegations. The punishment was decidedly mild: She was given "verbal counseling," or a warning not to do it again.

Although the outcome won't appear as a black mark on her official military record, Jarzabek called the investigation a thinly veiled attempt to retaliate against her for advocating too strongly for sexual-assault victims. In an interview, she also questioned the timing, noting that her departure from the service was imminent. After a five-year career, Wednesday is her last day in the Air Force.

"I told the truth," said Jarzabek, 34, who is stationed at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. "I do believe they are trying to silence me and also send a message to other special-victim counsels who agree with me but are afraid to speak up."

Air Force Col. Kristine Kijek, the investigating officer who upheld the allegations against Jarzabek, did not respond to an email seeking comment. Lt. Col. Christopher Karns, an Air Force spokesman at the Pentagon, said he could not discuss details of Jarzabek's case because of privacy restrictions.

In a statement, Karns said the Air Force "is strongly committed to combating sexual assault" and has "actively listened to feedback and suggestions concerning military justice improvements."

He said any Air Force members who — like Jarzabek — believe that they have been retaliated against have the right to file a complaint with the Defense Department's inspector general. Jarzabek said she decided not to go that route because such cases typically "go nowhere."

The military's record of investigating and prosecuting sexual-assault cases has been a sensitive subject at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. Members of Congress and President Barack Obama have demanded reforms amid a surge in reported incidents of rape and sexual abuse.

Military commanders have adopted a host of administrative and legal changes and have made clear to their troops that the issue is a top priority. But some lawmakers have been pressing for more radical changes.

Foremost has been a bill introduced by Gillibrand that would strip commanders of the authority to oversee investigations into sexual assaults and other serious crimes, giving those powers to uniformed prosecutors. Pentagon leaders have lobbied heavily against her proposal, saying it would undermine commanders and diminish their ability to maintain order and discipline.

A majority of senators voted in favor of Gillibrand's measure in March, but the bill fell five votes short of the 60 necessary to clear a procedural hurdle. Gillibrand had been pushing for another vote in early December when Jarzabek posted her supportive comments on the senator's Facebook page.

"I admire her bravery in speaking her mind, because I have heard from many other active-duty service members who have encouraged me privately to keep moving forward but are afraid to say it publicly out of fear of retribution or retaliation," Gillibrand said in a written statement. "I think the message being sent here is very clear — unless you are going to toe the company line, shut up, or we will punish you."

Jarzabek and her supporters said she had raised her superiors' hackles previously by zealously advocating for sexual-assault victims. She was a key player in a case that led to the retirement of a three-star general a year ago after he was criticized for his oversight of an investigation of a rape suspect.

Don Christensen, a former chief prosecutor in the Air Force, now serves as president of the advocacy group Protect Our Defenders, which backs Gillibrand's bill. He said the criminal investigation into Jarzabek would resonate within Air Force legal circles.

"It's clear that if you support the current system and you do so publicly, then that's something that's considered praiseworthy and can get you promoted," he said. "But if you oppose it and say so, you'll get criminally prosecuted."

South Korean to drop Sony film in North by balloon

SEOUL, South Korea — A South Korean activist said Wednesday that he will launch balloons carrying DVDs of Sony's "The Interview" toward North Korea to try to break down a personality cult built around dictator Kim Jong Un.

The comedy depicting an assassination attempt on Kim is at the center of tension between North Korea and the U.S., with Washington blaming Pyongyang for crippling hacking attacks on Sony Entertainment. Pyongyang denies that and has vowed to retaliate.

Activist Park Sang-hak said he will start dropping 100,000 DVDs and USBs with the movie by balloon in North Korea as early as late January. Park, a North Korean defector, said he's partnering with the U.S.-based non-profit Human Rights Foundation, which is financing the making of the DVDs and USB memory sticks of the movie with Korean subtitles.

Park said foundation officials plan to visit South Korea around Jan. 20 to hand over the DVDs and USBs, and that he and the officials will then try to float the first batch of the balloons if weather conditions allow.

"North Korea's absolute leadership will crumble if the idolization of leader Kim breaks down," Park said by telephone.

If carried out, the move was expected to enrage North Korea, which expressed anger over the movie. In October, the country opened fire at giant balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets floated across the border by South Korean activists, trigging an exchange of gunfire with South Korean troops.

But it is not clear how effective the plan will be, as only a small number of ordinary North Korean citizens are believed to own computers or DVD players. Many North Koreans would not probably risk watching the movie as they know they would get into trouble if caught. Owning a computer requires permission from the government and costs as much as three months' salary for the average worker, according to South Korean analysts.

Not everyone supports sending balloons into the North, with liberals and border town residents in South Korea urging the activists to stop. North Korea has long demanded that South Korea stop the activists, but Seoul refuses, citing freedom of speech.

Park said the ballooning will be done clandestinely, with the pace picking up in March when he expects the wind direction to become more favorable.

Calls to the Human Rights Foundation on Wednesday were not immediately answered. The foundation says on its website that it works with North Korean defectors to use hydrogen balloons to send material across the border, as well as smuggling items through China and broadcasting radio transmissions to reach those who own illegal short wave radios.

Yongsan bans personal drones equipped with cameras

SEOUL, South Korea — The discovery of several camera-equipped North Korean drones south of the Demilitarized Zone last spring raised worries about spying. But at the U.S. military’s largest installation on the peninsula, the real security threat this holiday season may have been Santa Claus.

A new U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan policy, issued just days before Christmas, banned the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Remote Control Aircraft — aircraft without human pilots, guided by computers or remote control — on its installations.

Garrison spokeswoman Michelle Thomas said the new policy was not prompted by any specific incidents or security concerns but was meant to reinforce existing military regulations on UAV and RCA use by creating a garrison policy.

“The timing of it really had to do with people getting those as presents because it was just before Christmas… just making sure they knew what the regulations were, and that’s it,” she said.

A Dec. 19 policy letter, signed by garrison commander Col. Maria Eoff, banned the use of UAVs or RCAs equipped with cameras or data collection devices on Yongsan and other Area II installations “for public safety and OPSEC reasons.” The ban excluded UAV and RCA flights made for official military purposes.

The policy does allow RCA use in Area II with conditions. Operators must be at least 13, have their aircraft registered and inspected and go no higher than 100 feet high. RCAs can be used only at the Family Fun Park or sports fields at Yongsan’s Blackhawk Village, across from Burke Towers, or at the K-16 Air Base sports field adjacent to the running track.

Violators may be subject to Uniform Code of Military Justice punishment, administrative sanctions or civilian criminal prosecution, the policy letter said.

The letter said that while RCAs have been used recreationally by model aircraft enthusiasts, “they are increasingly being used for professional applications such as surveillance and data-gathering. Such aircraft are likely to be operated in a way that may pose a greater risk to the general public and operators may not be aware of the potential dangers… Further, the possibility of signal interference or interception might be associated with such aircraft.”

Thomas said the ban on UAVs and model aircraft was not prompted by security concerns following the discovery of several crashed North Korean drones in the South earlier this year, including one that was found to have taken pictures of the president’s residence in Seoul.

The rudimentary blue drones were similar in size and shape and were equipped with cameras and parachutes. Defense officials said they were not capable of carrying a significant load of weaponry or software to provide a live feed to a ground contact, indicating the North was in the early stages of developing UAV technology.

The drones’ ability to penetrate South Korean airspace without detection raised concerns about the country’s air defense, prompting Seoul to vow that it would respond forcefully to future drone incursions and increase its efforts to monitor and down UAVs.

rowland.ashley@stripes.com

Twitter: @Rowland_Stripes

Russia says Ukraine deal to buy US nuclear fuel poses safety risks

31 minutes ago

By Carol J. Williams

Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Published: December 31, 2014

Russia’s Foreign Ministry accused Ukraine of endangering public safety in Europe with its decision to buy nuclear fuel for its Soviet-built nuclear plants from a U.S. supplier, saying Ukrainian leaders had failed to learn anything from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster about safe nuclear energy usage.

“Moscow was somehow alarmed” over the deal announced earlier in the day by Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk for Kiev to buy fuel for its nuclear plants from U.S. company Westinghouse through the year 2020, the ministry said in a statement posted on its website.

“Consequences of possible accidents and meltdowns will be the full responsibility of the Ukrainian authorities and U.S. suppliers of the fuel,” the statement added.

The shift in supplier for the Ukrainian plants that produce 44 percent of the country’s electricity was part of an effort across Eastern Europe to diversify fuel supplies currently sourced almost exclusively from Russia’s monopoly Rosatom.

Westinghouse, majority-owned by the Toshiba Group and the builder and operator of more than half of the nuclear plants around the world, noted it “has been working in the Ukrainian market since 2003, and brings diversification of suppliers, global best practices and technology to the Ukraine market.

“Westinghouse fuel is currently operating safely and efficiently at the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant without any defects in performance,” the company noted in a statement from its global headquarters near Pittsburgh.

The Russian Foreign Ministry statement was carried in full by the country’s state-controlled media and appeared to signal Rosatom’s pique over erosion of its once-captive market.

“It seems that the Chernobyl tragedy did not teach Kiev authorities any lessons concerning a scientifically feasible approach to the (peaceful) use of nuclear energy,” the statement said. “In fact, it might be that nuclear safety is sacrificed for the sake of political ambitions.”

Chernobyl, in northern Ukraine near the Belarus border, was the scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster when an explosion and fire destroyed the No. 4 reactor at the four-unit plant and sent up a radioactive cloud that circled the planet.

Russia has been chafing at Ukraine’s pivot toward economic and security alliance with the West and away from its traditional integration with Russia. The Security Council revised Russia’s military doctrine last week to label the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization the greatest threat to Russian security and earlier in the week blamed the alliance for Ukraine’s decision to renounce its nonaligned status.

———

©2014 Los Angeles Times

6 bodies recovered from AirAsia crash as weather hampers search

PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia — A massive hunt for the 162 victims of AirAsia Flight 8501 resumed in the Java Sea on Wednesday, with six bodies, including a flight attendant identified by her trademark red uniform, recovered. But wind, strong currents and high surf hampered recovery efforts as distraught family members anxiously waited to identify their loved ones.

Three bodies were retrieved Tuesday, while the others were found after the search resumed Wednesday morning, said Indonesia's Search and Rescue Agency chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo.

On Tuesday, the number had varied, with different officials saying as many as six corpses had been discovered.

He said half of those found were male and half female, including the flight attendant.

The first proof of the jet's fate emerged Tuesday in an area not far from where it dropped off radar screens. Searchers found the bodies and debris that included a life jacket, an emergency exit door and a suitcase about 10 miles from the plane's last known coordinates.

On Wednesday, divers were deployed, but heavy rain and clouds grounded helicopters, said Soelistyo.

The airliner's disappearance halfway through a two-hour flight between Surabaya, Indonesia, and Singapore triggered an international search for the aircraft involving dozens of planes, ships and helicopters. It is still unclear what brought the plane down.

The plane needs to be located and its cockpit voice and flight data recorders, or black boxes, recovered before officials can start determining what caused the crash.

Images of the debris and a bloated body shown on Indonesian television sent a spasm of anguish through the room at the Surabaya airport where relatives awaited news.

The first sign of the jet turned up about 10 miles from its last known coordinates. Parts of the interior, including the oxygen tank, were brought to the nearest town, Pangkalan Bun. Another find included a bright blue plastic suitcase, completely unscratched.

"I know the plane has crashed, but I cannot believe my brother and his family are dead," said Ifan Joko, who lost seven family members, three of them children, as they traveled to Singapore to ring in the new year. "We still pray they are alive."

The corpses were spotted about 100 miles from Central Kalimantan province.

Rescue workers descended on ropes from a hovering helicopter to retrieve bodies. Efforts were hindered by 6-foot waves and strong winds, National Search and Rescue Director SB Supriyadi said.

The first body was later picked up by a navy ship. Officials said as many as six others followed, but they disagreed about the exact number.

Supriyadi was on the aircraft and saw what appeared to be more wreckage under the water, which was clear and a relatively shallow 65 to 100 feet.

When TV broadcast an image of a half-naked man floating in the water, a shirt partially covering his head, many of the family members screamed and wailed uncontrollably. One middle-aged man collapsed and had to be carried out on a stretcher.

About 125 family members were planning to travel Wednesday to Pangkalan Bun to start identifying their loved ones. Body bags and coffins have been prepared at three hospitals there. Dozens of elite military divers also joined the search.

Malaysia-based AirAsia's loss comes on top of the still-unsolved disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in March with 239 people aboard, and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July over Ukraine, which killed all 298 passengers and crew.

Nearly all the passengers and crew were Indonesians, who are frequent visitors to Singapore, particularly on holidays.

Haidar Fauzie, 60, said his youngest child and only daughter, Khairunnisa Haidar, was a flight attendant who had worked with AirAsia for two years.

On learning about the crash, he struggled to console his grieving wife. They last saw their child six weeks ago, when she returned home on holiday.

"From the start, we already knew the risks associated with being a stewardess," Fauzie said. "She is beautiful and smart. It has always been her dream to fly. We couldn't have stopped her."

AirAsia group CEO Tony Fernandes, the airline's founder and public face and a constant presence in Indonesia since the tragedy started unfolding, said he planned to travel to the recovery site on Wednesday.

"I have apologized profusely for what they are going through," he said of his contact with relatives. "I am the leader of this company, and I have to take responsibility. That is why I'm here. I'm not running away from my obligations."

The jet's last communication indicated the pilots were worried about bad weather. They sought permission to climb above threatening clouds but were denied because of heavy air traffic. Four minutes later, the jet disappeared from the radar without issuing a distress signal.

Several countries rushed to Indonesia to help with search and recovery efforts.

The United States said it was sending the USS Sampson destroyer, joining at least 30 ships, 15 aircraft and seven helicopters in the search for the jet.

A Chinese frigate was on the way. Singapore said it was sending two underwater beacon detectors to try to pick up pings from the plane's all-important cockpit voice and flight-data recorders. Malaysia, Australia and Thailand are also involved in the search.

McDowell reported from Jakarta. Associated Press writers Niniek Karmini, Ali Kotarumalos and Margie Mason in Jakarta and Eileen Ng in Surabaya, Indonesia, contributed to this report.

9 people, including 2 kids, found dead at 3 crime scenes in Canada

EDMONTON, Alberta — Nine people, including seven adults and two young children, were found dead at three separate crime scenes in what Edmonton's police chief on Tuesday called the city's worst mass murder.

Chief Rod Knecht told a news conference the killings were the result of domestic violence. The victims included a middle-aged woman found Monday night by officers who were responding to a report of a man entering the south-side home, opening fire and fleeing.

Police were later called to a house in a quiet cul de sac in the northeast Monday afternoon to check on reports of a depressed, suicidal male earlier in the evening.

"The male was not located and there was no response, and nothing suspicious was noted at the residence."

Knecht said police received new information after midnight that prompted officers to return to the house where they found the seven bodies. He didn't say how the victims died or what prompted police to return.

"It is a tragic day for Edmonton," he said. "This series of events are not believed to be random acts. ... These events do not appear to be gang-related, but rather tragic incidents of domestic violence."

The police chief didn't give the ages of the two children, other than to say they were very young. The adult victims were all middle-aged.

Neighbor Moe Assiff said he saw officers come out and talk to a woman sitting with a man in a white car outside the house.

"She just let out a hysterical scream. It was eerie," Assiff said." She was screaming about her kids: `My kids! The kids!,' grabbing her hair and trying to pull her hair out. The cops then ushered her down the road into a police cruiser."

About two hours after that, the drama shifted to the VN Express Asian restaurant in the bedroom community of Fort Saskatchewan where a man matching the description of the suicidal male was found dead on Tuesday morning, Knecht said.

"Our homicide investigators have established associations and linkages between these homicides," he said.

Police would not elaborate on the connection between the deaths.

"It's a really complex case involving multiple locations and police have yet to identity the suicide victim so police cannot yet say with 100 percent accuracy what the connection is," said police spokesman Scott Patterson.

In Edmonton, a city of 878,000 people, mass murders are extremely rare. Knecht said the case was the worst mass killing in the city since at least 1956, when six people were murdered.

John Etter Clark, a provincial politician who served as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta for four years, killed his wife, son, three daughters and an employee of their family farm before taking his own life in 1956. Clark had been suffering from frequent nervous breakdowns in the years before the killings.

Alberta Justice Minister Jonathan Denis said in a statement that his thoughts and prayers were with the families and friends of those involved as well as with first responders.

Amid protest in Ferguson, guardsmen rescued flag

No one said anything to either man. No one gave an order, or even made a suggestion. But the two soldiers seemed to simply know what they had to do.

Maj. Lance Dell and Sgt. 1st Class Eric Allison of the Missouri National Guard rescued a burned American flag.

“They treated the flag like it was trash,” Allison said. “It’s not trash to us.”

In a demonstration on South Florissant Road in Ferguson on Dec. 4, several protesters wearing Guy Fawkes masks lit an American flag on fire. After letting it burn for a bit, they let it drop to the wet ground.

At that point — it could have been one or two seconds, it might have been 30 — two Missouri National Guardsmen in combat gear crossed into the fray of South Florissant.

With as much tenderness as can be mustered when covered in riot gear and hit by angry insults, Dell and Allison picked up the remains of the flag off the street, folded as much of it as they could, picked up smaller, charred pieces of fabric and then walked it inside for safe keeping.

In a telephone interview with the Post-Dispatch (and with a public information officer in the room with them), the two shared their thoughts about the protests and the night of Dec. 4.

Allison said local police officers always took the lead in making any arrests, and that the guard units were there strictly to back up those officers.

“The majority of the protesters were very peaceful,” Dell said. “There were very few instances of us having to get involved because the protesters got violent.”

Dell, 46, and Allison, 43, are full-time National Guard members, assigned to the 205th Military Police Battalion in Poplar Bluff.

Both men spent 13 months in Afghanistan around 2010, and Allison also spent 18 months in Iraq in 2004-05. They’ve served together long enough that they knew their thoughts were aligned when the flag was burned. They looked at each other and acted.

'We love the flag'

Said Allison, “My dad used to tell me that you can’t even count the people who gave their lives so we can fly that flag. We love the flag, or at least what it stands for.”

Dell noted that he and his men are well aware of the court rulings concerning flag burning.

“We know that it’s a constitutional right to burn the flag,” Dell said.

“But I knew we couldn’t leave it just lying in the road.”

Two weeks after the incident, the flag was still in the two soldiers’ possession.

They’re not sure what exactly will become of it, but Dell said anyone concerned should know that it will be handled “by the code.”

©2014 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Visit the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at www.stltoday.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

AirAsia jet wreckage, bodies found in sea could hold clues to crash

PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia — A massive hunt for the 162 victims of AirAsia Flight 8501 resumed in the Java Sea on Wednesday, focusing on an area of the aqua-colored waters where the first bodies and debris were located a day earlier. But wind, strong currents and high surf hampered recovery efforts as distraught family members anxiously waited to identify their loved ones.

The first proof of the jet's fate emerged Tuesday in an area not far from where it dropped off radar screens. Searchers found as many as six bodies and debris that included a life jacket, an emergency exit door and a suitcase about 10 miles from the plane's last known coordinates.

On Wednesday, divers were deployed, but heavy rain and clouds grounded helicopters, said Indonesia's Search and Rescue Agency chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo.

The airliner's disappearance halfway through a two-hour flight between Surabaya, Indonesia, and Singapore triggered an international search for the aircraft involving dozens of planes, ships and helicopters. It is still unclear what brought the plane down.

The plane needs to be located and its cockpit voice and flight data recorders, or black boxes, recovered before officials can start determining what caused the crash.

Images of the debris and a bloated body shown on Indonesian television sent a spasm of anguish through the room at the Surabaya airport where relatives awaited news.

The first sign of the jet turned up about 10 miles from its last known coordinates. Parts of the interior, including the oxygen tank, were brought to the nearest town, Pangkalan Bun. Another find included a bright blue plastic suitcase, completely unscratched.

"I know the plane has crashed, but I cannot believe my brother and his family are dead," said Ifan Joko, who lost seven family members, three of them children, as they traveled to Singapore to ring in the new year. "We still pray they are alive."

First Adm. Sigit Setiayanta, commander of the Naval Aviation Center at Surabaya Air Force base, told reporters six corpses were spotted about 100 miles from Central Kalimantan province.

Rescue workers descended on ropes from a hovering helicopter to retrieve bodies. Efforts were hindered by 6-foot waves and strong winds, National Search and Rescue Director SB Supriyadi said.

The first body was later picked up by a navy ship. Officials said as many as six others followed, but they disagreed about the exact number.

Supriyadi was on the aircraft and saw what appeared to be more wreckage under the water, which was clear and a relatively shallow 65 to 100 feet.

When TV broadcast an image of a half-naked man floating in the water, a shirt partially covering his head, many of the family members screamed and wailed uncontrollably. One middle-aged man collapsed and had to be carried out on a stretcher.

Their horror was captured by cameras on the other side of windows into the waiting room. Officials later blacked out the glass.

About 125 family members were planning to travel Wednesday to Pangkalan Bun to start identifying their loved ones. Body bags and coffins have been prepared at three hospitals there. Dozens of elite military divers also joined the search.

Malaysia-based AirAsia's loss comes on top of the still-unsolved disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in March with 239 people aboard, and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July over Ukraine, which killed all 298 passengers and crew.

Nearly all the passengers and crew were Indonesians, who are frequent visitors to Singapore, particularly on holidays.

Haidar Fauzie, 60, said his youngest child and only daughter, Khairunnisa Haidar, was a flight attendant who had worked with AirAsia for two years.

On learning about the crash, he struggled to console his grieving wife. They last saw their child six weeks ago, when she returned home on holiday.

"From the start, we already knew the risks associated with being a stewardess," Fauzie said. "She is beautiful and smart. It has always been her dream to fly. We couldn't have stopped her."

AirAsia group CEO Tony Fernandes, the airline's founder and public face and a constant presence in Indonesia since the tragedy started unfolding, said he planned to travel to the recovery site on Wednesday.

"I have apologized profusely for what they are going through," he said of his contact with relatives. "I am the leader of this company, and I have to take responsibility. That is why I'm here. I'm not running away from my obligations."

The jet's last communication indicated the pilots were worried about bad weather. They sought permission to climb above threatening clouds but were denied because of heavy air traffic. Four minutes later, the jet disappeared from the radar without issuing a distress signal.

Several countries rushed to Indonesia to help with search and recovery efforts.

The United States said it was sending the USS Sampson destroyer, joining at least 30 ships, 15 aircraft and seven helicopters in the search for the jet.

A Chinese frigate was on the way. Singapore said it was sending two underwater beacon detectors to try to pick up pings from the plane's all-important cockpit voice and flight-data recorders. Malaysia, Australia and Thailand are also involved in the search.

McDowell reported from Jakarta. Associated Press writers Niniek Karmini, Ali Kotarumalos and Margie Mason in Jakarka and Eileen Ng in Surabaya, Indonesia, contributed to this report.

Stripes.com's top 10 most read stories of 2014

Word gets around online — especially if the news is bad behavior by troops.

That was reflected in stripes.com's most read articles of 2014, where three of our website's top 10 stories were about troops under investigation over an incident. Social media outrage no doubt propelled the stories to the top of the list.

Stripes.com readers also clicked en masse this year on stories about pay changes, fiscal waste and offbeat news.

Here's our website's top 10 stories of 2014:

No. 10

Biden challenges graduating AF Academy cadets to create 'new world order', by Tom Roeder of The (Colorado Springs, Colo.) Gazette, posted May 28.

In a graduation speech at the Air Force Academy, Vice President Joe Biden urged cadets to "shape a new world order for the 21st century," and to rebuild "America’s foundations, our economic foundations, our moral and strategic foundations."

No. 9

Female fighters of the PKK may be the Islamic State's worst nightmare, by Seth Robson of Stars and Stripes, posted Aug. 30.

Stars and Stripes reporter Robson and photographer Joshua L. DeMotts traveled to Makhmur, Iraq, where they met female guerillas fighting Islamic State militants along with their male counterparts.

No. 8

Feds: Navy engineer tried to steal schematics for new carrier class, by Hugh Lessig and Peter Dujardin, (Newport News, Va.) Daily Press, posted Dec. 5.

A civilian engineer at Norfolk Navy Shipyard was arrested and charged with trying to pass U.S. military technology to the Egyptian government.

No. 7

Former Marine wins award for self-portrait, by Victoria Brito, The Brownsville (Texas) Herald, posted May 12.

An Iraq and Afghanistan veteran received a Marine Corps Heritage Foundation award for her striking charcoal painting that portrays her clutching a uniform and American flag.

No. 6

DOD announces changes to imminent danger pay, by Jon Harper of Stars and Stripes, posted Jan. 3.

At the beginning of the year, the Defense Department removed and added regions to the list of areas where servicemembers qualify for imminent danger pay.

No. 5

DOD wants bullet that can change direction after being fired, by Matthew M. Burke of Stars and Stripes, posted Dec. 15.

In a story that went viral online, a YouTube video posted by secretive military tech agency DARPA shows tests for a program to develop ammunition that can change direction in midair.

No. 4

Parris Island sergeant major charged in alleged assault during protest, by Rebecca Lurye, The (Hilton Head Island, S.C.) Island Packet, posted June 7.

The sergeant major at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., was charged with third-degree assault and battery after a confrontation with a protester outside the base.

No. 3

Army's top sex assault prosecutor suspended after assault allegation, by Chris Carroll and John Vandiver of Stars and Stripes, posted March 6.

Amid rising reports of sexual assault in the military, the Army's top prosecutor for sexual-assault cases was removed from his job while the Army investigated a report that he had tried to kiss and grope a subordinate lawyer at a sexual assault conference two years prior. The story was picked up by several major media outlets.

No. 2

Report: Pentagon to destroy $1B in ammunition, by Tom Vanden Brook, USA Today, posted April 28.

According to a government watchdog report, the Pentagon plans to destroy more than $1 billion worth of ammunition, some of which could still be used by troops.

No. 1

Air Force will take 'appropriate action' over viral POW/MIA emblem photo, by Jon Harper of Stars and Stripes, posted Feb. 15.

A photo that went viral on social media of an airman posing with her tongue "licking" the mouth of the silhouetted prisoner of war in the iconic POW/MIA emblem sparked outrage with readers and veterans and "disappointed" Air Force officials. A spokeswoman at Fairchild Air Force Base identified the airman and said an investigation had been launched.

news@stripes.com

US allocates a whopping $65 million for new Guantánamo school

(Tribune News Service) — The base with the most expensive prison on earth is getting one of the world’s priciest schools — a $65 million building with classroom space for, at most, 275 kindergarten through high school students.

Do the math: That’s nearly a quarter-million-dollars per school child. In Miami-Dade County a new school costs perhaps $30,000 per student.

Congress recently allocated the funds for the new W.T. Sampson School to put the children of American sailors stationed here under one roof. It will meet Americans with Disabilities Act standards, have a proper public address system, computer and science labs, art and music rooms, a playground, cafeteria and gym — just like any new school anywhere in America.

But the investment also illustrates the Pentagon’s intent to keep this base open even if President Barack Obama manages to move out the last 132 war-on-terror captives, and close the prison run by 2,000 or more temporary troops and contractors.

And it offers a lesson on the cost of doing business out here on Cuba’s southeastern tip where under the U.S. trade embargo all business is conducted independent of the local economy.

Base not prison

Guantánamo Bay may be best known for its war-on-terror prison separated from the rest of the island by a Cuban minefield. But this 45-square-mile U.S. Navy base, leased from Cuba for $4,085 a year that Havana won’t accept, functions like a small town of 6,000 residents.

Sailors and civilians on long-term contracts run the airport, seaport, public works division and a small community hospital. They bring their families and belongings, get suburban-style homes, scuba dive in the Caribbean — and send their children to two U.S. government schools that are nearer to the base McDonald’s and bowling alley than the Detention Center Zone.

This year, there are 243 students — 164 at the elementary school and the rest at a separate building for middle and high school students whose mascot is a pirate.

In Florida, it typically costs $20,000 to $30,000 per student to build a school, according to Jaime Torrens, chief facilities officer for Miami-Dade County Public Schools. But South Florida has a “competitive environment where labor is readily available, materials are readily available.”

Guantánamo’s costs are so much higher “because all materials must be barged to the island, and the construction contractor’s crews must live on site for the duration of construction,” said Cindy Gibson, spokeswoman for the unit that runs the Department of Defense schools.

She estimated building costs are “70 percent higher than the average construction costs experienced in the United States.”

The money for the new Sampson School is tucked inside the massive, $585 billion national defense spending act that, among other things, funds the war on the Islamic State and requires that new construction projects at Guantánamo have an “enduring military value” independent of the detention operations.

It also funds the renovation or new construction of six other Defense Department schools in Belgium, Japan and North Carolina. The next most expensive is another K-12 school being built on the outskirts of Brussels for another American enclave — the children of Americans assigned to the U.S. Army or NATO at a cost of $173,441 per pupil.

Consider this: Miami High School, with an enrollment of 2,906, spent $55 million to renovate and expand its 1928 Mediterranean Revival building, working out to $18,926 per student.

The Sampson School is being built for a maximum 275-member student body ($237,054 per pupil) at one location, something smaller but similar to the exclusive 1,200-student Miami Country Day School, whose head of school John Davies’ first reaction to the price-tag was “Wow, $65 million?”

For $65 million, he said, “we could probably do our entire new master plan for the campus, a center for the arts, parking garage, new gym, new cafeteria and pretty substantial classroom building.”

But Davies studied the building proposal and found “a pretty adequate but not over-the-top construction program.” He searched the specifications and justification and “it doesn’t strike me as one of those $600 toilets or $1,000 hammer kinds of things that we get every once and a while from the GAO” — the General Accounting Office that sometimes uncovers embarrassing examples of profligate U.S. government spending.

“Obviously we’re thinking we’ll be in Guantánamo for a long time,” he said.

Number crunch

To be sure, there’s no exact science for evaluating costs at the U.S.-controlled corner of Cuba. Any cost-benefit analysis is mired in political debate and difference of opinion.

Last year, for example, some Democrats in Congress got a Pentagon comptroller report on what it costs to run Guantánamo’s sprawling detention center operations, including to maintain its 2,000-plus staff and court system for seven of the last 132 detainees. It put the cost at $2.7 million per prisoner a year.

More prisoners have been released since then, meaning the Congressional crunch is more like $3.1 million per captive a year. And that price is probably higher. Some costs are classified.

In February, however, Marine Gen. John Kelly disputed that soup-to-nuts approach at a Congressional hearing. His Southern Command headquarters, with oversight of the prison, figured it cost “about $750,000” for each prisoner, he said.

Then again, he’s been seeking $69 million to replace a secret prison at Guantánamo that now holds 15 former CIA captives. It works out to $4.6 million per prisoner in construction costs, giving new meaning to the term “high-value detainees.”

Replace not renovate

The school project looks cheap by comparison. As presented to Congress, it consolidates two inefficient schools that were built in the 1970s and ’80s and have deteriorated across the decades.

The separate structures need new ventilation and air-conditioning systems, electrical upgrades of alarms and emergency systems, an updated elementary school kitchen, new bathrooms and insulation and retrofitting to meet new standards, according to a report to Congress by Chuck King, the facilities engineer for the Department of Defense Education Activity, who is based in Peachtree City, Georgia.

Instead, he proposed and Congress agreed to build the new 112,000-square-foot school on the site of today’s smaller, single-story 1983-vintage elementary school on Sherman Avenue — along the road to Camp X-Ray, the original war-on-terror prison, and the frontier with Cuba.

Students will go to school in trailers and other available space while their current building is demolished and replaced by the new one. Once the high school students move in, workers will demolish their 1975 building behind the base pub, O’Kelly’s, not far from the scrubby nine-hole golf course.

Thrice evacuated

The Sampson school system, established in 1931, is named for a 19th Century U.S. Navy rear admiral who was responsible for the blockade of Cuba in the Spanish American war. It has a storied history of closings that no occasional hurricane or snow day can match.

Sampson students were sent home — evacuated back to the United States — during World War II and for three months in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The schools also closed in the mid-’90s when families were sent away as the base coped with a huge influx of tens of thousands of Cuban and Haitian migrants, housed in tent cities, that taxed this isolated outpost’s water desalination and other resources.

The new school’s plan includes state-of-the-art technology in physics, chemistry and video-broadcast labs, a music suite, LED lighting and a wireless network. It will also have space for 50 faculty and administration members, two or more floors and a stucco finish, according to the proposal to Congress.

It’s not possible to ask the kids what they think about it because Department of Defense policy shields school children from speaking with reporters on base. Besides, today’s students are mostly the children of military families that move every few years, meaning they’ll likely be gone by the time the new $65 million school opens.

It’s projected to be finished in April 2018. By then, Obama’s successor will be in office, the Pentagon will have completed a $31 million underwater fiber-optic cable between the base and South Florida and, unless Congress lifts the U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba, the blockade will be in its 57th year.

Miami Herald staff writer Christina Veiga contributed to this report.

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©2014 Miami Herald. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC