Shiite rebels call for Yemen offensive; US troops evacuate

ADEN, Yemen — Yemen's Shiite rebels issued a call to arms Saturday to battle forces loyal to the country's embattled president, as U.S. troops were evacuating a southern air base crucial to America's drone strike program after al-Qaida militants seized a nearby city.

The turmoil comes as Yemen battles al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the target of the drone program, and faces a purported affiliate of the extremist Islamic State group that claimed responsibility for a series of suicide bombings killing at least 137 people Friday.

All these factors could push the Arab world's most impoverished country, united only in the 1990s, back toward civil war.

"I hate to say this, but I'm hearing the loud and clear beating of the drums of war in Yemen," Mohammed al-Basha, a spokesman for the Yemeni Embassy in Washington, D.C., wrote on Twitter.

The Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, swept into Yemen's capital, Sanaa, in September and now control it and nine of the country's 21 provinces. President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, a one-time prisoner of the Houthis in his own home, escaped last month and installed himself in Aden, declaring it the temporary capital amid the Houthi insurrection.

Earlier Saturday, Hadi gave his first televised address since fleeing the capital, striking a defiant tone. He described the rebels' rule as "a coup against constitutional legitimacy." He also pledged to raise the Yemeni flag over the Maran mountains, a stronghold for the Houthis, members of the Shiite Zaydi sect that represents nearly 30 percent of Yemen's population.

Hadi also said regional Shiite power Iran supported the Houthis, something critics also allege and the rebels deny. Sunni Gulf countries have lined up to support Hadi and have moved their embassies to Aden to back him against the Shiite rebels.

Almost immediately after Hadi's speech, the Houthis issued a statement announcing their offensive against security and military institutions loyal to Hadi, calling it a battle against extremists.

"The council announces this decision to call the proud sons of the Yemeni people in all regions to unite and support and cooperate with the armed and security forces in confronting terrorist forces," they said in the statement carried by the Houthi-controlled state news agency SABA.

Though seizing power in Sanaa and clashing with those protesting their power grab, the Houthis largely haven't resorted to open warfare since beginning their campaign in September. Their statement Saturday immediately recalled the years of war fought in the country, once split between a Marxist south that once was a British colony and a northern republic.

As the threat of civil war grew, the U.N. Security Council called an emergency meeting for Sunday afternoon beginning at 3 p.m. (1900 GMT) to discuss the Yemen crisis. The U.N. spokesman's office said that after a briefing on the situation in Yemen, the council would meet in closed session for consultations. Representatives of Yemen and Qatar, which currently heads the Gulf Cooperation Council, were scheduled to speak.

Meanwhile Saturday, U.S. troops including Special Forces commandos were evacuating from the al-Annad air base in southern Yemen, Yemeni security and military officials said. The air base, the country's largest, was believed to have some 100 American troops stationed there.

Late Saturday, the U.S. State Department said in a statement that it "has temporarily relocated its remaining personnel out of Yemen."

Saturday night, a security official in Aden said a military transport plane from Oman evacuated 16 British military and security forces. He and other security officials spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information.

On Friday, al-Qaida militants seized control of the southern provincial capital of al-Houta in the group's most dramatic grab of territory in years. That's just nearby the al-Annad air base, which has been the scene of rocket attacks in the past by militants.

Maj. Gen. Mahmoud al-Subeihi, the country's defense minister who is loyal to Hadi, said troops would be deployed near the base to protect it from militants.

The al-Annad base is where American and European military advisers help Yemen battle the country's local al-Qaida branch through drone strikes and logistical support. That group, which holds territory in eastern Yemen, has said it directed the recent attack against the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

U.S. forces also have been involved in at least two hostage rescue raids in Yemen in recent months, including one that saw militants kill an American photojournalist and a South African teacher in December.

It's unclear what the pullout will mean for the drone program. The U.S. has carried out more than 100 suspected drone strikes in Yemen since 2009, according to the New America Foundation's International Security Program, which tracks the American campaign. Civilian casualties from the strikes have stoked widespread anti-American sentiment in the country.

All this comes a day after suicide bombers attacked a pair of mosques in Sanaa, unleashing monstrous blasts that killed 137 people, including at least 13 children. A purported affiliate of the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the bombings, which also wounded 357 people — raising the alarming possibility the extremist group has expanded its presence to Yemen after already setting up a branch in Libya. U.S. officials expressed skeptisim about the claim, though there have been several online statements by individual Yemeni militants declaring allegiance to the Islamic State group.

The presence of the Islamic State group could set up yet another conflict in Yemen, as al-Qaida and the extremists holding a third of Iraq and Syria already are rivals.

___

Associated Press writers Brian Rohan and Jon Gambrell in Cairo contributed to this report.

News reports: Islamic State identifies 100 US servicemembers, urges followers to kill them

WASHINGTON — Islamic State extremists have called on followers in the United States to kill 100 U.S. servicemembers whose purported names, photos and addresses were posted on a website, media reports said Saturday.

Several U.S. media organizations, including The New York Times, the New York Daily News and the Reuters news agency, said the Islamic State claimed the 100 servicemembers – from the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps – had taken part in attacks on Islamic State targets in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan.

“You crusaders that fight the Islamic State, we say to you: ‘Die in your rage!’” the posting said, according to the Daily News account.

The news reports quoted an unidentified Pentagon official as saying the Defense Department was aware of the posting and “we are looking into it.” The official would not say whether the names, photos and addresses were valid.

The New York Times said the FBI had been called in to take part in the investigation along with Pentagon investigators. ABC News said the military services were notifying the families of the 100 people named in the list.

U.S. officials have been concerned about terror threats against servicemembers and their families since the sharp rise in terrorist operations in the wake of last year’s offensive by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

The latest threat was posted online by the “Islamic State Hacking Division,” the news reports said. A statement in English claimed to have hacked military servers, databases and emails to gather information on specific servicemembers who could be targeted by “lone wolf” attackers in U.S.

“Kill them in their own lands, behead them in their own homes, stab them to death as they walk their streets thinking they are safe,” the Daily News quoted the posting as saying.

ABC News quoted a Marine Corps spokesman, L. John Caldwell, as saying the Naval Criminal Investigative Service was conducting in-person notifications of Navy and Marine personnel on the list.

"It is recommended Marines and family members check their online/social footprint ensuring privacy settings are adjusted to limit the amount of available personal information," Caldwell said, according to ABC News.

Judge orders US release of military detainee abuse photos

NEW YORK — The U.S. must release photographs showing abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, a federal judge has ruled in a long-running clash over letting the world see potentially disturbing images of how the military treated prisoners.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein's ruling Friday gives the government, which has fought the case for more than a decade, two months to decide whether to appeal before the photos could be released. The American Civil Liberties Union has been seeking to make them public in the name of holding government accountable.

The Defense Department is studying the ruling and will make any further responses in court, spokesman Lt. Col. Myles Caggins III said. ACLU representatives didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night.

The ACLU has said the pictures "are manifestly important to an ongoing national debate about governmental accountability for the abuse of prisoners."

The fight over the photographs reaches back to the early years of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it invokes the images of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq that sparked international outrage after they emerged in 2004 and 2006. Early in the 2004 lawsuit, the ACLU pointed to the Abu Ghraib photos as priority examples of records the organization was seeking on the treatment of detainees.

It's unclear how many more photographs may exist. The government has said it has 29 relevant pictures from at least seven different sites in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it's thought to have perhaps hundreds or thousands more, Hellerstein said in a ruling in August. He said some photos he had seen "are relatively innocuous while others need more serious consideration," and he has ruled that any images that would be released would be redacted to protect the identities of people in them.

Some photographs, taken by servicemembers in Iraq and Afghanistan, were part of criminal investigations of alleged abuse. Some images show "soldiers pointing pistols or rifles at the heads of hooded and handcuffed detainees," then-Solicitor General — now Supreme Court Justice — Elena Kagan wrote in an appeal to the high court earlier in the case, which has taken a long road through the courts and Congress.

The government has long argued that releasing the photographs could incite attacks against U.S. forces and government personnel abroad, and officials have said that risk hasn't abated as the U.S. military role in Iraq and Afghanistan lessened.

Indeed, "the danger associated with release of these photographs is heightened now," amid the rise of the Islamic State militant group, Navy Rear Adm. Sinclair Harris, the vice director for operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a December court filing. Islamic State, he said "would use these photographs to further encourage its supporters and followers to attack U.S. military and government personnel."

Amid the lawsuit, Congress passed a 2009 law allowing the government to keep the photos secret if the secretary of defense certified that unveiling them would endanger U.S. citizens or government or military personnel.

Defense secretaries have since done so, but Hellerstein said the government hasn't been specific enough.

Associated Press writer Lou Kesten contributed to this report from Washington.

Family of suspected snakebite victim soldier awaits answers

Pfc. Bailey Swaggart’s family is in the midst of grieving his loss, waiting for answers about his death, and trying to come to terms with what they know so far.

Swaggart died Feb. 19 at Manda Bay naval base, Kenya. He got out of a Humvee while on guard duty to check into a brush fire by the runway and was bitten by one of Africa’s many deadly snakes, according to military authorities.

Swaggart, just three weeks into his deployment from Fort Bliss, Texas, stepped out of the vehicle sometime in the afternoon, said his aunt, Alisa Lear. Yet he wasn’t found for two hours, after a search with Kenyan helicopters.

His body was immediately returned to the Armed Forces Medical Examiner office at Joint Base Andrews for autopsy, Lear said in a phone interview.

During the procedure, fang marks — puncture wounds — were found on Bailey’s thigh, military officials told the Swaggart family.

“We were told within 48 hours that their primary assumption was (that the cause of death) was a snakebite,” she said. “Of course his parents and his sisters are devastated. It’s a huge loss to all of us.”

Snakebite is an exceedingly rare cause of death for U.S. troops deployed throughout the world.

Snakebites caused no U.S. military deaths from 1998 to 2004, according to a 2004 report by the Navy Operational Medical Lessons Learned Center. The report cited the DOD Mortality Register, which contains detailed cause and manner of death of all U.S. active-duty personnel since 1998. Additionally, the Armed Forces Medical Examiner’s mortality files, going back to 1978, showed zero snakebite deaths through 2006, the report said.

For Swaggart’s family, which lives in rural Louisiana where venomous snakes are a distinct hazard, the tragedy of his death is compounded by the fact that Bailey was well versed in avoiding snakebites and what to do if bitten. He was instructed from an early age not to overturn rocks or fallen branches by hand, not to step over a log or other obstacle if the other side wasn’t visible, his aunt said.

“We have snakebite kits all over the property,” Lear said. “My husband has been walking around, shaking his head for weeks, saying, ‘A snake. A damn snake.’"

The family is waiting for the medical examiner’s office to issue a final report on Swaggart’s cause of death.

Paul Stone, spokesman for the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, said it usually takes about four weeks to complete a report. Stone said the military does not do preliminary reports, as civilian medical examiners do. “We don’t want anything that can possibly be conjecture,” he said.

Concluding that Swaggart died of a snakebite was premature, Stone said. “Anytime anyone suspects a snakebite — a lot of things can look like snakebites,” he said.

A number of questions surrounding Swaggart’s death won’t be answered until a command investigation report is completed.

Were troops prevented from searching on foot because it was feared more snakebites might occur? Was there a delay in reporting the emergency? Military authorities have told Stars and Stripes that they were working through “a variety of explanations” on why it took two hours to locate Swaggart.

Did the other soldier in the Humvee — the driver — see the snake or hear Swaggart call for help? What, exactly, happened?

“We have all those questions,” Lear said. “Who was the driver? Why didn’t he step into the woods?” she said. “The other side of the coin is that we feel so sad for him.”

Military authorities, who declined to be identified because they are not authorized to speak about the case, have told Stars and Stripes that the snake was thought to be a black mamba or a viper.

Black mambas are one of Africa’s most feared snakes, whose venom disrupts the central nervous system, can kill within 20 minutes and is almost invariably fatal without anti-venom treatment,. Vipers’ venom destroys red blood cells, disrupts blood clotting and causes organ degeneration and tissue damage. Ubiquitous on the continent, they kill more Africans than any other snake.

An estimated 30,000 to 94,000 people, primarily in Africa and Asia, are killed by snakes annually, according to the World Health Organization, and many thousands more are left permanently disabled and disfigured. Most of the deaths could be avoided if anti-venom were more readily available.

Only five to 12 people in the U.S. are estimated to be killed each year by snakebites, most of them by diamondback rattlesnakes, a type of viper.

Swaggart’s family has only praise for how the military has responded following Bailey’s death.

“They’ve been extremely kind to us,” Lear said. She said his commanders had expressed condolences, that their casualty assistance officer was most helpful and that members of his Fort Bliss-based unit had come halfway across the country for his funeral on March 8. She said she could see how his death had changed them. “Now, the danger was brought home to them,” Lear said. “You could see it in their faces.”

“The thought that he died instantly brings us tremendous relief. Or that he lost consciousness,” she said. “That brings us some peace.”

Swaggart, 25, was described as a favorite by fellow soldiers in news reports: thoughtful but light-hearted, conscientious yet full of fun.

“I would give you a million dollars for you to have met the young man,” Lear said. “He’s a huge loss to us. We say every day that we’re going to do what Bailey would have wanted us to do.”

That includes his parents, three older sisters, aunt and uncles, a nephew, 11, and seven nieces all under age five.

“There is tremendous love and energy that will carry Bailey’s memory for a long, long time,” Lear said.

montgomery.nancy@stripes.com

For Iraqis, years after US invasion seem like an unending war

BAGHDAD — Alaa al-Qureishi's home is full of ghosts — the photos of dead relatives decorating the walls of every room.

In 2006, his mother and brother were killed when the house, in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad, was randomly hit by a rocket. A year later, tragedy struck again when two more brothers and his brother-in-law were killed in sectarian violence at the height of the country's civil war.

Today, many of his fellow Shiites are on the front lines battling the extremists of the Islamic State group in what many see as an existential threat to Iraq. But the 37-year-old al-Qureishi is sitting this one out.

"Our situation keeps going from bad to worse," he said, his eyes filled with tears, the pain of his loss still fresh. "My family doesn't need any more martyrs."

Twelve years after the U.S. invaded Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein and eliminate weapons of mass destruction that were never found, the country is still mired in war.

The Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, rules more than a third of Iraq. Powerful, often violent, Shiite militias — armed and advised by Iran — are leading the fight against the extremists, propping up Iraq's humiliated military, which crumbled in the face of the militant threat last year.

U.S. forces are back, albeit in a non-combat role, thrusting open a door that many had sought to close for good when American troops withdrew in late 2011.

For Iraqis, the various conflicts feel like one long war, which many blame on the United States. A common view is that overthrowing Saddam spurred the explosion of sectarianism that followed when the long-oppressed Shiite majority rose to power.

A country beleaguered by foreign invasion and civil war became vulnerable to extremism. Fueled by another civil war in neighboring Syria, that extremism grew into al-Qaida in Iraq and later, morphed into the Islamic State group that is now spreading havoc in several countries across the Arab world.

"Obviously, there is a threat that you can trace that shows Daesh emerged because of the invasion," said Sajad Jiyad of the Iraqi Institute for Economic Reform, using another acronym for the Islamic State group. "It's the lack of rule of law, randomness of the violence and brutality that we see on a daily basis today that shocks people."

The U.S.-led invasion that began in March 2003 was initially touted as the dawn of a new, democratic era for Iraq.

There was the "shock-and-awe" campaign; a dictator found hiding in a spider hole; national unity governments; insurgents, militias and retribution; and sectarianism and civil war.

More than 500,000 Iraqis were reportedly killed in the eight-year war, while more than 3,500 U.S. soldiers died in combat.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis fled the country during that war. Today, more than 2 million are displaced from the violence set off by the campaign by the Sunni militants of the Islamic State group to establish a self-declared caliphate.

Iraq has staggered economically, despite its oil wealth. The International Monetary Fund forecasts that the economy shrank by 2.75 percent in 2014 — its first contraction since 2003.

Na'ma Ali Saleh, a 52-year-old resident of Sadr City, has struggled to keep a steady job since the invasion and believes the country's current crisis makes finding work impossible.

"We have hot weather, and half of the time, there is no power or water," he said. "Saddam was a disaster for Iraq, but at least in those days, we only feared one man. Now, we fear many."

Nostalgia for life under Saddam is rampant, despite his heinous criminal record that included the hangings of Shiite politicians, unlawful detentions and the disappearance of hundreds of political dissidents, and a massacre of between 50,000 to 100,000 Kurdish Iraqis.

"Iraqis are still waiting for a better alternative," Jiyad said. "At least in Saddam's time, there was some semblance of rule of law," he added. "He was violent, but it was targeted."

Three of al-Qureishi's late brothers were imprisoned under Saddam, accused of political dissent. But he now believes that was a small price to pay for the relative stability the country once enjoyed.

"What's worse? Prison or death?" he asked, visibly distraught. "I may be doing my country a service by fighting in the war against Daesh, but I will do my family a much bigger disservice if I go to fight and die."

Heavy casualties, discord stall Iraqi operation to recapture Tikrit

ISTANBUL (Tribune Content Agency) — The much ballyhooed Iraqi government operation to capture the central city of Tikrit from the Islamic State has stalled three weeks after it began, amid widespread reports that Shiite Muslim militias and the government are badly divided over tactics and roiled by claims that the militias have engaged in war crimes against the local Sunni Muslim population.

A two-day pause supposedly intended to give the Iraqi government time to bring up reinforcements has stretched into a week, as reports circulate that Iraqi government troops and the militias took heavier than anticipated casualties in their first efforts to dislodge Islamic State fighters. At least 1,000 militiamen died in the early days of fighting, according to some reports, roughly 5 percent of the 20,000 men the militias have committed to the operation.

Even during the pause, pro-government casualties remain high. A witness in the main government hospital at the nearby city of Samarra said that at least 100 dead or wounded fighters had been brought in over the last four days and that “bodies are everywhere” at the facility. The witness asked to remain anonymous for security reasons.

Difficulties with the Tikrit operation underscore how unlikely it is that the Iraqi military will be in any position soon to launch an assault to recapture Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, which fell to the Islamic State last June. A U.S. military officer in February created a stir when he told reporters at the Pentagon that such an assault might come as soon as April. Pentagon officials later acknowledged that Iraqi troops might not be in such a position before the fall.

How to proceed in Tikrit has left the government and the militias split. Iraqi officials say a full frontal assault against the Islamic State forces might succeed but would come at a heavy cost. Commanders of Iraq’s special operation forces, which would lead such a charge, are opposed to it.

The Shiite militias come to the battle with a sectarian zeal and are said to be untroubled by the prospect of casualties. Tikrit is the hometown of the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, whom most Shiites detest for his repression of their sect. It is also the scene last summer of a notorious massacre of 1,000 Shiite air force recruits, whose video-recorded deaths at the hands of the Islamic State were widely distributed on the Internet. Hadi al-Ameri, the leader of one of the militias, the Badr Organization, openly referred to the retaking of Tikrit as “revenge for Speicher,” the military camp where the recruits were murdered.

The militias’ Iranian advisers, against whom Saddam fought an eight-year war and who have also battled the Islamic State in Syria, also are said to favor an advance, whatever the cost.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, however, has asked for a better plan, apparently hesitant to unleash the militias for fear of an American backlash after reports that Shiite militias have terrorized the local Sunni population, pillaging houses and raping women. The United States, whose commanders apparently opposed the Tikrit operation, so far has declined to commit American air power to it.

An Iraqi military commander on the scene who asked not be identified discussing sensitive national security matters described a difficult task ahead for any troops sent in to dislodge the Islamic State forces, whose numbers have been described as a few hundred. The Islamic State portions of the town are heavily fortified with booby-traps and defended by snipers and suicide bombers scattered among civilians unable to leave, he said.

The presence of massive fortifications, hundreds of roadside bombs and the effective use of suicide bombers, a tactic the Islamic State — also known as ISIL or ISIS — has employed in both Iraq and Syria, would lead to enormous destruction and the likely loss of hundreds of civilian lives, the officer said.

That has led the military command of Salahuddin province, of which Tikrit is the capital, the Iraqi army’s so-called Golden Brigade of special operators, and the Iraqi Interior Ministry to clash with the militias, the officer said.

“The militia leadership insists on completing the attack with massive air cover, artillery and the heavy bombing on Daash elements,” the officer said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.

The officer’s comments were later endorsed by an Iraqi political leader, who also asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Such seemingly indiscriminate bombardment of a populated area would kill many civilians and likely would inflame both the international community and U.S. officials, who’ve openly warned that they are watching the operation for such problems.

The American sensitivity is heightened by videos posted on social media that purport to document a wide range of abuses, from executions to kidnappings, some involving troops U.S. advisers had trained. One shows two men being interrogated by Iraqi special forces before being machine-gunned to death.

ABC News compiled a string of such videos earlier this month and presented them to U.S. and Iraqi authorities. In a statement, the United States expressed anger. “As the ISF (Iraqi Security Forces) and militias reclaim territory, their behavior must be above reproach or they risk being painted with the same brush as ISIL fighters,” the statement said, according to the network.

A statement from Human Rights Watch earlier this month said it had documented atrocities by government forces and militias in areas of Diyala province north of Baghdad, where they had recaptured territory from the Islamic State.

The military and the militias also are reportedly split over whether to ask the United States to provide air cover to the effort to retake Tikrit. The military has said precision airstrikes are needed to root out the Islamic State forces. But the militias and their Iranian advisers reportedly have rejected such a request, saying that want to prove that the militias can conquer Islamic State forces without Western help.

For now, the officer and the political official both said, the Iraqi military has decided to push up heavy earth-moving equipment to clear booby traps while tightening the cordon on the city center to deny the militants resupply. The plan will be to wait them out, the officer and official said.

A spokesman for the largest of the Shiite militias, The League of Righteousness, disagreed, however, that that is the plan. Speaking to McClatchy by phone from Tikrit, Abu Zahra Zergawi said the popular movement, a common euphemism for the militias, would resume operations “in one or two days as more men and equipment are brought to the area.”

The trajectory of the Tikrit operation also might easily have been foreseen, given the difficulties Iraqi government forces have had retaking the central Iraqi town of Baiji, another Sunni stronghold that, like Tikrit, was captured last summer in the Islamic State’s initial push across the country.

The Iraqi government announced an offensive to retake Baiji with great fanfare in early November, but in the ensuing days it was forced to break off the attack after encountering roadside bombs, suicide bombers and snipers that prevented army troops and militias from getting closer than six miles from the city.

Finally in December, the government announced that it had reached Baiji and had broken an Islamic State siege on the town’s oil refinery, Iraq’s largest. But a fierce Islamic State counterattack a few days later recaptured most of the town and surrounding areas.

The oil refinery remained in government hands, as it had since the Islamic State onslaught last summer, but to date the Iraqi government has been unable to restart its operations, and the troops occupying it have only a precarious resupply line, residents report.

The course of such operations augur poorly for government operations of a more ambitious nature such as the recapture of Mosul, said a former U.S. military non-commissioned officer who served in Iraq and now trains foreign militaries in the region. He suggested it meant the operation to retake Mosul might need to be shelved indefinitely.

“If the Iraqis can’t retake two square miles of a town they’ve had surrounded for weeks, how can anyone expect they’ll be better off fighting house to house in a place the size of Mosul, with almost 2 million residents?” he said, asking that he not be identified because he hoped still to win a contract to help train Iraqis. “I’m not sure they will ever be capable of doing it without a bloodbath. It would be an enormously complex operation for the American military, and these guys aren’t even close to ready.”

Prothero is a McClatchy special correspondent. McClatchy special correspondents in Salahuddin province and Irbil, Iraq, contributed to this report. They are not being named for security reasons.

©2015 McClatchy Washington Bureau. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

US targeting Islamic State group with 'smart bombs'

AL UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar (Tribune Content Agency) — Coalition warplanes have dropped more than 10,200 so-called “smart bombs” since President Barack Obama authorized the air war on Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria last summer.

The use of such “joint direct attack munitions,” the U.S. military says, provides greater accuracy and fewer unintended casualties than explosives not outfitted with GPS antennas or laser control systems.

The fight against the militant Islamist group is the first conflict in which nearly every bomb used by the United States has been guided by satellite or laser; in comparison, about 10 percent of bombs in the 1991 Persian Gulf War had advanced systems.

The U.S.-led aerial assault nonetheless has yet to push the Islamic State group out of any of the strongholds it captured last year, including 10 cities in Iraq. And U.S. warplanes are not supporting the Iraqi ground offensive currently aimed at ousting the extremists from Tikrit, in part because Iranian officers and artillery are assisting the Iraqi army and Shiite militias trying to retake the city north of Baghdad.

Attaching GPS-guided tail fin kits isn’t glamorous work, but it’s among the many jobs they do here at this air base in the small Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar. U.S. troops make sure that guidance antennas are linked properly to a computer program to ensure they receive accurate signals.

Airman 1st Class Joshua Miller and 14 others on the so-called ammo team are important cogs in the U.S. military operation. Since deploying here last summer from Dyess Air Force Base in Texas, they have upgraded 2,000 free-falling bombs to “smart bomb” status.

The crew works on a remote stretch of desert at the outer reaches of this sprawling base, operational headquarters for the U.S.-led air war against Islamic State. Their hangar is far from the 8,000 other people who work and live here.

The team initially took an hour to upgrade each 500-pound or 2,000-pound bomb. Now they finish each one in 10 minutes or so.

“When you first start building bombs, your hands are shaking from the nervousness,” said Air Force Tech. Sgt. David Skelton, 31, who oversees the crew. “But that goes away. We went from building nothing to building bombs 12 hours a day.”

A forklift carries the explosives into the hangar from dome-covered facilities, referred to as igloos, where they are stored. The team then swarms like a NASCAR pit crew, affixing a dozen parts — fuses, radar-equipped nose cones, as well as the GPS-guided tail fins to the systems that have been built in St. Louis before being delivered to Qatar for assembly.

“You just develop a rhythm after a while,” Skelton said. “It’s lean manufacturing around here. It’s all part of the assembly line.”

As the airmen work, B-1 bomber jets take off and streak overhead, rattling teeth and equipment alike.

The bomb crews labor six days a week, 12 hours a day. They eat together and share rickety barracks. They endure the 110-degree heat outside.

“We know way too much about one another,” said Master Sgt. Jeremy Luster, 38, who oversees the crew with Skelton.

The pace of attacks is forcing the military to bolster its arsenal.

The Air Force is asking Congress for $559.1 million to buy nearly 20,000 of the bombs for the next fiscal year, according to Pentagon budget documents. Coalition partners have issued orders for thousands more.

Defense giant Boeing Co. plans to more than double its current production to meet the demand.

“The way we’re building now, they’re just rolling off the conveyor belt and going straight to the flight line,” Luster said.

©2015 Tribune Co. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Obama to announce slower Afghan withdrawal through 2016

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is expected to announce plans next week to slow down the pace of troop withdrawals between now and the end of 2016 to maintain security in Afghanistan. But the White House on Friday night tamped down expectations raised earlier by an administration official that it could reconsider its plan to remove nearly all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2016.

Obama is meeting in Washington next week with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah.

Current plans call for a U.S. drawdown to 5,500 troops by the end of this year, but the Obama administration has said previously it might keep more troops in Afghanistan next year.

Jeff Eggers of the White House's National Security Council said Friday the U.S. still intends to pursue its longer-term withdrawal strategy, which calls for a U.S. security cooperation office in Kabul beyond 2016 of about 1,000 U.S. troops, but no major troop presence.

Eggers appeared to leave open the possibility that the U.S. role after 2016 could also be reconsidered. "The question of the post-2016 plan will, of course, flow from that, and it's fair to say that will need to be considered in the same way given the intent to maintain this ongoing dialogue with President Ghani and his team," he said.

But officials later said Eggers was alluding to discussions about the breadth of the U.S. relationship with Afghanistan after 2016, and the size of the U.S. footprint and the troop levels in Afghanistan that Obama called for previously would not change.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest earlier emphasized that point, saying Obama and his national security team have been discussing changing the pace of the troop drawdown and the rate of base closures in Afghanistan up through the end of 2016 to deal with the security situation in the country.

Earnest said that after 2016, Obama envisions a smaller military footprint designed to protect embassy personnel and to engage in military-to-military relationships with the Afghan armed forces — a figure that experts place at about 1,000 troops.

"That's been the policy that President Obama put in place a number of years ago. That hasn't changed," Earnest said.

"But the United States is interested in making sure that we have a troop presence that can protect forces that are on the ground," he said. "We want to make sure that we can continue to have some counterterrorism capability in Afghanistan, because there are still extremist elements operating in Afghanistan that do pose a threat to our interests."

Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.

North Korean envoy says his country has nuclear missiles, not afraid to use them

LONDON — A North Korean envoy says his country has developed nuclear missiles and is prepared to use them at any time.

North Korean Ambassador to Britain Hyun Hak Bong said in a recent interview with British broadcaster Sky News that his government would use the missiles in response to a nuclear attack by the United States.

Asked whether North Korea has the ability now to launch a nuclear missile, Hyun replied: "Any time. Any time. Yes."

"If the United States strike us, we should strike back," he said.

Asked if North Korea would only fire nuclear missiles in retaliation, Hyun replied: "We are a peace-loving people you know. We don't want war but we are not afraid of war. This is our policy of the government."

North Korea is thought to have a handful of crude nuclear bombs and has conducted three nuclear tests since 2006. But experts are divided on how far it has come in developing the technology needed to miniaturize warheads so they can be placed on missiles.

The spokesman for South Korea's Defense Ministry, Kim Min-seok, said Saturday that while North Korea might have advanced its technologies for miniaturizing nuclear warheads so they can be installed on missiles, Seoul does not believe they have succeeded yet.

Kim pointed out that the North has conducted only three nuclear tests so far and it's unclear how successful they were.

The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security recently estimated that North Korea currently has between 10 and 16 nuclear weapons, some based on plutonium, others on uranium. It concluded that North Korea already has plutonium-based weapons small enough to mount on medium-range and intercontinental-range missiles.

The United Nations has imposed sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs.

Hyun's comments come as rival South Korea and the United States conduct annual springtime military drills that North Korea says are aimed at preparing to topple its government. Seoul and Washington say the exercises are purely defensive.

The U.S. stations about 28,500 soldiers in South Korea to deter possible aggression from North Korea.

Associated Press writer Tong-hyung Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

More than 130 dead, hundreds wounded in Yemen mosque bombings

ADEN, Yemen — Suicide bombers attacked a pair of mosques Friday in the Yemeni capital, unleashing monstrous blasts that ripped through worshippers and killed 137 people in the deadliest assault yet targeting Shiite rebels who have taken over large parts of the rapidly fragmenting nation. At least 13 children were among the dead.

A purported affiliate of the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the bombings, which also wounded 357 people — raising the alarming possibility the extremist group has expanded its presence to Yemen after already setting up a branch in Libya. Earlier this week, the group claimed responsibility for a bloody attack on Western tourists in Tunisia that authorities said was carried out by militants trained in Libya.

If the claim is true — and the U.S. expressed skepticism — Friday's attacks would be the first by the Islamic State group in Yemen, adding a frightening new layer to the country's turmoil.

Shiite rebels known as Houthis have taken over the capital, Sanaa, and nine of the country's 21 provinces over the past six months, raising fears of a civil war tinged with sectarianism. The government of the internationally backed president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, has fled to the southern port city of Aden.

Yemen is already home to the most powerful branch of the al-Qaida network, which has been battling the Houthis for months. On Friday, al-Qaida militants seized control of a southern provincial capital, al-Houta, in the group's most dramatic grab of territory in years. However, it denied carrying out the mosque bombings, citing instructions from the terror network's leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, not to strike mosques or markets.

Friday's blasts left scenes of bloody devastation in the Badr and al-Hashoosh mosques, located across town from each other in Sanaa. Both mosques are controlled by the Shiite Houthis, but they are also frequented by Sunni worshippers.

Images from the scene showed a number of children among the dead. In footage from the al-Hashoosh mosque, screaming volunteers were seen using bloodied blankets to carry away victims as a small child lay among the dead on the mosque floor.

"Blood was running like a river," said one survivor, Mohammed al-Ansi, who said he was thrown six feet by one of the blasts at the Hashoosh mosque, where the floor was strewn with body parts.

The mosques were targeted by two suicide bombers each during midday prayers, when large crowds turn out to attend weekly sermons. The state news agency SABA put the toll at 137 dead and 357 wounded. Among the dead were 13 children, according to the Interior Ministry. A prominent Shiite cleric, al-Murtada al-Mansouri, and two senior Houthi leaders were also killed, the rebel-owned Al-Masirah TV channel said.

It also reported that a fifth suicide bomb attack on another mosque was foiled in the northern city of Saada — a Houthi stronghold.

In the Badr mosque, the first bomber was caught by guards searching worshippers at the gate, where he managed to detonate his device. In the ensuing panic, a second bomber entered the mosque and blew himself up amid the crowd, according to the official news agency SABA.

"I fell on the ground and when I regained consciousness I found myself lying in a lake of blood," one survivor, Ahmed al-Gabri, told The Associated Press. Two worshippers next to him were killed in the explosions and another died when one of the mosque's glass chandeliers fell on him, al-Gabri said.

Another survivor, Sadek al-Harithi, said the explosions were like "an earthquake where I felt the ground split and swallow everyone."

If Friday's bombings were carried out by Islamic State group supporters, it could be intended as a dramatic signal to al-Qaida, the group's rival — effectively a challenge over turf. That raises the possibility of intra-jihadi fighting as the two compete for recruits by showing who can unleash the worst bloodshed.

In its claim of responsibility, an alleged Islamic State affiliate calling itself "Sanaa Province" warned of an "upcoming flood" of attacks targeting the Houthi rebels. "The soldiers of the Islamic State ... will not rest until we have uprooted" the Houthis, it said. The claim could not be independently confirmed and did not give concrete proof of IS involvement.

The statement was posted on the same web bulletin board where the Islamic State claimed responsibility for Wednesday's deadly attack on a museum in Tunisia.

In Washington, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the U.S. had seen no indications of an operational link between the Islamic State group and Friday's attacks. He said the U.S. was investigating to see whether the Islamic State branch in Yemen has the command-and-control structure in place to substantiate its claim of responsibility.

Earnest said it was plausible that the Islamic State was falsely claiming responsibility. "It does appear that these kinds of claims are often made for a perception that it benefits their propaganda efforts," Earnest said.

In recent months, there have been several online statements by individual Yemeni militants declaring allegiance to the Islamic State group. Its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, formally accepted their oaths and declared a "province" of the Islamic State in Yemen in November.

He and his deputies in Iraq have vowed to strike against the Houthis in Yemen. That has raised questions whether direct operational links have also arisen. For example, in Libya, where the Islamic State also declared official "provinces," fighters and officials are known to have been sent from the group's core to build the local branch.

It also has fomented a rivalry with al-Qaida, with Islamic State leaders mocking the terror network for failing to stop Houthi advances in Yemen. Al-Qaida has denounced the Islamic State declaration of a caliphate in areas of Iraq and Syria under its control and accuses the group of "driving a wedge" among jihadis.

In a further sign of the country's chaos, al-Qaida's branch of the country took control of the southern city of al-Houta on Friday, Yemeni security officials said. Al-Qaida militants driving pickup trucks and flying black flags swept through the city, which is the capital of Lahj province. They took over the main security barracks, the governor's office, and the intelligence headquarters, which houses prisons with al-Qaida detainees, the officials said.

Most of the security forces in the city — loyalists of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh — surrendered to the militants without resistance. The militants killed 21 members of the security forces who resisted at the governor's office, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Oldest female veteran dies at 108 in San Antonio

The nation's oldest woman veteran, Lucy Coffey, died Thursday in San Antonio. She was 108.

A World War II veteran, Coffey met Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama last summer in the White House as part of a final visit she wanted to make to Washington, D.C.

"I am so honored to have met this incredible lady," Bexar County veterans service officer Queta Marquez said. "She was truly a pioneer, and full of life and spunk."

Coffey died overnight in her sleep, Marquez said, adding that she had been sick this week and suffered a chronic cough.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete. A memorial service in San Antonio is planned before Coffey is laid to rest with her family in Indiana.

Only one other veteran, also a Texan, was older than Coffey. Richard Overton, a Bastrop County native, was born three days before her in May 1906.

A small-town girl from a farm in Martinsville, Indiana, Coffey had a sense of adventure. She left the farm for Chicago, then moved to Dallas, where she was working at an A&P supermarket on Dec. 7, 1941 — the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

After the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps was created, Coffey quit the A&P in 1943 and put on the uniform. The war took her to the Pacific and, in time, Japan, where she spent a decade before moving to San Antonio.

Last summer, fellow veterans in Austin and San Antonio worked to help her make an Honor Flight to Washington. While in the capital, she saw the Women's Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. The weekend was capped by a visit to the White House, where Coffey and Biden spent a half-hour in the West Wing.

Obama also dropped by to meet her.

"We spent some time together and, you know, I know she doesn't speak, but she spoke to me, " Biden said.

Coffey also was honored late last year at a Spurs game, getting to meet both coach Gregg Popovich and her favorite player, Tony Parker.

Coffey had a simple reason for joining the Honor Flight, an all-expense paid salute to World War II veterans.

"I'd like to go to see things that are there that were not there before, " Coffey explained.

"It's been a long time since I've been in Washington, but I would like to go to see the things that are there."

sigc@express-news.net

Federal watchdog: DOD slow in addressing sexual assault of men

Although the Department of Defense has taken numerous steps to address sexual assaults of servicemembers in general, it still doesn’t have a clear plan for responding specifically to attacks on men, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released Thursday.

“DOD has taken steps to provide and improve the availability of medical and mental health care for all sexual assault victims, but DOD’s Health Affairs office has not systematically identified whether male victims have any gender-specific needs,” the report concluded.

Although the problem of sexual assault of female servicemembers has been in the spotlight for several years, sexual assault of their male counterparts has received less publicity — even though the incidents are quite common.

About 3,200 male servicemembers reported sexual assault during fiscal years 2008 through 2014, the GAO said.

But that’s regarded as a highly underreported number. A Rand Corp. survey last year estimated 9,000 to 13,000 active-duty men were sexually assaulted during the year prior to the survey. About 2,500 to 5,500 of those were described as “penetrative” sexual assaults.

The GAO estimated that, at most, 13 percent of males reported assaults, compared with at least 40 percent of female servicemembers.

“DOD has reported data on the gender of military sexual assault victims since 2008, but it has not used all these data to inform program decision making or established a plan to do so,” the report said. “Thus, without a plan for how it will use data in making decisions about program development, DOD risks leaving important issues, such as those related to male victims, unaddressed.”

Men make up about 85 percent of the active-duty force.

The DOD has implemented a “gender-neutral” program for preventing and responding to the problem of sexual assault, an approach that does not take into consideration the significantly lower rates of reporting assault by men compared with women.

The difference in reporting “suggest that male victims of sexual assault may not have a similar level of confidence as do female victims in the process of reporting a sexual assault within the department,” the GAO said.

The DOD has taken some steps in the past year to address male sexual assault. In May, it directed the services to implement methods that encourage male victims to report assault and seek care.

The DOD, however, has not systematically evaluated whether male servicemembers who have been sexually assaulted have any gender-specific needs, the report said.

Interviews by the GAO with two clinicians at the Veterans Administration Center for Sexual Trauma Services in Bay Pines, Fla., and other published studies suggest that men have specific needs and responses to sexual assault, the report said.

Male victims are “more likely than women to manifest their trauma externally through problems with behavior control, interpersonal relationships, and sexual dysfunction,” the report said.

Male victims are likely to experience shame and question their “masculinity.” Heterosexual victims often question their sexuality.

The military culture can also pose problems unique to men.

“We found that gender has played a significant role in defining a servicemember’s position and the opportunities that are available to him or her in the U.S. military, and such distinctions have been a catalyst for the long-standing debate over the role of and occupations open to female servicemembers,” the report said.

Traditional gender stereotypes also stand in the way of men reporting assaults because the victims “contend with myths of male strength and sexuality, which lead many to believe that ‘real’ men do not get raped and that males raped by another man must be homosexual.”

“These traits are heightened in the military environment that, according to DOD’s April 2014 sexual assault prevention strategy, idealizes confidence, decisiveness, and strength, and that until 2011, had a policy of initiating separation of servicemembers who committed homosexual acts,” the report said.

Finally, the report advised the DOD to better communicate the issue of male sexual assault to the troops, noting that public service posters by the services tended to emphasize women as the victims.

“DOD has not clearly depicted male victims in the communications to servicemembers because it has seen its program as gender-neutral and because of its focus on female victims,” the report said.

olson.wyatt@stripes.com

Twitter: @WyattWOlson

Oldest woman veteran dies at 108 in San Antonio

The nation's oldest woman veteran, Lucy Coffey, died Thursday in San Antonio. She was 108.

A World War II veteran, Coffey met Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama last summer in the White House as part of a final visit she wanted to make to Washington, D.C.

"I am so honored to have met this incredible lady," Bexar County veterans service officer Queta Marquez said. "She was truly a pioneer, and full of life and spunk."

Coffey died overnight in her sleep, Marquez said, adding that she had been sick this week and suffered a chronic cough.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete. A memorial service in San Antonio is planned before Coffey is laid to rest with her family in Indiana.

Only one other veteran, also a Texan, was older than Coffey. Richard Overton, a Bastrop County native, was born three days before her in May 1906.

A small-town girl from a farm in Martinsville, Indiana, Coffey had a sense of adventure. She left the farm for Chicago, then moved to Dallas, where she was working at an A&P supermarket on Dec. 7, 1941 — the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

After the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps was created, Coffey quit the A&P in 1943 and put on the uniform. The war took her to the Pacific and, in time, Japan, where she spent a decade before moving to San Antonio.

Last summer, fellow veterans in Austin and San Antonio worked to help her make an Honor Flight to Washington. While in the capital, she saw the Women's Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. The weekend was capped by a visit to the White House, where Coffey and Biden spent a half-hour in the West Wing.

Obama also dropped by to meet her.

"We spent some time together and, you know, I know she doesn't speak, but she spoke to me, " Biden said.

Coffey also was honored late last year at a Spurs game, getting to meet both coach Gregg Popovich and her favorite player, Tony Parker.

Coffey had a simple reason for joining the Honor Flight, an all-expense paid salute to World War II veterans.

"I'd like to go to see things that are there that were not there before, " Coffey explained.

"It's been a long time since I've been in Washington, but I would like to go to see the things that are there."

sigc@express-news.net

Navy veteran takes on Saipan's restriction on handguns

A Navy veteran and his wife are challenging a ban on handguns in Saipan, arguing in federal court that the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands is bound by the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.

“I’ve always been a firm believer in our constitutional rights, whether that’s freedom of speech, religion or the right to keep and bear arms or right to privacy, and I’m pretty sure that what I’m doing in this case is in defense of those convictions,” said David J. Radich, 44, a former petty officer third class.

His wife, Li-Rong Radich, was severely beaten by an intruder in 2010, a trauma that her husband says might have been prevented if she had a handgun.

While the islands’ citizens can receive permits for a select few long guns, the law prevents them from possessing those for self-defense, even at home. Regulation of handguns varies in the four other inhabited U.S. territories. With differing degrees of regulation, they are allowed in America’s only other commonwealth territory, Puerto Rico, as well as in Guam and the Virgin Islands, but handguns are banned in American Samoa.

Injured in service

Born in California, Radich, a former boatswain’s mate, served aboard the USS Vandegrift, a guided-missile frigate that participated in Operation Desert Shield’s Maritime Interception Operations in 1990. After a ship’s rope crushed his right hand, Radich lost his pinky and required extensive physical therapy. Although he was subsequently found fit for duty, he left the Navy in 1993 and enrolled in college, earning a degree in history and education. He taught school in the Detroit area.

Radich said he became comfortable around handguns after a doctor suggested that holding and firing one would be therapeutic for his hand. He bought one and used it for target practice.

Radich said he eventually wearied of the cold weather and general decay of Detroit and in 2006 took a job teaching earth science to seventh- and eighth-graders in Tinian, a sparsely populated island near Saipan that’s part of the Northern Marianas. He took a job as an environmental consultant on Saipan in June 2008.

Shortly thereafter, he met Li-Rong and they were soon married.

About 45 minutes after he arrived at work one morning in 2010, his wife called, sobbing, saying she’d been attacked. Radich called 911 and rushed home.

“I found my wife on the floor of the apartment in really bad shape,” Radich said. “Her face was unrecognizable.”

The attacker had broken into their home as Li-Rong was making breakfast, then began beating her and demanding money but ran out after she began screaming loudly, Radich said. She suffered broken ribs, an orbital fracture, bruises to the face and a concussion.

‘It’s an equalizer’

Radich said he began thinking about getting a handgun for his wife.

“The guy who came into my house was about 6 foot, maybe 200 pounds,” he said. “My wife is about 4-foot-11 and weighs about 100 pounds.

“I thought, well, it’s an equalizer. If my wife had had the ability to deter a crime …,” Radich paused. “Most people who defend themselves with a firearm never actually fire it. It’s the presence of the gun in the hand of the would-be victim that usually deters the crime from happening.”

Radich said he had general knowledge that handguns weren’t permitted on the islands and subsequently learned that private ownership was limited to .22-caliber rifles and .410-gauge shotguns.

“I’d contemplated getting a shotgun,” Radich said. “I’d looked at the application and didn’t apply because it says on the application, ‘Note: Self-defense or home-defense is not an acceptable reason.’ I wasn’t going to lie on the form, so I did not apply at the time.”

Seeking advice, Radich contacted the Second Amendment Foundation, a Washington state-based nonprofit promoting gun rights.

Court decisions cited

Radich said the foundation advised him to apply for ownership of a handgun because two relatively recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions had established the right of private ownership. In District of Columbia vs. Heller, the Supreme Court in 2008 upheld a lower court’s decision that the District’s law banning all handguns was a violation of the Second Amendment.

“The District’s total ban on handgun possession in the home amounts to a prohibition on an entire class of ‘arms’ that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense,” the narrow 5-4 decision concluded.

When it became clear the Department of Public Safety was not going to approve the permit, Radich’s attorneys in September filed a complaint in federal district court claiming the commissioner of the Department of Public Safety was enforcing an unconstitutional ban of handguns in the Northern Marianas through the Commonwealth Weapons Control Act. The act bans importation, manufacture, sale and ownership of handguns.

Radich’s attorneys argue that the Second Amendment must be followed because the covenant signed by the United States and the Northern Mariana Islands in 1975 that created the commonwealth provided that Amendments 1 through 9 are applicable there.

James Zarones, the assistant attorney general representing the government, has argued that the Supreme Court gave handguns constitutional protection because they were widely used by citizens in America’s 50 states.

“If the widespread usage of handguns for self-defense justifies their constitutional protection, then it logically follows that the Supreme Court would have denied constitutional protection to handguns if they had never been used by law-abiding citizens for self-protection,” Zarones told a reporter for the Saipan Tribune.

But the islands’ people have never owned handguns, and therefore the commonwealth’s citizens have never “considered the handgun to be the quintessential self-defense weapon,” he told the newspaper.

Jurisdiction ruling

Earlier this month, a U.S. District Court judge dismissed the case because the Department of Public Safety commissioner does not have jurisdiction over importation of handguns into the Northern Marianas. The judge gave the Radiches the option to continue their suit by filing an amended complaint that includes the import ban and names the Customs Service as a defendant.

The amended complaint is expected to be filed before Tuesday.

Asked whether he’s considered the Pandora’s box he might be opening in Saipan if he prevails, Radich said: “I think people are responsible for their own actions. Most of the people I know here are good people.

“I think it’s even an offensive argument because it implies that the people here are somehow incapable of handling freedom,” he said. “I think the people who are on this island are better than that.”

olson.wyatt@stripes.com

Twitter: @WyattWOlson

Okinawa man arrested over US embassy, Caroline Kennedy threats

16 minutes ago

U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy stresses the importance of the partnership between the U.S. and Japan in the success of promoting equal opportunities for women worldwide during a news conference Thursday, March 19, 2015, at the Iikura Guest House in Tokyo. At left is Japanese first lady Akie Abe.
Eric Guzman/Stars and Stripes

By Andy Sharp

Bloomberg News (TNS)

Published: March 19, 2015

TOKYO (Tribune Content Agency) — Japanese police arrested a resident of Okinawa over death threats against U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, as an almost two-decade row over the expansion of an American military base rumbles on.

The 52-year-old man used a public phone in Naha, the capital of the southern Japanese island, to make anonymous calls in English and threatened to blow up the embassy building in Tokyo, the Jiji news agency reported. The U.S. State Department welcomed the arrest as a “positive step.”

The threat comes after the U.S. envoy to South Korea, Mark Lippert, was slashed in the face before a speech in Seoul earlier this month, highlighting the risks faced by diplomats globally. It was accompanied by a threat to blow up the U.S. Marine base in Okinawa, where expansion plans are being protested by local residents who say they bear an unfair share of the burden of the American military presence in Japan.

“We take any threats to U.S. diplomats and U.S. diplomatic facilities very seriously,” Jen Psaki, a State Department spokeswoman, told reporters in Washington. “We’ve been working with the Japanese government on these threats since prior to Ambassador Lippert’s attack.”

Protests have been flaring at the Okinawan marine base since the resumption of work to reclaim land to build new runways at the facility, meant to replace Futenma Air Station in a crowded city on the island. Okinawa hosts about three-quarters of the U.S. bases in Japan on only 0.6 percent of the country’s land mass.

Kennedy met with Michelle Obama on March 19 as part of the U.S. first lady’s trip to Japan and Cambodia to draw attention to the Let Girls Learn education initiative. The ambassador is scheduled to attend a ceremony Saturday to mark the 70th anniversary of the battle of Iwo Jima.

Kennedy, 57, became ambassador to Japan in November 2013. She is the only surviving child of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963.

©2015 Bloomberg News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Goodbye, JIEDDO: Organization that fought roadside bombs is fading into DOD bureaucracy

WASHINGTON — As U.S. casualties mounted in Iraq in 2006, the Pentagon established a new organization with a lofty goal: defeating improvised explosive devices, the ubiquitous bombs that were killing hundreds of U.S. troops and maiming thousands more each year.

Top defense officials compared the scope of Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) to the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb in World War II. They drew the parallel to convey the broad nature of the threat and the time and money it would take to address it, including attacking the insurgent networks that build IEDs and training troops to deal with them better.

Nine years after JIEDDO's creation, however, it will soon fade into the Pentagon's bureaucracy. One reading of this, as Military Times noted last week, is that JIEDDO's main functions will become permanent. But it also means, as Military.com highlighted, that JIEDDO itself will be diminished, with a smaller budget, a new name and fewer employees in a combat support organization that falls under Frank Kendall, the defense undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics.

The details are still being worked out, but it is effectively the end of JIEDDO as we know it.

The organization's legacy is mixed. On one hand, JIEDDO's creation meant that there was a Defense Department organization that could rapidly sort through and acquire technology to help troops find IEDs on the battlefield. Examples include the Thor, a backpack-like radio that jammed radio-controlled IEDs, and the variety of metal detectors that U.S. troops used to search for bombs. Equipment like that was considered key, especially as insurgents constantly adopted new techniques to make the bombs hard to find.

On the other hand, JIEDDO grew to become a behemoth with at least 2,000 employees, a multi-billion dollar budget that wasn't closely scrutinized by outside organizations. For example, a 2012 report by the Government Accountability Organization, the investigative arm of Congress, noted the organization had not yet developed a comprehensive counter-IED strategy and that other Defense Department organizations, independent of JIEDDO, were still developing equipment to find roadside bombs.

"Without actionable goals and objectives established by DOD, JIEDDO, and other DOD components cannot tie individual performance measures to DOD's desired outcomes," the GAO found. "As a result, DOD and external stakeholders are left without a comprehensive, data-driven assessment as to whether DOD's counter-IED efforts are achieving DOD's mission."

"Furthermore, without a means to measure the success of JIEDDO's efforts in achieving DOD's counter-IED mission, JIEDDO's basis for determining how to invest its resources among its three lines of organizational effort — to attack the network, defeat the device, and train the force — is limited," the report added.

But a 2013 report by the Rand Corp., a think tank, requested by the Pentagon at the direction of Congress said that although the services were developing their own counter-IED capabilities, they rarely overlapped directly with JIEDDO's and were more often complementary.

"The overall conclusion is that while many Service organizations are developing and fielding C-IED training capabilities using functions and processes similar to JIEDDO, the processes in place provide effective coordination and integration and mitigate the risk of inefficiency," Rand's study found. "JIEDDO's success in this respect may also be a function of its ability to perform all the elements of capability development within a single organization, rather than spreading functions across several organizations, as is the case with the Service models."

Other organizations will continue to look for new ways to ferret out IEDs. The Defenses Advanced Research Projects Agency, for example, announced in 2012 that it was looking for a way to find bombs in mud, meat or animal carcasses, materials that current technology couldn't effectively penetrate.

Finding IEDs remains difficult work that relies just as much on rank-and-file soldiers and Marines talking to villagers as it does expensive equipment. IEDs will present a challenge for a long time to come.

Report: Army Alaska command investigating ‘Racial Thursdays’

The Army is investigating a platoon of soldiers in Alaska reportedly given a free pass to use racial slurs against each other in what was known as “Racial Thursdays.”

The soldiers belong to 2nd Platoon, C Company, 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, according to a member of the unit who spoke to Army Times.

U.S. Army Alaska spokesman Lt. Col. Alan Brown confirmed to the Times and other outlets that a commander’s inquiry was launched last week.

The battalion belongs to the 25th Infantry Division’s 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team at Fort Wainwright.

“When I first got to my unit, someone said we should do ‘Racial Thursdays’ because it’s been a tradition,” said the soldier, who asked to remain anonymous. “It’s something they made up where you can say any racist remark you want without any consequences. The platoon sergeant said no, but [it’s] still going on.”

The soldier, a staff sergeant, added: “We’ve had soldiers almost fight over the crap that’s going on here.”

According to Army Times, the NCO, who is black, said no one has directed any racial slurs towards him because he made it clear he would not participate or put up with the practice.

But he also said he felt compelled to bring the issue to the media because the unit “has a bad habit of sweeping things under the rug.”

The unit is the same unit that Pvt. Danny Chen belonged to.

Chen, who belonged to C Company, committed suicide in 2011 while deployed to Afghanistan. Authorities said Chen killed himself because he was hazed over his Chinese ancestry.

At least eight soldiers were either court-martialed or administratively punished in the case.

“There is absolutely no connection between this current investigation and the case of Pvt. Danny Chen,” Brown told the Times, noting that leadership had turned over several times since the Chen situation.

The NCO who spoke to Army Times said he filed an equal opportunity complaint against his platoon leader, who allegedly encouraged “Racial Thursdays” as a way to build morale and camaraderie.

Another soldier in the unit, a junior enlisted who also asked to remain anonymous, verified what the NCO told Army Times.

“The way it was put to me was it was a tradition among the guys,” the junior soldier said. “Every Thursday, they wouldn’t make you, you didn’t have to participate, but they’d remind you. Everybody would get a joke in or one person would be picked out and everybody would say jokes to that one person.”

The junior soldier said he was afraid to speak up against the practice.

Angst among allies: Japan-South Korea rift complicates Pacific pivot

WASHINGTON — With the leaders of Japan and South Korea both set to visit Washington in the coming months, President Barack Obama has a fresh chance to nudge the estranged U.S. allies to heal a bitter rift that has put a damper on his effort to boost America's role in Asia.

Obama brought Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korea's Park Geun-hye together for a three-way meeting a year ago, but direct talks between the two nations have failed to achieve progress on the thorny historical issues that divide them.

The Japan-South Korea rift has complicated U.S. efforts to forge a stronger security alliance against common foe North Korea and to U.S. strategy aimed at countering China's rise. Japan and South Korea host 80,000 U.S. troops, the backbone of America's military presence in the Asia-Pacific.

The U.S. administration's former top diplomat for East Asia, Kurt Campbell, has proposed appointing a high-level envoy to shuttle between Tokyo and Seoul. But the administration remains wary of wading into the historical minefield that underlies the acrimony and which will be in the spotlight ahead of commemorations this summer to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Japan colonized the Korean peninsula and occupied parts of China, often brutally, before and during the war. Historians say tens of thousands of women, including Japanese, Koreans and others from around Asia, were sent to front-line military brothels to provide sex to Japanese soldiers.

The plight of the so-called "comfort women" stirs deep emotions in South Korea. Two years into her presidency, Park Geun-hye has yet to hold a summit with Abe, a nationalist who raised hackles when he visited a controversial Tokyo shrine in December 2013 where war criminals are among those memorialized.

Obama will get another shot at impressing the importance of reconciliation when Abe visits Washington in late April, and when Park follows, likely in June. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel urged both sides this week to try to improve strained bilateral ties, calling the tension between them a "strategic liability" for all three countries.

South Korea wants Japan to take legal responsibility for its military's mistreatment of the comfort women, but Tokyo says it's unfair to make that demand as issues of compensation were settled between the two governments when they resumed diplomatic relations in 1965.

Richard Lawless, a former undersecretary of defense for the Asia-Pacific, said he sees little chance of improvement in Japan-South Korea relations in the next two years.

"Left unattended, this situation is going to get worse," he said.

A senior State Department official said U.S. officials don't see the two countries as wanting a special envoy and even question whether an envoy would lead to a breakthrough. The official, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomatic discussions, said both Seoul and Tokyo have welcomed U.S. advice but think it's up to them to reach a resolution.

The risks of weighing in on highly charged issues of history was apparent after a recent speech about Northeast Asia by Wendy Sherman, the fourth-ranking U.S. diplomat, provoked heated debate in Seoul. Without naming a particular government, Sherman criticized political leaders who earn "cheap applause" by vilifying old enemies. South Korean politicians and media questioned whether she was siding with Japan.

For its part, Japan took offense when the U.S. criticized Abe for visiting the Yasukuni shrine, and it has bristled at Korean-Americans setting up monuments to comfort women on U.S. soil and drawing attention to wartime atrocities.

Despite the rift, U.S. officials and experts say Japan and South Korea are still willing to cooperate on a working level.

Late last year, they signed a trilateral intelligence-sharing agreement with the U.S. to exchange information on North Korean nuclear and missile threats. And this weekend, the foreign ministers of China, Japan and South Korea will hold their first meeting in three years, which could help tamp down political tensions.

Associated Press writers Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul and Ken Moritsugu in Tokyo contributed to this report.

Fayetteville veterans push to legalize marijuana for pain management

Edwin McClannan lives in pain every day.

The retired Army first sergeant injured his spine during a parachute accident and, in the years since, has been prescribed a laundry list of medications to help him cope.

But the best relief he has found has not come from a pill. It came in the form of a cupcake.

McClannan mistakenly ate the sweet, brought home by a son and baked with marijuana, several years ago.

It was one of the few times he has had real relief from the pain since before being crushed under 125 pounds of military equipment in a jump.

"It's all over my body. I'm in pain right now," McClannan said. "I can't sleep at night because of the pain."

McClannan, like more than a dozen others socializing in a Fayetteville restaurant last month, is part of a growing group of veterans who have found marijuana to be a relief from pain, post-traumatic stress and depression.

Now, they are hoping to push state lawmakers to help them get legal access to the drug.

"For me, any break in the pain is critical," McClannan said. "It's very attractive to me. But I'm one of those anal-retentive, law-abiding citizens."

The veterans, mostly retired senior noncommissioned officers or officers, have something else in common: They are Republicans.

The Fayetteville veterans are the core of the growing North Carolina Republicans Against Marijuana Prohibition, or N.C. RAMP.

The group's president, David Hargitt, said they don't fit the old marijuana advocate stereotypes. And he hopes that helps.

The push for medical marijuana in North Carolina has previously been fought by Democrats. Hargitt said he hopes the group's input might help turn the tide in their favor.

Hargitt and other N.C. RAMP leaders attended this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering attended by conservative activists and elected officials. They plan to bring a medical marijuana resolution to the N.C. GOP convention later this year.

Hargitt also has become a regular face at the state legislature, promoting medical marijuana every Tuesday.

N.C. RAMP will be part of a larger legislative outreach day Thursday in Raleigh hosted by N.C. NORML - the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws - and the N.C. Cannabis Patients Network.

The legislative rally starts at 10 a.m. in the Legislative Office Building auditorium.

Members will lobby legislators to support a medical marijuana bill.

One such bill, House Bill 78, was introduced last month by Rep. Kelly Alexander, a Mecklenburg County Democrat. Alexander's latest bill is his fourth attempt at legalizing medical marijuana.

For the first time, it has attracted more than a dozen co-sponsors, including Rep. Garland E. Pierce, a Democrat who represents Scotland, Hoke, Richmond and Robeson counties.

But what the bill lacks is bipartisan support in a Republican-controlled legislature. None of the co-sponsors is Republican.

Hargitt has said a similar bill may be introduced by a Republican. He said the issue is becoming increasingly attractive to Republicans, for more than just the medicinal benefits.

Reports have indicated medical marijuana could bring in an additional $100 million in tax revenue in North Carolina.

Hargitt said marijuana prohibition has been a "fiscal disaster" that fuels border violence, creates unnecessary criminal records and cuts off the injured from effective medicine.

Changing landscape

Hargitt said his group is part of a growing trend of more acceptance of marijuana among the Republican Party.

"Republican opinion is changing," he said, citing a poll conducted earlier this year in North Carolina.

A January survey of North Carolina voters by Raleigh-based Public Policy Polling found 69 percent of those asked thought a doctor should be allowed to prescribe marijuana for medical use. Another 10 percent were "not sure."

Among those supporting medical marijuana?

The practice received 57 percent support from those who said they voted for Republican Mitt Romney in 2012, 61 percent support from self-described "somewhat conservatives" and 47 percent from those identifying as "very conservative."

The same poll found divisions in how far marijuana access should go.

While it showed majority support for medical marijuana, the survey found 37 percent of respondents supported full legalization, with 10 percent "not sure" and 53 percent against.

If North Carolina passes a medical marijuana bill, it would join a majority of states that have adopted some form of medical marijuana law.

Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have such laws. Another 12 allow the consumption of a specific form of cannabis known as cannabidiol, or CBD, commonly used to treat seizure disorders.

But marijuana remains illegal under federal law, meaning veterans who receive care from the Department of Veterans Affairs, even if they live in a state that allows medical marijuana, may not be able to use it.

But that could change under a bill submitted to Congress this month. The bipartisan federal legislation would end the federal ban on medical marijuana, instead leaving the decision to the states.

The bill is sponsored by Sens. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican; Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat; and Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat.

The bill would allow VA doctors to prescribe medical marijuana and reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I drug, defined as one with no medical value, to a Schedule II drug. It would open the doors to medical marijuana research.

"For far too long, the government has enforced unnecessary laws that have restricted the ability of the medical community to determine the medicinal value of marijuana and have prohibited Americans from receiving essential care that would alleviate their chronic pain and suffering," Paul said in a news release announcing the bill.

A separate bill, introduced in the U.S. House in February, would allow VA physicians to discuss and recommend medical marijuana to their patients.

"Post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury can be more damaging and harmful than injuries that are visible from the outside," Rep. Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat who introduced the bill, said in a statement. "And they can have a devastating effect on a veteran's family. We should be allowing these wounded veterans access to the medicine that will help them survive and thrive, including medical marijuana - not treating them like criminals and forcing them into the shadows. It's shameful."

Co-sponsors of the House bill include Democrats and Republicans, including North Carolina Republican Walter Jones.

Tough choices

For now, veterans near Fort Bragg have to make a tough decision.

They could move to a state that allows medical marijuana; break the law and risk the loss of federal benefits and criminal prosecution; or avoid the drug they have found to best help ease chronic pain, depression and the complex terrors of post-traumatic stress.

Those torn include a retired colonel who said he was taking 17 medications to treat traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress. The medications were taking a toll on his body, harming his kidneys and intestines but not solving his pain. Their side effects left him home-bound and numb, his wife said.

Then he tried marijuana.

"I'm able to function and move outside in the world and not feel threatened or to be in such a hyper vigilant state," he said.

"It works for me," said the veteran, who asked not to be identified. "I use it. But I don't like feeling like a criminal."

The veteran said his doctor told him to look at moving to a state that allows medical marijuana.

"Instead of moving, we're working towards making it legal now," his wife said.

Moira Holman is a Fayetteville veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress related to a sexual assault while she was in the Army and has a bad back from a jump gone wrong. She said marijuana is one of the things that has kept her going.

Holman is a belly dancing instructor and a proud Republican. She said marijuana helps her be a productive member of society again.

"If I had stayed on medication that I was being prescribed for the pain, I would never be able to leave the house," she said. "I would never be able to drive a car."

"Marijuana has saved my life, because I can function on it," she said.

Another veteran, who served 19 years before breaking his back when an improvised explosive device blew up his armored vehicle in Iraq in 2009, said he, too, was prescribed "a ridiculous amount of opiates" to treat his pain.

"It really just clouds everything," he said of the painkillers. "It takes the edge off the pain, but it's not like it's not there. It's just a horrible feeling."

Four months ago, the veteran, who also asked not to be named so as not to risk losing VA benefits, tried marijuana.

It was difficult, he said. The soldier said he has been anti-drugs, including marijuana, all his life. And he said he is about as far from "hippies and high schoolers" as one could get.

But he couldn't ignore the stories he had heard of others like him who found relief through pot.

"I was absolutely skeptical," the retired sergeant first class said. "But I was sick of the opiates."

Now, he smokes half a marijuana cigarette each morning and evening. That has allowed him to cut back on 90 percent of his medication.

"It's a huge weight off my shoulders," he said. "I'm hoping by summer to be narcotic free."

"I'm not going to say it's a miracle drug, because it's not," the veteran said. "But it sure has helped me."

"I almost feel like a normal person again."

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©2015 The Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, N.C.)

Visit The Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, N.C.) at www.fayobserver.com

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Michelle Obama visits Japan to showcase girls' education aid

TOKYO — U.S. first lady Michelle Obama is visiting Japan and Cambodia, who are among Asia's richest and poorest nations, to highlight cooperation on helping girls finish their educations.

The five-day trip that began in Tokyo on Wednesday is Mrs. Obama's first visit to Japan.

In Tokyo she plans to announce, along with Japanese first lady Akie Abe, a partnership supporting girls' education. The two will also meet with Japanese university students.

Mrs. Obama will also have separate meetings with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and with Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko. She will visit historic sites in the ancient capital, Kyoto, before traveling to Cambodia.

Japan plans to cooperate with the "Let Girls Learn" initiative announced by President Barack Obama and his wife. The community-based aid program, led by the Peace Corps and similar aid organizations, is meant to help get 62 million girls back into school.

White House staff said the program also reflects a U.S. commitment to be more involved in the Asia-Pacific region.

Mrs. Obama will be the first sitting U.S. first lady to visit Cambodia, one of 11 countries participating in the "Let Girls Learn" initiative.

Cambodia's government is led by Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has a reputation for ruthlessness and little tolerance for dissent. The country also has child prostitution and human trafficking problems.

Evan Medeiros, senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council, told reporters that while in Cambodia, Mrs. Obama plans to discuss the need for open and inclusive politics and highlight basic values and principles that are important to the U.S.

Mrs. Obama's visit is seen in Japan as a "makeup" call after she did not accompany her husband during his state visit to Japan last year. Abe is soon due to make a reciprocal visit to the U.S.

In an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal earlier this week, Mrs. Obama called it a "tragic waste of human potential" when 62 million girls worldwide are not in school.

"It is also a serious public-health challenge, a drag on national economies and global prosperity, and a threat to the security of countries around the world, including our own.

"This visit is part of a journey that began decades ago, back when I was a little girl," Mrs. Obama wrote in her online travel journal.

YouTube celebrity Michelle Phan is joining Mrs. Obama in Tokyo to help spread awareness for the Let Girls Learn campaign and field questions to the first lady submitted through Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

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Associated Press writers Miki Toda in Tokyo and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.

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Navy SEAL dies in skydiving accident in California

By AMY TAXIN

The Associated Press

Published: March 18, 2015

PERRIS, Calif. — A Navy SEAL was killed when his parachute malfunctioned during training in Southern California on Wednesday, Navy officials said.

The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to provide details beyond a brief statement issued by Naval Special Warfare Group One, which is the Coronado, Calif.-based SEALs group to which the sailor was assigned.

An American flag was draped over the body after the accident as emergency responders stood nearby.

The skydiver was reported down shortly after 9 a.m. near state Route 74 in an unincorporated area near Perris, where much of Southern California's skydiving — and many of its accidents — take place.

The sailor died of injuries sustained in the parachute jump, and his name would be released after next of kin were notified, the Naval Special Warfare Group statement said.

The Riverside County Fire Department responded to the scene, but a spokeswoman referred all questions to the military. The facility, Skydive Perris, also deferred to the military and had no comment.

AP National Security Writer Robert Burns contributed to this story from Washington.