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

Indonesia: Bodies found near site where plane disappeared

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Six bloated bodies and debris seen floating in Indonesian waters Tuesday painfully ended the mystery of AirAsia Flight 8501, which crashed into the Java Sea with 162 people aboard and was lost to searchers for more than two days.

The bodies were found about 100 miles from land and 6 miles from the plane's last communication with air-traffic control. The plane vanished Sunday on its way from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore after encountering storm clouds.

The six bodies were recovered, swollen but intact, and taken to an Indonesian navy ship, First Adm. Sigit Setiayanta, the Naval Aviation Center commander at the Surabaya air force base, told reporters. The corpses did not have life jackets on.

Search and rescue teams were lowered on ropes from a hovering helicopter to retrieve the corpses, their efforts hindered by 2-meter-high (6-foot) waves and strong winds, National Search and Rescue Director SB Supriyadi told The Associated Press.

The discovery came after several pieces of red, white and black debris were spotted in the Java Sea near Borneo island. AirAsia planes are red and white.

Supriyadi said that from an aircraft above, he said he saw what appeared to be a life jacket and an emergency exit door. More wreckage could be seen beneath the water.

Indonesian television showed a half-naked bloated body of a man whose shirt partially covered his head. The images sent a spasm of pain through family members watching together in a waiting room at the Surabaya airport.

Many screamed and wailed uncontrollably, breaking down into tears while they squeezed each other. One middle-aged man collapsed and had to be out on a stretcher.

AirAsia group CEO Tony Fernandes tweeted, "My heart is filled with sadness for all the families involved in QZ 8501. On behalf of AirAsia my condolences to all. Words cannot express how sorry I am."

Ifan Joko, 54, said he was still hoping for a miracle. His brother, Charlie Gunawan, along with his wife, their three children and two other family members, were traveling to Singapore on the plane to ring in the New Year.

"I know the plane has crashed, but I cannot believe my brother and his family are dead," he said, wiping a tear. "... We still pray they are alive."

Monument unveiled in Korea for Medal of Honor recipient Emil Kapaun

SEOUL, South Korea — A chaplain who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for refusing to abandon troops during combat finally has been recognized with a monument in the country where he died more than six decades ago.

The dark gray granite stone, erected by U.S. Army Garrison Daegu in front of the Camp Walker chapel, includes an image of Capt. Emil Kapaun supporting an injured soldier and the inscription, “He paid the ultimate sacrifice and consecrated the soul of Korea.” The monument, about four feet tall, was unveiled Dec. 19.

It’s the first memorial on the Korean peninsula for Kapaun, who died in a prisoner of war camp in May 1951 after being captured at Unsan the previous November. Although U.S. forces were surrounded and ordered to evacuate, the Roman Catholic priest stayed behind to comfort the wounded, despite the certainty of capture, and made rounds even as hand-to-hand combat broke out between U.S. and Chinese troops.

“We need inspiration and motivation to continue to serve the country,” deputy garrison chaplain Maj. Moon Kim said of Kapaun’s legacy. “People get easily discouraged or demotivated. But we see those forefathers who have gone before us and died, and they inspire us.”

The chaplain, a native of Pilsen, Kan., was awarded the Medal of Honor in April 2013.

“This is the valor we honor today,” President Barack Obama said during the award ceremony, “an American soldier who didn’t fire a gun, but who wielded the mightiest weapon of all: a love for his brothers so pure that he is willing to die so that they might live.”

After being captured, Kapaun pushed aside a Chinese soldier who was about to execute a U.S. soldier, saving his life, according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. Before contracting dysentery and pneumonia and suffering from a blood clot in his leg, Kapaun ministered to other soldiers in the POW camp.

Kim said few South Koreans know Kapaun’s story, though some American troops have heard of him through spots on the American Forces Network or seen his picture in the Camp Walker chapel.

Kapaun Barracks and Kapaun Chapel in Kaiserslautern were named after the chaplain in 1955. Both have since been transferred to the Air Force and renamed Kapaun Air Station. A bust of the chaplain is also located outside the chapel.

Kapaun, whose body is thought to be buried in a mass grave, is being considered by the Vatican for sainthood.

Kim said the priest’s life is an inspiration for military chaplains, “especially when we deploy or go to other places.”

“He gave his life,” he said, so Kapaun is a motivation “to not complain, to do your best. We all need those kinds of heroes.”

rowland.ashley@stripes.com

Twitter: @Rowland_Stripes

Debris spotted off Indonesia coast in search for missing AirAsia jet

SURABAYA, Indonesia — Several pieces of debris seen floating in the sea off Borneo island might be linked to the missing AirAsia jetliner, an Indonesia National Search and Rescue spokesman said Tuesday.

Yusuf Latif said an Indonesian military aircraft saw white, red and black objects, including what appears to be a life jacket, off the coast, about 105 miles south of Pangkalan Bun.

He said the agency has dispatched at least one helicopter to pick up at least 10 pieces of debris to be checked. The items will be taken to the search and rescue coordination post on Belitung island.

"This is the most significant finding, but we cannot confirm anything until the investigation is completed," he said.

The plane with 162 people on board disappeared Sunday on its way from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore after encountering storm clouds. A massive international search effort has been launched since Flight 8501 disappeared from radar over the Java Sea near Belitung island.

The United States announced it was sending the USS Sampson destroyer, joining at least 30 ships, 15 aircraft and seven helicopters in the search for the jet, said Indonesia's Search and Rescue Agency chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo.

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

The plane vanished Sunday halfway into what should have been a two-hour hop from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore. The Airbus A320-200 is believed to have crashed into Indonesia's Java Sea, a busy shipping lane where water on average is only 150 feet deep.

On Monday, searchers made various sightings they thought might be related to the plane, but by Tuesday all had been dismissed.

Soelistyo said an Indonesian navy ship reached the spot where a military craft reported two oil patches in the Java Sea east of Belitung island. It was not jet fuel, or even oil, but coral.

"They were just shadows of two wide shapes of coral clusters that when seen from the air looked like oil spills," he said.

The search has expanded to include not only the sea but nearby land. As the sun rose Tuesday over Pangkalan Bun on the western part of Kalimantan, two Indonesian helicopters flew over the island looking for any sign of wreckage. Two other copters were hundreds of kilometers east over the smaller islands of Bangka and Belitung.

The AirAsia pilots had been worried about the weather on Sunday and had sought permission to climb above threatening clouds, but were denied due to heavy air traffic. Minutes later, the jet was gone from the radar without issuing a distress signal.

Pilots rely on sophisticated weather-radar systems that include a dashboard display of storms and clouds, as well as reports from other crews, to steer around dangerous weather, and it's unlikely that alone would cause the plane to crash.

"A lot more information is available to pilots in the cockpit about weather" than ever, said Deborah Hersman, former chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. But the technology has limits and sometimes information about storms "can be a little bit stale."

The suspected crash caps an astonishingly tragic year for air travel in Southeast Asia, and Malaysia in particular. Malaysia-based AirAsia's loss comes on top of the mystery surround 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 are Indonesians, who are frequent visitors to Singapore, particularly on holidays.

Ruth Natalia Puspitasari, who would have turned 26 on Monday, was among them. Her father, Suyanto, sat with his wife, who was puffy-eyed and coughing, near the family crisis center at Surabaya's airport.

"I don't want to experience the same thing with what happened with Malaysia Airlines," he said as his wife wept. "It could be a long suffering."

Few believe this search will be as perplexing as the ongoing one for Flight 370, which remains a mystery. Authorities suspect the plane was deliberately diverted by someone on board and ultimately lost in a remote area of the Indian Ocean that's thousands of feet deep. Flight 8501 vanished over a heavily traveled sea that is relatively shallow, with no sign of foul play.

The captain, Iryanto, who like many Indonesians uses a single name, had more than 20,000 flying hours, AirAsia said.

People who knew Iryanto recalled that he was an experienced military pilot, flying F-16 fighters before shifting to commercial aviation. His French co-pilot, Remi Plesel, had been in Indonesia three years and loved to fly, his sister, Renee, told France's RTL radio.

"He told me that things were going well, that he'd had a good Christmas. He was happy. The rains were starting," she said. "The weather was bad."

McDowell reported from Jakarta. Associated Press writers Ali Kotarumalos, Niniek Karmini and Margie Mason in Jakarta, Chris Brummitt in Singapore, Joan Lowy in Austin, Texas, Scott Mayerowitz in New York, David Koenig in Dallas and Lori Hinnant in Paris contributed to this report.

UN wants new probe into mysterious crash that killed UN chief Hammarskjold

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. General Assembly voted unanimously Monday to ask Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to appoint an independent panel of experts to examine new information about the mysterious plane crash that killed U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold on a peace mission to newly independent Congo in 1961.

The 193-member world body approved a resolution by consensus encouraging member states to release any relevant records and information on his death in the plane crash over the African bush in Northern Rhodesia — today's Zambia.

The assembly's action follows an independent investigation by a Commission of Jurists released in September 2013 which concluded that "significant new evidence" exists which might shed light on the circumstances of Hammarskjold's death. It said the U.S. National Security Agency may hold crucial evidence, which remains classified.

Hammarskjold was flying into a war zone infested with mercenaries and riven by Cold War tensions.

Congo won its freedom from Belgium in 1960, but foreign multinationals coveted its vast mineral wealth. The country was challenged by a Western-backed insurgency in Katanga, which hosted mining interests belonging to the U.S., Britain, and Belgium. The Western countries were also jockeying for influence with the Soviet Union, which was trying to spread communism to the newly independent nations of Africa.

All four powers had a stake in the outcome of Congo's struggle, and all four have been fingered as potential suspects in Hammarskjold's death.

Three investigations into the tragedy have failed to satisfactorily settle the matter. The publication of "Who Killed Hammarskjold?" by Susan Williams in 2011 set off a renewed round of speculation because it relied on testimony ignored by earlier inquiries.

The resolution approved by the General Assembly requests that the panel appointed by Ban examine the new information and "assess its probative value." It asks the secretary-general to give a progress report to the assembly during its next session which begins in September 2015.

It has long been rumored that Hammarskjold's DC-6 plane was shot down, and the independent commission said recordings of the last minutes of the flight, possibly in the NSA archive, could be key to explaining why the aircraft crashed.

The commission said the NSA reported that two of three documents "responsive" to its request for any radio intercepts were classified "top secret" and could not be released, a decision it is appealing. The status of the third document, which is not held by the NSA, is still unknown, the commission said.

Ban, in a note in March, asked the General Assembly to press several governments, which he didn't identify, to declassify relevant records.

"The unparalleled service and sacrifice of Dag Hammarskjold and his legacy within the United Nations and beyond compels us to seek the whole truth of the circumstances leading to his tragic death and that of the members of the party accompanying him," Ban said.

Hearing set for former Fort Bragg soldier convicted of rapes and murders

A federal court in Kansas has set a February hearing for Ronald A. Gray, a former Fort Bragg soldier sitting on military death row for a series of rapes and murders that began nearly 30 years ago.

Gray is appealing a military court's decision to not grant him extraordinary relief in his attempts to have his death sentence lifted.

The federal case, in U.S. District Court in Kansas, was first filed in 2008 but has sat dormant for nearly two years while he exhausted his military appeals.

Last month, the case was reassigned to Chief Judge J. Thomas Marten, and last week officials set a hearing for Feb. 23.

The 9 a.m. hearing will take place in Kansas City, and Gray will be present for the proceedings, according to online court records.

"By mid-January, the court will set forth the matters to be addressed at the hearing," the records state. "The court has reserved six hours for this hearing."

Gray has been held at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, since his conviction at a court-martial in 1988.

A former Army cook who held the rank of specialist when he was arrested, Gray was convicted of two counts of murder and three counts of rape. He also pleaded guilty to 22 felonies in Cumberland County Superior Court, including two additional murders and five other rapes.

His crimes were committed in 1986 and 1987 in Fairlane Acres Mobile Home City near Fort Bragg.

The military jury convicted Gray in the deaths of Pvt. Laura Lee Vickery Clay and Kimberly Ann Ruggles. A civilian court convicted Gray in the deaths of Linda Jean Coats and Tammy Wilson.

He was sentenced to death in the military court and to eight life sentences in civilian court, three of which were to be served consecutively.

His execution was approved by President George W. Bush in 2008, but it has been on hold while Gray appeals his conviction.

Gray's lawyers have previously claimed he had an ineffective lawyer in his earlier case, argued that he lacked the mental capacity to stand trial and questioned the military's jurisdiction over the case.

Lawyers for the government have previously asked a federal judge to lift the stay of execution that has delayed Gray's death for six years.

He originally was scheduled to be executed in December 2008. If Gray is eventually put to death, it would likely be the first military execution in more than 50 years.

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©2014 The Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, N.C.)

Iraq's Sunnis may seek Iran help against ISIL

Baghdad - Iraqi Sunni tribal sheikhs threatened to resort to the United States' rival in the region, the Islamic Republic of Iran, to get the needed military support in their fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), if the US did not respond to their demands, warned Iraqi lawmakers and tribal sheikhs.

The warning came during a meeting with US Senator, John McCain, who embarked on a short visit to Baghdad on Friday.

McCain met with several Iraqi lawmakers and tribal sheikhs representing the Sunni-dominated provinces of Anbar, Saladin, Diyala as well as the towns constituting the belt of Baghdad, to discuss proposed plans to confront ISIL.

Three Iraqi Sunni figures who attended the meeting told Al Jazeera that a list of demands was submitted to McCain asking for US ground troops, weapons and funds to accelerate the liberation of areas seized by ISIL and grant them (Sunni tribes) a bigger role in the battle against ISIL.

The disgruntled tribal leaders, according to Sunni figures, made it clear that they were considering alternative options to get the much needed military support to drive away ISIL fighters, and that Iran was on top of the list of alternatives.

"[McCain] was told clearly that if the Americans kept watching the situation [in Anbar, Saladin and Diyala provinces] and did not intervene, we will ask another regional power to fill the gap," a senior Iraqi lawmaker who attended the meeting, told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.

"We have already opened many channels with Iran and they have offered unconditional support including weapons, funds and even fighters if required," he said.

ISIL fighters overran the second largest city in Iraq, Mosul, in June, with hardly any resistance from the Iraqi army. A few days later, ISIL fighters seized the neighbouring province of Salahuddin and vast parts of southern Kirkuk.

They now have control over most of the cities and towns of the Sunni-dominated province of Anbar.

Iran was the first regional country that responded to the Iraqi government's calls for assistance to stop ISIL advances towards the capital.

Iranian military commanders, accompanying Iraqi forces and Shia militias, have played a vital role in gaining control over the border towns of Jalawla and Saadia, in Diyala province, a few weeks ago and driving ISIL fighters from Jurf al-Sakhar, one of the main supply routes for ISIL in southern Baghdad.

Iran, according to analysts, was also quick to cover the large shortage of weapons and ammunition for the Iraqi troops and Kurdish forces.

On Sunday, official Iranian media reported that an Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander, who was training Iraqi troops and militia fighting ISIL, was killed in the Iraqi city of Samarra.

McCain, who was mostly just listening during the meeting, according to the lawmaker, asked for clarification relating to that point.

"McCain stopped us a lot when it came to that point, he looked very interested and was asking questions like who, when, where, why and how," the lawmaker said.

The meeting which lasted 90 minutes was held at the house of the Iraqi speaker, Saleem al-Joubori, in the Green Zone, the most fortified area in Baghdad that contains governmental buildings and many foreign embassies including the US and British embassies.

The tribal leaders and lawmakers had also expressed their dismay at the lack of a serious US policy to liberate their lands and "the US' double standards" in dealing with the Sunni tribes in these provinces compared to the Kurds.

"The attendees have expressed their anger and dissatisfaction at the US and the [US-led] international coalition that does not support them in their war against Daesh [ISIL] while they rose up when Daesh got close to the Kurdish region and quickly intervened," Salah al-Joubori, a senior Sunni lawmaker who also attended the meeting, told Al Jazeera.

Salah al-Joubori, who confirmed that Sunni tribes have threatened to get assistance from Iran, added that McCain did not make any promises or offer any plans to explain how the US will address their demands although the meeting was "frank and realistic".

"The man is a senator and he has nothing to do with the decision-making [related to arming and funding the Sunni tribes]. He will transfer all what he heard, in addition to the written list of demands, to Congress," Joubori said.

Iraqi Sunni leaders who met McCain, as several senior officials who are familiar with the talks confirmed, were hoping to convince the US administration to put pressure on the Iraqi government to form the long-awaited National Guard troops, arm the Sunni tribes and keep the Kurdish forces and Shia militias away from the Sunni areas.

"US is able to put great pressure on the Iraqi government and force it to form the National Guard, support the [Sunni] tribes and prevent the Peshmerga and Shia militias from entering the Sunni areas," a senior Sunni figure told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.

"We believe that the Iraqi government is deliberately holding up the formation of the National Guard and does not support the [Sunni] tribes."

In a briefing held on Saturday at the US embassy in Baghdad, McCain told reporters that the US will train and arm Sunni tribal fighters who will be part of the planned National Guard troops in Anbar.

"The Iraqi government will arm 4,000 tribesmen, in Anbar, within the National Guard troops which will be formed [later], and their training and arming will be through the Iraqi government," he said.

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©2014 Al Jazeera (Doha, Qatar)