by Rupe | Nov 24, 2005 | Military-Political
By DAVID S. CLOUD
Published: November 24, 2005
WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 – The Pentagon is planning to make modest troop reductions after next month’s elections in Iraq and, if security conditions improve, could begin reductions next summer that would drop the American force level below 100,000 by late next year, Defense Department officials said Wednesday.
Troop reductions of this magnitude have been discussed by military commanders in the past, and it is not clear to what extent the most recent statements by various officials reflect the pressure on the Bush administration from Congress and even some Iraqi leaders to begin laying out withdrawal options. Officials said that no decisions had been made and that tentative plans for troop cuts could be abandoned if the insurgency gained strength or Iraqi security forces did not progress as quickly as their American trainers hoped.
“There is planning that is looking at, if the conditions are such that there could be reduction of the U.S. presence, how we could do that,” said a Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman. “We are also looking at contingency planning where you need to increase troop strength in Iraq.”
In recent days, President Bush and his top advisers have all rejected calls to set a timetable for withdrawal, saying that to do so would embolden the insurgents. But they have talked, if only vaguely, about the possibility of reducing the numbers of troops. “I suspect that American forces are not going to be needed in the numbers that they are for that much longer,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview on CNN on Tuesday.
Mr. Whitman said that “the current thinking” is that the number of American troops, which is now over 150,000, would fall to around 138,000, where it was before a buildup to help provide security for the referendum on the constitution in October and the coming elections on Dec. 15 to choose a new government.
Officials have repeatedly emphasized that any decisions on troop reductions depend on whether security conditions worsen or whether Iraq’s new government demands quicker reductions. For at least the past year and a half officials have held out the prospect of troop reductions, but those reductions have not occurred.
A major decision point will be reached next spring, the officials said, after the new Iraqi government forms. Assuming security conditions allow it, the troop levels could drop by 20,000 to 30,000 more soldiers by then, the officials said.
A military officer in Iraq said Wednesday that the pace of the drawdown would be driven by how many Iraqi units were able to reach a readiness rating of level two, under the military’s scale of one to four. Level two means an Iraqi unit is capable of taking the lead on military operations but still needs American military support, as opposed to level one, in which an Iraqi unit can operate independently.
“The key is level two,” the officer said. At that level, an Iraqi unit “will be able to control a local battle space just fine” as long as it receives continued American help with logistics, intelligence and transportation, he added. An increasing number of level-two Iraqi units in coming months will make it possible for a significant number of American combat troops to withdraw, he said, declining to specify how many.
Of the roughly 120 Iraqi Army battalions that are trained and conducting operations, roughly 40 are at level two, Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who commanded the training effort in Iraq until earlier this year, said in a speech this month. The readiness of most police units, which some officials say are at least as important as the military in achieving stability, is still far below that of the Iraqi Army.
Senior Army officials remain concerned that pressure for withdrawals will drive officials in Washington to reduce the American troop levels before the Iraqis are ready to handle the primary role in fighting the insurgency. An Army official said that planners were discussing the option of keeping a brigade of 2,500 to 3,000 soldiers in Kuwait, so the unit could be rushed back to Iraq if security conditions worsened.
by Rupe | Nov 24, 2005 | Mad Musings
By Marilynn Marchione
Associated Press
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Children who are overweight face more than future health problems. They appear to have broken bones and joint problems more often during childhood than kids of normal weight, research suggests.
“A lot of people think that if you’re an overweight kid . . . that later on in life you’re going to run into having heart disease or Type 2 diabetes,” said Susan Yanovski, director of the obesity and eating disorders program at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
“But kids and adults who are overweight are already having problems with their mobility, fractures and joint pain.”
A study led by her husband, obesity researcher Jack Yanovski, found that children and teenagers who are overweight are far more likely to have had a fracture than their ideal-weight peers. They also have more bone and hip joint abnormalities, which can lead to permanent deformities.
The research involved 227 overweight children and adolescents and 128 who were not overweight. The children had an average age of 12. All were enrolled in various federal health studies between 1996 and 2004 and were considered overweight if they were in the 95th percentile of weight and height for their age and sex.
A review of their medical history revealed that 13 percent of overweight kids had had at least one broken bone at some point in their lives, compared with less than 4 percent of ideal-weight children. Similar results were found for how many had muscle, bone or joint pain, and restricted movement.
“The combination of musculoskeletal pain and poor mobility may possibly lead to less physical activity . . . and perpetuate the vicious cycle,” said Jack Yanovski, head of the growth and obesity program at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. He presented results of the study at a recent meeting of the Obesity Society in Vancouver, B.C.
Children often say their knees hurt, but the real problem is the malformation that is starting to occur in the joint, said Junichi Tamai, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon at Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati. Being unable to exercise makes the situation worse.
“If a child is very active, chances are the bones are very strong,” because weight-bearing exercise promotes bone density, Tamai said.
by Rupe | Nov 23, 2005 | Military-Political
The constitution, originally written by the United States after the defeat of Japan in 1945, would continue to reject war as an option. But the new draft would remove limitations on the country’s 240,000-member Self-Defense Forces, which have been defined as being strictly limited to defending Japan’s home islands.
The new military status would explicitly authorize Japanese participation in foreign peacekeeping efforts, although the country has sent small troop contingents on such missions, including about 600 soldiers now serving in a noncombat capacity with the United States in Iraq. The constitutional draft would broaden the government’s ability to send forces overseas; such an order now requires special legislation in parliament.
The revision also opens the door to a broader interpretation of the constitution, permitting what some call “collective self-defense” — or coming to the military aid of other countries. The most likely beneficiary would be Japan’s closest ally, the United States, which has urged Japan to adopt such measures. Changes in Japan’s constitutional status would have major significance in the region, particularly in the event of a conflict between China and the United States over Taiwan.
“In addition to activities needed for self-defense . . . the defense forces can take part in efforts to maintain international peace and security under international cooperation, as well as to keep fundamental public order in our country,” the draft says.
The revised constitution, released on the 50th anniversary of the LDP’s founding, faces major hurdles and may not be approved for at least a year. Parliamentary approval requires a two-thirds vote by both the lower and upper houses, and the debate is likely to be highly emotional. New Komeito, the LDP’s coalition partner since 1999, favors new clauses and refinements, rather than major changes, in Article 9 of the constitution, which deals with the military.
After parliamentary approval, the draft would also require majority approval in a national referendum.
The release of the draft by the LDP, which has governed the country for most of the post-World War II era, marked a significant turning point in the crusade to give Japan a higher international profile, commensurate with its status as the world’s second-largest economy.
“Today, a major step was taken toward the revision of the constitution,” Taku Yamasaki, an LDP lawmaker and adviser to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, told reporters.
The draft maintains language that defines the emperor of Japan, once revered as a divine being, as a symbol of the state. But the constitutional revision waters down the concept of separation of church and state, which would make it easier for sitting prime ministers to visit Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine honoring Japan’s military dead, including World War II criminals. Koizumi’s annual visits to Yasukuni have caused outrage in China and South Korea.
Officials in both those countries have expressed concern about the proposed constitutional language on the military, noting the rise to power of nationalist Japanese political leaders and a new sense of patriotism among the populace.
On Tuesday, the official New China News Agency described Japan’s revision as a document “designed to provide legal support for its ambition of playing a greater political role on the global stage and of boosting the defense force’s status.”
by Rupe | Nov 22, 2005 | philosophy-religion
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
Published: November 22, 2005
CHERKESSK, Russia – Security officials here in Karachayevo-Cherkessia, a restive republic on Russia’s mountainous southern border, have a secret list of people who are kept under scrutiny.
Those on it have committed no crimes, but are considered suspect because they are Muslims who practice Islam outside of the state’s sanctioned mosques.
Ovod Golayev is on that list. He lives in Karachayevsk, a city nestled in the foothills of the Caucasus, where he works for a tourism company that organizes skiing and hiking excursions. He wears his hair and beard long. He prays five times a day. He fasts during Ramadan, which is unusual here.
In recent weeks, he said, the police have detained him four times, twice in one day.
Mr. Golayev, 36, said the Islam he observes is opposed to violence, but he warned that the mistreatment of believers was driving men like him to desperation.
“They will pressure me enough,” he said, “and then I will blow somebody’s head off.”
Here in the northern Caucasus, and across all of Russia, Islamic faith is on the rise. So is Islamic militancy, and fear of such militancy, leading to tensions like those felt in Europe, where a flow of immigrants from the Muslim world is straining relations with liberal, secular societies.
And so the government has recreated the Soviet-era system of control over religion with the Muslim Spiritual Department, which oversees the appointment of Islamic leaders.
But the Muslims of Russia are not immigrants and outsiders; they are typically the indigenous people of their regions. “These are Russian citizens, and they have no other motherland,” President Vladimir V. Putin said in August, when he met with King Abdullah of Jordan.
In Russia, the struggle over Islam’s place is not seen as a question of whether to integrate Muslims into society, but whether the country itself can remain whole. The separatist conflict in Chechnya, more than a decade old, has taken on an Islamic hue. And it is spilling beyond Chechnya’s borders in the Caucasus, where Islam has become a rallying force against corruption, brutality and poverty.
On the morning of Oct. 13, scores of men took up arms in Nalchik, the capital of the neighboring republic, Kabardino-Balkariya. They were mostly driven, relatives said, by harassment against men with beards and women with head scarves, and by the closing of six mosques in the city. In two days at least 138 people were killed. In Dagestan and Ingushetia, militants have been blamed for unending bombings and killings.
Followers of a Chechen terrorist leader, Shamil Basayev, have claimed responsibility for the deadliest attacks, including the one in Nalchik, and before that a similar raid in Ingushetia and the school siege in Beslan in September 2004. In Beslan, 331 people were killed, 186 of them children.
All have been part of Mr. Basayev’s declared goal to establish an Islamic caliphate, uniting the northern Caucasus in secession from Russia.
That goal has little popular support in the region’s other predominantly Muslim republics, but discontent is spreading as the government cracks down. Not all involved in the attacks are hardened fighters of Chechnya’s wars. More and more oppose the hard-line stands that the Kremlin takes against anyone who challenges its central authority.
In places like Nalchik and here in Karachayevo-Cherkessia, “official” muftis and imams have themselves been accused of acting to preserve their own status by tolerating the Kremlin’s efforts to repress anyone practicing a “purer” form of Islam.
Larisa Dorogova, a lawyer in Nalchik whose nephew Musa was among those killed in the fighting, said Muslims had appealed to the authorities, both religious and secular, to end the abuse of believers, only to be ignored. “If they had listened to the letters we wrote – from 400 people, from 1,000 – maybe this would not have happened,” she said.
Officials have denounced those who took up arms in Nalchik with the same broad brush they have used to describe Mr. Basayev’s forces. Mr. Putin linked the Nalchik uprising to international terrorists, whom he called “animals in human guise.” But in the Caucasus, where Islamic-inspired violence has killed far more people than terrorists have in Western Europe, the prevailing view is quite different.
“They were all good guys,” Ms. Dorogova said of Nalchik’s fighters.
The paradox of Islam in today’s Russia is that Muslims have never been freer.
Read more….
by Rupe | Nov 18, 2005 | Military-Political
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Iran began converting a new batch of uranium at a key nuclear facility yesterday, rejecting international pleas to suspend such work and dismissing a new offer — sponsored by Russia — that was designed to ease tensions over the country’s nuclear ambitions, U.S. and European officials said.
The work at the facility in the town of Isfahan does not bring Iran significantly closer to nuclear capability. But the decision to convert additional uranium — a key ingredient for fueling nuclear energy or weapons programs — was seen as a provocative move just days after Iranian officials reacted coolly to the Russian offer.
Coming at a sensitive time, the Iranian moves threatened to derail efforts to set up a meeting next week between European and Iranian officials that was meant to reinvigorate negotiations on hold since the summer, diplomats said. Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is leading an investigation of Iran’s nuclear program, also canceled a planned trip to Tehran, said officials in Vienna, where the agency is based.
R. Nicholas Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, was to travel to London today to meet with his European and Russian counterparts about next steps in an effort to increase diplomatic pressure on Tehran. The 35-member IAEA board meets in Vienna on Nov. 24 to discuss the status of Iran’s program. For more than two years, the Bush administration has been unable to persuade allies to send the Iranian nuclear case to the U.N. Security Council, where the country could face economic sanctions for failing to disclose a nuclear energy program built in secret over 18 years.
Iran has said the program was designed to produce nuclear energy, not bombs. But the scale of the program and its clandestine nature have fueled suspicions that Tehran is using it to conceal a weapons effort. The Bush administration and several key allies have said they want Iran to forgo plans to complete a uranium enrichment facility, the most sensitive aspect of the nuclear fuel cycle, because it would give Iran the capacity to produce bomb-grade uranium. The Iranians have said they will not give up that part of the program, which they are allowed to have as signatories to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
One of the key countries that has so far resisted sending Iran’s case to the Security Council is Russia, which has a close economic partnership with Tehran and helped build one of the country’s larger nuclear power reactors.
Igor Ivanov, a senior Kremlin adviser and the country’s former foreign minister, offered Iran a deal that would have allowed it to continue operating the Isfahan facility as long as Iran’s enrichment effort remained on hold. According to officials who have been briefed on the offer, the converted uranium from Isfahan would have been shipped to Russia for enrichment and then sent back to Iran to fuel the Russian-built reactor. Russia offered Iran a 35 percent financial stake in the Russian end of the enrichment process and suggested the deal remain in effect for several years while Iran continued to negotiate a broad-ranging deal with the West.
Iranian officials initially rejected the deal but then offered cool public statements saying they would consider the proposal. At the end of the Ivanov trip, the Iranians reportedly agreed to delay additional work at Isfahan until after the Vienna meeting and committed to a meeting next week with European and Russian officials.
But yesterday, the Iranians began converting more uranium at the Isfahan facility. Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the IAEA, said agency inspectors were at the facility at the time. The Bush administration is hoping the move may persuade Russia to vote with other IAEA board members to send Iran’s case to the United Nations.
David Albright, a nuclear expert and the president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said Iran’s move at Isfahan was “mostly symbolic” but the Iranians will “end up with a larger stock” of converted uranium that they can store away for the day when their own enrichment facility is completed. If that happens, Iran could wind up with enough bomb-grade uranium for as many as eight weapons, he said.
