Category: America

Operation Donkey brings Iraqi equine to US

Operation Donkey brings Iraqi equine to US

(AP) – 21 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — It took 37 days and a group of determined animal lovers, but a donkey from Iraq is now a U.S. resident.

In this Sept. 11, 2008 photo provided by the Department of Defense and Retired Marine Col. John Folsom, Smoke the Donkey takes part in a Freedom Walk event at Camp Taqaddum, Iraq. It took 37 days and a group of determined animal-lovers, but the donkey from Iraq is now a U.S. resident. Smoke The Donkey, who became the friend and mascot of a group of U.S. Marines living in Iraq’s Anbar Province nearly three years ago, arrived in New York this week aboard a cargo jet from Turkey. After being quarantined for two days he was released Saturday and began road trip to Omaha, Nebraska, where he is destined to become a therapy animal. (AP Photo/Department of Defense)

Smoke The Donkey, who became a friend and mascot to a group of U.S. Marines living in Iraq’s Anbar Province nearly three years ago, arrived in New York this week aboard a cargo jet from Turkey. After being quarantined for two days he was released Saturday and began a road trip to Omaha, Neb., where he is destined to become a therapy animal.

The chest-high donkey’s story begins in the summer of 2008, when he wandered in to Camp Taqaddum west of Fallujah, a former Iraqi air base being used by Marines.

The smoke-colored donkey, which once snatched and ate a cigarette from a careless Marine, soon became such a part of the unit that he received his own care packages and cards. Marines took care of him until 2009 when they left the area, but they turned Smoke over to a sheik who promised to care for him.

But one of the Marines, retired Col. John Folsom, couldn’t forget Smoke.

Folsom used to walk Smoke daily and had formed a bond with the animal. It didn’t seem right that Smoke was left behind, he said in a telephone interview Saturday.

Folsom, the founder of a support group for military families, Wounded Warriors Family Support, decided to see if Smoke could be brought to the United States to serve as a therapy animal.

Getting Smoke back proved more difficult than Folsom realized. At first, the sheik demanded $30,000 for the famous donkey, a demand that was later dropped. Then, there was the bureaucracy of getting Smoke nearly 7,000 miles around the world: blood tests, health certifications and forms from customs, agriculture and airline officials.

To cut through the red tape, Folsom got help from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals International, which has a project that transports dogs and cats from Iraq to the United States.

The group, however, had never attempted airlifting a donkey, which is more complicated because equines can’t be transported on traditional commercial aircraft and must go by cargo plane.

The donkey’s journey has provided laughter — and head scratching — along the way.

“People just couldn’t believe we were going to these great lengths to help a donkey because donkeys in that part of the world are so low down on the totem pole,” said the society’s Terri Crisp, who negotiated the donkey’s passage from Iraq to the United States. “Donkeys are not viewed as a companion animal. They’re viewed as a work animal.”

As frustrating as the journey sometimes was for those involved, including a week-long delay getting Smoke in to Turkey and another three weeks to get out, the donkey found friends and supporters along the way, Crisp said. They included the U.S. ambassador in Turkey, who at one point was getting daily updates.

“I think people did finally come to realize that this is one of these out-of the-ordinary situations. Once you met him and saw what a unique donkey he was, it was hard to say no to him,” Crisp said, describing Smoke as “gentle” and “mischievous” as well as a food-lover — carrots and apples in particular.

The journey, which started April 5, wasn’t cheap.

The society estimates it cost between $30,000 to $40,000 from start to finish, with expenses such as $150 to ship Smoke’s blood from Turkey to a U.S. Department of Agriculture lab in Iowa, $18,890 for a Lufthansa flight through Frankfurt, Germany and $400 a day for quarantine in New York. Folsom says he recognizes some people may be critical of the expense, which was paid for through donations, but he says he considers it payback for the donkey that was such a friend to Marines.

“Why do we spend billions of dollars of pet food in this country? Why do we do that?” Folsom said. “We love our animals. That’s why.”

Folsom saw the donkey for the first time in years Saturday when he arrived in New York to transport him to his new home in Omaha. By Saturday afternoon they had driven through Baltimore and were on their way to Warrenton, Va., for meet-and-greet with some fans. The journey to Omaha is expected to take two days, and Folsom said Smoke is already getting used to seeing big, green trees instead of desert.

“He’s an American donkey now,” Folsom said.

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

via The Associated Press: Operation Donkey brings Iraqi equine to US.

May 15, 2011
U.S. Congress members to Turkey’s Erdogan: Stop Gaza flotilla

36 members of the U.S. House sign letter addressed to Turkish PM urging him to stop another attempt ‘to provoke a confrontation with Israel.’

By Natasha Mozgovaya

Members of the U.S. Congress issued a letter to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday in which they urge Turkey’s premier to stop the departure of another flotilla to the Gaza Strip.

“We write today to express our serious concern over reports that the so-called Free Gaza Movement and the IHH are planning to send another flotilla to Gaza in the coming weeks to provoke a confrontation with Israel”, read a signed letter by 36 members of Congress initiated by Rep. Steve Israel.

The Mavi Marmara, aboard which Israel's deadly raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla resulted in the deaths of 9 Turkish activists May 22, 2010 Photo by: AP

“As members of the United States House of Representatives we ask you to help discourage these efforts and work with the Israeli government in a productive way as it continues to allow legitimate aid, but not weapons, to enter Gaza.”

The letter further stressed that the Israeli government has “a right and responsibility” to protect its people, emphasizing that the “threat facing Israel by weapons smuggled into Gaza is real.”

Congress members urged Erdogan to stop the flotilla from departing in order to prevent another confrontation such as last May’s from happening again.

“If flotilla organizers carry out their confrontational plans, the Israelis will have little choice but to board the vessels and search for weapons. We fear violence could erupt just as it did last year,” the letter warned.

The letter signatories expressed hope that the Turkish government will work out with Israel an alternative way to allow “legitimate humanitarian assistance” into Gaza.

“By finding a constructive solution as an alternative to another flotilla, you have a unique opportunity to potentially save lives and be a force for stability at a particularly volatile time,” the letter concluded.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s Erdogan said in an interview with U.S. television late Wednesday that Hamas is not a terror organization but a political party. He also said the recently penned Palestinian reconciliation agreement was an essential step toward Mideast peace.

via U.S. Congress members to Turkey’s Erdogan: Stop Gaza flotilla – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

May 13, 2011
TACC Condemns Act of Vandalism Against US Flag

UPDATE: TACC Condemns Act of Vandalism Against US Flag; Manalapan PD to Hold Investigation

The board of directors of the Turkish American Community Center released a statement indicating concern about a possible hate crime and being targeted in an attack.

By Katrina Rossos

The Turkish-American Community Center released a statement Tuesday afternoon regarding the vandalism that occurred on their property on Monday, May 9, where a damaged American flag was raised upside down in front of the center, located at 229 Rt. 33 in Manalapan Township.

“We the Turkish American Community Center condemn the act of vandalism on our building and insulting our US flag by someone replacing our well maintained and displayed US flag with a tattered one in front of our community center,” the press release stated. “Any act of vandalism is deplorable. But vandalism against a cultural center and places of learning, are particularly cowardly and hateful.”

The press release went on to say that the center does not believe the crime was random, but isolated, and that the center is working with the local police to find the perpetrators of the crime.

“We have been in our community for over 25 year as an integral part of our community and we have never hung our American flag that was being flown upside down or tattered in front of our community center building. The Turkish American community is a minority among minorities, but with pride second to none in our deep love and loyalty to these great United States of America our new home.” the press release said.

“Our beliefs in country, liberty, fairness, charity, democracy, are not merely words or passing thoughts,” the release continued. “They are tangible rocks of granite, permanent and unshakeable, as clear to us as the ground we walk upon, serving ultimately to define us. We offer our labors in maintaining the fundamental principles of American and Turkish freedom and democracy which are firmly entrenched, and remain undiminished in our hearts.”

If anyone has any information on the crime, the Turkish-American Community Center is asking its neighbors to please report it to the police.

The Turkish-American Community Center board of directors concluded the press release saying that “all forms of racism, bigotry, and vandalism are unacceptable and completely contrary to our American fundamental values of freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.”

Manalapan Police Captain Christopher Marsala verified that the police were called to the Turkish American Community Center at 10:58 a.m. on Tuesday, May 10. No police report was filed Tuesday morning.

“At that time, we were not made aware that the flag had been stolen and replaced with a tattered one,” Capt. Marsala said. “I have since spoken with the TACC and confirmed that their US flag was stolen and we are now making this a theft investigation.”

via UPDATE: TACC Condemns Act of Vandalism Against US Flag; Manalapan PD to Hold Investigation – Manalapan, NJ Patch.

May 12, 2011
The Unwisdom of Elites

By PAUL KRUGMAN

The past three years have been a disaster for most Western economies. The United States has mass long-term unemployment for the first time since the 1930s. Meanwhile, Europe’s single currency is coming apart at the seams. How did it all go so wrong?

Well, what I’ve been hearing with growing frequency from members of the policy elite — self-appointed wise men, officials, and pundits in good standing — is the claim that it’s mostly the public’s fault. The idea is that we got into this mess because voters wanted something for nothing, and weak-minded politicians catered to the electorate’s foolishness.

So this seems like a good time to point out that this blame-the-public view isn’t just self-serving, it’s dead wrong.

The fact is that what we’re experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. The policies that got us into this mess weren’t responses to public demand. They were, with few exceptions, policies championed by small groups of influential people — in many cases, the same people now lecturing the rest of us on the need to get serious. And by trying to shift the blame to the general populace, elites are ducking some much-needed reflection on their own catastrophic mistakes.

Let me focus mainly on what happened in the United States, then say a few words about Europe.

These days Americans get constant lectures about the need to reduce the budget deficit. That focus in itself represents distorted priorities, since our immediate concern should be job creation. But suppose we restrict ourselves to talking about the deficit, and ask: What happened to the budget surplus the federal government had in 2000?

The answer is, three main things. First, there were the Bush tax cuts, which added roughly $2 trillion to the national debt over the last decade. Second, there were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which added an additional $1.1 trillion or so. And third was the Great Recession, which led both to a collapse in revenue and to a sharp rise in spending on unemployment insurance and other safety-net programs.

So who was responsible for these budget busters? It wasn’t the man in the street.

President George W. Bush cut taxes in the service of his party’s ideology, not in response to a groundswell of popular demand — and the bulk of the cuts went to a small, affluent minority.

Similarly, Mr. Bush chose to invade Iraq because that was something he and his advisers wanted to do, not because Americans were clamoring for war against a regime that had nothing to do with 9/11. In fact, it took a highly deceptive sales campaign to get Americans to support the invasion, and even so, voters were never as solidly behind the war as America’s political and pundit elite.

Finally, the Great Recession was brought on by a runaway financial sector, empowered by reckless deregulation. And who was responsible for that deregulation? Powerful people in Washington with close ties to the financial industry, that’s who. Let me give a particular shout-out to Alan Greenspan, who played a crucial role both in financial deregulation and in the passage of the Bush tax cuts — and who is now, of course, among those hectoring us about the deficit.

So it was the bad judgment of the elite, not the greediness of the common man, that caused America’s deficit. And much the same is true of the European crisis.

Needless to say, that’s not what you hear from European policy makers. The official story in Europe these days is that governments of troubled nations catered too much to the masses, promising too much to voters while collecting too little in taxes. And that is, to be fair, a reasonably accurate story for Greece. But it’s not at all what happened in Ireland and Spain, both of which had low debt and budget surpluses on the eve of the crisis.

The real story of Europe’s crisis is that leaders created a single currency, the euro, without creating the institutions that were needed to cope with booms and busts within the euro zone. And the drive for a single European currency was the ultimate top-down project, an elite vision imposed on highly reluctant voters.

Does any of this matter? Why should we be concerned about the effort to shift the blame for bad policies onto the general public?

One answer is simple accountability. People who advocated budget-busting policies during the Bush years shouldn’t be allowed to pass themselves off as deficit hawks; people who praised Ireland as a role model shouldn’t be giving lectures on responsible government.

But the larger answer, I’d argue, is that by making up stories about our current predicament that absolve the people who put us here there, we cut off any chance to learn from the crisis. We need to place the blame where it belongs, to chasten our policy elites. Otherwise, they’ll do even more damage in the years ahead.

www.nytimes.com, May 8, 2011

May 9, 2011
Mass appeal for bin Laden at Irish church

By MARK HILLIARD in Dublin, Ireland, and BOB FREDERICKS in NY

The name alone got their Irish up.

A Catholic church in Ireland has provoked outrage among its parishioners after announcing plans for a Mass to pray for the “soul” of Osama bin Laden.

The Church of the Assumption in the affluent Dublin suburb of Howth distributed a leaflet to parishioners during its Sunday services that included details of the service.

Listed under “Mass Intentions” for Thursday in the church pamphlet distributed yesterday was a call to prayer for “Osama Bin Laden (Recently Deceased)” during that day’s 10 a.m. Mass.

Parishioners were immediately incensed, saying the idea of praying for the al Qaeda leader was an “insult,” particularly with the upcoming visit of President Obama to Ireland.

“I was disgusted. I have family in America who would be disgusted,” said one regular Mass-goer. “The Irish-Americans would be absolutely horrified, as if we are on the wrong side.”

The church attempted to play down the scandal yesterday, saying the request was probably taken down in a hurry and that the matter remained undecided.

However, the parish note was removed from the Web site and it remains unclear whether the service will go ahead as scheduled for 10 a.m. Thursday.

www.nypost.com, May 9, 2011

May 9, 2011
Wasn’t Bin Laden the reason we went to war?

Patrick Cockburn: Wasn’t Bin Laden the reason we went to war?

The killing of the al-Qa’ida leader offers an opportunity to make long overdue progress on Afghanistan

Does the death of Osama bin Laden open the door for the US and UK to escape from the trap into which they have fallen in Afghanistan? At first sight, the presumed weakening of al-Qa’ida ought to strength the case for an American and British withdrawal. When President Obama ordered the dispatch of an extra 30,000 troops to Afghanistan in 2009, he declared that the goal was “to deny safe-haven to al-Qa’ida and to deny the Taliban the ability to overthrow the Afghan government”.

This justification for stationing 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan and for Washington spending $113bn (£69bn) a year always looked thin. By the US army’s own estimate there are about 100 members of al-Qa’ida in Afghanistan compared with an estimated 25,000 Taliban. Even on the Pakistan side of the border, al-Qa’ida probably only has a few hundred fighters.

A problem for the US and Britain is how to dump this convenient but highly misleading explanation as to why it was essential for the safety of their own countries to fight a war in Afghanistan. This has required pretending that al-Qa’ida was in the country in significant force and that a vast US and UK military deployment was necessary to defend the streets of London or the little house on the prairie.

The death of Bin Laden reduces this highly exaggerated perception of al-Qa’ida as a threat. People, not unreasonably, ask what we are doing in Afghanistan, and why soldiers are still being killed. One spurious argument has been to conflate al-Qa’ida and the Afghan Taliban, and say they are much the same thing. But it is difficult to think of a single Afghan involved in bomb attacks against targets in the US and Britain before and after 9/11. Al-Qa’ida’s leadership was mainly Egyptian and Saudi as were all the 9/11 bombers.

The problem for Washington and London is that they have got so many people killed in Afghanistan and spent so much money that it is difficult for them to withdraw without something that can be dressed up as a victory. Could the death of Bin Laden be the sort of success that would allow Obama to claim that America’s main objective has been achieved? For the moment, at least, it will be more difficult for the Republicans to claim that a disengagement is a betrayal of US national security. Could not this be the moment for the US, with Britain tagging along behind, to cut a deal and get out?

Unfortunately, it probably isn’t going to happen. It will not be Obama’s decision alone. In 2009, he was dubious about what a temporary surge in US troop numbers would achieve and keen not to be sucked into a quagmire in Afghanistan just as the US was getting out of one in Iraq. Endless discussions took place in the offices of the White House about whether or not to send reinforcements.

But the outcome of these repeated meetings was predictable given the balance of power between different institutions in Washington. Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA and the next US Secretary for Defence, said that the decision to send more troops should have been made in a week, because the political reality is that “no Democratic president can go against military advice, especially if he has asked for it. So just do it. Do what they [the generals] said.”

The US military is not going to eat its optimistic words of late last year when they were claiming that it was finally making headway against the Taliban. Insurgent mid-level commanders were being assassinated in night raids by US Special Forces, and survivors were fleeing to Pakistan. If the Taliban were increasing their strength in northern Afghanistan, they were losing their grip on their old strongholds in Helmand and Kandahar.

Such reports of progress appear to have been largely propaganda or wishful thinking. At the start of this year’s fighting season the Taliban have been able to launch as many attacks as last year and replace its casualties. In Kandahar last month, they were able to free 500 prisoners from the city jail by digging a tunnel 1,000 feet long over five months without anybody finding out about it. An organisation that can do this is scarcely on its last legs. The message of the last few months is that the “surge” in Afghanistan, of which so much was expected, has not worked.

The Americans and British are meant to be training Afghan military and police units to take the place of foreign forces. It is never quite explained how Taliban fighters, without any formal military training, are able to battle the best-equipped armies in the world, while Afghan government troops require months of training before they can carry out the simplest military task.

One escaped Taliban prisoner in Kandahar has said that their plan was helped by the fact in the evening the prison guards always fell into a drug-induced stupor.

Official bromides about building up the strength of the Afghan government ignore an ominous trend: the governing class is detested by the rest of the population as a gang of thieves and racketeers. I was struck in a recent visit to Kabul by the venom with which well-educated professional people and businessmen, who are not doing badly, condemn Hamid Karzai’s government. This does not mean that they support the Taliban, but it does show that Karzai’s support, aside from cronies busily engaged in robbing the state, is very small.

When negotiations do start they should be between the four main players: the US, the Afghan government, the Taliban, and Pakistan. For all the rude things being said about the Pakistan military after Bin Laden was discovered so close to their main military academy in Abbottabad, nothing is going to be decided without their say-so.

Only the Pakistani army can deliver the Taliban whose great strategic advantage in the war is that under pressure they can always withdraw across the border into Pakistan. It is the highly permeable border, as long as the distance from London to Moscow, which prevented the Soviet Union from defeating Afghan rebels in the 1980s. Pakistan is not going to try to close this border and could not do so even if it wanted to.

It would not be difficult for the Taliban to renounce al-Qa’ida and other jihadi groups. The killing of Bin Laden as the icon of evil should make this easier for the US to accept.

Obviously there is going to be no military solution to the Afghan conflict, and negotiations with the Taliban will have to begin sooner or later, so why not now?

www.independent.co.uk, 8 May 2011

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Sort by Subscribe by email Subscribe by RSS anna 21 minutes ago afghanistan has untold mineral wealth and the Unicla pipeline goes through it – that’s why they are thereGetit? the Taliban can’t get hold of that, right?

May 8, 2011