The Daily Blog

Two Arrested In Seattle Terror Plot, Justice Department Says.

SEATTLE — Two men intent on attacking a military recruiting station to inspire Muslims to defend their religion from U.S. actions abroad were snared by FBI agents in a terror plot sting, authorities said Thursday.

Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif, also known as Joseph Anthony Davis, of Seattle, and Walli Mujahidh, also known as Frederick Domingue Jr., of Los Angeles, were arrested Wednesday night after they arrived at a warehouse garage to pick up machine guns to use in the attack, an FBI agent wrote in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court.

The machine guns had been rendered inoperable by federal agents and posed no risk to the public.

The two suspects appeared in federal court Thursday in tan prison garb and listened as prosecutor recited the charges against them. Detention hearings were set for Wednesday.

Their court-appointed defense lawyers declined to comment. The suspects could face life in prison if convicted.

Authorities learned of the plot early this month when a third person recruited to participate alerted the Seattle Police Department, the complaint said. Investigators immediately began monitoring the men, and the confidential informant continued to string them along by promising to obtain weapons.

The building, the Military Entrance Processing Station on East Marginal Way in Seattle, also houses a daycare. Recruits for all military branches are screened and processed there.

The Homeland Security Department said in a May 31 assessment with other organizations that it did not think it likely there would be coordinated terrorist attacks against military recruiting and National Guard facilities.

The agencies agreed, however, that lone offenders or groups would continue to try to launch attacks against these facilities.

“Our review of attempted attacks during the past two years suggests that lone offenders currently present the greatest threat,” according to the assessment, marked “for official use only” and obtained by The Associated Press.

Recently, terror supporters have encouraged their followers to focus on simple attacks and not complex, elaborate ones like those on Sept. 11, 2001.

In audio and video recordings, the suspects in the Seattle case discussed the plot at length, discussing how to time their attack at military recruits, such as by tossing grenades in the cafeteria, the complaint said.

“The key thing to remember here is, is we are not targeting anybody innocent – that means old people, women out of uniform, any children,” Abdul-Latif is quoted as saying. “Just people who wear the green for the kaffir Army, that’s who we’re going after.”

The agent wrote that they also fantasized about the headlines the attack would generate – “Three Muslim Males Walk Into MEPS Building, Seattle, Washington, And Gun Down Everybody” – and speculated that if they got control of the building, television news crews would arrive to cover them.

Mujahidh, 32, voluntarily spoke with investigators after the arrests and confessed, the complaint said.

“Mujahidh admitted that he was planning on carrying out an attack at the MEPS for the purpose of killing United States military personnel in order to prevent them from going to Islamic lands and killing Muslims,” the complaint said.

Abdul-Latif, 33, and Mujahidh, 32, are charged by complaint with conspiracy to murder officers and employees of the United States, conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, and possession of firearms in furtherance of crimes of violence. Abdul-Latif is also charged with two counts of illegal possession of firearms.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle said the defendants initially planned to attack Joint Base Lewis-McChord but later changed targets. The defendants intended to carry out their attack with both grenades and machine guns, the government said.

“The complaint alleges these men intended to carry out a deadly attack against our military where they should be most safe, here at home,” Seattle U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan said in a statement. “This is a sobering reminder of our need to be vigilant.”

Abdul-Latif has previous felony convictions for first-degree robbery and custodial assault, as well as misdemeanor convictions for obstructing a law enforcement officer, assault and theft.

When he was prosecuted on the robbery charge in Kitsap County, Wash., in 2002, Abdul-Latif was ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation, and despite some “issues” was found competent to participate in his defense, FBI Special Agent Albert C. Kelly III wrote in the complaint.

Abdul-Latif was sentenced to 31 months in prison on that charge. He served from January 2002 until July 2004 for a conviction of first-degree robbery in Kitsap County and a custodial assault in Walla Walla County, and committed two serious infractions while in custody – assault in 2002 and fighting in 2004, said state Corrections Department spokesman Chad Lewis.

“There is nothing in Davis’ records that indicates that he converted to Islam while he was in prison,” Lewis said in an email.

Mujahidh does not appear to have a criminal record, the complaint said.

In a bankruptcy filing from a month ago, Abdul-Latif reported assets of about $3,000 and liabilities of about $6,000. He reported that about $2,000 in monthly income from a janitorial business was entirely nullified by the expenses of operating Fresh and Clean Janitorial. His wife, identified as Binta Moussa, was earning about $1,200 a month, according to court documents but that wasn’t enough to cover their costs of living.

Steve Dashiak, a bankruptcy attorney representing Abdul-Latif, told The Associated Press he was stunned by the developments, and that his client seemed like a regular man.

“I sensed no ill will from him whatsoever,” Dashiak said. “He seemed like a guy just trying to make it, having a rough time because business wasn’t going very well. To say that I didn’t see this coming would be an understatement.”

A sign on the door of Abdul-Latif’s apartment read in part: “In the Name of Allah we enter, in the name of Allah we leave, and upon our lord we depend.”

Potential recruits came and left as normal at the military processing center Thursday. Children and adults were having a barbecue behind a fence at the same building.

Army Corps of Engineers Col. Anthony Wright, commander of the Seattle district and senior official for the building, said he was kept informed about the threat and made some changes in security as a precaution.

“I’ve spent about three years in Iraq. It’s a little different to feel it here in Seattle, but it’s part of the world we live in,” he said.

Veteran Afghan Pilot Fires on NATO Troops, Killing Several.

KABUL, Afghanistan - A veteran Afghan military officer opened fire on foreign forces Wednesday after a dispute at the Kabul airport, killing several NATO troops, Afghan and coalition officials said.

It was the latest in a spate of deadly incidents that have occurred inside government or military installations, a favorite target of Taliban insurgents.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, but Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said the gunman was an Afghan military pilot who “opened fire on foreigners after an argument.”

The pilot was killed in the shooting, which occurred inside a facility used by the Afghan Air Force, Azimi said.

NATO did not disclose the number or nationalities of the casualties pending notification of their families. The airport is home to the NATO Air Training Command.

Lt. Col. David Simons, a spokesman for the NATO training mission, said small arms fire was reported at the airport at about 10:25 a.m. local time.

“A quick-reaction force responded to the incident,” he said. “At this time there are reports of NATO casualties.”

Azimi said the shooter was a military pilot of 20 years. “An argument happened between him and the foreigners and we have to investigate that.”

An Afghan pilot who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the gunman was Ahmad Gul, a 50-year-old pilot from Tarakhail district of Kabul province.

In a statement, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed the gunman was impersonating an army officer and that others at the facility helped him gain access. The gunman killed nine foreigners and five Afghan soldiers, he said. The Taliban often exaggerate the number of casualties caused by their attacks.

Since March 2009, the coalition has recorded 20 incidents where a member of the Afghan security forces or someone wearing a uniform used by them attacked coalition forces, killing a total of 36.

According to information compiled by NATO, half of the 20 incidents involved the impersonation of an Afghan policeman or soldier. The cause of the other 10 incidents were attributed to combat stress or unknown reasons. The officers insisted that so far, there is no solid information that an insurgent was directed to join the army for the purpose of conducting attacks.

NATO officials said that in recent incidents:

-An Afghan man wearing a border police uniform who shot and killed two American military personnel April 4 in northwest Faryab province was upset over the burning of the Quran at a Florida church.

-An Afghan soldier who shot and killed three German soldiers and wounded six others Feb. 18 in northern Baghlan province felt he had been personally offended by his German partners.

-An Afghan border policeman who gunned down six American soldiers Nov. 29, 2010 in eastern Nangarhar province was suffering from personal stress because his father was forcing him into an arranged marriage.

It is not known how many of the 282,000 members of the Afghan security forces have been killed in these type of incidents.

A man in an Afghan army uniform penetrated to the heart of the Afghan Defense Ministry compound on April 18 and gunned down two Afghan soldiers.

Japanese helicopters dump seawater onto stricken reactor.

ZAO, JAPAN—Military helicopters dumped loads of seawater onto Japan’s stricken nuclear complex Thursday, turning to combat-style tactics while trying to cool overheated uranium fuel that may be on the verge of spewing out more radiation.

Plant operators also said they were racing to finish a new power line that could restore cooling systems and ease the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant on the country’s northeast coast.

The top U.S. nuclear regulatory official gave a far bleaker assessment of the situation than the Japanese, and the U.S. ambassador said the situation was “deteriorating” while warning U.S. citizens within 80 kilometres of the complex to leave the area or at least remain indoors.

Ottawa is also warning Canadians to stay well away from the plant. The department of Foreign Affairs says Canadians within 80 kilometres should evacuate the area as a further precautionary measure.

Ottawa says there isn’t a radiation health risk to Canadians travelling into or out of Japan so long as they have not been within the evacuation zone.

Australia, Britain and Germany advised their citizens in Japan on Wednesday to consider leaving Tokyo and earthquake-affected areas, but so far Canada has said no evacuation of its citizens has been planned.

The Japanese government said it had no plans to expand its mandatory, 20-kilometre exclusion zone around the plant, while also urging people within 30 kilometres to stay inside.

The troubles at the nuclear complex were set in motion last week’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami knocked out power and destroyed backup generators needed for the reactors’ cooling systems. That added a nuclear crisis on top of twin natural disasters that likely killed well more than 10,000 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless.

Four of the plant’s six reactors have faced serious crises involving fires, explosions, damage to the structures housing reactor cores, partial meltdowns or rising temperatures in the pools used to store spent nuclear fuel. Officials also recently announced that temperatures are rising in the spent fuel pools of the last two reactors.

Two Japanese military CH-47 Chinook helicopters began dumping seawater on the complex’s damaged Unit 3 at 9:48 a.m. local time, defence ministry spokeswoman Kazumi Toyama said. The choppers dumped at least four loads on the reactor in just the first 10 minutes, though television footage showed much of it appearing to disperse in the wind.

Chopper crews were flying missions of about 40 minutes each to limit their radiation exposure, passing over the reactor with loads of about 7,500 litres of water.

The dousing is aimed at cooling the Unit 3 reactor, as well as replenishing water in that unit’s cooling pool, where used fuel rods are stored, Toyama said. The plant’s owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said earlier that pool was nearly empty, which would cause the rods to overheat and emit even more radiation.

Defence Minister Toshifumi Kitazawa told reporters that emergency workers had no choice but to try the water dumps before it was too late.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, said Unit 4 also was seriously at risk.

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko said at a congressional hearing in Washington that all the water was gone from that unit’s spent fuel pool. Jaczko said anyone who gets close to the plant could face potentially lethal doses of radiation.

“We believe radiation levels are extremely high,” he said.

Tokyo Electric executives said Thursday that they believed the rods in that pool were covered with water, but an official with Japan’s nuclear safety agency later expressed skepticism about that and moved closer to the U.S. position.

“Considering the amount of radiation released in the area, the fuel rods are more likely to be exposed than to be covered,” Yuichi Sato said.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said that along with the helicopter water drops, special police units would use water cannons — normally used to quell rioters — to spray water onto the Unit 3 storage pool. The high-pressure water cannons will allow emergency workers to stay farther away.

Military vehicles designed to extinguish fires at plane crashes will also be used, said Gen. Ryoichi Oriki.

Emergency workers were forced to temporarily retreat from the plant Wednesday when radiation levels soared, losing precious time. While the levels later dropped, they were still too high to let workers get close.

The storage pools need a constant source of cooling water. Even when removed from reactors, uranium rods are still extremely hot and must be cooled for months, possibly longer, to prevent them from heating up again and emitting radioactivity.

A core team of 180 emergency workers has been at the forefront of the struggle at the plant, rotating in and out of the complex to try to reduce their radiation exposure.

But experts said that anyone working close to the reactors was almost certainly being exposed to radiation levels that could, at least, give them much higher cancer risks.

“I don’t know any other way to say it, but this is like suicide fighters in a war,” said Keiichi Nakagawa, associate professor of the Department of Radiology at University of Tokyo Hospital.

Experts note, though, that radiation levels drop quickly with distance from the complex. While elevated radiation has been detected well outside the evacuation zone, experts say those levels are not dangerous.

U.S. officials were taking no chances, and Prime Minister Naoto Kan and U.S. President Barack Obama spoke about the crisis early Thursday.

In a statement, U.S. Ambassador John V. Roos made his evacuation recommendation “in response to the deteriorating situation” at the Fukushima complex. In Washington, the State Department warned U.S. citizens to consider leaving the country, and offered voluntary evacuation to family members and dependants of U.S. personnel in the cities of Tokyo, Yokohama and Nagoya.

Chartered planes also would be brought in to help private American citizens who wished to leave, the State Department said.

While American officials have been careful not to criticize Japan’s response, they have made clear it’s difficult to ascertain what is going on.

“It’s a very fluid and indeed it’s a very confused situation,” U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman told reporters Wednesday.

Japanese officials raised hopes of easing the crisis early Thursday, saying they may be close to bringing power back to the plant. The new power line would revive electric-powered pumps, making it easier for workers to control the high temperatures.

Tokyo Electric officials said they hoped to have the new power line working later Thursday, and had electricians standing by to connect the power plant. The company also is trying to repair its existing disabled power line.

Nearly a week after the disaster, police said more than 452,000 people were staying in schools and other shelters, as supplies of fuel, medicine and other necessities ran short. Both victims and aid workers appealed for more help.

“There is enough food, but no fuel or gasoline,” said Yuko Niuma, 46, as she stood looking out over Ofunato harbour, where trawlers were flipped on their sides.

Along the tsunami-savaged coast, people must stand in line for food, gasoline and kerosene to heat their homes. In the town of Kesennuma, they lined up to get into a supermarket after a delivery of key supplies, such as instant rice packets and diapers.

Each person was only allowed to buy 10 items, NHK television reported.

With diapers hard to find in many areas, an NHK program broadcast a how-to session on fashioning a diaper from a plastic shopping bag and a towel.

More than 5,300 people are officially listed as dead, but officials believe the toll will climb to well over 10,000.

Other countries have complained that Japan has been too slow and vague in releasing details about its rapidly evolving crisis at the complex of six reactors along Japan’s northeastern coast.

17 Victims Sue Pentagon Over ‘Plague’ of Sexual Violence.

WASHINGTON — It may become a landmark case to force the military to take rape and sexual assault seriously. Or it could be yet another failed attempt in a decades-long battle by women to be accepted in the armed forces.

Seventeen veterans and active-duty service members today took the first step to determining that, suing the Pentagon on charges of violating their constitutional rights to serve their country.

They accused two secretaries of defense of condoning, ignoring and implicitly encouraging sexual abuse in the ranks in a 42-page complaint filed in federal district court in Alexandria, Va., which contains phrases like “f—-ing whore,” “bitch” and “troublemaker.”The plaintiffs, who include two men, come from every military branch. They charge they were victimized twice — once by their assailants and again by the institution they served.

“The system is driven by rape myths,” said Myla Haider, a former Army criminal investigator who was raped by a co-worker. The co-worker was later court-martialed in another case as a “serial sex offender.”
“There is a pervasive attitude within DOD that any man might commit these types of offenses and therefore when these things do come up it is seen as something that is commited by a peer or just another soldier” and not taken seriously, said Haider, a plaintiff in the suit.

Such attitudes aren’t new. Ever since the infamous Tailhook scandal broke out in 1991 after the first Gulf War, an unending series of investigations, congressional hearings, reports, training regimens and special offices have sought to end the problem that the acronym-obsessed service now has given its very own name: MST — military sexual trauma.

Eleanor Smeal of the Feminist Majority Foundation, who has watched for decades as women warriors fought to be accepted in the macho ranks of the military, said the challenge in civil court “is necessary because so much else has failed.”

As a Marine captain, Anuradha Bhagwati witnessed her own senior officers violate sexual harassment policies.Bhagwati is now the head of the advocacy group Service Women’s Action Network. She says she has seen those violators “shirk their responsibilities to their own troops … transfer sexual predators out of the units instead of prosecuting them, promote sexual predators during ongoing investigations and accuse highly decorated enlisted service members of lying.”

She called sexual violence “a plague upon the United States military” that “threatens our national security by undermining operational readiness, draining morale, harming retention and destroying lives.”The stories told by Haider and other plaintiffs at a news conference this morning were harrowing. Among them:

• Kori Cioca, the lead plaintiff, said she was constantly harassed by her Coast Guard supervisor. After she made a mistake during a knot-tying quiz, he called her a “stupid f—-ing female, who didn’t belong in the military” and then spit in her face. After complaining to her superior, the abuse escalated to stalking, sexual harassment and ultimately rape in December 2005. Despite an admission from her rapist, commanders told Cioca if she pressed charges she would be court-martialed for lying and later faced retaliation.
• Sarah Albertson was raped by a fellow Marine who outranked her in 2006. Because they had been drinking alcohol, both she and the man were charged with “inappropriate barracks conduct,” and she was ordered to “respect” her assailant. Commanders forced the corporal to interact with her rapist for two more years, suspending her security clearance and downgrading her work assignments because she took prescription medicine to cope with the trauma of being forced to live and work with her rapist.
• Rebekah Havrilla was an Army sergeant serving in Afghanistan in 2006 when she was sexually harassed by a supervisor and later raped by another soldier. She reported it under the military’s restricted reporting policy. When she later saw her rapist at a base in Missouri, she went into shock and sought the help of a military chaplain. She said he told her “it must have been God’s will for her to be raped” and recommended she attend church more often.

Most of the plaintiffs have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental stress problems. They charged the Pentagon with a “systemic failure to stop rape and sexual assault.”The suit names former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his successor, Robert Gates, for failing to “eradicate a well-entrenched misogynistic military culture that permits Command to scoff at rape allegations, threaten victims with courts martial and exercise unfettered discretion to decide to use ‘non-judicial punishment’ to penalize rape and sexual assault.”

The lawsuit specifically cites Rumsfeld, desperate for volunteers to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, for granting “moral waivers” to recruits arrested or convicted of domestic and sexual violence. Despite a federal law making it a felony for such offenders to possess a firearm, he provided an exception to members of the military.Sex crimes, it noted, soared 24 percent in the year before Rumsfeld’s resignation in 2006.

Gates is charged with “failing to take reasonable steps” to protect the plaintiffs from repeated abuse. It notes that he directed the head of the Pentagon’s Sexual Assault and Prevention and Response Office to ignore a congressional subpoena to testify and failed to create a centralized database of sex crimes as mandated by lawmakers.

The current defense secretary’s “failures to act … led to a steady and dramatic increase” in the number of rapes and sexual assaults, rising by 25 percent in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007 and continuing to increase at double digits annually since then.

“Sexual assault is a wider societal problem, and Secretary Gates has been working with the service chiefs to make sure the U.S. military is doing all it can to prevent and respond to it,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said in a statement.

“That means providing more money, personnel, training and expertise, including reaching out to other large institutions such as universities to learn best practices. This is now a command priority, but we clearly still have more work to do in order to ensure all of our service members are safe from abuse.”

The lawsuit cited the Pentagon’s own statistics that reported 3,230 rapes and other sexual assaults in 2009. Because the military acknowledges that 80 percent of victims don’t report the crime, the real number may be more than 16,000.

Moreover, the complaint charges that the Department of Defense “fails to report conviction rates from courts marital, which is critical data needed by Congress to assess whether reforms are being implemented.”Still, the plaintiffs face a high hurdle.

Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said the facts as presented in the complaint are “certainly disturbing” and merit attention from Pentagon leaders. However, he said he is “skeptical that this case, as a case, will gain any traction” in court.

From a legal point of view, he said, it is a steep climb for 17 plaintiffs to argue for systemic abuses in a military of some 2 million people.

“I don’t know that a culture of sexism and misogyny has ever been recognized as a basis” for suing for violations of equal protection, he added. “Not every sexual assault is a violation of equal protection.”

Mubarak Resigns; Egyptian Streets Erupt in Cheers.

Hosni Mubarak resigned as Egyptian president today and handed control to the military, driven from the top after 30 years of autocratic rule.

Seconds after the nationally televised announcement by Vice President Omar Suleiman, celebrations broke out in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square, ground zero of the protest movement, which was packed with some 250,000 protesters.

“Egypt is free! Egypt is free!” the crowds shouted.

Car horns honked and people waved Egyptian flags, sang the national anthem and danced in conga lines.”The Egyptian people made history today!” Hala Abdel Razik, a retired English teacher, told AOL News’ Sarah Topol in Tahrir Square. “We still have a long way to go to fix things. We have to start all over again. It’s the young people’s role, with the help of older people. We’re open to new scenarios.”

In Washington, President Barack Obama said Egyptians “inspired us” through the “moral force of nonviolence” that changed their nation.

“The people of Egypt have spoken. Their voices have been heard. And Egypt will never be the same,” Obama said.

Nobel Peace laureate and pro-democracy campaigner Mohamed ElBaradei said it was the “greatest” day of his life. “The country has been liberated after decades of repression,” the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said, according to The Associated Press. He said he hoped for a “beautiful” transfer of power.That transition will be overseen by the High Council of the Armed Forces — a group of generals headed by Defense Minister Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, 75 — which is now in charge of the country. In a statement issued hours before Mubarak’s resignation, the council promised that it would support free and fair elections. It also said it would scrap the much-hated emergency laws instituted when Mubarak took power in 1981, which grant police almost unlimited powers of arrest.

It is not yet clear what role, if any, Suleiman will have in the transitional regime.

Many Egyptians are shocked that Mubarak — who is thought to have left Cairo earlier today and headed to his seaside palace at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh — is finally out of their lives.”I can’t believe I’m going to see another president in my lifetime,” Sherif el-Husseiny, a 33-year-old lawyer protesting in Tahrir Square, told Reuters. “I was born during [President Anwar] Sadat’s time but was only 4 when he died.”

The seemingly unmovable president was finally toppled by an uprising that grew from small groups of young activists organizing on the Internet. Google manager Wael Ghonim, 30 — who set up a popular protest page on Facebook and is now seen as one of the revolution’s figureheads — told CNN that he wanted to thank Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for supplying the tools that helped mobilize masses of Egyptians.

The rebellion may have started online, but it soon spread throughout society. Inspired by events in neighboring Tunisia — where a popular uprising ended President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s 23-year-long rule — Egyptians of all ages and classes took to the streets to protest Jan. 25.They expressed their anger over the Mubarak regime’s corruption and brutality, and its failure to create jobs and control soaring inflation. When the police used violence to break up the largely peaceful demonstrations — at least 300 people are believed to have died in clashes over the past month — they became angrier and more determined to overthrow the autocrat.Mubarak desperately tried to cling to power during the 18 days of protest. He offered pro-democracy campaigners numerous concessions, including a promise not to run in elections in September. On Thursday, after word spread that he would resign, he went on national TV and announced he was handing only some of his powers to Suleiman.

But a surge in protests today apparently helped force the military to finally boot the 82-year-old autocrat from office.

More than 1,000 activists besieged the state TV and radio building in Cairo, in an attempt to end its broadcast of round-the-clock pro-Mubarak propaganda. Tahrir Square was crammed with a crowd that rivaled the quarter-million figure of the biggest protests over the past 18 days. Some 100,000 people gathered in the main square of Egypt’s second biggest city, Alexandria.

And, for the first time since demonstrations began, protesters staged rallies outside the president’s many palaces.”What are you waiting for?” one protester yelled at soldiers stationed outside Mubarak’s main residence, Oruba, in northern Cairo, The Associated Press reported this morning. “Did you sign an oath and pledge your allegiance to the president or the people?” shouted another member of the 1,000-strong crowd.

Throughout it all, the military stood by, guarding key pieces of infrastructure but keeping its earlier promise not to fire on protesters. When it became clear that the armed forces had taken over from Mubarak, protesters in Cairo embraced soldiers and had their pictures taken with tank drivers.

Although the future was not known, jubilation ruled for the moment.

“I’m excited, euphoric!” Nirvana Said, a training manager who has camped out in Tahrir Square since Jan. 25, told AOL News’ Topol. “Now that the military controls everything, there will be no people on the square tomorrow. It’s finished!”

‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Repeal Passes Senate, But Change Will Take Time.

After months of fits and starts, a bill repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the ban against gays serving openly in the military, passed the Senate 65 to 31 on Saturday.

Eight Republicans — Sens. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mark Kirk of Illinois, John Ensign of Nevada, Richard Burr of North Carolina, and George Voinovich of Ohio — joined 57 members of the Democratic caucus in support of the measure. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) did not vote Saturday, but released a statement saying he could not support repeal “at this time.”
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), the lead Senate sponsor of the bill, framed the issue as a civil rights imperative, calling the ban on gays in the military “inconsistent with basic American values.”

“To force the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy on the military is to force them to be less than they want to be — and less than they can be,” Lieberman said Saturday. “These people simply want to serve their country.” Under the Clinton-era policy, armed services members are expected to keep their sexual orientation private, with the promise that recruiters and officers will not delve into their personal lives.President Obama applauded the Senate and said “thousands of patriotic Americans” would no longer have to “live a lie” to serve in the military.

During the debate Saturday, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was alarmed by the number of Arabic and Farsi linguists who had been discharged under the policy at a time the military needs them most, noting that nearly 10,000 of the 14,000 men and women forced out since 1993 were language specialists.

“I don’t care who you love. If you love this country enough to risk your life for it, you should be able to serve as you are,” Wyden said. “Today the Senate has the opportunity to be on the right side of history. ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ is a wrong that should never have been perpetrated.”

At a congressional hearing earlier this month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen testified that lifting the DADT policy would likely have only a limited impact on the services. They said they preferred congressional action — which would give the military some time to implement the change — to a judicial decision, which would alter the policy immediately.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee, cited that testimony, as well as the results of a Pentagon study on implementing the change, as the reasons he believed ending the policy that bans gays from serving openly is the right thing to do.

“The final report of a working group concluded that changing the policy would present a low risk to the military’s effectiveness, even during a time of war, and that 70 percent believe it would be positive, mixed or no effect,” Levin said. “The troops told us that what matters is doing the job.”

But several Republicans on the Armed Services panel disagreed with Levin and stood up Saturday to vocally oppose changing the policy.

Sen. John McCain, a former Navy flier and POW during the Vietnam war, had filibustered the repeal bill throughout the year. Yet he said he was resigned to the fact that it would pass an earlier test vote Saturday.

But McCain (R-Ariz.) said he remained convinced that repealing the ban would cost American lives.

“I understand the other side’s argument about their social political agenda, but to somehow argue that [‘don’t ask, don’t tell’] has harmed our military is not consistent with the facts,” he said.

Although McCain said he was confident that the military will comply with a change in the law, he warned that troops will be put at greater risk as a result. “They will do what is asked of them, but don’t think it won’t be at great cost,” he said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a JAG officer in the Air Force Reserves, excoriated the bill’s proponents for pushing forward with the change when the military is fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“You care more about politics…than you care about governing this country,” Graham said.

Now that the bill has passed the House and Senate, it goes to Obama to be signed into law some time next week.

But a change in the law will not automatically change the policy. Rather, the bill stipulates that the policy will only be discarded after the president, the Secretary of Defense, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff certify that changing it will not hurt the armed services’ readiness, morale or cohesion. After a 60-day review by Congress, the Pentagon is to develop procedures for ending it altogether, a process that could take months or years to complete.

Sen. Levin said he would be watching the military carefully as the certification and implementation process moves forward. But he could not yet say how long would be too long.

“I just think we’ll know it when we see it,” Levin told Politics Daily. “But right now we’ve got to just be optimistic and be confident, particularly with these leaders.” Levin credited Mullen’s early support of repeal for giving the legislative process momentum when it needed it most.

“I don’t have any doubt that he is going to be pushing this quickly and at the appropriate speed and in the appropriate way,” Levin said. “This is a totally doable deal.”

Sen. Collins told Politics Daily that she expects it to take months, not years, but said that the military needs time to create and hold training sessions for servicemembers and to work through any issues associated with the implementation.

But Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), an early advocate for repeal this year, said Congressional passage of the bill makes one immediate change in military policy.

“No one will be dismissed under this policy ever again,” she said.

House Votes to Repeal ‘Don’t Ask’ as Focus Turns to Senate.

Congress took a small step toward allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military Wednesday as the House voted, again, to repeal the 17-year-old ban on military gays.The action now moves to the Senate, where a similar bill awaits consideration in the frenzied final days of the lame-duck Congress.The House vote of 250-149 came after heated debate on the arguments that have echoed across the Capitol for months: how risky to combat readiness would it be to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, and how fair is it to continue to ban them from military service? Critics threw aside the judgments of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the troops are ready for the change.California Republican Buck McKeon, incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, held that repeal would shatter the morale and cohesiveness of small, all-male combat units. “I don’t think it’s worth the risk to put them in further jeopardy than they are in now,” he said. “I implore our members to reject this … ”House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged members to repeal the “fundamental unfairness” of the law banning gays from openly serving. She said repeal would honor “the values they fight for on the battlefield.”Repeal of that law, and the Pentagon’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy implementing it, are widely supported by senior Defense Department officials and by a broad majority of military service members as well as by the public. But repeal has been buffeted by a series of unrelated political and legislative maneuverings that have kept its supporters on edge for months.Pending in the Senate is a bill introduced last weekend by mavericks Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Susan Collins of Maine. Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts, elected last January to fill the late Ted Kennedy’s seat, told me over the weekend he also intends to vote for repeal. Approval would send it to the White House for President Obama’s signature. As a presidential candidate and as president, Obama had vowed to work for repeal.The Lieberman-Collins bill came after Senate Republicans refused to end a filibuster aimed at preventing the DADT measure and the rest of the mammoth defense budget bill, from coming to the floor for debate. The House had approved repeal as part of the defense budget package last May.Opponents of repeal took heart from the testimony earlier this month of the military chiefs, three of whom told the Senate Armed Services Committee that they needed more time to prepare their troops to get used to serving with openly gay or lesbian military members.Unless the Senate acts this month, it is likely the courts will order an immediate repeal, an outcome Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said would lead to chaos and precisely the kind of disruption of morale and combat readiness many critics of repeal have feared. He has urged Congress to repeal the law now, giving the Pentagon time to implement the change in an orderly fashion.
If courts order an immediate repeal, the Pentagon would be required to allow gays to serve openly in front-line infantry combat units, where the resistance is expected to be the highest.Gates acknowledged greater resistance to repeal among those units. But he cited evidence from a year-long Defense Department study which found that troops who have served alongside a gay or lesbian service member said they experienced little or no impact on their unit’s cohesion or performance.Gen. Jim Amos, the outspoken commandant of the Marine Corps, this week repeated his opposition to repealing the current law, arguing that it would distract Marines in the midst of combat. “Distractions cost Marines lives,” Amos growled in a session with reporters.

SKorea Vows Action Against North but Flip-Flops on Drills.

(Nov. 29) — South Korea’s president apologized today for failing to better protect his citizens and vowed actions — not words — against what he called “inhumane” North Korean attacks. His comments came on Day 2 of military drills with U.S. forces designed to threaten and deter nuclear-armed Pyongyang in the wake of its deadly barrage on a southern island.

But while the USS George Washington and its South Korean allies rehearse for war in the Yellow Sea, China is calling for “emergency consultations” to calm emotions on the Korean peninsula — seizing a diplomatic role, albeit in a neutral way, that Washington and Seoul have long pushed for Beijing to play.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak gave his first speech on national TV today since the North’s artillery attack killed two South Korean civilians and two marines last Tuesday on Yeonpyeong Island near the Koreas’ disputed sea border. Seoul announced today that more live-fire exercises would take place on the island, but then quickly reversed the decision, saying marines made the announcement without final approval from superiors. The same type of drills prompted last week’s attack.Lee has been struggling to display his government’s leadership while embroiled in the crisis with the North, and today’s flip-flop over more Yeonpyeong drills only exacerbated his critics’ frustration. His defense minister resigned Thursday amid public outrage over Seoul’s failure to prevent the attack, which also wounded nearly 20 people. Hundreds of veterans have been rallying in Seoul’s streets, burning North Korean flags and effigies of Kim Jong Il but also decrying their own government as weak.”Genuine peace will only be possible when we confront any threats and provocations with sturdy courage,” Lee said today, according to The Wall Street Journal. “Any provocations by the North from now on will, without fail, be met with strong responses.”

Naval skirmishes are not uncommon between the two Koreas, technically still at war after their 1950-53 war ended without a peace treaty. But last week was the first time a residential, civilian neighborhood suffered a direct hit.

“North Korea will pay the price in the event of further provocations,” Lee continued, according to Reuters. “Attacking civilians militarily is an inhumane crime that is strictly forbidden in a time of war. … Now is the time to show action, not a hundred words.”

Lee’s speech comes on the second of four days of joint military exercises between South Korean and American forces, which are taking place off the coasts of the Korean peninsula and China.

Beijing said last week that it objects to the drills, which ratcheted up tensions across Asia and speculation about whether all-out war between the Koreas could be coming. Pyongyang said Friday the exercises bring the peninsula “closer to the brink of war,” and its state media said today that the drills mark an “intentional plot” by Washington and Seoul, The Associated Press reported.

Over the weekend, Beijing seemed to embrace the role of mediator that Washington and Seoul have long encouraged, but did so in a neutral way, failing to assign blame to the North for Tuesday’s clashes. Still, China called for both Koreas, the U.S., Japan and Russia to convene for emergency talks in Beijing next month, in a resumption of the talks with the same parties that have so far failed to reach a breakthrough over Pyongyang’s disputed nuclear program.

Beijing also sent one of its top foreign policy officials to Seoul over the weekend and announced that a North Korean official would travel to China on Tuesday, The New York Times reported.

It’s unclear whether China’s actions are a result of pressure from Washington and Seoul, and whether they would prove fruitful. But the U.S. and South Korea have demanded concerted action from China to wield its influence with Pyongyang, more than Beijing has so far taken. China is North Korea’s only real ally and provides the country with desperately needed humanitarian aid.
“North Korea is not the kind of country that if its neighbor severs economic assistance it will bow down and listen to it,” Liu Ming of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences told the Times. “China knows this, so it cannot do much more.”

Japan, meanwhile, voiced reluctance today at China’s suggestion of new six-party talks with North Korea. “We want to respond to [the proposal] cautiously while consulting with the United States and South Korea,” Prime Minister Naoto Kan told reporters in Tokyo, according to The Straits Times.

In the past, Seoul has vetoed the idea of renewed six-party talks over the North’s nuclear program, saying it won’t participate until Pyongyang apologizes for the sinking of a southern warship last March, which killed 46 sailors. The Cheonan’s demise in the Yellow Sea not far from Yeonpyeong Island was blamed on a North Korean torpedo, but Pyongyang has denied any involvement.

US and South Korea Start War Games.

YEONPYEONG ISLAND, South Korea (Nov. 27) — The U.S. and South Korea launched joint war games Sunday as a top official from North Korea’s ally China met South Korea’s president in a bid to calm tensions after a deadly North Korean artillery attack last week.

Hours after the drills began, residents of the South Korean island targeted by last week’s barrage were ordered to evacuate to shelters after the military heard fresh artillery fire north of the disputed western sea border. None of the rounds landed on the island, and authorities later lifted the evacuation order.Four South Koreans were killed last Tuesday when the North rained artillery on Yeonpyeong Island, home to both fishing communities and military bases, in one of the worst assaults on South Korean territory since the 1950-53 Korean War.

China’s State Councilor Dai Bingguo, a senior foreign policy adviser, met with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in Seoul, according to Lee’s office, which provided no details. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said they discussed the North Korean attack and how to ease tensions.The meeting followed similar discussions Saturday between Dai and South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan, according to Seoul’s Foreign Ministry.

The war games in the Yellow Sea, south of the targeted island involve the USS George Washington supercarrier and display resolve by Korean War allies Washington and Seoul to respond strongly to any future North Korean aggression. However, Washington has insisted the drills are routine and were planned well before last Tuesday’s attack.

The drills kicked off Sunday morning when ships from both countries entered the exercise zone, an official with South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said on condition of anonymity, citing office rules.

However, a spokesman for the U.S. military in South Korea said U.S. ships were still steaming toward the area and that the drills would not officially begin until later in the day.Earlier Sunday, North Korea issued a fresh threat to launch attacks against South Korea if provoked.

“We will launch merciless counter-military strikes against any provocative moves that infringe upon our country’s territoritorial waters,” the North’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

South Korea was investigating the exact location of Sunday’s artillery fire and whether it was part of North Korean exercises, an official with South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing office rules.