Civilians

Five weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden publicly commanded his foot-soldiers to ramp up the violence against American civilians. But five weeks before his death, he privately instructed his lieutenants to refrain from killing any civilians. Did the world's most notorious terrorist have a moral awakening and grow soft? Hardly. His unheralded tactical shift was purely strategic. This month, the Combating Terrorism Center at the West Point Military Academy released 17 declassified documents that were seized from bin Laden's Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound in the targeted killing last year.

Ravens coach John Harbaugh will be honored tomorrow for his support of the U.S. Army. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno , the Chief of Staff of the Army, will present Harbaugh with one of five Outstanding Civilian Service Awards during a ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Va.  The program honors those who have passionately supported the U.S. Army. The citation that will be presented to Harbaugh by Gen. Odierno, the Chief of Staff of the Army, will read:  “For outstanding service to the United States Army, Soldiers, families, veterans and military communities.

In her op-ed, Laila El-Haddad ("Palestinians betrayed by Judge Goldstone," April 18) displays the mind-set of someone who believes that the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas, is blameless in its purposeful attacks on Israeli civilians. While Judge Goldstone recently noted "that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy by Israel," he cannot say the same for Hamas. He states, "That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.

Five weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden publicly commanded his foot-soldiers to ramp up the violence against American civilians. But five weeks before his death, he privately instructed his lieutenants to refrain from killing any civilians. Did the world's most notorious terrorist have a moral awakening and grow soft? Hardly. His unheralded tactical shift was purely strategic. This month, the Combating Terrorism Center at the West Point Military Academy released 17 declassified documents that were seized from bin Laden's Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound in the targeted killing last year.

The Hamas government in Gaza backtracked Saturday on its apology earlier in the week in which it expressed regret for harming Israeli civilians in rocket attacks. The apology had signaled a rare deviation from Hamas' violent ideology, and the subsequent zigzag reflects the Islamic militants' conflicting objectives. Hamas, which seized Gaza by force in 2007, is trying to reach out to the West in hopes of winning recognition and getting Israel to lift its blockade of Gaza. However, Hamas is also reluctant to discard its violent ideology for fear of losing credibility at home.

The Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center and the University of Delaware have entered into a cooperative research and development agreement to collaborate on an orthopedic rehabilitation project that will improve rehabilitative care for wounded warriors and civilians. Entitled "Enhanced Locomotion for Limb Salvage Patients: Optimal Dorsiflexion Resistance Ankle-Foot Orthoses," the joint project will generate personalized rehabilitation devices (orthopedic braces) for wounded warriors who receive treatment at Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs medical treatment facilities, as well as civilians.

How is it really going in Afghanistan? In his recent testimony before Congress, Gen. David Petraeus reported substantial if fragile progress and conveyed a can-do attitude reflecting confidence about our prospects. Yet press reports and other organizations and individuals on the ground seem to grow more dispirited by the month. Are they looking at the same war? They are. But they apply very different standards, and so they reach very different conclusions. Soldiers are trained and equipped to fight.

MOSCOW -- After weeks of trying to persuade civilians to flee Grozny, Russian officials said yesterday that residents had missed their chance to leave and should hide in their shelters until Russian forces have secured the Chechen capital. Yesterday's warning was a fresh indication that the climactic battle for the city is finally at hand. It was also a somber reminder that Russian forces are determined to quickly subdue Grozny even if it means fighting in a city still occupied by tens of thousands of civilians.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- NATO forces said yesterday that they were investigating reports that 25 Afghan civilians were killed in overnight airstrikes in southern Afghanistan. The mounting civilian casualty toll in Afghanistan is eroding public support for the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai. After the report of the latest deaths, Karzai told the BBC that accidental killings and injuries of civilians at the hands of coalition forces are "difficult for us to accept or understand."

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has enlarged its ever-swelling roster of Desert Storm heroes by more than 4,000 civilians -- and potentially many more than that.The list includes comedians Jay Leno, Steve Martin and Bob Hope, and even Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams.According to an announcement yesterday, medals will be awarded to thousands of civilians for supporting the Persian Gulf war effort. They include entertainers and others who supported troops through the United Service Organizations, Red Cross and civil reserve air fleet, and Defense Department civilians who spent "any time" in the Persian Gulf through April 11.Officials said this includes Mr. Williams, who toured the region four times with his boss, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, but otherwise spent the war fighting reporters at the Pentagon.

A civilian employee of the U.S. Navy who for years sold government scrap metal from Naval installations for a personal profit was sentenced in federal court Wednesday to 30 months in prison for the scheme, according to U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein. Christopher M. Hill, 47, of Lusby, who handled recycling and scraps for the Patuxent River Naval Air Station and other military installations, was also ordered by Chief U.S. District Judge Deborah K. Chasanow to pay more than $630,000 in restitution to the Navy and almost $135,000 in restitution to the IRS. According to a plea agreement in the case, a private contractor collected scrap metal owned by the government — but Hill had the firm submit payments for those scraps directly to him. Between 2004 and 2010, Hill deposited 124 checks from the company into his personal bank accounts, and did not report the earnings to the IRS. In a statement, Robert Craig, special agent in charge for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, one of the agencies involved in the investigation, said Hill's arrest shows those agencies and Rosenstein's office "will doggedly investigate and prosecute those that decide to break the rules — or make-up their own rules — to steal and cheat from the Department of Defense.

The announcement Sunday that the U.S. will join Turkey in providing "nonlethal" humanitarian aid to Syrian opposition groups is a clear sign of the Obama administration's growing frustration with the failure of diplomatic efforts to halt Syrian President Bashar Assad's bloody crackdown on dissent. But it's still far from clear whether that modest escalation of involvement in the conflict will hasten Mr. Assad's departure from the scene. The U.S. has been calling on the U.N. Security Council for weeks to prevent what officials fear is a looming humanitarian disaster on the order of the mass killings in Kosovo and Bosnia during the 1990s.

I am ashamed to admit that my heart aches for Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, and I feel almost nothing for the families of the Afghan men, women and children he is accused of killing. It is alarming, almost horrifying, to realize that I feel this wave of sadness for him and for his wife and two young children but can find no pity for the people he is said to have methodically gunned down. He snapped, I tell myself. He was in his fourth combat tour and had just seen the grave wounds of a comrade, and something inside him just broke apart.

The Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center and the University of Delaware have entered into a cooperative research and development agreement to collaborate on an orthopedic rehabilitation project that will improve rehabilitative care for wounded warriors and civilians. Entitled "Enhanced Locomotion for Limb Salvage Patients: Optimal Dorsiflexion Resistance Ankle-Foot Orthoses," the joint project will generate personalized rehabilitation devices (orthopedic braces) for wounded warriors who receive treatment at Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs medical treatment facilities, as well as civilians.

The vile acts depicted in a video on the Internet this week - purportedly showing four U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of three Taliban fighters - require condemnation in the strongest possible terms by U.S. and NATO officials. To do anything other than unequivocally repudiate such conduct would be self-defeating in a war that depends on maintaining the moral high ground against our enemies and the trust of the Afghan people. It would also hand our adversaries a massive propaganda victory.

"The Lakotah had no language for insulting other orders of existence: pest, waste, weed ... " But what about "bugsplat"? That's the word for the cop at UC Davis, walking up and down the line of students sitting with their arms locked, zapping them in the eyes with pepper spray. It's the word for the Tunisian police and bureaucrats who humiliated Mohamed Bouazizi and destroyed his livelihood as a street vendor. It's the word for anyone whose power exceeds his humanity.

ACRE, Israel -- The last mourners were saying goodbye to Shimon Zribi and his young daughter, Mazal, their shrouded bodies buried side by side in dirt the color of henna. A few feet away, down a rocky hillside, women were already sobbing over another dead man, Albert Ben-Abu. One funeral hadn't even ended when another began. Israel yesterday buried its dead, killed a day earlier in the Jewish state's single bloodiest day in more than three weeks of fighting. Five of the dead were residents of this northern coastal city who had emerged from bomb shelters, thinking the coast was clear, only to be cut down by Hezbollah rocket fire; the other three were Israeli Arab youths who had leapt from their car for safety, only to take the direct hit that left not a scratch on their vehicle.

Army officials at Fort Meade say they will lay off about 40 permanent employees and 10 temporary workers late this year because of restructuring and budget cuts.The layoffs will be part of an overall force reduction that will cut 136 civilian Army positions at the base. In addition to the layoffs, the other jobs will be eliminated by moving workers to new positions or leaving vacancies unfilled, Fort Meade spokesman Don McClow said.The cuts are expected to save approximately $7 million a year.

Weapons-makers, ideologues and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta are busy whipping up fears in reaction to scheduled reductions in our bloated military budget. Don't be fooled. These cuts will not put our security at risk, though they will cut into profits and executive pay at certain defense-establishment corporations. In this time of debilitating unemployment and financial disaster, our slavish devotion to military spending undercuts our opportunity to rebuild America. Military expenditures have doubled in constant dollars since 2001.

So many of us have waited a long time for the complete withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. Some of us were against the war from the very beginning since we felt it was unjustified. Some of us moved to that conclusion after so many years and American lives lost to this tragedy, in addition to the loss of Iraqi civilians. We are in this recession and economic situation because of two wars and the billions of dollars spent which could have been used in our own country. Now that President Barack Obama has kept his promise to withdraw all troops by the end of year, which is what so many of us have been looking for, there is this very vocal minority who are against leaving.