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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, AUGUST 17, 2018
Mattis says further Taliban assaults likely
By ROBERT BURNS
Associated Press
Western-backed Afghan
defenses will not break under
the weight of Taliban violence
in advance of scheduled parlia-
mentary elections in October,
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis
said.
In his most detailed com-
ments on the Taliban’s assault
on the eastern city of Ghazni
since it began Aug. 10, Mattis
said the Taliban had six objec-
tives in and around the city and
failed to seize any of them. He
would not specify the six sites.
In Ghazni, provincial
police chief Farid Mashal
said Thursday that roads were
being cleared of mines planted
by Taliban who temporarily
held entire neighborhoods of
the city that they had besieged.
The fighting continued for five
days with more than 100 mem-
bers of the Afghan National
Security forces killed and 20
civilians. Scores of Taliban
were also killed, according to
Afghan officials.
Mattis said Thursday some
Taliban fighters were still
AP Photo/Rahmat Gul
Men carry the coffin of a relative who died in a deadly suicide bombing that targeted a training class in a private build-
ing in western Kabul, Afghanistan.
holed up in houses in the city
“trying to get resupplied.” He
said businesses are reopening,
and overall, “it’s much more
stable” in Ghazni, showing that
the Taliban have fallen short.
“They have not endeared
themselves, obviously, to the
population of Ghazni,” Mat-
tis said. “They use terror. They
use bombs because they can’t
win with ballots.”
The Taliban operation fol-
lowed a familiar pattern, Mat-
tis said in remarks to report-
ers flying with him Thursday
WORLD IN BRIEF
Associated Press
Trump nixes
$92M military
parade, blames
DC for high cost
WASHINGTON — Presi-
dent Donald Trump said today
he had canceled plans for a
Veterans Day military parade,
citing the “ridiculously high”
price tag — a day after U.S.
officials said the November
event could cost $92 million,
more than three times the price
first suggested by the White
House.
Trump on Twitter accused
local Washington, D.C., poli-
ticians of price-gouging. But
preliminary estimates from
the Pentagon showed that
roughly $50 million would
cover military aircraft, equip-
ment, personnel and other sup-
port. The remainder would
be borne by other agencies
and largely involve security
costs.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser
shot back on Twitter today that
she was the one who “finally
got thru to the reality star in the
White House with the realities
($21.6M) of parades/events/
demonstrations in Trump
America (sad).”
The Defense Department
had announced Thursday there
would be no parade in 2018.
Trump tweeted that perhaps
something could be sched-
uled next year when the price
“comes WAY DOWN.” He
did not explain how the costs
would be reduced.
Col. Rob Manning, a Penta-
gon spokesman, said Thursday
that the military and the White
House had “agreed to explore
opportunities in 2019,” an
announcement that came sev-
eral hours after reports about
the projected parade price tag.
Defense Secretary Jim Mat-
tis told reporters traveling with
him to Bogota, Colombia, that
whoever leaked the $92 mil-
lion number to the press was
“probably smoking something
that is legal in my state but
not in most” — a reference to
his home state of Washington,
where marijuana use is legal.
The parade’s cost has
become a politically charged
issue, particularly after the
Pentagon canceled a major
military exercise planned for
August with South Korea, in
the wake of Trump’s summit
with North Korean leader Kim
Jong Un. Trump said the drills
were provocative and that
dumping them would save the
U.S. “a tremendous amount of
money.” The Pentagon later
said the Korea drills would
have cost $14 million.
The parade was expected
to include troops from all five
armed services — the Army,
Navy, Air Force, Marine
Corps and Coast Guard — as
well as units in period uni-
forms representing earlier
times in the nation’s history. It
also was expected to involve
a number of military aircraft
flyovers.
Bodies of
missing wife,
daughters found
in Colorado
FREDERICK, Colo. —
After his pregnant wife and
two daughters disappeared,
Christopher Watts stood on
his porch in Colorado and
lamented to reporters how
much he missed them.
He longed for the simple
things, he said, like telling his
girls to eat their dinner and
gazing at them as they curled
up to watch cartoons.
“Last night, I had every
light in the house on. I was
hoping that I would just get ran
over by the kids running in the
door, just barrel-rushing me,
but it didn’t happen,” he told
Denver TV station KMGH.
On Thursday, Watts was
in jail after being arrested on
suspicion of killing his fam-
ily, probably before he spoke
those words. Authorities did
not offer a motive.
The body of 34-year-old
Shanann Watts was found on
property owned by Anadarko
Petroleum, one of the state’s
largest oil and gas drill-
ers, where Christopher Watts
worked, police said. Investi-
gators found what they believe
are the bodies of 4-year-old
Bella and 3-year-old Celeste
nearby on Thursday afternoon.
“As horrible as this out-
come is, our role now is to do
everything we can to deter-
mine exactly what occurred,”
John Camper, director of the
Colorado Bureau of Investiga-
tion, said at a news conference
in Frederick, a small town on
the grassy plains north of Den-
ver, where fast-growing subdi-
visions intermingle with drill-
ing rigs and oil wells.
Watts, 33, has not been for-
mally charged. A judge ordered
him held without bail and told
prosecutors to file charges by
Monday afternoon. He set a
Tuesday hearing to review the
case.
Remains found
in New Mexico
desert tunnel
are missing boy
SANTA FE, N.M. —
Forensic investigators said
Thursday they identified the
remains of a Georgia boy
whose father is accused of
abducting him and perform-
ing purification rituals on the
child as he died at a remote
New Mexico desert compound.
The cause of the child’s death
remained unknown.
The body of Abdul-ghani
Wahhaj was found Aug. 6 in
an underground tunnel. It was
so severely decomposed that
investigators could not yet
determine how the severely
disabled boy reported missing
in December had died, New
Mexico’s Office of the Medical
Investigator said in a statement.
A spokeswoman for the
office said it will be examining
both the body and where the
remains were located to seek
to determine a cause and man-
ner of death. A prosecutor said
no charges regarding the death
are imminent because officials
don’t yet know how the boy
died.
“All we have is a positive
ID,” Donald Gallegos, the dis-
trict attorney for Taos County
in northern New Mexico, said
in an interview. “We’ll need
something else, actual cause of
death, manner of death.”
Authorities have said they
believe Abdul-ghani died in
February, when he was 3.
The boy’s father, Siraj Ibn
Wahhaj, was among five peo-
ple arrested on suspicion of
child abuse at the compound
near the Colorado state line,
where authorities say 11 hun-
gry children were found liv-
ing in filth during a raid ear-
lier this month. A search a few
days later turned up the body in
a tunnel.
Prosecutors seeking to keep
Sirah Ibn Wahhaj and four
members of his extended fam-
ily behind bars said in court on
Monday that he had been train-
ing some children at the com-
pound to use firearms and carry
out attacks on an anti-govern-
ment mission that might target
schools.
An FBI agent, citing inter-
views with two children from
the compound, said Abdul-
ghani died as relatives per-
formed a ritual on the boy to
cast out demonic spirits while
reading from the Quran.
Police work to
stop overdoses
after 76 fall ill
Police swarmed a Con-
necticut park near Yale Uni-
versity and searched people’s
homes for drugs Thursday in
an effort to prevent more over-
doses from a batch of syn-
thetic marijuana blamed for
sending more than 70 people
to the hospital.
Social workers and men-
tal health professionals also
responded to the New Haven
Green, where most of the
overdoses happened Wednes-
day. Authorities described a
chaotic scene where people
were dropping to the ground
unconscious, others vom-
iting and some becoming
lethargic.
Officials said 76 peo-
ple overdosed Wednesday
and 17 more fell ill Thurs-
day. Officials weren’t cer-
tain whether Thursday’s over-
doses involved the same batch
of “K2” synthetic marijuana.
No deaths were reported,
and most of those brought
to local hospitals have been
discharged.
Synthetic marijuana, called
“spice” and other names, usu-
ally is plant material sprayed
with chemicals or other sub-
stances that is sold in small,
colorful packets. It has been
blamed for other mass over-
doses across the country.
evening to Bogota, Colom-
bia, where he was winding
up a weeklong tour of South
America.
The insurgents likely were
trying to gain leverage in
advance of an expected cease
fire offer by Afghan President
Ashraf Ghani, he said. And
they likely were hoping to sow
fear in advance of the October
elections, he added.
“They achieved a degree of
disquiet,” he said, but nothing
more.
“So we’ll continue to see
this sort of thing,” he said,
even though the Taliban lack
the strength to hold territory
they seize for brief periods.
“They will never hold against
the Afghan army.”
The Afghan war has been
stalemated for years. The Tal-
iban lack the popular support
to prevail, although they bene-
fit from sanctuary in Pakistan.
Afghan government forces, on
the other hand, are too weak to
decisively break the insurgents
even as they develop under
U.S. and NATO training and
advising.
Mattis has said he believes
the Afghan security forces are
gaining momentum and can
wear down the Taliban to the
point where the insurgents
would choose to talk peace. So
far that approach has not pro-
duced a breakthrough.
Next week will mark one
year since President Donald
Trump announced a revised
war strategy for Afghani-
stan, declaring there would
be no time limit on U.S. sup-
port for the war and mak-
ing a renewed push for peace
negotiations.
Vatican in ‘shame and sorrow’
over abuses in Pennsylvania
By FRANCES D’EMILIO
Associated Press
VATICAN CITY — The
Vatican expressed “shame
and sorrow” Thursday over a
scathing Pennsylvania grand
jury report about clergy who
raped and molested children
in six dioceses in that state,
calling the abuse “crimi-
nally and morally reprehen-
sible” and says Pope Francis
wants to eradicate “this tragic
horror.”
In a written statement
using
uncharacteristically
strong language for the Holy
See even in matters like the
long-running abuse scandals
staining the U.S. church, Vat-
ican spokesman Greg Burke
sought to assure victims that
“the pope is on their side.”
Pope Francis himself
wasn’t quoted in the state-
ment, and there was no men-
tion of demands in the United
States among some Roman
Catholics for the resignation
of Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the
archbishop of Washington.
The grand jury report
made public this week
accused the cardinal of help-
ing to protect some molester
priests while he was bishop of
the Pennsylvania city of Pitts-
burgh. Wuerl has defended
his actions in Pittsburgh while
apologizing for the damage
inflicted on victims.
Burke said the incidents
of abuse graphically docu-
mented in the report were
“betrayals of trust that robbed
survivors of their dignity and
their faith.”
“The church must learn
hard lessons from its past,
and there should be account-
ability for both abusers and
those who permitted abuse to
occur,” he said.
Victims and their advo-
cates for decades have
L’Osservatore Romano
Pope Francis, left, talks in 2010 with Cardinal Donald
Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, D.C., at the Vatican.
On Tuesday, a Pennsylvania grand jury accused Cardi-
nal Wuerl of helping to protect abusive priests when he
was Pittsburgh’s bishop.
lamented that top Catholic
churchmen repeatedly put
the reputation of the church
ahead of obligations to pro-
tect children from harm from
pedophile priests.
In a sign that Pope Fran-
cis wants to end that perva-
sive mind set among church
hierachy, including bishops
and cardinals, he recently
accepted the resignation from
cardinal’s rank of former
Washington archbishop The-
odore McCarrick amid alle-
gations that the American
prelate had engaged in sexual
misconduct.
Resignations by cardi-
nals are extremely rare, and
McCarrick’s was the first
time a prelate lost his cardi-
nal’s rank in a sexual abuse
scandal.
Burke said Francis “under-
stands well how much these
crimes can shake the faith and
the spirit of believers and reit-
erates the call to make every
effort to create a safe environ-
ment for minors and vulnera-
ble adults in the church and in
all of society.”
The grand jury report
documented how pedo-
phile priests were often pro-
tected by church hierarchy or
moved to other postings with-
out the faithful being told of
the priests’ sexual predatory
history.
The long-awaited grand
jury report was full of vivid
examples of horrendous
abuse. In one such example,
a young girl was raped by a
priest visiting her while she
was in a hospital following
surgery to remove her tonsils.
In another, a priest tied up a
victim with a rope in a con-
fessional booth, and when the
victim refused to perform sex,
the priest assaulted him with
a crucifix.
Speaking about Francis,
Burke said: “Those who have
suffered are his priority, and
the church wants to listen to
them to root out this tragic
horror that destroys the lives
of the innocent.”
Even before the report
was released, a series of scan-
dals over the last few decades
involving pedophile priests
and systematic attempts by
pastors and bishops to cover
up the abuse by shuttling
offenders to new parishes had
rocked the faith of many Cath-
olics in the United States.
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