Page 8A
PARIS ATTACKS
East Oregonian
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Obama rejects
calls for shift
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By JULIE PACE
AP White House Correspondent
AP Photo/Jerome Delay
People stand for a minute of silence at the Gare de Lyon train station in Paris, Monday, three days after the
Paris attacks.
Stadium massacre averted
SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) — The
suicide bombers’ explosive belts, packed
with shrapnel, had been designed to kill
and maim the crowds at the national
stadium.
But while their terrorist associates in
the city center of Paris killed 128 people
in gun and suicide bomb attacks, the
three assailants who blew themselves
up outside the Stade de France added
just one more body to the overall count
of 129.
A combination of solid security at
the huge arena, quick thinking in a
crisis, modern stadium infrastructure
and apparent mistakes in the attackers’
planning appears to have averted a
massacre. That suggests the host of next
year’s European soccer championships,
which are expected to draw millions
of fans from far and wide, is as well-
equipped as any nation can be against
such viciousness.
The stadium, much loved because it
was there that the national team won the
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hit on Friday night. It was packed with
79,000 people watching France beat
Germany at soccer. Had the suicide
attackers gotten inside or, failing that,
blown up outside among crowds before
and after the game, they would have
been more murderous and caused even
more panic, further overloading Paris
hospitals and rescue services scram-
bling to treat hundreds of casualties with
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Instead they exploded outside,
during the match, when the stadium
surrounds were less crowded. One of
the explosions was in a lonely dead-end
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blast was deadly, killing a bystander.
There also were several dozen injuries.
At least one of the attackers tried
to get in, despite not having a ticket,
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who spoke on condition of anonymity
because he wasn’t authorized to publicly
discuss the complex and fast-evolving
investigation.
One police theory is that the attackers
never expected to get inside, knowing
they likely wouldn’t get past security
pat-downs with their suicide vests, and
instead planned to detonate as people
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France’s 2-0 victory.
But their timing may have been off,
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match, the third at half-time — the bulk
of the crowd was safely inside, enjoying
itself.
“We think this operation failed,”
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condition of anonymity because French
law doesn’t allow the release of details
from ongoing investigations. “Badly
organized.”
Still, as chaos unfolded, authorities
decided spectators would be safer
kept inside and the match went on.
That decision was taken by President
Francois Hollande, in consultation with
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presidential Elysee Palace says.
Bley Bilal Mokono, who arrived late
at the game with his 13-year-old son Ryan
and a friend, believes he saw one of the
attackers — “a man with a beard and a
gaunt face” — in the toilets of a restaurant
opposite the stadium’s Gate D.
“His face was sweaty, he looked
distressed, staring at the mirror in front
of him with his hands on the sink,”
Mokono told French broadcaster BFM.
He saw him again outside, where
Mokono had stopped to buy a sandwich.
Then came a powerful blast. Mokono
was hospitalized with a collarbone
injury and damaged hearing.
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whizzing through the restaurant and left
a large shattered dent in its frontage of
triple-layered toughened glass.
Jeremy, a stadium security guard
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for fear of losing his job, said he’d just
arrived to help with the aftermath when
the second blast went off minutes later,
200 yards away outside Gate H.
“Everyone was stepping on each
other,” he said. “It was a mess.”
As world mourns Paris, many
in Mideast see double-standard
BAGHDAD (AP) —
Within hours of last week’s
Paris attacks, as outrage and
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airwaves, Baghdad resident
Ali al-Makhzomy updated
his Facebook cover photo to
read “solidarity” — and his
friends were shocked.
“Everyone was like why
are you posting about Paris
and not about the attacks
in Baghdad every day,” the
recent law school graduate
said. “A lot of my friends said,
‘OK, so you care more about
them than you care about us?”’
He had unintentionally
tapped into frustration in Iraq,
Lebanon and Syria with what
many see as a double-standard:
The world unites in outrage and
sympathy when the Islamic
State group kills Westerners,
but pays little attention to the
near-daily atrocities it carries
out in the Middle East.
The day before the
Paris attacks, twin suicide
bombers struck a southern
Beirut suburb, killing at least
43 people, and on Friday
a suicide bomber struck a
funeral in Iraq, killing at least
21. Both attacks were claimed
by the IS group and reported
by major media outlets,
but generated little interest
outside the region, where the
turmoil of recent years has
made such events seem like a
sadly regular occurrence.
Baghdad has seen near-
daily attacks in recent years,
mainly targeting the security
forces and the country’s Shiite
majority. Bombings killed
an average of more than 90
civilians a month last year,
according to Iraq Body Count,
D8.EDVHGJURXSWKDWGRFX-
ments civilian deaths in Iraq.
The civil war in neigh-
boring Syria has killed
250,000
people
since
2011. There, government
warplanes regularly carry out
raids using so-called barrel
bombs that demolish entire
apartment blocks and insur-
gent groups shell govern-
ment-held neighborhoods.
Lebanon, however, had
been relatively calm for the
past year, leading many to
feel that last week’s tragedy
was unfairly neglected. Many
were angered by Facebook’s
deployment of a new feature
in the wake of the Paris attacks
that allowed users to check in
and say they were safe. The
feature was not available for
the Beirut attacks.
“‘We’ don’t get a safe button
on Facebook,” Lebanese
blogger Joey Ayoub wrote.
“‘We’ don’t get late night state-
ments from the most powerful
men and women alive and
millions of online users.”
Facebook released a state-
ment saying it had previously
only used the Safety Check
feature after natural disasters
and said it would be used
for “other serious and tragic
incidents in the future.”
But it added that “during
an ongoing crisis, like war
or epidemic, Safety Check
in its current form is not that
useful for people: because
there isn’t a clear start or end
point and, unfortunately, it’s
impossible to know when
someone is truly ‘safe.”’
Al-Makhzomy said the
feature wouldn’t be quite as
useful in Iraq.
“In Baghdad it’s not just
like one attack,” he said.
“You would need to have a
date on the safety check, like
I’m safe from this one or that
one. ... There are too many
for just ‘I’m Safe.”’
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shaming also played out on
Facebook, Twitter and other
channels in the aftermath of
Paris over the use of a tool
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Other social media users
object to a sea of vacation
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being posted as a show of
solidarity and an expression of
“slacktivism,” rather than true
social justice commitment.
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ANTALYA, Turkey — President Barack Obama on
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against the Islamic State following the Paris attacks,
saying Republicans who want to send ground troops into
the volatile region are “talking as if they’re tough” but fail
to understand the potentially grave consequences.
“Folks want to pop off and have opinions about what they
think they would do,” Obama said in a
news conference wrapping up a two-day
summit of world leaders in Turkey. “If
they think that somehow their advisers
are better than the chairman of my Joint
Chiefs of Staff and the folks who are
actually on the ground, I want to meet
them. And we can have that debate.”
In a stinging rebuke, the president
condemned Republicans who have
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Obama
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on Christians, not Muslims. GOP presidential candidates
Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz have made such suggestions,
while some Republican governors want to ban all Syrian
refugees from their states.
“That’s shameful,” he said. “That’s not American. It’s
not who we are.”
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus
called Obama’s statements “excuse-laden and defensive.”
Even before the Paris attacks, Obama was under
pressure from allies and his own administration to show
progress in the campaign against the Islamic State. The
assault in the heart of Western Europe was part of a trou-
bling pattern showing the group focusing new attention on
targets outside its base in Iraq and Syria.
Obama conceded that the attacks in France marked a
“terrible and sickening setback” in the anti-Islamic State
campaign. But he insisted his strategy of building an
international coalition to launch airstrikes, while training
and equipping more moderate forces on the ground, is the
best approach.
“The strategy that we are putting forward is the strategy
that ultimately is going to work,” Obama said. “It’s going
to take time.”
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troops to Iraq to assist local security forces, and he recently
announced plans to send 50 special operations forces to
Syria. But he’s vowed to avoid the kind of large-scale
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Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama appeared emotional as he spoke of the conse-
quences of war, referencing the injured troops he visits at
Walter Reed, a military hospital near the White House.
“Some of those are people I’ve ordered into battle,” he said.
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nent occupation in Syria or Iraq if he sent in ground forces.
“What happens when there’s a terrorist attack generated
from Yemen?” Obama asked. “Do we then send more
troops into there? Or Libya, perhaps? Or if there’s a terrorist
network that’s operating anywhere else — in North Africa,
or in Southeast Asia?”
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