Thursday, July 7, 2016
NATION/WORLD
No end to Afghan war:
Obama slows U.S. withdrawal
By JOSH LEDERMAN
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President
Barack Obama scrapped plans
Wednesday to cut American forces
in Afghanistan by half before
leaving ofice, a dispiriting blow
to his hopes of extricating the U.S.
after 15 years of ighting. He said
he’ll leave 8,400 troops to address
the country’s “precarious” security
situation.
Obama’s new drawdown plan,
announced alongside top military
leaders, reinforced the likelihood
that the U.S. will remain entangled
in Afghanistan for years to come
as America works to suppress
a resurgent Taliban and train a
still-struggling Afghan military.
Indeed, Obama said his goal was
to ensure the next president has the
foundation and lexibility to ight
terrorism there “as it evolves.”
Obama acknowledged that few
Americans might have expected
U.S. troops would still be in
Afghanistan this long after the 2001
invasion following the 9/11 attacks.
But he said perseverance was
needed to prevent al-Qaida from
regrouping and the Islamic State
group from spreading. He said if
terrorists regain control of territory,
they’ll try to attack the U.S. again.
“We cannot allow that to happen.
I will not allow that to happen,” he
declared.
Obama, who had revised the
exit plan several times before, had
most recently expected to leave
5,500 troops when his term ends in
January, down from roughly 9,800
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
President Barack Obama makes a statement Wednesday on Afghan-
istan from the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington.
there currently. His move to slow
that withdrawal relected the Afghan
military’s continuing inability to
secure the nation independently,
demonstrated by escalating Taliban
attacks that have killed scores in
recent weeks.
The new plan, announced the
day before Obama attends a NATO
summit in Poland, marked the
culmination of a delicate debate
within his administration about how
many troops to pull out — if any.
Though U.S. oficials said
Obama had accepted the Pentagon’s
formal recommendation of 8,400
troops, top military leaders had
urged the White House to stay closer
to the current 9,800. In an unusually
public lobbying campaign, last
month more than a dozen former
ambassadors and commanders
urged him to “freeze” the current
level for the rest of his term
In the end, Obama appeared to
settle on a number that would show
continued progress toward drawing
down without jeopardizing the
mission.
Elected after vowing to end the
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama
has struggled to deliver a legacy of
leaving the U.S. less encumbered
by foreign conlicts than he found it.
Although he’s declared U.S. combat
operations over in both countries,
the U.S. is still deep in conlict in
both, plus major new ighting that
has emerged in Syria and Libya
since he took ofice.
In Congress, Republican leaders
who favor a larger force said
Obama’s new plan was preferable to
the old one, but they criticized him
for not keeping the full 9,800. Sen.
Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the
partial drawdown would increase
the dangers for remaining troops,
calling it “more a political decision
by President Obama than a military
one.”
Yet some Democrats, frustrated
by the inability to fully end the war,
said they were disappointed — for
the opposite reason.
“Today, the longest war in Amer-
ican history just got longer,” said
Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass.
Ultimately, it will be up to the
next president to decide the level
of U.S. involvement. Democrat
Hillary Clinton has aligned herself
with Obama’s handling of Afghan-
istan, while Republican Donald
Trump has remained vague and has
criticized Obama for revealing too
much publicly about deployment
decisions.
In Kabul, Afghan President
Ashraf Ghani applauded Obama’s
decision. A brief statement from
his spokesman called it “a sign of
continued partnership between our
nations to ight our common enemy
and strengthen regional stability.”
But the Taliban said the U.S.
action would only prolong the war.
“What Obama could not do with
149,000 troops, he will not be able
to do with 8,400 troops,” Taliban
spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said
on Twitter.
At the peak, in 2010, U.S. troop
levels surged to 100,000, ighting
alongside forces from U.S.-allied
countries.
Court orders release of detained immigrant kids, not parents
By PAUL ELIAS
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal
appeals court ruled Wednesday
that Homeland Security oficials
must quickly release immigrant
children — but not their parents —
from family detention centers after
being picked up crossing the border
without documentation.
The San Francisco-based 9th
Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said
that lengthy detentions of migrant
children violated a 19-year-old
legal settlement ordering their quick
release after processing. Government
lawyers had argued that the settlement
covered only immigrant children who
crossed the border unaccompanied
by adult relatives. But the three-judge
panel ruled that immigration oficials
aren’t required to release the parents
detained along with the children,
reversing U.S. District Judge Dolly
Gee’s ruling last year.
Advocates seeking stricter immi-
gration controls said they hoped
Navy SEAL
instructor
dunked trainee
before death
SAN DIEGO (AP) — His
lips turning blue and his
face purple, the Navy SEAL
trainee dressed in full gear was
struggling to tread water in a
giant pool when his instructor
pushed him underwater at least
twice — actions a medical
examiner ruled Wednesday
made his death a homicide,
not an accident.
The homicide ruling
on the May 6 drowning of
21-year-old Seaman James
Derek Lovelace raises ques-
tions about the safety of the
grueling training that produces
the U.S. military’s most elite
warighters. It also raises
questions about where the
line is drawn between what
is considered to be rigorous
training designed to weed out
the weakest and what is abuse
that leads to a homicide.
Lovelace, of Crestview,
Florida, was in his irst week
of a six-month program in
Coronado, near San Diego. An
autopsy found he drowned.
The report noted he also had a
heart abnormality but said the
problem was only a contrib-
uting factor.
The homicide ruling does
not necessarily mean a crime
occurred, and the instructor
has not been charged.
The medical examiner said
some may consider the death
an accident, especially in a
“rigorous training program
that was meant to simulate an
‘adverse’ environment.”
But “it is our opinion that
the actions, and inactions, of
the instructors and other indi-
viduals involved were exces-
sive and directly contributed
to the death,” the report said.
the ruling would discourage adults
crossing the border illegally from
exploiting children as a way to stay
out of custody in the United States.
Mark Krikorian, Center for
Immigration Studies executive
director and an advocate for stricter
border controls, said allowing the
parents to be released may have
encouraged illegal immigration of
adults traveling with children.
“It makes using children way
less attractive,” he said of the most
recent ruling.
The Department of Homeland
reported that more than 23,000
families have been apprehended
in the irst ive months of the year
compared to about 13,400 in 2015
and around 30,600 in 2014. Most
are from Honduras, El Salvador or
Guatemala.
Melissa Crow, legal director of the
American Immigration Council, said
she was “somewhat disappointed”
with the ruling because the goal of the
litigation was to shield the children
from unfair and inhumane treatment.
Separating children and parents still
treats the children unfairly.
“The court misses the point,”
Crow said.
Since Gee’s ruling, immigration
oficials have released hundreds
of families and have been holding
newly arriving families for only
short durations. Following that
earlier ruling, the number of immi-
grant families has again been on the
rise.
At issue are two detention centers
in Texas that were built after a lood
of immigrants in summer 2014
overwhelmed border authorities.
The government poured millions of
dollars into the two large detention
centers after tens of thousands of
immigrant families, mostly mothers
with children from Central America,
crossed the Rio Grande into the U.S.
that year. Many have petitioned
for asylum after leeing gang and
domestic violence back home.
A Homeland Security oficial told
a group of immigration advocates in
September 2014 that the jails were
opened in part because roughly
70 percent of immigrant families
released after being caught at the
border didn’t report to immigration
authorities as ordered.
Critics of the jails complained
that they were not suited for children
and later went to federal court to
argue that the government was
violating a decades old agreement
about how immigrant children
would be treated.
The Department of Homeland
Security didn’t return phone and
email inquiries over how it planned to
proceed.
If the government decides to start
detaining parents after releasing
their children, the children would be
treated as unaccompanied minors.
That means they would be turned
over to the Department of Health and
Human Services and placed either
with relatives or possibly a foster
family in the United States while they
wait for DHS or a judge to decide if
they will be allowed to stay in the
United States.
East Oregonian
Page 7A
Lynch ends
email probe
on Clinton
WASHINGTON
(AP)
— The Justice Department’s
investigation into Hillary
Clinton’s email setup has
been formally closed without
any
criminal
charges,
Attorney General Loretta
Lynch said Wednesday.
The decision had been
expected and was largely a
formality given FBI Director
James Comey’s recommen-
dation a day earlier against
any prosecution. Even before
Comey’s public statement,
Lynch had said she intended
to accept the recommenda-
tions of the FBI director and
of her career prosecutors.
Even so, it oficially closes
out an FBI investigation that
had dogged Clinton for the
last year and proved a major
distraction on the campaign
trail as she emerged as the
Democratic
presidential
front-runner.
Lynch said she met with
Comey and prosecutors
Wednesday and agreed that the
investigation, which looked
into the potential mishandling
of classiied information,
should be concluded.
“I received and accepted
their unanimous recommen-
dation that the thorough,
year-long investigation be
closed and that no charges be
brought against any individ-
uals within the scope of the
investigation,” Lynch said in
a statement.
Comey, in an unusu-
ally detailed and public
accounting of the investi-
gation Tuesday, said “no
reasonable
prosecutor”
would pursue a criminal case
and said he was advising the
Justice Department against
bringing any charges.
But he also rebuked
Clinton, who relied exclu-
sively on a private email
server as secretary of state, and
her aides for being “extremely
careless” with their handling
of classiied information.
“There is evidence to
support a conclusion that
any reasonable person in
Secretary Clinton’s position
... should have known that an
unclassiied system was no
place” for sensitive conver-
sations, Comey said.
Clinton’s likely general
election opponent, Donald
Trump, unleashed a method-
ical attack during a rally
Wednesday in Cincinnati,
contrasting her statements
about the email server
with what Comey said and
labeling the former secretary
of state “a dirty, rotten liar.”