Reps. Gil Cisneros, D-Calif., Don Bacon, R-Neb., Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Greg Steube, R-Fla., wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray, asking for an investigation into “suspicious” social media accounts that could be impersonating veterans service organizations.

“Online influence and psychological operations against trusted civilian community leaders like our nation’s veterans are novel threats that demand law enforcement attention,” they wrote.

The request for an FBI investigation follows an announcement earlier this month from the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, which launched its own review into foreign actors using “shadowy practices” to disseminate false information to veterans, servicemembers and their families.

The committee is in a fact-finding stage and is planning to hold meetings with stakeholders about the issue.

Cisneros, a Navy veteran, is a member of the veterans affairs committee and the House Armed Services Committee. He asked for an FBI investigation “in order to identify and dismantle these cyber threats before they cause harm,” he said.

Vietnam Veterans of America, a congressionally chartered veterans service organization, has been looking into the issue since 2017, when it discovered a Facebook page using its name and logo. The page posted politically divisive posts and was followed by nearly 200,000 people – tens of thousands more than the official VVA page.

Facebook Inc. disabled the page after determining it violated VVA’s intellectual property.

Kristofer Goldsmith, associate director for policy and government affairs at VVA, has worked to shut down more fake accounts that target veterans and servicemembers with “divisive propaganda,” he said.

Though the issue has the attention of the veterans affairs committee, Goldsmith argued earlier this month that the FBI needs to become involved to track and identify the people behind the accounts.

“The problem is persistent, widespread, and presents a threat to the force and the veterans community,” Goldsmith said Tuesday in a statement. “We’re glad that Congressman Cisneros and the members are taking this issue seriously, and we hope that Director Wray will too. Depending on social media companies to stop bad-actors is not enough — we need to hold the people behind these fraudulent online avatars accountable.”

A study from Oxford University in 2017 found Russian operatives used Twitter and Facebook to disseminate “junk news” to veterans and servicemembers.

Researchers with Oxford’s Project on Computational Propaganda, which studied how Americans were affected by disinformation campaigns during the 2016 presidential election, found trolls and bots targeted military personnel and veterans with propaganda, conspiracies and hyper-partisan political content. The population of veterans and servicemembers contains “potentially influential voters and community leaders” because of the trust the public places in them, the study states.

In their letter, the four congressmen asked Wray whether the FBI was aware of the problem and if the agency had taken any action to combat it.

“As the federal law enforcement agency responsible for criminal and counterintelligence investigations, we respectfully request answers to our questions below about the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s work to combat such predation,” the letter states.

The Military Coalition — a group of 32 military and veterans organizations that includes VVA, as well as Veterans of Foreign Wars and Wounded Warrior Project — listed cyber protection for veterans and servicemembers as one of their policy goals. The group said it wants to encourage Congress, the departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense to investigate the online targeting of servicemembers and provide training and online protection where necessary.

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Twitter: @nikkiwentling

Airman 1st Class Darrelly Franken, 38, had been assigned to Tyndall Air Force Base, but was reassigned to Eglin AFB in December, in the wake of Hurricane Michael, according to Eglin spokesman Andy Bourland. The October hurricane scored a direct hit on Tyndall as it roared across the eastern Florida panhandle on Oct. 10, all but destroying the installation.

Bourland wasn't certain in a Monday interview, but said he believed the home where Franken and her husband, 61-year-old Frederick Franken, had lived with their young son, Frederick Franken Jr., while stationed at Tyndall was destroyed by the hurricane.

On the afternoon of March 15, Darelly Franken arrived at the family's home to find her husband and son on the floor. Shortly afterward, Okaloosa County sheriff's deputies responded to the residence, according to witnesses. Details of the incident have not yet been released by the Sheriff's Office.

The child was pronounced dead at the scene, and the medical examiner's office was scheduled to perform an autopsy on Monday.

Frederick Franken was listed in critical condition at Fort Walton Beach Medical Center on Friday, and had improved to fair condition as of Monday morning, according to hospital spokeswoman Denise Kendust. Frederick Franken is not in military service, Bourland said.

Darelly, an active-duty airman who has been in the Air Force for just over a year, according to Bourland, is assigned to the 96th Maintenance Group. She was at Eglin AFB on Monday, where the base's health and family assistance personnel were waiting to assess her condition and address any needs she might have in the wake of the tragedy, Bourland said.

In addition, according to Bourland, the 96th Test Wing's leadership, chain of command and personnel are "rallying around" Franken as she copes with Friday's events. On their own, base officials have reached out to the Air Force Aid Society, the official charity of the Air Force, to arrange assistance for her, Bourland said.

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“The forces already assigned will remain assigned,” said Gen. Robert Brown, commander of U.S. Army Pacific, referring to the roughly 85,000 soldiers in the theater, primarily stationed in South Korea, Hawaii, Washington and Alaska.

“We will bring forces from [the mainland] over,” he said during a media roundtable at U.S. Army Pacific headquarters that included Army Under Secretary Ryan McCarthy and Gen. James McConville, vice chief of staff of the Army.

Brown said the number of troops to be tapped annually has not yet been set and would vary depending upon circumstances and the preferences of allies and partner nations hosting the troops.

“It would be a division headquarters and several brigades — you know, 5,000, 10,000 rotating over,” he said. “I would hesitate to throw a number out. It’ll depend on the scenario. It’ll depend on the exercise. There will be a continued focus on the assigned forces staying and the additional forces to come.”

McConville described the planned rotations as part of Dynamic Force Employment, a key component of the National Defense Strategy released by the Pentagon last year, which emphasized America’s shift to so-called “great power competition.”

“We’re talking about moving troops into a place with certain capabilities based on the partners we’re dealing with — move them out and move them back,” he said. “And then have the agility to move around the globe and in this theater the way we need to in response to our partners.

“They’re expeditionary. They’re rotational. They’re not long-term. They’re not permanent. But we can move them the way we need to, depending on the mission requirements.”

The beefed-up rotations would dovetail with U.S. Army Pacific’s evolving plans for Pacific Pathways and the new Multi-Domain Task Force.

Pacific Pathways, which launched in 2014, strings together already established Army exercises with allies and partner nations throughout the Pacific as a way of keeping U.S.-based troops and equipment deployed beyond the International Date Line for extended periods.

During the first several years, the rotations were a matter of a few weeks.

This winter, soldiers spent 3 1/2 months in Thailand and are now in the Philippines for four months of joint training, Brown said.

“Next year it will be six months,” he said.

The Army’s Multi-Domain Task Force program was piloted in the Pacific and this year is moving on to Europe for its second phase.

During the Pacific pilot, an artillery brigade stood as fires headquarters while integrating with an intelligence, cyber, electronic warfare and space detachment. The task force was first tested at a ship-sinking exercise during last summer’s Rim of the Pacific drills in Hawaii.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley has since directed the Multi-Domain Task Force be built up to counter potential attempts by adversaries to deny access in those domains by U.S. forces.

Brown said the multidomain concept is crucial because any conflict scenario in the Pacific would require a “joint solution” involving all service branches.

“Any issue that would develop in the South China Sea, all the forces are going to have to work together to be successful to handle that," Brown said. “Nobody’s asking for that. Competition doesn’t mean conflict; we don’t want that. But in any scenario you can come up with in the Pacific, it would be a joint solution.”

Positioned on any of the theater’s 25,000 islands, the Army could potentially enter any fray with long-range weapons.

“Those islands make a difference,” he said. “Land will play a role — as all domains will in a joint manner.”

McConville emphasized that the U.S. is not at the point of placing “long-range precision fires” in partner nations in the Pacific.

“I think they are ‘open to the discussion’ is probably the way to put it,” he said. “They’re certainly open to us being there working with them, absolutely.”

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Twitter: @WyattWOlson
 

Soldiers with the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division began arriving in Berlin and will move on to training grounds in Poland for live-fire drills, U.S. Army Europe said.

“Our ability to rapidly surge combat-ready forces into and across the theater is critical in projecting forces at a moment’s notice to support the NATO alliance,” USAREUR said in a statement. “However, this deployment is not in response to any real world situation.”

The purpose is to “exercise the U.S. Army’s ability to rapidly alert, recall and deploy under emergency conditions.”

The sudden deployment is the latest sign of how the Pentagon’s “Dynamic Force Employment” strategy is altering how the Army operates in the U.S. European Command area.

The concept, developed by former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, calls for more unpredictable deployments designed to showcase military agility to potential adversaries.

Earlier this month, the U.S. military also deployed an advanced missile defense system to Israel where it will operate from various locations in an effort to bolster Israeli defenses. That Army mission also tapped Fort Bliss soldiers, including the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade and the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command.

The force now arriving in Germany under the Dynamic Force Employment concept “makes our activities unpredictable to potential adversaries … while maintaining strategic predictability for our NATO allies and partners,” USAREUR said.

The soldiers will travel to Drawsko Pomorskie Training Area, Poland, where they will use more than 700 pieces of equipment pulled from an Army pre-positioned equipment site in Eygelshoven, Netherlands. The soldiers will train with their Polish counterparts over the next few weeks, USAREUR said.

“The training will culminate with a gunnery and a combined live fire exercise. Once the exercise is complete, the unit will return to Fort Bliss and the equipment will return to Eygelshoven,” USAREUR said.

The Army relies on pre-positioned weapons stockpiles to make up for a smaller number of permanently based troops in Europe, where both manpower and weaponry were scaled back after the Cold War.

In response to concerns about a more aggressive Russia, the military in Europe has been building up weapons stockpiles, which forces rotating into Europe can draw from for training or in a crisis.

The weapons stocks “reduce deployment timelines, improve deterrence capabilities and provide additional combat power,” USAREUR said.

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Twitter: @john_vandiver

The fourth suspect, apprehended in the city of Darmstadt, is a 33-year-old French citizen, prosecutors said Monday. Two other suspects — both brothers of the man who died of stab wounds following the break-in — already are in custody and have been charged with attempted robbery.

“Part of the investigation also is to find out how the fourth suspect is related to the brothers already jailed,” the Zweibruecken prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

Meanwhile, prosecutors said they continue to investigate the circumstances surrounding the attempted robbery and whether the American acted in self-defense or used excessive force. German authorities did not say when they expected to conclude their investigation of the 41-year-old American, who works as an Army civilian.

In an interview with Stars and Stripes days after the attack, the American described a violent encounter in which he was forced to fight for his and his family’s life.

The confrontation began when the father opened his front door on a Sunday evening and four men forced their way in. The American fought off three of the men and managed to push them back out the door, which locked shut. But one man slipped past and ran upstairs, where the man’s wife and three children were hiding.

While the father fought, he heard his wife’s screams. At one point, the invader had pinned the wife down and was smothering her with one hand on her neck, the American said.

After forcing the other three men out of the house, the father grabbed a kitchen knife. As he charged up the stairs, he collided with the robber and the two scuffled. The American said he thought he had stabbed the intruder three times.

The culprit then fled and made it out the door. Police said the invaders drove away but stopped in the nearby village of Krickenbach. They laid the 43-year-old injured man on the sidewalk. One of the suspects, the older brother of the injured man, asked a witness to call for medical help, officials said.

The wounded man died at the scene from blood loss related to puncture wounds, investigators said, citing an autopsy result. His 51-year-old brother was arrested and charged with attempted robbery and another brother was arrested days later. The men are German nationals, the police said.

Police said the arrest of the fourth suspect was the result of “intensive investigations.”

There are no indications that the suspects are part of a larger criminal network, Zweibruecken lead prosecutor Iris Weingardt said.

Marcus Kloeckner contributed to this story.

vandiver.john@stripes.com
Twitter: @john_vandiver
 

Tech. Sgt. Jacory Royster of the 36th Security Forces Squadron was found not guilty Friday of the most serious charge against him after a four-day court-martial, according to a trial report provided to Stars and Stripes.

Prosecutors alleged that Royster in July had touched a woman’s back, buttocks and leg without her consent.

Several people levied those accusations against Royster, 36th Wing spokesman Tech Sgt. Jake Barreiro said last month. Royster was not placed in pre-trial confinement pending trial.

However, Royster was found guilty of using indecent language and telling several servicemembers they could consume alcohol, as long as they did so out of his sight, a violation of Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the report said.

Royster will be reprimanded for his conduct and forced to forfeit $4,800.

burke.matt@stripes.com

The high administrative court in Muenster did not order a ban on Germany allowing U.S. bases to relay drone data, as three Yemeni citizens had sought in a court filing. The three plaintiffs said they lost family members to U.S. drone strikes in 2012.

The court’s findings run counter to years of military denials that Ramstein Air Base plays a part in Middle East drone warfare.

The court said in a statement that there were “substantial indications” known to the German government that the U.S. drone missions assisted from Ramstein are at least in part “violating international law.”

The court added that the German parliament’s investigation into the National Security Agency’s activity in Germany and official information the court examined prove “the central role” of Ramstein Air Base’s satellite relay station for “continuing armed U.S. drone missions in Yemen.”

The drone allegations began when a former sensor operator said in 2013 that the technology used at Ramstein transfers data between drone pilots in the United States to aircraft on missions in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa.

Air Force officials at Ramstein on Tuesday, when queried about the court’s ruling, said no drones are launched or operated from the base as part of counterterrorism activities.

“We greatly value our longstanding and close relationship with Germany and remain in close dialogue with our German counterparts on all matters related to our bases here and our mutual efforts to support German and European security,” U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa said in a statement Tuesday.

The 86th Airlift Wing also said in 2017 that “no data is relayed through Ramstein for the operation of drones.”

A USAFE-AFAFRICA spokeswoman could not immediately confirm late Tuesday whether that was still the case.

The court said that armed drone strikes are only “legitimate under recognition of the guidelines of humanitarian international law and international human rights protection.”

The U.S. military has conducted drone strikes in Yemen as part of its fight against al-Qaida and extremist groups. That isn’t illegal, even if it did use a base in Germany as part of the effort, the court said.

But statements by U.S. officials cast doubt on whether the drones were focused solely on targets with a “continuous combat function,” the court said. Targeting civilians associated with militant groups but not actively fighting for them could result in extrajudicial killings, the court stated.

Germany’s assumption that the U.S. has not violated German or international law is based on an “inadequate investigation of facts and is finally legally not sustainable,” the court said.

The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, which brought the case forward for the three Yemenis, said in a statement that the ruling was “an important step to place limits on the U.S. drone program via Ramstein, which is contrary to international law.”

Stars and Stripes reporter Jennifer H. Svan contributed to this report.

kloeckner.marcus@stripes.com

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According to police, Jasmyne Denise Russell-Dicker, driving a 2017 Toyota Corolla, hit a motorcycle operated by 22-year-old Spc. Patrick McDill, who died a short time later at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center, Strepay said.

Russell-Dicker was initially charged with driving while impaired and unsafe movement causing injury in the 3 a.m., collision on Yadkin Road between Santa Fe Drive and the Fort Bragg gate.

Those charges were upgraded Friday to felony death by motor vehicle, said Fayetteville police Sgt. Shawn Strepay.

The additional felony charge was added due to Russell-Dicker's alleged impairment, according to Cumberland County District Attorney Billy West.

Russell-Dicker's was re-arrested on the new charge Friday morning and released on a $15,000 secured bail.

McDill, originally from Illinois, was a member of the 2nd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg. He joined the military in June 2015.

"The loss of SPC Patrick McDill is a tragedy. He is part of the one percent who volunteered to serve his country in a time of war and his loss will be a significant loss to the White Devil Team. Right now, our focus is on supporting Spc. McDill's family and his teammates," reads a statement from Lt. Col. Scott McKay, commander of 2nd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment.

"Spc. McDill truly embodied the 82nd Airborne Division's motto of 'All the Way' as he put his best effort in every challenge given to him. Alpha Company misses his genuine smile, the care he gave to his fellow 'Blackhearts,' and his indefatigable energy. Alpha Company deeply mourns his loss and is focused on supporting his family and friends through this tragedy," McDill's company commander, Capt. Eric Kim, said in a statement.

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The long-range strategic bombers with the 2nd Bomb Wing out of Barksdale Air Force Base, La., arrived at the British base last week along with about 600 airmen and their equipment.

The B-52s will operate out of Fairford, U.S. Air Forces in Europe — Air Forces Africa’s forward operating location for bombers.

“While here, the bombers will integrate into our U.S. and allied forces to demonstrate the strength of NATO operability of joint and combined arms teams,” Harrigian, USAFE’s deputy commander, told reporters.

Deployment of the bombers to Europe is part of Operation Atlantic Resolve, which is aimed at reassuring NATO allies concerned about Russia’s military assertiveness. During the post-Cold War era, it was relatively rare to send long-range bombers to Europe, but recent tensions with Russia have prompted the Air Force to incorporate the aircraft into more alliance exercises.

Last year, three B1-B Lancers from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, deployed to Fairford for a month in May for NATO exercises BALTOPS and Saber Strike. A B-52 from Barksdale arrived in September for Saber Strike.

And in May 2017, a flight of Stratofortresses from the 2nd Bomb Wing deployed to RAF Fairford for similar exercises across Europe.

Unlike in past years, the B-52s deployed to Europe this spring are slated to conduct training events simultaneously with B-52s deployed to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, in what U.S. European command said earlier this week was a “clear and visible demonstration of U.S. commitment to global allies and partners.”

Since 2004, the U.S. has rotated B-1, B-52 and B-2 long-range bombers out of Guam to conduct training missions in Asia as part of the INDOPACOM’s “continuous bomber presence.”

In recent weeks, the bombers have garnered headlines after flying a series of flights over the South China Sea.

EUCOM and INDOPACOM closely coordinated the cross-command training effort with U.S. Strategic Command, along with USAFE in Germany, Pacific Air Forces in Hawaii and Air Force Global Strike Command in Louisiana, EUCOM said.

“The ability to operate in the different environments at the same time and demonstrate global reach and the capacity to do that in a timeline that synchronizes our efforts is really a tremendous opportunity for our collective teams in both theaters,” Harrigian said.

howard.william@stripes.com
Twitter: @Howard_Stripes
 

Of the 117 changes the reports recommended — later trimmed to 103 — 91 were put in place, according to a Feb. 25 memorandum to Congress by Adm. William Moran. Those changes were meant to address years of underfunded operations, an increased pace of operations and an erosion of safety standards, according to the reports.

Navy Secretary Richard Spencer ordered the reports to identify problems that led to the separate tragedies involving ships of the Japan-based 7th Fleet. He tasked the Navy with conducting a comprehensive review in August 2017 and the following month asked an independent team of subject matter experts to conduct a separate strategic readiness review.

The USS Fitzgerald collided with a Philippine container ship in June 2017, killing seven sailors. Two months later, the USS John S. McCain ran into a Liberian merchant vessel, resulting in the deaths of 10 sailors. Both destroyers sustained millions of dollars in damages.

A little more than year after the reports came out, Moran in his memo declared the service “currently safe to operate and a more effective Navy than we were a year ago.”

While the memorandum provides the most detail yet on the changes made after the tragic collisions, some in Congress are pushing for more information to ensure safety standards are being met.

In a heated exchange last month, Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, challenged Adm. Philip Davidson, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, for more detail about the progress of the implementation of the recommendations.

“I would like to see specific data on where we stand with issues like certification of sailors and personnel on the ships, training rules, staffing levels — and I want real numbers,” King told Davidson at an Armed Services Committee hearing Feb. 12. “I don’t want general, ‘we’re working on staffing or we’re working on more training’ because these were avoidable tragedies.”

Davidson directed King to Moran’s report and said those numbers “were all readily available.”

The report highlighted several recommendations that have been implemented and offered some numbers, but Moran did not list all changes in his memo.

Moran broke down the recommendations into three tiers of importance: safety, followed by operations effectiveness and, finally, “strengthening the culture of operational excellence.”

Safety issues

At the time of the collisions, ships were sent to sea to keep up with a fast pace of operations despite having fallen behind on required maintenance and mandatory training for their crews.

The practice of waiving those requirements — called Risk Assessment and Mitigation Plans — was eliminated in October 2017 while the reviews were underway. In their place, the Navy conducted Ready-for-Sea Assessments to evaluate the manning levels, training certifications and equipment status on operational vessels.

In Japan, 15 of 18 ships passed these assessments, while three were “sidelined for additional training and maintenance prior to getting underway.”

The report did not identify the sidelined ships, and 7th Fleet officials declined to release their names for security reasons.

The November 2017 comprehensive review also recommended changing crew sleep schedules to better accommodate circadian rhythms and reduce fatigue, which Navy reports identified as a contributing factor in both collisions.

Moran in his memo said all ships reported implementing the suggested sleep schedules since the policy was rolled out in November 2017, but “anecdotal feedback indicates uneven compliance during manpower-intensive operation scenarios.”

Effectiveness and culture

To reduce workloads, the Navy last year put the need for manpower on ships and on shore in overseas locations ahead of the need at U.S. bases, Moran’s memo states.

That meant assigning some personnel to temporary duty overseas and putting some operations on hold to make sure forward-deployed ships “went to sea with the manpower they needed,” he wrote. Moran said that on average, 100 percent of overseas billets are filled, compared to the Navy-wide 95 percent.

However, a Government Accountability Office official told Congress in December that ship manning still needed improvement.

GAO Defense Capabilities and Management director John Pendleton said many sailors on two Yokosuka-based ships he visited on a research trip last fall reported heavy workloads and 100-hour workweeks.

“I’m concerned that this reveals an underlying problem still facing the Navy — that it simply is not putting enough sailors on the ships to cover the workload,” Pendleton said at a Dec. 12 congressional hearing.

Meanwhile, the Navy increased incentives for sailors to remain overseas longer to boost stability, and in May 2018 increased the standard tour length by one year for Japan, Guam and Spain. Incoming sailors at those locations are now serving up to four years.

When Vice Adm. Robert Burke, chief of naval personnel and deputy chief of naval operations, announced the change last year at a townhall meeting in Yokosuka, he said the intent was to avoid having commands “in a state of continuously having to train up their people and not having a seasoned, experienced crew that can train up the new junior folks.”

In the past year, the Navy has also issued several assessments of leadership, including fleet-wide officer-of-the-deck competency checks. Results revealed “deficiencies in practical applications of the Maritime Rules of the Road,” but 91 percent of test takers passed the assessments, according to the memorandum. As a result, the Navy developed two new junior officer-of-the-deck courses for training.

Another assessment of surface warfare officers was improved to better gauge the proficiency of prospective commanding officers. Of the 103 officers who were assessed, five were removed from the command pipeline, according to the memorandum.

More information wanted

King, after reviewing the report, continues to seek out more data related to the Navy’s changes.

In a March 10 interview with Defense News Weekly, he said the Navy has “made a good-faith effort to respond” to him and that officials had met with him at the Pentagon. He also commended the service for being “responsive to this tragedy.”

Still, King wants more specific data instead of “general reassurances.”

“My age-old question is ‘does it work and how do you know?’ And until I see ship specific data, I’m not going to be satisfied that we’re really making the progress that we should be,” he told Defense News Weekly.

doornbos.caitlin@stripes.com
Twitter: @CaitlinDoornbos
 

Trump enumerated a list of grievances against McCain, who died in August, including that he had wrongly supported the war in Iraq, failed to “get the job done” for veterans and “badly” hurt the Republican party and the nation by voting against repealing Obamacare.

The president also complained that McCain had turned over the so-called Steele dossier to federal authorities during the 2016 presidential campaign instead of alerting Trump himself. The dossier is a private, uncorroborated intelligence report alleging ties between Trump and the Russian government.

“He got it, and what did he do? He didn’t call me, he turned it over to the FBI, hoping to put me in jeopardy,” Trump said.

Trump’s criticism of the late senator came after senior Republican lawmakers offered implicit and explicit criticism of the president for remarks earlier this week attacking McCain.

Senate Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Johnny Isakson called Trump’s attacks “deplorable” in an interview with Georgia Public Broadcasting’s “Political Rewind” radio program earlier on Wednesday.

“That’s what I called it from the floor of the Senate seven months ago,” Isakson said, when the senator criticized the Trump administration for lowering the White House flag to half-staff for only a single day following McCain’s death. “It will be deplorable seven months from now if he says it again and I will continue to speak out.”

The flag was returned to half-staff following Isakson’s criticism.

Trump recalled the controversy over McCain’s memorial services during his remarks Wednesday, claiming that he “gave him the kind of funeral he wanted” but “didn’t get a thank you.” McCain laid in state at the U.S. Capitol — a decision made by congressional leaders, not Trump — before his burial last year.

Other Republican senators also weighed in on Trump’s fresh attacks on McCain, the former Armed Services Committee chairman who died of brain cancer. McCain, an Arizona Republican who had served in Congress since 1983, was a onetime Navy pilot who was North Vietnam’s most prominent prisoner of war.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell praised McCain in a tweet Wednesday that didn’t mention the president or his criticisms. McConnell, R-Ky., wrote that he missed McCain every day and added, “It was a blessing to serve alongside a rare patriot and genuine American hero in the Senate.”

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who was just elected to a six-year term, said on Twitter, “I can’t understand why the President would, once again, disparage a man as exemplary as my friend John McCain.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., long McCain’s best friend in the Senate, tweeted praise for McCain without mentioning Trump. Graham has become perhaps Trump’s most important ally in the Senate, changing his tune dramatically from before Trump’s election, when the senator predicted that he would destroy the Republican Party.

Most Republicans go to great lengths to avoid criticizing Trump to keep from also becoming targets of presidential tirades on Twitter. Trump remains immensely popular among Republican voters, which makes such a move especially risky. Former senators Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee both tussled with Trump and retired rather than face tough Republican primary challenges in 2018.

Isakson, R-Ga., is somewhat insulated from political pressure because he won his third Senate term in 2016 and won’t be up for re-election until 2022. Still, he needs Trump for issues important to his state, such as a disaster-relief package scheduled to be on the Senate floor next week.

“We’re all Americans,” Isakson said on the radio program. “There aren’t Democratic casualties and Republican casualties on the battlefield, there are American casualties, and we should never reduce the service that people give to this country.”

Trump, as a candidate in 2015, picked a fight with McCain, declaring that the Navy veteran was “not a war hero” for spending five years being tortured in a Vietnamese prison and refusing advantages offered to him because his father was a prominent military leader. “I like people who weren’t captured,” Trump said at the time.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on Twitter he will reintroduce his legislation to rename the Russell Senate Office Building after McCain, whom he called an “American hero.” The building was named in 1972 after Georgia Democratic Senator Richard Russell, a proponent of racial segregation who fought the Civil Rights Act.

Isakson rejected Schumer’s call to rename the Russell building, saying Schumer is “just playing politics.”

“I’m shocked somebody did this. It’s complete disrespect,” said Leoncello, 95, of Hyde Park, Mass. “I lost a lot of my friends in that battle that I’ll never forget. Why can’t people understand life is precious?

“To think I put my life on the line on the front lines to fight for my country I really love only to have someone do this,” he added.

Leoncello’s wife, Theresa, told the Herald her husband was crying when news broke that the beloved memorial had been doused with oil, which can seep in and permanently stain stone. State police are investigating and a professional cleaning crew will be back at the seaside site today with power washers, City Councilor Ed Flynn said.

Still, Leoncello — a Purple Heart recipient who served as a rifleman in Gen. George Patton’s Third Army — said the culprits need to think about those soldiers who died for their freedom.

The memorial, near Castle Island, commemorates the 216 solders from South Boston and Dorchester killed during World War II.

State police said the vandalism was reported Monday at about 11:30 a.m. and troopers found “some type of oil” splashed or poured on the memorial.

U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch said the damage done could be irreversible.

“It’s disgraceful. Absolutely disgraceful,” Lynch said at the scene Monday. “These men gave their lives in fighting Nazi Germany.”

That includes Lynch’s wife’s uncle, Arnold F. Bailey, who was killed in April 1945 “in a jump over the Rhine just before the end of World War II.” He was one of the many Boston men, some of whom left high school to fight, Lynch added, who were disrespected.

“Why would someone, unless they’re Nazi sympathizers, come here and deface this monument? It’s a crazy world we live in. Saddening that these men who gave their very lives … that their memories would be defamed in this way,” Lynch said as volunteers scrubbed the stone.

“It’s a sign of the times. The world has just gone crazy,” Lynch added. “I’m just beside myself.”

Lynch said the oil has soaked into the granite and could “permanently deface” the monument.

Flynn said volunteers and veterans will gather at the memorial this morning to try anew to rid the granite of the oil stains.

“The South Boston community and veterans will not tolerate this and we will make sure this is cleaned up,” Flynn said. “The vets and military families deserve all the respect they’ve earned.”

John Leoncello said he couldn’t stop thinking all day about being back on patrol with his squad capturing Germans — “including one Gestapo” — and being wounded.

“They told me I was going home, but I didn’t get out. They treated my wound,” he said. “I’ve been thinking of that and all my friends who passed away over there. I want people to understand they didn’t get to go home. They deserve to be honored.”

—
©2019 the Boston Herald
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Dubbed the “ship-in-a-box,” the full-scale fishing dhow inside a warehouse has become a key training tool in efforts to combat threats in Middle East waters, such as drug trafficking that funds extremists in places like Afghanistan.

It’s run by the Maritime Engagement Team, a group of 10 U.S. Coast Guardsmen who specialize in maritime enforcement operations.

Known as the MET Facility, the compound also includes a pair of stacked shipping containers simulating cargo aboard a ship and is in high demand from U.S. and partner forces.

The team recently took Stars and Stripes on a walkthrough of the facility to show how they use it to practice safety sweeps, close-quarter battle techniques, quick exits and searches.

“They’re searching for illicit materials and we’re trying to deter illicit activities,” said Coast Guard Capt. John Gregg, the team’s commander. “Sometimes there are narcotics that are found, and we have had experiences where boarding teams have found weapons.”

The facility has been around since 2003, mainly to keep Coast Guard members up-to-date on qualifications, but it has recently become a valuable training environment where the Americans and partner countries can share best practices. The team’s 2019 calendar is already fully booked, officials said.

“We realized that we really had the capacity here, and as we began to build our own capability with this facility, it really had a lot of promise,” Gregg said. “So, we started to have engagements with partners and that demand signal grew.”

Last year, 27 countries sent nearly 800 participants to the facility.

Earlier this year, security forces from four Gulf countries came together with the Americans at the facility for an exercise in ship-boarding tactics.

“Each country has unique methods when it comes to inspection and approach,” said Capt. Saleh Alfodary of the Kuwaiti coast guard, in a U.S. Army video in January highlighting the exercise involving Kuwaiti, Saudi, Bahraini and Emirati teams. “This exercise was held on the basis of standardizing methods of inspection, uniting our understanding and theories and creating a foundation for cooperation and relationships between the largest nations in the Arabian Gulf.”

The increased demand for the facility comes as boarding parties, known as visit, board, search and seizure teams, have scored some of the largest smuggling busts since the Combined Maritime Force here transitioned from a U.S. force to a multinational counterterrorism and maritime security coalition after 9/11.

Just before Christmas, the British destroyer HMS Dragon boarded a pair of dhows carrying nearly 11 tons of illegal drugs — the largest CMF bust so far. In December and January, the U.S. destroyer USS Chung-Hoon busted two more vessels hauling about 10 tons of hashish in the Gulf of Aden.

To hone their skills prior to the busts, Chung-Hoon’s boarding team had trained at the ship-in-a-box and had received training onboard their own ship.

“I am grateful that Chung-Hoon was able to play a small part,” Cmdr. Brent Jackson, the ship’s skipper, said in a statement following one of the drug busts.

Although the MET trains for many scenarios, U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class Philip Cook said that most boarding parties encounter cooperative crewmembers. During practice runs, participants have fun with role-playing and hand-to-hand combat exercises that add authenticity to the experience and prepare them for less compliant crews.

Any flagless vessel is deemed “stateless” under international law and patrols seek out such vessels for boarding, using a checklist to assess red flags, or what the team calls “tripwires,” that represent threats or questionable behavior and set the tone for a boarding.

“Our job is to establish positive control,” said Cook, who said he enjoys sharing tips on how to find hidden compartments.

Positive control could mean dealing with combatant crew members, clearing spaces with “questionable” cargo or providing medical assistance, he said.

Many partner navies in the region conduct coastal operations as part of their daily missions, a sharp contrast to the deep-water U.S. Navy, officials said. The MET specializes in those coastal engagements, which is what draws regional partners to work with them.

“They are great at partnering with regional navies and coast guards,” said U.S. Navy Capt. Adan Cruz, commodore of all surface patrol forces in the 5th Fleet. “Because of the Coast Guard presence here, it makes it easier to engage with the other regional coast guards who are doing similar operations.”

Of the 20 U.S. ships permanently stationed in Bahrain, six of them are Coast Guard cutters.

“Most navies are not in the business of power projection. They’re in the business of enforcing sovereignty,” Gregg said. “Most other countries, whether it’s navy or coast guard, are in the business of fisheries enforcement, countersmuggling, search and rescue — missions that very much dovetail with what the U.S. Coast Guard does.”

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Twitter: @joshua_karsten

Justin Walters, 32, who served as an infantryman during two tours in Afghanistan, shot his wife Nichole Walters, 27, multiple times on July 9, 2017. Nichole died of her wounds inside the home, located in Theresa, about 80 miles outside of Syracuse.

Walters also fatally shot 36-year-old Joel Davis, a trooper and married father of three who had responded to the home.

A jury found Walters guilty Wednesday morning on 52 counts – including two counts of first-degree murder, as well as attempted murder, assault, and criminal possession of a weapon. He did not display a reaction when the verdict was read.

Rather than argue that Walters had not committed the crime, his attorney Ed Narrow, argued – along with a psychiatrist, his only witness – that Walters was not responsible for the crimes due to PTSD, alcoholism and childhood trauma, rendering him incapable of controlling himself on that tragic night, WWNY-TV reported.

Davis, who had been a member of the force for four years, was responding to a 911 call citing an argument at the residence.

Upon arrival, he heard gunshots and ordered backup. Though he reached for his own weapon, a semi-automatic rifle, he was shot in the chest before he could defend himself, according to police. The trooper then fell into a ditch, making it difficult for his colleagues to locate him.

It wasn’t until after Walters surrendered that the troopers were able to locate Davis. He was taken to Watertown’s Samaritan Medical Center where he was pronounced dead within the hour.

Nichole’s friend, Rebecca Finkle, was also shot but survived.

At the time of the shootings, Walters was an active-duty soldier stationed at Jefferson County’s Fort Drum. He was assigned to the 10th Mountain Division.

Gov. Cuomo instructed that government buildings lower their flags to half-staff following Davis’ death.

©2019 New York Daily News
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The Pentagon on Monday released a list of $12.9 billion worth of projects that could be defunded in some combination to divert $3.6 billion for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The 21-page list highlights military projects worldwide that had not been awarded contracts as of Dec. 31.

More than $600 million in projects focused on deterring Russian aggression in Europe are potential targets identified by the Pentagon, including ammunition depots, fuel storage sites and rail network improvements centered on speeding the U.S. military’s ability to respond to a crisis.

Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former head of U.S. Army Europe, said cutting such projects would be a blow to efforts in countering Russia.

“These projects were selected based on a professional assessment of what was most needed in order to ensure effective deterrence by U.S. forces as part of NATO,” Hodges said Tuesday, referring to how the projects were originally chosen for funding. “They represent tangible manifestations of America’s commitment to Europe and to the alliance, which has unfortunately been called into question over the last couple of years.”

In Europe, several school construction projects could be in jeopardy, including plans for a new $79 million Spangdahlem Elementary School, a $56 million Clay Kaserne Elementary School in Wiesbaden and a $46.6 million new Robinson Elementary in Stuttgart.

Other long-planned efforts, such as the $43.9 million expansion of the Marine Corps’ headquarters in Stuttgart and a $31 million mission training complex in Grafenwoehr – the Army’s main training area in Europe – also are potentially on the chopping block.

A Defense Department fact sheet said no decisions have yet been made and that if the Pentagon’s 2020 budget request is enacted on time, no military construction projects would be delayed or canceled.

In Europe, the largest number of projects is related to the military’s ongoing efforts to deter Russian aggression through the European Deterrence Initiative, or EDI. While much of that military campaign has focused on funding operations, such as rotating armored brigades from the U.S. to serve as reinforcements in Europe, another dimension centers on logistics. Since Russia’s 2014 forced annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, the United States and allies have spent billions trying to improve infrastructure that would be needed to move forces in response to a conflict.

“I cannot stress enough that U.S. (European Command’s) ongoing and future success in implementing and executing these strategies (to deter Russia) is only possible with Congress’ support, especially the sustained funding of the European Deterrence Initiative,” EUCOM commander Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti told lawmakers earlier this month.

Hodges said beefing up logistics networks is one of the ways the U.S. compensates for a smaller Army presence, which stands at roughly 32,000 soldiers on the Continent.

“We could only fill half of a football stadium with the number of troops we have here (in Europe),” Hodges said of the Army’s presence. “Our deterrence contributions rely on presence in Europe and on prepositioned equipment and logistical infrastructure that will enable rapid reinforcement.”

A focal point has been the setup of large ammunition depots scattered at strategic locations in Europe, improvements at ports where weaponry would be offloaded and at various railroad points where gear would likely be hauled. And there are scores of initiatives that have been funded, but for which contracts are yet to be rewarded. Some of the biggest plans are in Poland, where about $145 million is to be spent on ammunition and fuel storage sites, staging areas and rail extensions.

The Pentagon list also touches projects in central and Eastern European countries: Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. Areas of focus include military airfield upgrades and munition storage areas.

In addition to logistics efforts, a plan to build a $15 million special operations training center in Estonia is on the list. In southern Europe, $21 million to improve port facilities at the U.S. Navy’s hub at Rota, Spain, and $47.8 million to improve Navy logistics and mobility centers in Souda Bay, Greece, also are at risk.

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Twitter: @john_vandiver
 

Military officials at the bases said Monday that they are surveying damage as they wait for the water to recede, which isn’t expected until Thursday.

Flooding began Friday at Offutt, which is near Bellevue, peaked Sunday evening and flooded about one-third of the base. Overnight, the water only receded about one foot, Col. Michael Manion, commander of the 55th Wing Command, which is headquartered at Offutt, wrote on his Facebook page. He also oversees base operations.

His team at the base is now preparing its priorities for when the water recedes, focusing first on safety and then on “generation of combat power,” he wrote.

Since preparation began Friday, the colonel has chronicled online the devastating flooding that now covers much of the southeastern portion of Offutt. That area includes the majority of the aircraft hangars for the wing’s RC-135s, fixed-wing reconnaissance aircraft, said Ryan Hansen, 55th Wing spokesman. The majority were moved to higher ground on the base and eight were flown off base to a National Guard facility in Lincoln and MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla.

Base officials evacuated the Base Lake, a recreational camping area, early Friday and personnel worked around the clock to fortify facilities with more than 235,000 sandbags and 460 flood barriers to minimize damage as much as possible, according to a news release on the Offutt Facebook page.

But the efforts couldn’t stop the water from overflowing. With 30 buildings flooded and one access gate blocked by water, the base, which is also home to U.S. Strategic Command, is open only to mission essential personnel. About 10,000 people work on the installation. Of those 6,500 are active-duty servicemembers.

The flooded facilities range from the 55th Wing’s headquarters to a veterinary clinic to a 55th Maintenance Group facility that is on the edge of the flooded area. Hansen estimated the maintenance facility is flooded with water about 2 to 3 feet high, with other base facilities further east flooded worse.

No housing or barracks were flooded, Hansen said.

“It is extremely clear that we face a grand challenge,” Manion wrote Sunday with photos of the airfield’s partially flooded runway. “Our goal is to only reopen when it’s safe.”

At about 6:20 p.m. Sunday, Manion posted the water levels stayed the same for about 12 hours and were not expected to rise. However, the Army Corps of Engineers predicted the water won’t begin to recede until Thursday.

Record-setting snowfall this winter is now melting, causing water levels to rise in the Missouri and Platte rivers and Papio Creek. Offutt sits north of where the two rivers meet.

Camp Ashland, a training site, is about 25 miles west of Offutt on the Platte River and is “completely underwater,” said Spc. Lisa Crawford, spokeswoman for the Nebraska National Guard. Flooding there began Wednesday and the 225 soldiers on base taking classes were evacuated.

Over the weekend, a levee protecting the base broke and military officials have not been able to access the base and assess damage, Crawford said.

“Right now we are focusing our attention on response efforts for the rest of the state and will assess our needs at a later time,” she said.

The Nebraska National Guard has nearly 80 servicemembers conducting medical evacuations as well as air and ground rescue missions, said Master Sgt. Michael Houk, spokesman for the National Guard. Since Friday, about 111 people have been rescued. Equipment in use includes three UH-60L Blackhawk helicopters and one LUH-72A Lakota helicopter.

Ashland flooded despite updated infrastructure following catastrophic flooding in May 2015, reported the Omaha World-Herald. In response, the Guard spent about $3.7 million installing flood gates on some buildings, rebuilding others on stilts and adding additional flood-control measures.

With the water moving downstream, flooding has begun in Missouri with hundreds of homes flooding as levees are breached in the northwestern part of the state, The Associated Press reported. Military C-130 planes, designed to transport cargo or people, were evacuated last week from nearby Rosecrans Air National Guard Base in St. Joseph.

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Astrid, a mother of two young boys from Frankfurt, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia last fall after going to the doctor for a sore throat. Doctors have said her best chance of beating the less than 50-percent odds of surviving the aggressive blood cancer is a stem cell transplant, said her family friend, Sara.

Astrid, 41, is facing an uphill battle in finding a genetic match, given her mixed African and Caucasian ethnicity, Sara said, speaking on Astrid’s behalf. Both women requested only their first names be used to protect their families’ privacy.

Their plea comes in an area where Defense Department personnel can easily register on base to become bone marrow donors; however, officials say minorities are underrepresented in the department’s globally accessible registry.

Less than three percent of all registered donors worldwide are of an ethnic mix, Sara said. Even fewer have African and Caucasian genes, she said. Astrid needs to find a “genetic twin,” someone who has the same genetic makeup, Sara said. “That hasn’t been found yet,” she said.

Astrid’s father was from Nigeria — belonging to the Igbo, one of the largest of all African ethnic groups.

“What we didn’t know before this happened to Astrid is that ... 70 percent,” of registered stem cell donors are Caucasian, Sara said.

“We just need to reach way, way, way more people, not just for Astrid but for everybody with similar backgrounds,” she said, “because it can become a problem for everybody.”

Astrid has appealed directly to residents of London, which has one of the biggest Nigerian communities outside of West Africa. Her supporters are also reaching out to the U.S. and broader public, Sara said, including to U.S. military personnel stationed in Germany.

The U.S. military cannot advise or endorse participation in the campaign to help Astrid, officials at Ramstein said. But DOD personnel, Coast Guardsmen and immediate family members in the Kaiserslautern area can easily register to become a stem cell or bone marrow donor — for anyone in need, since Ramstein Air Base is one of about 65 walk-in registration sites for the C.W. Bill Young Department of Defense Marrow Donor Program, also called Salute to Life.

Individuals between the ages of 18 and 60 in general good health may register through the program. On Ramstein, the 86th Medical Group oversees registration at the base medical clinic and has about 50 collection kits on hand, officials there said.

Registration can be completed in about seven minutes and doesn’t cost anything, said Eddy Medina, the senior recruiter for the DOD marrow donor program. It involves filling out a form and having each cheek swabbed twice.

Once a kit arrives at the program’s lab in Maryland, DNA is extracted from the swabs and analyzed for six different genes to determine the human leukocyte antigen typing — the markers found on most cells in the body. That information will be added to the registry, Medina said.

The DOD program partners with the National Marrow Donor Program, which is open to both civilian and military patients in need of a transplant. The national registry works with more than 50 other nations, increasing the pool of potential donors to more than 33 million.

“If you become a match, they’ll ask you if you want to go through the process of donating,” Medina said. “They’ll tell you the age of the person, the gender and the disease.”

If a person agrees to donate and passes a blood test and physical, he or she would be flown to the greater D.C. area for the procedure, which usually takes less than a week. Military personnel would work through their commander to get permissive leave, while the DOD donor program — which receives funds from Congress — would cover the travel costs, Medina said.

More than 1 million DOD personnel are registered in the program’s database, Medina said. Minorities, however, are not represented “as well as they should be,” in the registry, he added.

Individuals may also request a testing kit by mail (www.salutetolife.org) or attend a registration drive. The next one overseas is at Camp Zama, Japan, from March 25 to 29. Those not affiliated with DOD may register at: www.bethematch.org.

In Germany, people may register through DKMS, a charity that works with national stem cell registries to defeat blood cancer.

The best way to help Astrid, Sara said, is to get registered as a donor.

For Astrid, finding a match is a life or death prospect, Sara said.

She’s undergone chemotherapy but “getting a stem cell donation is her only chance of surviving this,” Sara said. “They can try to buy her some time with the medicine, but ultimately she will need a match or she will most likely die.

“She’s also hoping that her case really raises awareness for this global problem,” Sara said.

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Twitter: @stripesktown

The taking of the ISIS camp was a major advance but not the final defeat of the group in Baghouz, the last village held by the extremists where they have been holding out for weeks under siege, according to Mustafa Bali, the spokesman for the Kurdish-led force known as the Syrian Democratic Forces. Still, fighters from the force were starting to celebrate anyway.

"I'm happy it's over. Now I know my people are safe," said a fighter who identified himself as Walid Raqqawi who fought in the camp Monday night. He said he is returning to his hometown of Raqqa to rest. Comrades from his unit sang and danced in celebration at an outpost in Baghouz, all saying they were looking forward to going home.

An unknown number of ISIS militants still clung to a tiny sliver of land trapped between the Euphrates River and the encampment now held by the SDF, officials in the force said.

The militants have been putting up a desperate fight, their notorious propaganda machine working even on the brink of collapse. On Monday, ISIS issued a video showing its militants furiously defending the encampment, a junkyard of wrecked cards, motorcycles and tents. In the footage. They shoot nonstop with AK-47s and M-16s from behind trucks, vehicles and sand berms.

A group of children could be seen at one point amid the fighting.

"My Muslim brothers everywhere, we did our best, the rest is up to God," a fighter said to the backdrop of black smoke rising from behind him.

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The complete fall of Baghouz would mark the end of the Islamic State group's self-declared territorial "caliphate," which at its height stretched across much of Syria and Iraq. For the past four years, U.S.-led forces have waged a destructive campaign to tear down the "caliphate." But even after Baghouz's fall, ISIS maintains a scattered presence and sleeper cells that threaten a continuing insurgency.

The battle for Baghouz has dragged on for weeks — and the encampment has proven a major battleground, with tents covering foxholes and underground tunnels.

The siege has also been slowed by the unexpectedly large number of civilians in Baghouz, most of them families of ISIS members. Over past weeks they have been flowing out, exhausted, hungry and often wounded. The sheer number who emerged — nearly 30,000 since early January according to Kurdish officials — took the Kurdish-led SDF by surprise.

In the last two weeks, many ISIS militants appeared to be among those evacuating. But SDF commanders have stopped speculating when the battle may finally be over. Commanders say they don't know how many more may still be left, hiding in tunnels beneath the war-scarred village.

In the seizure Tuesday of the encampment, hundreds of wounded and sick militants were captured and have been evacuated to nearby military hospitals for treatment, Bali, the SDF spokesman, said in a Twitter post. Still, he cautioned, "this is not a victory announcement, but a significant progress in the fight."

There were conflicting reports from SDF commanders on the ground about the extent of the ISIS surrender.

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Commander Rustam Hasake said SDF forces advanced on four fronts Monday night and were inside the camp when the last ISIS fighters surrendered at dawn.  He said the last fighters were pushed out of the camp and were now in an open patch of land by the Euphrates River and were being processed and detained.

Another commander, however, said some ISIS militants continue to hold a tiny area in an open patch of land in the village, outside the encampment.

AP journalists in Baghouz reported sporadic gunfire echoing in Baghouz and jets circling overhead. At a command post in Baghouz, a Humvee pulled up and unloaded weapons captured from ISIS on Tuesday, including sniper and hunting rifles, pump action shot guns and grenades and ammunition.

Five trucks hauling 10 trailers full of people were seen coming out of Baghouz. A child could be heard wailing from inside one of them. At least 100 people, nearly all of them children, have died in the truck trips from Baghouz on the way to a camp in northern Syria, or soon after reaching it, according to the International Rescue Committee — a sign of how miserable conditions were inside Baghouz during the siege as supplies ran out.

Bali, in a separate Twitter post Tuesday, said the SDF captured a group of suspects involved in a January suicide bombing that killed four Americans in the northern town of Manbij. He did not elaborate on the number of suspects or whether they were among the most recent militants to surrender.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the blast outside a popular restaurant in Manbij, which killed at least 16 people, including two U.S. service members and two American civilians. It was the deadliest assault on U.S. troops in Syria since American forces went into the country in 2015.

As they make their final stand, the ISIS militants have issued a string of statements this month claiming to have inflicted heavy losses on the SDF.

In an audio posted online Monday, the ISIS spokesman, Abu Hassan al-Muhajer, issued his first message in six months, calling for revenge attacks by Muslims in Western countries in retaliation for the shooting attack on two New Zealand mosques that killed 50 people.

He also ridiculed U.S. declarations of the defeat of the Islamic State group, calling the claim of victory a "hallucination."

But SDF fighters celebrated as if the final collapse were imminent. At the SDF outpost in Baghouz, a commander danced with his soldiers. Fighters said remaining ISIS militants didn't put up much resistance.

"We fired on them with our rifles and heavy weapons and they didn't shoot back. So we walked into the camp and they didn't shoot at us," said Orhan Hamad, from the northern province of Hassakeh.

"I tell the martyrs, it wasn't for nothing. With God's permission, we've finished Daesh."

___

Associated Press writer Maamoun Youssef in Cairo and Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed reporting.

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More than a month after President Donald Trump declared a national emergency to contend with migration from Central America, the Pentagon on Monday released a list of projects that could be delayed to divert funding to build a southern border wall.

The 21-page list outlines $12.9 billion for more than 400 projects approved by Congress dating back to fiscal year 2015 that have not been awarded contracts as of Dec. 31. The projects span the country, overseas and every branch of military service.

A fact sheet provided with the list states no decisions have been made about which projects could lose funding.

The list was created in response to Trump’s Feb. 15 declaration of a national emergency, ordering the use of up to $3.6 billion in military construction funds to build a wall there. Since then, Pentagon officials have said they are working to identify projects that can be delayed to divert funds to the construction of the wall.

The Defense Department will use the following criteria to reduce the list to projects that could be delayed: it will eliminate projects that have contracts awarded, it will eliminate projects related to housing, barracks or dormitories, and it will only look at projects with award dates after Sept. 30, which ends the fiscal year.

Based on that criteria, Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Washington think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, said only about half the projects listed are at risk, leaving about $6.5 billion to divert to the wall.

Cancian said he doesn’t see this sitting well with lawmakers.

“They’ve now alerted a large number of members of Congress that something in their district is vulnerable. And therefore, built a lot of opposition that’s unnecessary,” he said. “They’ve published a list and half of which they’ve said they’re not going to take,” Cancian said Tuesday.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., released a statement Tuesday in response to the list because it includes $55 million for military facilities in her state. At-risk projects include a communications facility at Scott Air Force Base, an automated record fire range for the Illinois Army National Guard in Marseilles and a new crash and rescue facility in Peoria.

“This is a reckless and irresponsible proposal that will hurt military readiness and undermine our ability to respond to real national security threats,” she said. “To be clear, Donald Trump is proposing stealing funding that Congress appropriated for critical national defense projects in Illinois and across the country in order to fund a vanity project that he promised Mexico would pay for. This is a monumental waste of taxpayer dollars that is downright harmful to our nation.”

The list became a heated topic last week during acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan’s visit to Capitol Hill to discuss the proposed Pentagon budget. During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday, senators — Jack Reed, D-R.I., Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Angus King, I-Maine, most notably — grilled Shanahan about the list.

At the onset of the hearing, Shanahan said the list was not ready to share, but after further questioning, he promised Reed that he would deliver it by the end of that day. That did not happen.

Later on Thursday, the Senate voted to revoke the president’s national emergency declaration, sending the bill to Trump’s desk. Trump vetoed the bill Friday. Congress now plans to vote in each chamber to override the veto. House Democrats plan to vote March 26.

Now with the list in hand, Reed said Monday in a statement that he hopes Congress will take into consideration what is at stake in their home states before voting to override the president’s veto.

“What President Trump is doing is a slap in the face to our military that makes our border and the country less secure,” said Reed, a U.S. Military Academy graduate and former Army Ranger. “He is planning to take funds from real, effective operational priorities and needed projects and divert them to his vanity wall. That may help shore up his political base, but it could come at the expense of our military bases and the men and women of our armed forces who rely on them.

Over the weekend, Kaine questioned whether the plan to deliver the list after a Senate vote to rebuke the president’s emergency declaration, which was scheduled for Thursday as well, was politically motivated.

He further outlined his frustrations on CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday morning.

“This is not the secretary of defense in my view, this is the White House wanting to hold the list back because they worry that if senators and House members saw the potential projects that were going to be ransacked to pay for the president’s wall, they would lose votes. And I think they’re going to try to hide the list until that veto override vote occurs in the House and then in the Senate,” he said.

Cancian said he expects more members of Congress to ask questions about their state’s vulnerability. One location that appears particularly vulnerable is Puerto Rico, where the National Guard is still struggling to rebuild from Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Nearly 80 percent of the Army National Guard’s $574 million in construction funding on the list is in this U.S. territory. Those projects include a maneuver area training equipment site, a readiness center and a power substation at Camp Santiago. There are similar projects at risk in the Virgin Islands.

“My guess is, that because of what’s going on there, it’s been very slow to award contracts,” Cancian said.

Final decisions on projects won’t happen until the Department of Homeland Security provides the Defense Department with the list of border-barrier projects that it wants completed. Then the military will determine which ones would support the use of the armed forces, according to the Pentagon project’s list fact sheet. Once that is determined, the Pentagon will know exactly how much it needs to divert from its military construction budget.

Pentagon officials have been adamant that no projects will be canceled, only delayed. Should the proposed Defense Department budget for fiscal year 2020 pass on schedule as requested, nothing will be delayed, according to the fact sheet.

The Defense Department’s $718 billion proposed budget includes $3.6 billion in an emergency fund to back fill money taken from 2019 construction projects for the wall as well as an additional $3.6 billion marked for potential new construction at the southern border.

Stars and Stripes reporter Caitlin Kenney contributed to this report.

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Twitter: @Rose_Lori

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“It’s important because if you worship the military too much, you lose track of why we’re actually at war and the underlying issues that are causing it,” Lagoze told Stars and Stripes during a phone interview before the film’s release on Friday.

The documentary — a patchwork of scenes showing Marines smoking marijuana while on patrol in Afghanistan, defecating outside the homes of locals, swearing at children and talking lightly of killing innocent people — goes far to challenge the ubiquitous label of “hero” frequently bestowed on American servicemembers.

The cultural insensitivity on display may also give viewers the feeling that they’re getting an explanation, or at least part of one, as to why America’s longest war — now in its 18th year — hasn’t been won.

Footage used in the film was taken by Lagoze, then a lance corporal, and other combat cameramen during a deployment to Helmand province with the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment between 2011 and 2012.

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Lagoze’s job as a combat cameraman was to shoot and edit video of Marines at war. After being approved by the military, the footage was distributed to private news networks and the American Forces Network.

A video Lagoze shot of a November 2011 attack on Patrol Base Georgetown in Helmand’s Kajaki Sofla was picked up by CNN that winter and billed it as a “rare, firsthand glimpse into a battle with the Taliban” and an “unfiltered look” at the war.

The video shows a platoon taking indirect fire, 30 mm grenades and sniper fire. They’re still beating back the attackers when they have to coordinate a medical evacuation for a wounded comrade.

The 5-minute video, one of several of his the Pentagon publicly shared on its own websites, earned Lagoze a first place prize for combat documentary in the 2011 Visual Information Awards Program run by the military’s public affairs school. But the hourlong “Combat Obscura” includes footage the Marine Corps never approved for release.

“We filmed what they wanted, but then we kept shooting,” text at the beginning of the film reads. Its website calls it the “documentary the Corps does not want you to see.”

Initial threats of legal action by the Marine Corps against Lagoze for using footage apparently shot on government equipment substantiate that claim.

Previously, Lagoze has said he hadn’t considered making the material into a full-length documentary until after he enrolled in film school at Columbia University and realized what he had.

Working with the Knight First Amendment Institute at the school, he pushed back against the military’s threats, a Columbia University statement said.

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After a preliminary inquiry by the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, military officials have decided not to pursue litigation against Lagoze or any of those depicted in the film “at this time,” said Marine spokesman Maj. Brian Block in an emailed statement.

“The potentially criminal activity captured ... is inexcusable and selfish and endangered the security of the Marines in that unit,” Block said. “Unfortunately, the statute of limitations for pursuing disciplinary action has passed.”

That activity includes Marines apparently smoking pot in several scenes, including one in which a Marine appears to be rolling a joint in front of Afghan children and his colleague jokes about marrying an underage girl.

“You join the Marine Corps, you think the Marine Corps is like a bunch of perfect people, you know, that don’t do anything bad,” another Marine says in a different scene after smoking. “But the Marine Corps is full of the most [obscenity] individuals I’ve ever met. Just like me, you know?”

The speaker is the only person in the film who asked to have his face blurred, according to Lagoze, who said most of the men in the movie were happy for the public to see what their combat experience was actually like.

“I think ... veterans of this war are at a point where we’re sick of the hero worshiping and the sugarcoating of the experience and a lot of us are sick of people saying, ‘thank you for your service,’ without actually getting in a real conversion about what we did and what happened,” Lagoze said.

Distributed by Oscilloscope Laboratories, the film is being released in a small number of theaters and became available to buy or rent on iTunes on Friday.

While images of Marines smoking marijuana and swearing will be seen as a blemish by some on the branch’s image, other scenes in the film are more disturbing and consequential.

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“I don’t care right now about their customs or their courtesies,” a Marine says in one part of the film before his men interrupt a religious service at a rural compound. After detaining the men there for what appears to be several hours, it’s revealed the “high-value individuals” being sought are not there.

In another scene, a patrol arrives to examine the body of a suspected Taliban fighter who has been shot dead. “Just like a deer,” one Marine says of the corpse as others talk to the lifeless body. The group quickly realizes the man was an unarmed shopkeeper.

The Marines discuss covering up the killing as the man’s body is shown being wrapped in a carpet, with one saying, “This is no good for people to see.”

Due to a lack of narration giving context to the raw footage, it’s often unclear exactly what is happening during the seemingly arbitrary assortment of scenes. But as the film progresses, a sense of the troops’ insensitivity and hubris becomes palpable.

The Marines in the film appear unsuited to the counterinsurgency strategy that U.S. commanders were pursuing at the time, focused on winning the trust of the Afghans.

“The behavior and actions depicted in this film do not live up to the high standards we expect of our Marines and do not represent the experience or attitudes of the vast majority of Marines who deploy and served with honor and distinction in Afghanistan,” said Block, the spokesman.

Lagoze admitted that “there are a lot of different types of guys in the military,” but that his film is an accurate experience of his deployment to Afghanistan as a 21-year-old, seven years ago.

“I thought it was important to document as much as I could,” Lagoze said. “It was important to the guys who I was filming that I was capturing as much of the reality as possible.”

wellman.phillip@stripes.com
Twitter: @pwwellman