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Among the Black “Minutemen” or militia members, former indentured servant Lemuel Haynes stands out prominently. Abandoned by a White Mother and African Father, Haynes would work on a Massachusetts farm until he was able to earn his freedom from servitude. At the age of 21, Haynes would volunteer to become a Minuteman in Massachusetts before joining a full military unit in Connecticut.

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Shortly after the conclusion of the Lexington and Concord clashes, Haynes marched with his troops to Roxbury. After the Northern Campaign of the War, Haynes then returned to Massachusetts to work on the farm. His life’s work didn’t end on the battle field, though, he taught himself how to read and write, eventually entering into ministry. Haynes was staunchly against slavery and believed in a harmonious integration of races. Haynes also has the distinction of becoming not only the first Black pastor of a White church, but he was also the first Black man to ever receive an advanced degree (although it was honorary) from Middlebury College.

Haynes was one of 5,000 African soldiers, both slaves and freed men among them, who fought in the Revolutionary War. His legacy remained intact by way of his many essays, some regarding freedom for Africans, and sermons that have been published. America has been slow to recognize Black soldiers of the Revolution, although some strides have been taken to publicize them. Today, African Americans in the military are low in number, making up just 13 percent of the force in the most-recent data. Still, the contribution of Black soldiers over the years has been nothing short of significant, and the Minutemen of color show and prove how vital we were in the fight for freedom, then and now.

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Obama planned to make a rare appearance in the Pentagon press briefing room Thursday to announce results of a strategy review that he ordered last spring. The aim was twofold: Streamline the military in an era of tighter budgets and reassess defense priorities in light of China’s rise and other global changes.

Obama’s decision to announce the results himself underscores the political dimension of Washington’s debate over defense savings. The administration says smaller Pentagon budgets are a must but will not come at the cost of sapping the strength of a military in transition, even as it gets smaller.

In a presidential election year, the strategy gives Obama a rhetorical tool to defend his Pentagon budget-cutting choices. Republican contenders for the White House already have criticized Obama on a wide range of national security issues, including missile defense, Iran and planned reductions in ground forces.

Obama also wants the new strategy to represent a pivot point in his stewardship of defense policy, which has been burdened throughout his presidency by the wars he inherited and their drag on resources.

A prominent theme of the Pentagon’s new strategy is expected to be what Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has called a renewed commitment to security in the Asia-Pacific region. China is a particular worry because of its economic dynamism and rapid defense buildup. A more immediate concern is Iran, not only for its threats to disrupt the flow of international oil but also for its nuclear ambitions.

The revamped strategy, to be outlined at a news conference also attended by Panetta and the Joint Chiefs chairman, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, is not expected to radically alter defense priorities. It may set the stage, however, for expected cutbacks in Europe and big weapons programs.

It also will move the U.S. further from its longstanding goal of being able to successfully fight two major regional wars – like the 1991 Gulf War to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait or a prospective ground war in Korea – at the same time. This takes into account a bigger focus on immediate threats like cyber warfare and terrorism.

The administration and Congress already are trimming defense spending to reflect the closeout of the Iraq war and the drawdown in Afghanistan. The massive $662 billion defense budget planned for next year is $27 billion less than Obama wanted and $43 billion less than Congress gave the Pentagon this year.

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said Wednesday that Obama was closely involved in the defense strategy review, meeting six times since September with top defense officials, including Panetta and Dempsey. Vietor said the review established priorities to ensure that defense spending cuts are “surgical.”

As for Obama’s decision to make a personal appearance at the Pentagon, Vietor said, “It’s a sign of how personally engaged he is in this process and the level of importance he puts in shaping our priorities for the next decade.”

Factors guiding the Obama administration’s approach to reducing the defense budget are not limited to war-fighting strategy. They also include judgments about how to contain the growing cost of military health care, pay and retirement benefits. The administration is expected to form a commission to study the issue of retirement benefits, possibly led by a prominent retired military officer.

The administration is in the final stages of deciding specific cuts in the 2013 budget, which Obama will submit to Congress next month. The strategy to be announced by Panetta and Dempsey is meant to accommodate about $489 billion in defense cuts over the coming 10 years, as called for in a budget deal with Congress last summer. An additional $500 billion in cuts may be required starting in January 2013.

On a trip to Asia last fall, Panetta made clear that the region will be central to American security strategy.

“Today we are at a turning point after a decade of war,” Panetta said in Japan. Al-Qaida is among a range of concerns that will keep the military busy, but as a traditional Pacific power the United States needs to build a wider and deeper network of alliances and partnerships in that region, he said.

“Most importantly, we have the opportunity to strengthen our presence in the Pacific – and we will,” he said.

The administration is not anticipating military conflict in Asia, but Panetta believes the U.S. got so bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11 that it missed chances to improve its position in other regions.

Also looming large over the defense budget debate is the prospect of reducing spending on nuclear weapons.

Thomas Collina, research director at the Arms Control Association, believes the U.S. nuclear program can cut $45 billion over the coming decade without weakening the force. He estimates that reducing the U.S. strategic nuclear submarine force from 12 subs to eight could save $27 billion over 10 years. A further $18 billion could be saved by delaying the building of a new fleet of nuclear-capable bomber aircraft, he says.

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Congolese-born Augusta Chiwy, now 93, received the Civilian Award for Humanitarian Service medal from U.S. Ambassador Howard Gutman at a ceremony in the military museum in Brussels.

“She helped, she helped, and she helped,” Gutman said at the ceremony. He said the long delay in presenting the award was because it was assumed that Chiwy had been killed when a bomb destroyed her hospital.

The Battle of the Bulge was a ferocious encounter in the final stages of World War II. In desperation, Adolf Hitler ordered a massive attack on allied forces in the Ardennes, in southern Belgium. More than 80,000 American soldiers were killed, captured or wounded.

Chiwy had volunteered to assist in an aid station in the town of Bastogne, where wounded and dying U.S. soldiers in their thousands were being treated by a single doctor in December 1944 and January 1945. Chiwy braved the gunfire, helping whoever she could, and saving the lives of hundreds of American GIs.

The Nazis hoped the surprise attack would reach the sea at the Belgian port of Antwerp and cut off the advancing allied armies. Bastogne, a market town that was also a critical road junction, was quickly besieged.

The U.S. troops – led by paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division – found themselves surrounded. But they resisted fiercely, and the key crossroads was never taken.

During the battle, Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe, the 101st’s acting division commander, delivered his famous reply to a German surrender demand when he scribbled: “To the German commander: Nuts! The American commander.”

In the ensuing siege, Bastogne was heavily shelled and quickly reduced to ruins. Another Belgian nurse – Chiwy’s friend Renee Lemaire – was killed along with about 30 patients when a bomb penetrated a cellar where she was tending to the wounded.

Gutman said the diminutive Chiwy combed battlefields during the battle, often coming under enemy fire, to collect the wounded in the deep snow.

“What I did was very normal,” Chiwy said during the ceremony. “I would have done it for anyone. We are all children of God.”

But Col. J.P. McGee, who commands a brigade of the 101st Airborne Division based in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, said that to the wounded soldiers Chiwy was “a goddess.”

“Men lived and families were reunited due to your efforts,” he said.

McGee said the army’s doctor in Bastogne, John Prior, had joked that the German snipers couldn’t hit Chiwy because she was so tiny. But Chiwy, who moved to Belgium from the colony of Congo before the war, responded that they were just bad shots.

Historian Alexander Omhof, who has dealt extensively with the history of the allied advance, also praised Chiwy’s deeds during the month-long battle.

Chiwy then received a letter of appreciation from Gen. David Petraeus, himself a former commander of the 101st Airborne.

After the battle, Chiwy slipped into obscurity, working as a hospital nurse treating spinal injuries. She married a Belgian soldier and had two children.

She was finally located several years ago by a British author and historian, Martin King, who had heard stories about a black nurse at Bastogne.

Chiwy was knighted by the Belgian king in June.

KHABARI CROSSING, Kuwait — A line of heavily armored American military vehicles, their headlights twinkling in the pre-dawn desert, lumbered past the barbed wire and metal gates marking the border between Iraq and Kuwait early Thursday and rolled into history.

For the troops of the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, it was a moment of relief fraught with symbolism but lightened by the whoops and cheers of soldiers one step closer to going home. Seven years and five months after the U.S.-led invasion, the last American combat brigade was leaving Iraq, well ahead of President Barack Obama’s Aug. 31 deadline for ending U.S. combat operations there.

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President Barack Obama will describe his plan to en U.S. combat operations in a speech today to the national convention of disabled veterans. Here is an excerpt.

Now, one of those chapters is nearing an end. As a candidate for President, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end. Shortly after taking office, I announced our new strategy for Iraq and for a transition to full Iraqi responsibility. And I made it clear that by August 31, 2010 America’s combat mission in Iraq would end. And that is exactly what we are doing — as promised, on schedule.

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WASHINGTON — After a take-it-or-leave-it vote by the Senate, House Democrats face little choice but to drop billions in aid for schools, college students and others that they had hoped could ride on legislation paying for President Barack Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan.

The Senate rejected the House measure, passed earlier this month, by a 46-51 vote that fell short of a majority, much less the 60 votes required to defeat a filibuster.

Instead, the Senate on Thursday stripped out the $20 billion in House add-ons and returned to the House an almost $60 billion measure passed by a bipartisan vote in May. The Senate measure is limited chiefly to war funding, foreign aid, medical care for Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange, and replenishing almost empty disaster aid accounts.

It would bring the amount of money appropriated for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan above $1 trillion.

Eleven Senate Democrats and Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut voted against the House version of the bill. Not a single Republican supported it.

The moves repel a long-shot bid by House Democrats earlier this month to resurrect their faltering jobs agenda with $10 billion in grants to school districts to avoid teacher layoffs, $5 billion for Pell Grants to low-income college students, $1 billion for a summer jobs program and $700 million to improve security along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Senate measure is likely to be grudgingly accepted by House Democrats next week despite opposition from liberals who oppose the war in Afghanistan, which many of them view as unwinnable.

A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wouldn’t comment on whether the House will simply approve the Senate measure and send it on to Obama for his signature.

But the pressure to do so is intense, especially after Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned lawmakers this week that unless the measure is enacted into law before Congress leaves for its August recess, the Pentagon could have to furlough thousands of employees.

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House Dems Pressured To Drop Funding For Schools, Students To Pay For Wars In Iraq And Afghanistan

ANDREW TAYLOR | 07/23/10 11:14 AM | AP
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WASHINGTON — After a take-it-or-leave-it vote by the Senate, House Democrats face little choice but to drop billions in aid for schools, college students and others that they had hoped could ride on legislation paying for President Barack Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan.

The Senate rejected the House measure, passed earlier this month, by a 46-51 vote that fell short of a majority, much less the 60 votes required to defeat a filibuster.

Instead, the Senate on Thursday stripped out the $20 billion in House add-ons and returned to the House an almost $60 billion measure passed by a bipartisan vote in May. The Senate measure is limited chiefly to war funding, foreign aid, medical care for Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange, and replenishing almost empty disaster aid accounts.

It would bring the amount of money appropriated for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan above $1 trillion.

Eleven Senate Democrats and Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut voted against the House version of the bill. Not a single Republican supported it.

The moves repel a long-shot bid by House Democrats earlier this month to resurrect their faltering jobs agenda with $10 billion in grants to school districts to avoid teacher layoffs, $5 billion for Pell Grants to low-income college students, $1 billion for a summer jobs program and $700 million to improve security along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Senate measure is likely to be grudgingly accepted by House Democrats next week despite opposition from liberals who oppose the war in Afghanistan, which many of them view as unwinnable.

A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wouldn’t comment on whether the House will simply approve the Senate measure and send it on to Obama for his signature.

But the pressure to do so is intense, especially after Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned lawmakers this week that unless the measure is enacted into law before Congress leaves for its August recess, the Pentagon could have to furlough thousands of employees.
Story continues below

The House bill also attracted a White House veto threat over $800 million in cuts to education programs to help pay for the additional domestic spending under a “pay-as-you-go” culture that the administration itself advocates.

The Senate measure blends about $30 billion for Obama’s 30,000-troop surge in Afghanistan with more than $5 billion to replenish disaster aid accounts, as well as funding for Haitian earthquake relief, and a down payment on aid to flood-drenched Tennessee and Rhode Island.

The measure contains $13 billion in benefits for Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange, but does not provide more than $4 billion requested by the administration to finance settlements of long-standing lawsuits against the government, including $1.2 billion to remedy discrimination by the Agriculture Department against black farmers and $3.4 billion for mismanaging Indian trust funds.

The measure contains $1.1 billion for mine-resistant vehicles, $657 million for military bases in Afghanistan and $6.2 billion in foreign aid for Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Haiti.

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From VOANews.com:

North Korea says an American man being held for illegally crossing its border has tried to kill himself.

A statement issued by the regime’s official Korean Central News Agency says Aijalon Mahli Gomes’ suicide attempt was “driven by his strong guilty conscience,” plus disappointment and despair that the U.S. government “has not taken any measure for his freedom.”

The statement said the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang is aware of Gomes’ condition, but it did not give any details of the incident.

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If you were a Jew, you’d probably feel like you had to be God’s chosen people because other human beings have always treated you so horribly.

Enslaved in Africa, your top guy Moses, through war and attrition, secures you a homeland called “Israel”.

You more or less keep Israel right up until around 70 A.D. when the same Romans who cosigned on the necessity of the death of that heretic among your people, would eventually decide to name that same heretic the “Son of God”, place the entire blame for his death on you and wipe you out.

So what do you do?

Well, first you scatter then you blend of course, wherever you go, but you keep your same traditions and religion, settling throughout the world but being most visible now in Europe.

Then Hitler comes along.

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It speaks volumes that a decision was made basically for the Jews that they should have their own homeland. It was almost as if the West understood that another European Hitler could always arise—and probably would—in which case the Jews would need to be protected by, if nothing else, isolation.

And it’s not like the murder of 6 million Jews really seemed to bother anybody but Jews.

I’m not exactly saying that Hitler punked Europe, but if he hadn’t gotten cocky enough to pull a blitz on London, who knows if and when the Allies would have deaded his run towards world domination.

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One might almost imagine that so long as Hitler’s agenda was only the killing of the Jews, everybody would have continued to pretend that they didn’t see anything.

But imagine that you had nothing to do with the killing of the Jews and you were just home chilling when suddenly you get the news that your home won’t be your home anymore.

You see, it wasn’t your home 2000 years ago and the original inhabitants all of a sudden need it back.

“God” had given them that land and it always had and always would be theirs.

At the very least, you might stop and wanna ask somebody “Whose God?”

And let’s really do it right this time.

Let’s install our own leadership over there. Put Jay-Z in charge. Then let’s go after Ireland and install Will Smith. Then let’s take over the rest of Europe. As many countries as we have rappers for.

The good folks at BP are sonning us crazy. Carl-Henric Svanberg says, “We care about the small people.”

Small people?

Then to make sure that we didn’t miss the diss he added, “The American People”.

Look man, we don’t have no European class system over here. There’s no Duke or Duchess of Jacksonville, Florida. We don’t wear those funny outfits or powder our faces unless we’re partying in Greenwich Village!

We knew before you tried to clown us that the “small people” are the American people.

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If Barack Obama proves anything, it’s that our “small people” can become President. That’s why I hope Barack becomes so insulted that he sends out a bunch of rappers to conquer Europe. Puts Puffy in charge of France.

People have been waiting for Obama to show an ugly side and I think it’s high time. Lets send our soldiers right into the middle of Piccadilly Circus.

Let’s run the dreds outta Brixton.

Lets do to downtown London what we did to downtown Baghdad.

Then get those bloody wankers in Parliament to bugger off.

I mean think about it: one of their companies has virtually ruined our southern coastline. We’re the only country that’s allowed to be that callous towards the international community.

Great Britain is treating us the way Super Powers are only supposed to treat Third World nations and I say it’s time we dead that.

Also, if you know anything about Revolutionary War history, you know that British tried to incite Black slaves into attacking our masters.

We wouldn’t do it. We knew this day would come. And now that we have a Black president that can pay you guys back for trying to con us into a suicide mission that would have only benefited ya’ll, it’s time that we get some getback.

So brace yourself, England.

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From BlackVoices.com:

He served two tours in Iraq and patrolled the potentially dangerous streets of Chicago. When he wasn’t in his Chicago police uniform, he volunteered as head of an effort to improve a local park and return it to residents.
But it wasn’t overseas or in the line of duty that Thomas Wortham IV lost his life. Chicago police say Wortham was killed by three people trying to steal his new motorcycle. Wortham was at his parents’ home, when he was approached by the suspects. His father, a retired Chicago police sergeant, came to his son’s aid, killing one attacker and critically wounding another. A third was able to escape.

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“This is a tragedy. This young man survived two tours in Iraq and came home and got murdered on the streets in front of his house that he grew up in,” Alderman Freddrenna Lyle, who has known the officer and his family for years, told the Chicago Tribune. “In front of his father, it’s just unbelieveable.”

Click here to read more.

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While the Tea Partiers are complaining about taxes and health care today. Let’s not forget where most of our tax dollars go to. As of today the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is more than $983 billion. That means on average, every tax payer has paid an average cost of $6,533 dollars. The only things that have cost as much as the wars in the past 10 years are health care, education, and pensions all of which cost taxpayers slightly more than $1 trillion. Source

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Now that President Obama has ordered more troops to Afghanistan, Roland asks the question no one else is asking, how will he answer to Black America who is decidedly against this war?

TELL US: What do you think of Susan Rice’s answer? Will it be enough to convince those who are already against the war?

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I have supported Obama strongly during the election and during his first year of Presidency. Still I cannot stand by his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan. I realize that he said he would add troops during the campaign but I believed that was just posturing for those who said he was soft on defense. I don’t see his decision as a betrayal but as a continuance of a stupid belief of his that I overlooked due being caught up with the energy of the election.

We have been in Afghanistan for almost eight years and I have seen no improvements. We are not closer to finding Bin Laden, the Taliban is strong, the government is corrupt and warlords run the country.

To understand Afghanistan you need to understand its history. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and occupied the country for 10 years. Many credit their long occupation for the fall of communist Russia. The long occupation left more than one million Afghans dead, three million severely wounded and five million, a third of the Afghan population became refugees.

It was the CIA and the American government who funded and trained the insurgents against the Russian occupation, who were also known as the mujahideen. One prominent member of the mujahideen was a tall Saudi by the name of Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden and his cronies would use the same tactics they were taught by the CIA and become the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Obama said he is going to send more troops to Afghanistan to “finish the job.” What exactly is the job? To get Bin Laden? Does it take 40,00 soldiers to catch one man? Inelligence reports say that there are only 100 Al Qaeda members in Afghanistan. If Bush wasn’t able to get Bin Laden during 8 years off occupation, how many troops and how much more time is required to get them?

If Obama has learned anything from the Soviet occupation of Afghnisatn or the American occupation of Vietnam is that occupations do not fix a country’ problems but only create civilian casualties, corrupt governments and animosity towards the occupiers.

Just as the USA gave power to Bin Laden and the Taliban, when they funded and supported the mujahideen, now they have created a a narco-state full of corrupt officials, drug dealing warlords, lawlessness, and a resurgent Taliban. The CIA is putting drug lords on their payroll now just like they had radical jihadists on their payroll like Bin Laden 30 years ago.

The problem in Afghanistan is a political problem that needs a political solution, not a military problem that needs a military solution. Most of Al Qaeda has relocated to Pakistan. Bin Laden has been extremely successful with propaganda reaching out to the Muslim world. He has done it without an Army. Maybe if Obama continued to win the hearts and minds by speaking out to the Muslim world he could counter Bin Laden more effectively than by sending troops to occupy an Arab country.

Using a massive army to stop Bin Laden and Al Qaeda is like using a machine gun to kill a rat. To beat them we must be smart and crafty and use intelligence (in both sense of the word). More troops means more civilian casualties, more disgruntled soldiers and more civilians feeling oppressed by an occupation.

If you believe that a surge in Afghanistan will be successful like the like it was supposedly in Iraq, remember that many believe that the slow down in violence in Iraq was caused by ethnic cleansing and not the surge. I’m not sure if you are letting the military bully you around. The same generals who have not made any progress in Afghanistan in eight years should not have a say in the matter.

The $30 billion dollars being used in Afghanistan is about half our entire budget for education. During a recession when unemployment is at an all time high, is it wise to use so much government money for a cause you can’t even explain?

This decision is wrong for the country and wrong from the world. The lessons of history tell us that this is wrong. When the people of America elected Obama, they elected to change the way America does business in the world and this decision seems to be right out of the Bush playbook.

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NAIROBI, Kenya — The bullet hit mother and son as they walked through Somalia’s capital. She felt a sharp pain in her palm. Then she saw her 8-year-old: The bullet tore through his cheekbones, nose and mouth. Blood gushed down to his waist.

Two months later, Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud’s nose is a small hole. His mouth is always open because he has no upper lip and his right eye is gone. He can barely speak.

His is a lost face of Somalia’s war.

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Like so many other victims of a savage war, Ahmed was caught in the crossfire between Islamist insurgents and government forces, struck as he walked home from a Mogadishu market with his mother, who says a barrage of bullets poured out from the presidential palace.

Unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, there are few images of the bloodshed in Somalia, where thousands of children have been casualties without the world knowing. Most foreign journalists stay away because of the danger.

On Sept. 24, an Associated Press photographer was present after Ahmed was shot and took pictures of the boy, bleeding profusely as he was carried from the scene by two bystanders. During the weeks that followed, AP journalists kept tabs on Ahmed and his mother, who are still struggling with his grievous wounds.

“My heart bleeds whenever I recall his former face, whenever I compare the two faces,” said Safi Mohamed Shidane as she inspected her son’s scars at a hospital in neighboring Kenya, where Ahmed was flown for treatment after a Minnesota-based Somali immigrant group intervened.

“God will judge those who did this to my son,” she said.

The lack of basic medical care, much less specialized doctors, has worsened the plight of children wounded in Somalia, a country mired in chaos since the last central government was ousted in 1991 and warlords turned their guns on each other.

“Ahmed’s situation represents the crisis faced by many, many children in Somalia,” said Katherine Grant, a child protection specialist with UNICEF who has visited the boy in the hospital outside Nairobi. Her agency will soon release a report accusing all parties in Somalia’s conflict of recruiting child soldiers.

There are no reliable casualty figures for children in Somalia, according to Grant and Susannah Friedman, emergencies director for Somalia for Save the Children U.K.

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“It is one of the most dangerous situations we’ve seen for children,” said Friedman, whose agency has aid workers in southern and central Somalia, but has pulled out of Mogadishu.

Yet even in violence-plagued Somalia, where the U.N. says one child in 10 dies before his or her first birthday and only 30 percent of the population has access to clean drinking water, Ahmed’s suffering tugged at heartstrings.

Doctors at Mogadishu’s Medina Hospital did all they could: They inserted a tracheotomy tube for Ahmed to breath and a feeding tube for nourishment. Doctors stitched together the horrific wounds to his face and wrapped it in thick layers of gauze.

But medical supplies — and expertise — are scarce in Somalia. When heavy fighting hits the seaside capital, tents go up at Medina to accommodate all the casualties. Inside, bloody footprints track down long corridors echoing with screams.

Appeals went out for help for Ahmed, including on Somali Web sites.

In late October, a Somali immigrant aid group, Healing the Children of Minnesota, had the boy flown to Kenya, where there are specialists and more advanced equipment. The Nigerian physician treating him there, Dr. Igohwo Etu, said the boy will need surgeries costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to reconstruct his face.

The Rochester, Minn.-based aid group is now trying to arrange treatment for Ahmed overseas and has contacted hospitals in the U.S., Britain, Italy and Mexico, its associate director, Abia Ali, said Monday.

The group, which is funded mainly by contributions from Somali immigrants, has helped 56 Somali war victims, mostly children, obtain medical care, according to its executive director, Abdi Gaal. These included two children treated at the Mayo Clinic and one at Fairview University in Minneapolis, Ali said.

Despite his uncertain future, Ahmed is a cheerful little boy who likes to play with a toy helicopter and spends time reading the Quran while lying in his hospital bed, his left eye twinkling as he scans the pages.

At the urging of his mother, he uttered a few words during a recent AP interview: “hooyo” — or “mother” in Somali — and his name.

But at other times the boy’s spirits sink.

His mother consoled him and wiped away tears that streamed from the swollen spot where his right eye once was, even as another tear dropped from his good eye and rolled into the opening where his lips and nose once were.

“With the help of God, you will recover and go back to your school,” his mother murmured, stroking her son.

Doctors had planned to remove Ahmed’s feeding tube Monday, but delayed the procedure until Nov. 30. Shidane says she was told that American or Canadian doctors might operate on Ahmed after the new year, but isn’t sure about future plans for her son.

Tens of thousands of Somalis have fled the fighting in Mogadishu, where gun battles occur daily and the Islamist insurgents hold public amputations and executions within shooting distance of the headquarters of the embattled government.

“Right now it’s very hard to be optimistic that the situation will improve, let alone that the violence will end,” said Chris Albin-Lackey, a researcher for Human Rights Watch. “In Mogadishu the situation is one of a bloody military stalemate. Neither side can gain the upper hand and the civilians are caught in between them.”

With some wanting to call the Ft. Hood shooting a terrorist act, Roland asks the question “are we at war with Islam?” Watch what his panel has to say here:

Catch this week’s episode at 5 p.m. ET on TV One!

Have a question or comment for an upcoming show? SUBMIT your videos here!

With some wanting to call the Ft. Hood shooting a terrorist act, Roland asks the question “are we at war with Islam?” Watch what his panel has to say here:

Catch this week’s episode at 5 p.m. ET on TV One!

Have a question or comment for an upcoming show? SUBMIT your videos here!

From CNN:

United Nations — The United Nations has suspended assistance to a Congolese army brigade battling rebels amid allegations that its troops killed 62 civilians, including women and children, between May and September.

The U.N. director of peacekeeping, Alain Le Roy, announced the move in an interview Sunday with Democratic Republic of Congo-based Radio Okapi.

The killings allegedly occurred near Lukweti — a village in North Kivu province in eastern Congo — about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of the regional capital, Goma.

The U.N. mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo — known by its French acronym MONUC — has been providing logistical and operational support to Congolese troops since May as they battle Rwandan Hutu rebel groups in the easternmost provinces of the war-torn nation.

The support includes medical evacuations, resupply of materiel and transport.

Click here to read more.

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]]> http://newsone.com/342937/u-n-cuts-aid-to-congo-army-brigade-for-allegedly-killing-civilians/feed/ 4 U.N. Cuts Aid To Congo Army Brigade For Allegedly Killing Civilians (thumbnail) ionesfontaine congo http://newsone.com/183981/john-legend-gives-commencement-speech-at-upenn/ http://newsone.com/183981/john-legend-gives-commencement-speech-at-upenn/#comments Tue, 19 May 2009 12:04:50 +0000 Smokey D. Fontaine http://newsone.com/?p=183981 ]]>

From HuffingtonPost.com:

Grammy-winning singer-songwriter John Legend delivered a stirring commencement address on Sunday at the University of Pennsylvania, College of Arts and Science.

In his speech, Legend powerfully expressed his own journey from a belief in simple black and white dichotomies to a more tolerant view of humanity.

Click here for VIDEO & text.

From BBC.com:

James Kimondo told reporters outside the Nairobi High Court his wife had observed the boycott and caused him “anxiety and sleepless nights”.

“I have been suffering mental anguish, stress, backaches, lack of concentration,” he said.

It is unclear how many women joined the strike, which ended on Wednesday.

Click here for more.

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The Obama administration is close to announcing a redrawn strategy for a war in Afghanistan that the president says the United States is not winning, focusing on enlisting Pakistan in the fight against extremism and trimming U.S. expectations for military victory, administration, defense and intelligence officials said.

The White House expects to announce new objectives for the flagging war as soon as next week that place an onus on next-door Pakistan to contain extremism, defense and administration officials said Thursday.

President Barack Obama was expected to explain the redrawn U.S. objectives to NATO allies when he attends a NATO summit in Europe next month.

The in-house review coordinated by the White House National Security Council lays out objectives over three years to five years, although that doesn’t necessarily mean the U.S. military could leave in that time, defense officials said.

The White House objectives were expected to roughly parallel 15 goals contained in a 20-page classified report to the White House from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Among them were getting rid of terrorist safe havens in Pakistan and adopting a regional approach to reducing the threat of terrorism and extremism in both countries.

The U.S. goal in Afghanistan must be to protect Kabul’s fragile government from collapsing under pressure from the Taliban — a goal that can only be achieved by securing Pakistan’s cooperation, increasing substantially the size of Afghanistan’s national security forces and boosting economic aid in the region, according to senior military and intelligence officials.

“We’re just about done,” Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen said in an interview with PBS’ “The Charlie Rose Show” on Thursday.

The review addresses “the safe haven in Pakistan, making sure that Afghanistan doesn’t provide a capability in the long run or an environment in which al-Qaida could return or the Taliban could return,” Mullen said, as well as the need for stability, economic development and better governance in Afghanistan, and the development of the Afghan armed forces.

An administration official said that although the review was not complete, one thrust was that Pakistan needed to recognize that combating extremism was in its own interest as well as that of U.S. and NATO fighting forces across the border in Afghanistan. The official, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on condition of anonymity because the review was not complete.

The review overseen by former CIA analyst Bruce Riedel drew on several generally bleak internal government assessments of the war done over the past six months. People familiar with those accounts sum up the conclusions much as Obama himself described the Afghanistan war in a New York Times interview last week: The United States is not winning.

Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, and Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, met privately on Thursday with more than a dozen senators. Although the session was confidential, it was part of the administration’s effort to recruit support for a trimmed-down U.S. mission in the war begun by former President George W. Bush following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

It is not clear whether Obama will approve additional forces for Afghanistan this year beyond 17,000 he has already dispatched. His ground commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, has requested up to 30,000 troops.

The White House review was expected to frame U.S. objectives in two major categories: strategic regional goals for stability in impoverished Afghanistan and nuclear-armed Pakistan and smaller-scale warfighting goals for the growing U.S. military commitment in Afghanistan.

Broadly speaking, the Obama administration was expected to endorse a doctrine of counterinsurgency that has military and civilian components and that scales back U.S. expectations for Afghan democracy and self-sufficiency. A main theme is the premise that the military alone cannot win the war, officials said.

The review was expected to focus on containing the Taliban and the proliferation of lesser-known militant groups, providing a greater sense of security and stability for Afghan civilians and increasing the size and proficiency of the Afghan armed forces.

“I would say that, at a minimum, the mission is to prevent the Taliban from retaking power against a democratically elected government in Afghanistan and thus turning Afghanistan, potentially, again, into a haven for al-Qaida and other extremist groups,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview with National Public Radio this week.

Part of the strategy would be purely military, as the 17,000 additional troops Obama has approved for Afghanistan this year attest. Their role is to face off against extremists in the busy spring and summer fighting season and buy time for less tangible counterinsurgency tactics to take hold.

Administration and military leaders have given a glimpse into one such tactic, describing ways that Afghan and U.S. leaders might co-opt or pay off mid- and lower-level Taliban and other insurgents in rough imitation of a successful strategy to blunt the insurgency in Iraq.

Barack Obama often has said he will issue orders to swiftly close down the Iraq war. Now military leaders are getting a chance to tell the new commander in chief how they could comply, and why he might want to wait.

Obama was to hear the opinions of the four U.S. military service chiefs on Wednesday in a meeting the White House called one more step toward fulfilling his promise of withdrawing all combat troops from Iraq. The Joint Chiefs of Staff will be ready with a rough sketch of what would be required to fulfill the president’s timetable for a 16-month withdrawal.

Defense officials have said they can meet Obama’s campaign pledge, but several officials have signaled that a fast withdrawal could upset the fragile security that currently holds in Iraq.

“We are developing other options as well,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday. “We are laying out, with each of the options we will present to him, our view — each of the commander’s — of the risks associated with that timeline.”

In preparing those, Obama has asked for more information behind assumptions and for additional analysis, Gates said. “I think that the president will listen to the commanders,” he said.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Tuesday that all the scenarios will meet the president’s “desire for a responsible drawdown that preserves the security gains we have made in Iraq and protects our forces.”

Mullen said he hopes to give Obama that menu “in the very near future,” but Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said there will be no decisions made at Wednesday’s meeting.

The Joint Chiefs are among those in the Pentagon hierarchy who have expressed concerns about the impact that long, repeated war tours in Iraq have had on the U.S. military.

Much of the discussion is also expected to look ahead to the building fight in Afghanistan and how Obama’s plans to add forces and resources there will depend in part on the success of the Iraq exit. The Pentagon is nearing an announcement of new troop deployments in Afghanistan, with forces arriving in numbers in the spring and summer.

Obama pledged during his presidential campaign to immediately order the withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq by May 2010. He said he would call in the Joint Chiefs and tell them so on his first day in office, a bit of campaign hyperbole that has evolved in practice into a series of consultations with military leaders, including commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The new president also has said he would adjust his timeline if it would risk the safety of U.S. troops remaining behind to train Iraqis and fight al-Qaida or if it would cause backsliding in Iraqi stability.

“Ultimately the commander in chief will decide which option he prefers and how much risk he can accept,” Morrell said.

Obama has not said when he plans to announce a new Iraq plan. Iraqi leaders already have said they want to stick to terms of an agreement negotiated with the United States last year that would leave some fighting forces in place longer.

“The president has laid down the test of ensuring that he hears specifically from both those on the ground and in the region before he makes decisions on our force posture going forward,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday.

Obama has not changed his determination that the war must end, his spokesman said.

“There will be a new mission in Iraq,” Gibbs said.

Two U.S. helicopters crashed Monday in northern Iraq, killing four American troops, the U.S. military said.

The military said the crash happened at about 2:15 a.m. local time and it “does not appear to be by enemy action.”

No precise location was given but a military spokesman said it happened in Tamim province, which includes the oil-rich disputed city of Kirkuk.

Iraqi officials said the crash site was located about 20 miles west of Kirkuk, which is about 180 miles north of Baghdad. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not supposed to release the information.

Maj. Derrick Cheng, a spokesman for U.S. forces in northern Iraq, said all the dead were Americans. He declined to give more details or release their names.

The deaths raised to at least 4,236 the number of U.S. service members who have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The U.S. military relies heavily on helicopters and other aircraft to ferry troops, dignitaries and supplies to avoid the threat of ambushes and roadside bombs in Iraq.

At least 70 U.S. helicopters have gone down since the war started in March 2003, according to military figures. Of those, 36 were confirmed to have been shot down.

The most recent previous incident was on Nov. 15, when a helicopter that made a hard landing after hitting wires in the northern city of Mosul killed two American soldiers.

A Russian-made cargo plane chartered by FedEx also crashed in November after reporting a malfunction west of Baghdad, leaving the seven crew members dead.

The Jan. 2005 crash of a U.S. Marine CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter in western Iraq claimed 31 lives — the biggest single U.S. loss of life in the Iraq war. Investigators determined the crash was not due to hostile fire.

A senior Obama administration official said the president would sign an order Thursday to shutter the Guantanamo prison within one year. The U.S. naval facility has been a major sore point for critics around the world who say it violates domestic and international detainee rights. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because the order has not yet been issued.

The executive order was one of three expected on how to interrogate and prosecute al-Qaida, Taliban or other foreign fighters believed to threaten the United States. The administration already has suspended trials for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo for 120 days pending a review of the military tribunals.

Obama also had in hand executive orders to review military trials of terror suspects and end harsh interrogations, a key part of aides’ plans that had been assembled even before Obama won the election on Nov. 4.

“In view of the significant concerns raised by these detentions, both within the United States and internationally, prompt and appropriate disposition of the individuals currently detained at Guantanamo and closure of the facility would further the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice,” said the draft executive order that would close Guantanamo. The draft was obtained by The Associated Press.

On Thursday, Obama was visiting the State Department to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and his top national security advisers.

White House aides announced that the president would meet with retired military officers to discuss the executive orders in the morning, but would not confirm that Obama planned to sign them immediately.

The Obama-Clinton meeting also was to include Vice President Joe Biden and national security adviser Jim Jones and his deputy. It was to be followed by an address by Obama and Clinton to State Department employees.

The address could provide an opening for Obama to enter the daunting thicket of Middle East diplomacy, long dodged by deferring to President George W. Bush, who left office Tuesday. It could also be the time he announces George Mitchell, the former Senate Democratic leader, as his special envoy to the region.

During his two-month stint as the president-elect, Obama promised he would have plenty to say on the conflict as soon as he was in office, but the country could only have one foreign policy voice at a time.

Some of Obama’s other promises, though, have already been attended to. On Wednesday, he signed executive orders to limit his staff’s ability to leave the administration to lobby their former colleagues. He also limited pay raises for his senior aides making more than $100,000 a year — a nod to a flailing economy and voters’ frustrations.

He also opened the doors to the White House to visitors on Wednesday, meeting with guests in the White House’s Blue Room.

“Enjoy yourself, roam around,” a smiling Obama told one guest as he shuffled through the room. “Don’t break anything.”

Obama was starting his day Thursday with a private meeting on the nation’s struggling economy, a signal to the millions of Americans struggling with tighter credit, increasing home foreclosures and the dollar’s shrinking value.

According to officials, Obama will conduct a videoteleconference late Wednesday afternoon with members of the National Security Council as well as the U.S. military commanders in the two war zones.

Obama has said he wants combat troops out of Iraq in 16 months and a greater effort made in Afghanistan. In his inauguration speech Tuesday he offered a glimpse of what was to come.

“We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan,” he said.

At the same time, he added a warning to America’s enemies: “We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”

Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister, told Associated Press Television News on Tuesday that Iraq is willing to have the U.S. withdraw its troops and assume security for the country “before the end of 2011,” the departure date agreed to by former President George W. Bush in November.

Summoned to the White House were Defense Secretary Robert Gates — the lone Republican Cabinet holdover from the Bush administration — along with chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen; the top military commander in the Middle East, Gen. David Petraeus; and other members of the security council.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Gen. David McKiernan, the top commander in Afghanistan, were due to participate from the war fronts, according to two senior military officers. The officers spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting has not been officially announced by the White House.

Obama pledged during his campaign to pull all U.S. combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months, but it was not clear whether he would issue any hard-and-fast orders Wednesday to end the war on that specific timeline or declare his intentions in more general terms.

Petraeus is in the midst of a broad review of his entire region of responsibility, which encompasses Iraq and the rest of the Middle East as well as Afghanistan, Pakistan and the rest of Central Asia. He is expected to finish his review by late next month.

With the inclusion of Petraeus, Odierno and McKiernan, the meeting Wednesday appeared to reflect, at least in part, Gates’ preference for offering the president a full range of views — from senior civilians as well as top military commanders — at key junctures in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

The military service chiefs, with whom Obama would be expected to consult at some point, were not expected to attend Wednesday’s session. Some have expressed concerns about the impact the long, repeated war tours have had on the U.S. military.

JERUSALEM – Israel declared a unilateral cease-fire in its 22-day offensive that turned Gaza neighborhoods into battlegrounds and dealt a stinging blow to the Islamic militants of Hamas, but the government said its troops will stay in the Palestinian territory for now.

Shortly before top leaders voted for the cease-fire at an emergency security meeting, Hamas threatened to keep fighting until Israeli troops leave Gaza.

“Our goals as they were set at the beginning of the operation were fully realized, and even more than that,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said after the 12-member Security Cabinet voted to halt the assault.

“Hamas was hit hard, in its military arms and in its government institutions,” Olmert said. “If the fire stops entirely, the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) will weigh pulling out of Gaza at a time that befits us. If not, the IDF will continue to act to defend our residents.”

More than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed since the Israeli offensive began on Dec. 27, according to Palestinian and U.N. officials. At least 13 Israelis have also died.

The offensive will stop at 2 a.m. local time (7 p.m. EST), Olmert said.

One Israeli airstrike killed two Hamas militants and another unidentified man, while another flattened a five-story building in northern Gaza, killing at least seven people, including an infant, Hamas officials said. Israeli aircraft struck more than 30 targets before dawn, and there were constant explosions after first light.

By midday, 19 Palestinians had been killed, pushing the death toll to more than 760 and in the two-week-old conflict, according to Gaza health officials who say at least half of those killed were civilians. Thirteen Israelis have also been killed.

A U.N. Security Council resolution approved Thursday night called urgently for an immediate, durable and fully respected cease-fire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. The U.S., Israel‘s closest ally and a veto-wielding member of the Security Council, abstained.

While the call is tantamount to a demand on the parties, Israel’s troops won’t be required to pull out of Gaza until there is a durable cease-fire. The resolution calls on U.N. member states to intensify efforts to provide guarantees in Gaza to sustain a lasting truce, including prevention of illicit trafficking in arms and ammunition.

In Israel’s first official response to the resolution, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert‘s office said the Hamas rockets fired at Israel Friday “only prove that the U.N.’s decision is not practical and will not be kept in practice by the Palestinian murder organizations.”

A Hamas spokesman said the Islamic militant group “is not interested” in the cease-fire because it was not consulted and the resolution did not meet its minimum demands.

Israel launched its assault on Dec. 27 in an attempt to halt years of rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled territory.

Despite the devastating offensive, Hamas has kept up rocket attacks on southern Israel. The rockets fired Friday hit in and around two of the largest southern cities, Beersheba and Ashkelon. Cities within rocket range of Gaza have largely been paralyzed since the fighting began.

The Security Council action came hours after a U.N. agency suspended food deliveries to Gaza, and the Red Cross accused Israel of blocking medical assistance after forces fired on aid workers. It also followed concerns of a wider conflict after militants in Lebanon fired rockets into northern Israel early Thursday, though the border has been quiet since.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the U.S. “fully supports” the resolution but abstained “to see the outcomes of the Egyptian mediation” with Israel and Hamas, also aimed at achieving a cease-fire.

Osama Hamdan, a Hamas envoy to Lebanon, told the al-Arabiya satellite channel that the group “is not interested in it because it does not meet the demands of the movement.”

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the U.N. failed to consider the interests of the Palestinian people.

“This resolution doesn’t mean that the war is over,” he told the Al-Jazeera satellite television network. “We call on the Palestinian fighters to mobilize and be ready to face the offensive, and we urge the Arab masses to carry on with their angry protests.”

Israel’s government says any cease-fire must guarantee an end to rocket fire and arms smuggling into Gaza. During a six-month cease-fire that ended with the current operation, Hamas is thought to have used tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border to smuggle in the medium-range rockets it is now using to hit deeper than ever inside Israel.

Hamas has said it won’t accept any agreement that does not include the full opening Gaza’s blockaded border crossings. Israel is unlikely to agree to that demand, as it would allow Hamas to strengthen its hold on the territory which it violently seized in June 2007.

With Israeli troops now in control of many of the open areas used by militants to launch rockets, gunman have continued shooting from inside populated neighborhoods.

The conflict has left hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza increasingly desperate for food, water, fuel and medical assistance, and the situation was expected to worsen as humanitarian efforts fall victim to the fighting.

One of the dead Thursday was a Ukrainian woman, the first foreigner to die in the fighting, according to Gaza Health Ministry official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain. He said the woman was married to a Palestinian doctor who trained in Ukraine and returned with her to Gaza. Her 2-year-old son was also killed in the tank shelling east of Gaza City, he said.

Details are emerging of other incidents in which civilians were killed. A U.N. agency said Israeli troops evacuated Palestinian civilians to a house in Gaza City on Jan. 4, then shelled the building 24 hours later, killing 30 people.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs report was based on eyewitness testimony. It added details to an incident previously reported by The Associated Press and an Israeli human rights group.

The U.N. agency said 110 people were in the house. The 30 people reported killed is a far higher figure than in other accounts.

The Israeli military had no comment on the report Friday.

The West Bank saw its biggest protests so far Friday, as thousands took to the streets following prayers to express their anger at the Israeli offensive.

From Rami G. Khouri at the Middle East Online:

Of course, the immediate consequences of the Israeli assault on Gaza are felt primarily by the Palestinians in Gaza. But the political shockwaves will be felt throughout the Arab world in forms that cannot be easily predicted today. The Israeli attempt to inflict patricide — the killing of a country — on Gaza emphasizes a series of transformational trends that have been clear throughout the Arab region for about the past quarter century.

The most important trend concerns the reconfiguration of power, legitimacy and activism in the modern Arab state. As governments in existing Arab states effectively ignore what is happening in Gaza — to judge by their political immobility — we will continue to witness the weakening impact, control and even the legitimacy of many of those regimes. We will also continue to see the rise of non-state actors who become so strong and credible that they should be called parallel states.

Click here for the full story.

Two people were lightly injured, and the rockets that exploded in Israel’s north raised the specter of renewed hostilities with Hezbollah, just 2 1/2 years after Israel battled the guerrilla group to a 34-day stalemate. Hezbollah started the 2006 war as Israel was battling Palestinian militants in Gaza.

No group claimed responsibility and Lebanon’s government, wary of conflict, quickly condemned the rocket fire. Israel fired mortar shells into southern Lebanon in response.

For a second straight day, Israel said it suspended is Gaza military operation for three hours to allow in humanitarian supplies.

Before the lull on Thursday, Israel killed at least 11 people in Gaza, including five militants, raising the death toll from its 13-day offensive to 699 people, according to Palestinian medical officials. The offensive is meant to halt years of Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel, but with roughly half the dead believed to be civilians, international efforts to broker a cease-fire have been gaining steam.

One of the Lebanese rockets went through the roof of a retirement home in Nahariya, about five miles from the border, and exploded in the kitchen as some 25 residents were eating breakfast in the adjacent dining hall. One resident suffered a broken leg, another bruises, apparently from slipping on the floor after emergency sprinklers came on.

“The rocket entered through the roof, hurling the water heaters into the air. It went through bedrooms upstairs and then into the kitchen. There was a serious blast,” said Henry Carmelli, the home’s manager.

About three hours later, air-raid sirens went off again. But authorities said it was a false alarm.

Israel has repeatedly said it was prepared for a possible attack on the north since it launched its bruising campaign against Hamas militants in Gaza on Dec. 27. Israel has mobilized thousands of reserve troops for such a scenario, and leaders have warned Hezbollah of dire consequences if it enters the fighting.

“We are following what is happening in the north. We are prepared and will respond as necessary,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak told reporters.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora condemned both the attacks and Israel’s retaliatory fire. The attacks are “the work of parties who stand to lose from the continued stability in Lebanon,” Saniora said.

Hezbollah, which did not comment, has said it does not want to draw Lebanon into a new war. Small Palestinian groups, who have rocketed Israel twice since the end of the 2006 war, have recently threatened to open a new front against Israel if the fighting in Gaza continued.

An Israeli Cabinet minister, Meir Sheetrit, suggested that Lebanese splinter groups, not Hezbollah, were responsible. He said the government had no interest in renewing hostilities.

“Even though we have the ability to respond with great force, the response needs to be carefully considered and responsible,” Sheetrit told Army Radio. “We don’t need to play into their hands.”

Shortly after the first rockets fell around the town of Nahariya, five miles south of the Lebanese border, Lebanese TV stations reported Israeli mortar fire on open areas in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military confirmed it carried out “pinpoint fire” in response without elaborating.

Israeli defense commentators said they expected the rocket fire to be a one-time show of solidarity with the Palestinians, not a declaration of war. Still, police said public bomb shelters throughout the north were opened.

Palestinians reported some two dozen airstrikes in Gaza on Thursday. One militant was killed and 10 wounded in Gaza City, while an airstrike in northern Gaza killed three members of a rocket-launching cell, Palestinian medical officials said. The attack took place about 150 yards from a hospital and wounded 12 bystanders. The Israeli army has repeatedly said militants use civilian areas for cover.

Nine other Palestinians were killed in separate incidents, including three civilians — en elderly man and two women — who were fleeing their homes in northern Gaza, officials said.

In Geneva, the international Red Cross said it found four small children alive next to their mothers’ bodies in the rubble of a Gaza home hit by Israeli shelling. The neutral aid group says a total of 15 dead were recovered from two houses in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City on Wednesday.

A Red Cross spokesman says rescuers had been refused permission by Israeli forces to reach the site for four days. It said the delay in allowing rescue services access was”unacceptable.”

The Israeli offensive has reduced Palestinian rocket fire, but not stopped it altogether. Several barrages were reported Thursday, including one strike that damaged a school and sports center in the southern city of Ashkelon, police said. Both buildings were empty.

For a second day, Israel’s Defense Ministry said the offensive was halted for three hours to allow Gaza residents to stock up on supplies and to allow aid shipments into the besieged area. Ministry spokesman Peter Lerner also said some 300 Palestinian holders of foreign passports would be allowed to leave.

The lull appears to be in response to international pressure on Israel to try relieve civilian suffering in Gaza. U.N. spokesman Chris Gunness said three hours was “wholly inadequate” and would not be enough to relieve widespread food and water shortages.

After Wednesday’s lull, Israel quickly resumed its offensive, bombing suspected smuggling tunnels near the border with Egypt after Hamas responded with a rocket barrage. Israeli planes destroyed at least 16 empty houses.

The tunnels are Hamas’ lifeline, used to bring in arms, money and basic goods. Israel says local homes are used to conceal the tunnels.

Of the Palestinians killed since Dec. 27, some 350 were civilians, among them 130 children, according to Palestinian medical officials. Eleven Israelis have been killed, including three civilians, since the offensive began. The army said Thursday that an infantry officer was killed by an anti-tank missile.

Growing international outrage over the human toll of Israel’s offensive, which includes 3,000 Palestinians wounded — could work against continued fighting. So could President Bush’s departure from office this month and a Feb. 10 election in Israel.

But Israel has a big interest in inflicting as much damage as possible on Hamas, both to stop militant rocket fire on southern Israeli towns and to diminish the group’s ability to play a spoiler role in peace talks with Palestinian moderates.

Despite the heavy fighting, strides appeared to be made on the diplomatic front with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saying the U.S. supported a deal being brokered by France and Egypt.

While the U.N. Security Council failed to reach agreement on a cease-fire resolution, Egypt’s U.N. Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz said representatives of Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority agreed to meet separately with Egyptian officials in Cairo.

Israeli envoys arrived in Egypt on Thursday to discuss the proposal.

For Israel to accept a proposed cease-fire deal, “there has to be a total and complete cessation of all hostile fire from Gaza into Israel, and … we have to see an arms embargo on Hamas that will receive international support,” said government spokesman Mark Regev.

For its part, Hamas said it would not accept a truce deal unless it includes an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza — something Israel says it is not willing to do. Israel and Egypt have maintained a stiff economic embargo on Gaza since the Hamas takeover.

The Palestinian Authority controls the West Bank while Hamas rules Gaza — two territories on opposite sides of Israel that are supposed to make up a future Palestinian state. Hamas took control of Gaza from forces loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007.

The Israeli Cabinet formally decided on Wednesday to push ahead with the offensive while at the same time pursuing the cease-fire.

The military has called up thousands of reserve troops that it could use to expand the Gaza offensive. Defense officials said the troops could be ready for action by Friday.

In Geneva, the international Red Cross said it found four small children alive next to their mothers’ bodies in the rubble of a Gaza home hit by Israeli shelling. The neutral aid group says a total of 15 dead were recovered from two houses in the Zaytun neighborhood of Gaza City on Wednesday.

A Red Cross spokesman said rescuers had been refused permission by Israeli forces to reach the site for four days. It said the delay in allowing rescue services access was “unacceptable.”

The Ohio man, who became famous during the U.S. presidential campaign after asking Barack Obama about his tax plan, is heading to Israel as a war correspondent for a conservative Web site called pjtv.com.

Dubbed “Joe the Plumber” by McCain’s campaign, Samuel “Joe” Wurzelbacher was held up as an example of an American worker who would be hurt economically by Obama’s election.

Wurzelbacher says he’ll spend 10 days covering the fighting and explaining why Israeli forces are mounting attacks against Hamas.

He tells WNWO-TV in Toledo that he wants “go over there and let their ‘Average Joes’ share their story.”

Wurzelbacher later joined Republican John McCain on the campaign trail.

At one stop, Wurzelbacher agreed with a McCain supporter who asked if he believed a vote for Obama was a vote for the death of Israel.

With criticism rising of the operation’s spiraling civilian death toll and Gazans increasingly suffering the effects of nonstop airstrikes and shelling, Israel’s military said opened “humanitarian corridors” to allow aid supplies to reach Palestinians.

Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner said the “recess in offensive operations” was aimed at allowing in supplies and fuel and would last from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m local time (6 a.m. to 9 a.m. EST). He said similar lulls in the coming days would be considered.

However, Lerner said that even during the pause “for every attack against the army, there will be a response.” Gaza residents reported scattered gunfire and explosions even after it was supposed to have gone into effect, but the scale of fighting appeared to drop.

As Israel’s leadership met in the morning in Tel Aviv, sounds of heavy gunfire and thick plumes of smoke engulfed the Zeitoun neighborhood east of Gaza City. Israel said it struck 40 Hamas targets during the hours of darkness. Gaza health officials said new strikes Wednesday morning killed eight people.

Outrage over an Israeli strike Tuesday near a U.N. school continued, with the U.N. agency responsible for the building demanding an “impartial investigation” into the attack. Gaza health officials put the death toll from the strike at 39, while the U.N. said 40 were killed.

Israel said its forces fired at militants who launched mortars from that location.

About 300 of the more than 670 Palestinians killed so far are civilians, according to Palestinian and U.N. figures. Of those killed, at least 130 are children age 16 and under, says the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which tracks casualties.

The number of armed fighters killed remains unclear. Gaza residents say Hamas fighters are known to have begun wearing civilian clothes and the organization is keeping its casualties secret and housing its wounded and dead in undisclosed locations.

Israel has lost six soldiers since launching a ground offensive on Saturday, and four other Israelis have been killed by rocket fire, three of them civilians.

Israel’s lull in operations could ease the plight of civilians in Gaza, where much of the territory has no power or running water, because pumps are dependent on electricity.

More than 500 aid trucks have been shipped into Gaza since operations began. But even when aid crosses into Gaza military operations have prevented officials from distributing it, leading to food shortages in some areas.

A World Bank statement Wednesday said there are growing signs of a severe public health crisis in Gaza because of a shortage of drinking water and an escalating failure of the sewage system.

Militants hit the Israeli city of Ashkelon on Wednesday with a medium-range rocket, causing no casualties. Rocket fire has fallen off as Israeli troops tighten their hold on Gaza, taking over open areas used to launch rockets, but Gaza residents say militants are still launching from heavily populated areas.

Israel’s leaders — including the top troika of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak — were to discuss whether to broaden the operation in Gaza or move to accept a plan being proposed by Egypt and France to end the fighting.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said the initiative calls for an immediate cease-fire by Israel and Palestinian factions for a limited period to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza and an urgent meeting of Israel and the Palestinian side on arrangements to prevent any repetition of military action and to deal with the causes.

International Mideast envoy Tony Blair said Tuesday the key to any cease-fire will be an arrangement to stop weapons smuggling over the Gaza-Egypt border.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Tuesday he saw the proposal as a “small hope” for ending the Gaza violence.

Israeli officials have said any cease-fire agreement must prevent further rocket attacks by Gaza militants and put in place measures to prevent the smuggling of missile and other weapons into the small Palestinian territory. Hamas has demanded that Israel open Gaza’s blockaded crossings as part of any agreement.

In the meantime, Israel has been making preparations to continue fighting. The military has called up thousands of reserve troops that it could use to expand the Gaza offensive, supporting the three brigade-size formations of regular troops now inside. Defense officials said the troops could be ready for action by Friday. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the army’s preparations are classified.

The Franco-Egyptian plan was given increasing urgency by the Israeli mortar strike near a U.N. school that stained the streets with blood.

The United Nations said the school was sheltering hundreds of people displaced by the onslaught on Hamas militants. Israel said its troops returned fire on a Hamas squad that fired mortars at them from nearby.

Israel’s military said its shelling — the deadliest single episode since Israeli ground forces invaded Gaza on Saturday following a weeklong air bombardment — was an attack on a military target and accused Hamas militants of using civilians as cover.

Christopher Gunness of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, responsible for the school, said the agency is “99.9 percent certain there were no militants or military activity in its school.”

That would not necessarily contradict Israel’s claim that the militants were just outside.

Gunness demanded an investigation, and punishment for anyone found to have violated international law.

Two residents of the area who spoke with The Associated Press by telephone said they saw a small group of militants firing mortar rounds from a street near the school. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. Gunness said 1,300 people were taking shelter from the shelling at the school.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said there were no militants there at the time.

The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights said the presence of militants did not justify Israel’s response. “The presence of armed resistance does not justify in any way the use of excessive force that is disproportionate,” the center said in a statement.

The carnage, which included 55 wounded, added to a surging civilian toll and drew mounting international pressure for Israel to end the offensive against Hamas.