Run on Afghan Bank’s Deposits Reported

Financial panic could spread through country and derail U.S. war effort

Michael Isikoff

National investigative correspondent

August 2, 2010

WASHINGTON — About $155 million in deposits have been withdrawn from Afghanistan’s largest bank in just the last two days, spurring fresh concerns among U.S. and Afghan officials that a financial panic could spread through the country and derail the U.S. war effort, according to bank insiders and U.S. officials.

Mahmood Karzai, the brother of Afghanistan’s president and one of the principal shareholders in the troubled Kabul Bank, told NBC News in a telephone interview that panicky depositors withdrew $70 million from the bank on Thursday. This is on top of an estimated $85 million taken out on Wednesday, he said.

Amid reports that Afghan government employees, including teachers, soldiers and policemen, were lining up outside Kabul Bank’s branches throughout the country to demand their money, Afghanistan’s Finance Ministry issued a statement Thursday declaring the bank was “reliable” and that deposits would be guaranteed.

But Karzai urged the U.S. government to take steps to calm the situation as well, saying continuing withdrawals could create a panic that might cause the bank to collapse and destroy Afghanistan’s fragile financial system.

“If this collapses, there will be a meltdown,” Karzai said.

According to him, the Kabul Bank had more than $1.3 billion in assets and about $500 million in cash on hand before the crisis began.

The prospect of a spreading financial crisis was triggered by new disclosures by Afghan officials and media reports this week that the Kabul Bank had allegedly violated the country’s banking laws by providing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to influential insiders, including Karzai and others with close ties to President Hamid Karzai’s government.

In addition, the bank’s chairman, Sherkhan Farnood, a world-class poker player who is known for flying around the world to play in card tournaments, acknowledged in an interview with NBC that the bank had invested more than $160 million of the bank’s assets to purchase luxury villas and two residential towers in Dubai. Most of the multimillion-dollar villas with swimming pools were acquired at Palm Jumeirah, a fabulously opulent man-made island that juts out into the Persian Gulf in the shape of a giant palm tree and has been dubbed by its developers “the eighth wonder of the world.”

An aerial view shows the Palm Jumeirah development in Dubai in December. Villas purchased in the development are part of the Afghanistan bank scandal. (Photo credit: Matthias Seifert / Reuters)

Farnood and Mahmood Karzai both confirmed that the homes were acquired in Farnood’s name using bank funds and then turned over for the use of major bank shareholders, such as Karzai, who owns about 9 percent of the bank, and Haseen Fahim, the brother of Muhammed Fahim, Afghanistan’s first vice president. Asked why he put the bank-acquired homes in his own name, Farnood said: “It was easier” to do it that way.

U.S. officials have described the Palm Jumeirah properties as a galling symbol of the massive movement of capital out of Afghanistan by the country’s wealthy elite as well as the cronyism and corruption that plagues Karzai’s government. …

Mahmoud Karzai said he still has hopes the situation can be stabilized. So do U.S. officials: The Kabul bank is heavily used by the U.S. Embassy and by the Afghan government to pay the salaries of Afghan police officers and soldiers who are critical to the war effort.

Karzai, who lives in one of the Palm Jumeirah properties that he leases from the bank, defended his own activities, saying his business profits — which include investments in a cement company, restaurants and a major housing complex in Kandahar that had been financed with U.S.-backed loans — were being reinvested in Afghanistan. But he acknowleged that his luxurious Palm Jumeirah home had created public relations problems. “I’m going to move,” he said.

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Chaplain is 1st Killed in Action Since ’70

Capt. Dale Goetz

NBC News’ Jim Miklaszewski and The Associated Press via MSNBC.com
August 2, 2010

KABUL, Afghanistan — A chaplain who died in Afghanistan this week was the first Army clergyman killed in action since Vietnam, military officials said Thursday. 

Army Capt. Dale Goetz of the 4th Infantry Division was among five U.S. soldiers killed when their armored vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan on Monday. Goetz was in a convoy traveling from one forward operating base to another, where he counseled soldiers. Witnesses said the vehicle was a Humvee.

Before Goetz, the last Army chaplain to die in action was Phillip Nichols, who was killed by a concealed enemy explosive in Vietnam in October of 1970, said Chaplain Carleton Birch, a spokesman for the Army chief of chaplains.

However, Army Chaplain Tim Vacok was gravely injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2006 and died in 2009 from a fall at a Minnesota nursing home, where he was being cared for because of his war injuries.

The Air Force said none of its chaplains were killed later than 1970. A spokesman for the Navy Chaplain Corps, which also provides clergy to the Marines, didn’t immediately return a phone call.

Goetz, 43, is survived by his wife and three sons, all under the age of 10, all from White, S.D. The family is currently residing at Fort Carson, Colo.

Geotz was the pastor at the First Baptist Church in White before joining the Army in 2000.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — September 2, 2009

Bachmann: “Slit Our Wrists”

One year ago today, I reported that U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, in a fiery speech at an Independence Institute fundraiser in Denver that at times sounded more like the plot of a slasher movie, railed against the dangers of health care reform and other Democratic initiatives, warning the proposals “have the strength to destroy this country forever” and calling on her audience to “make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing.”

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: Two Years Ago — September 2, 2008

On the Campaign Trail: Day 50

Two years ago today, on the 50th day of my 2008 campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, I reminded voters that there was just one week left until the September 9, 2008 Minnesota state open primary election, which offered disaffected Republicans, independents, and Democrats an opportunity to join forces and vote Rep. Bachmann out of office in the Republican primary.

5 More American Troops Die in Afghan Fighting

Spike in bloodshed claims 19 American lives in 4 days

In this Aug. 25, 2010 photo, U.S. and Afghan army soldiers on patrol in Zhari district, northeast of Kandahar city, southern Afghanistan. Since the war began, the countryside surrounding Kandahar has been marked as the heartland of the Taliban, the insurgents’ springboard to retake all of Afghanistan. Now, as U.S. and allied forces wrestle with diehard insurgents on booby-trapped fields and roads, the battle for Kandahar is being described as the decisive campaign, a linchpin of American strategy to win the nine-year-old conflict. (Photo credit: Brennan Linsley / AP)

By Robert H. Reid

Aug. 31, 2010

KABUL, Afghanistan — Five more American troops were killed in action in Afghanistan on Tuesday, ending the month with a spike in bloodshed that has claimed the lives of 19 U.S. service members in only four days.

The U.S. death toll for August stood at 55 — three-quarters of them in the second half of the month as the Taliban fight back against U.S. pressure in southern and eastern strongholds. American losses accounted for more than 70 percent of the 76 fatalities suffered by the entire NATO-led force.

NATO said four of the Americans were killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan, while a fifth died in a gunfight with insurgents in the country’s south. No other details were released.

Until the late month spike, it appeared that the death toll for August would be well below the back-to-back monthly records of 66 in July and 60 in June. …

As the U.S. formally ends its combat role in the Iraq war, NATO and Afghan forces are ramping up operations in Afghanistan, especially in the area around Kandahar City, the Taliban birthplace and their former headquarters until they were ousted from power in the U.S.-led invasion of 2001.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters in Copenhagen, Denmark, that higher casualties were inevitable because more troops have arrived in Afghanistan in recent weeks, bringing the overall alliance force to more than 140,000 — including 100,000 Americans. The U.S. figure is more than triple the number of American service members in Afghanistan at the beginning of last year. …

Video

Deadly month for Americans in Afghanistan (NBC Nightly News, Aug. 30, 2010) — In an ominous new tactic, some Afghan insurgents are dressing in American uniforms purchased in Kabul or other towns. NBC’s Tom Aspell reports. (01:15)

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — September 1, 2009

Afghan farmer Lal Mohammad, who claims his nose and ears were cut of by the Taliban. (Photo credit: Massoud Hossaini / AFP — Getty Images)

Iraq-Afghanistan Casualties

One year ago today, I provided my weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Iraqi and Afghanistan and reported that with 52 U.S. troops killed, August 2009 became the deadliest month of the deadliest year yet in the Afghanistan war; that the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan called for a new strategy against the Taliban in an assessment of the 8-year-old conflict ordered by the U.S. Secretary of Defense; and that the number of civilians killed in Iraq shot up to 393 in August 2009, the highest level since April 2009, after a spate of mass-casualty bombings caused carnage in Baghdad and northern Iraq.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: Two Years Ago — September 1, 2008

On the Campaign Trail: Day 49 (Labor Day)

Patrick (2) fishing from a constituent’s dock during a campaign swing to Little Rock Lake in Benton County.

Two years ago today, on the 49th day of my 2008 campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, I visited the St. Stephen Parish Festival with my four children. Afterwards, we made a detour through Rice on the way home to Sartell, for an update on shoreline restoration and water quality issues on Little Rock Lake in Benton County.

U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq

As of Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2010, at least 4,416 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Since the start of U.S. military operations in Iraq, 31,929 U.S. service members have been wounded in hostile action, according to the Defense Department’s weekly tally.

U.S. Troop Casualties in Iraq

Latest identification:

None

U.S. Military Deaths in Afghanistan

As of Thursday, Aug. 26, 2010, at least 1,145 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department.

Since the start of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, 7,643 U.S. service members have been wounded in hostile action, according to the Defense Department’s weekly tally.

Latest identifications:

Army Pfc. Justin B. Shoecraft, 28, Elkhart, Ind., died Aug. 24, 2010 at Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit using an improvised explosive device at Kakarak, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, Vilseck, Germany.

Army Pfc. Chad D. Coleman, 20, Moreland, Ga., died Aug. 27, 2010 of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device in Paktiya, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 33rd Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky.

Marine Master Sgt. Daniel L. Fedder, 34, Pine City, Minn., died Aug. 27, 2010 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 7th Engineer Support Battalion, 1st Marine Logistics Group, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.

Army Pvt. Adam J. Novak, 20, Prairie du Sac, Wis., died Aug. 27, 2010 of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device in Paktiya, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 33rd Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky.

Navy Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class James M. Swink, 20, Yucca Valley, Calif., died Aug. 27, 2010 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was a hospital corpsman assigned to 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force.

Army Spc. James C. Robinson, 27, Lebanon, Ohio, died Aug. 28, 2010 at Paktika, Afghanistan, when insurgents attacked his unit with indirect fire. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky.

Marine Gunnery Sgt. Floyd E. C. Holley, 36, Casselberry, Fla., died Aug. 29, 2010 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 7th Engineer Support Battalion, 1st Marine Logistics Group, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.

Army Staff Sgt. James R. Ide, 32, Festus, Mo., died Aug. 29, 2010 at Hyderabad, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit with small-arms fire. He was assigned to the 230th Military Police Company, 95th Military Police Battalion, 18th Military Police Brigade, 21st Theater Sustainment Command, Sembach, Germany.

Army Pfc. Bryn T. Raver, 20, Harrison, Ark., died Aug. 29, 2010 at Nangahar, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when his military vehicle was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade on Aug. 28 at Nangahar, Afghanistan. Raver was assigned to 1st Brigade Special Troop Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky.

Army Capt. Ellery R. Wallace, 33, of Utah, died Aug. 29, 2010 at Nangahar, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when his military vehicle was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade on Aug. 28 at Nangahar, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky.

9/1/10 update: Army Spc. Andrew J. Castro, 20, of Westlake Village, Calif., died Aug. 28, 2010 in Babur, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 2nd Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky.

9/1/10 update: Army Sgt. Patrick K. Durham, 24, Chattanooga, Tenn., died Aug. 28, 2010 in Babur, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 320th Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky.

9/1/10 update: Army Pfc. Chad D. Clements, 26, Huntington, Ind., died Aug. 30, 2010 in the Arghandab River Valley, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 4th Brigade Support Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Carson, Colo.

9/1/10 update: Army Capt. Dale A Goetz, 43, White, S.D., died Aug. 30, 2010 in the Arghandab River Valley, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Carson, Colo.

9/1/10 update: Army Staff Sgt. Jesse Infante, 30, Cypress, Texas., died Aug. 30, 2010 in the Arghandab River Valley, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 4th Brigade Support Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Carson, Colo.

9/1/10 update: Army Staff Sgt. Kevin J. Kessler, 32, Canton, Ohio., died Aug. 30, 2010 in the Arghandab River Valley, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 4th Brigade Support Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Carson, Colo.

9/1/10 update: Army Staff Sgt. Matthew J. West, 36, Conover, Wis., died Aug. 30, 2010 in the Arghandab River Valley, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 71st Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group, Fort Carson, Colo.

9/2/10 update: Marine Sgt. Joseph A. Bovia, 24, Kenner, La., died Aug. 31, 2010 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 3rd Combat Assault Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Okinawa, Japan.

9/2/10 update: Marine Sgt Lance Cpl. Cody A. Roberts, 22, Boise, Idaho, died Aug. 31, 2010 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

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Remember Their Sacrifice

Related links

Iraq Casualties

Afghanistan Casualties

Honor the Fallen

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — August 31, 2009

Michele Bachmann ‘Lies in Christ’

One year ago today, I featured Bill Prendergast’s debunking of Rep. Michele Bachmann’s false claim that she had no interest in running for political office prior to being “called by God” to run for the Minnesota State Senate in 2000.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: Two Years Ago — August 31, 2008

On the Campaign Trail: Day 48

At the entrance to the Minnesota State Fairgrounds: Paddy (2), Matt (11), Pam, and Tim Immelman (13).

Two years ago today, on the 48th day of my 2008 campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, I took my family to the Minnesota State Fair in St. Paul.

Horner interview starts 30 sec. into the clip.

A Message from the Horner Campaign

Minnesota State Fair in full swing

Lots of people have been stopping by the booth on Nelson St. across from the DNR building to learn about Tom Horner’s plans for creating jobs, spurring economic development, improving health, and enhancing community vitality. Make sure to stop by and sign up to be a part of the campaign. Others just want a photo in between cheese curds. Tom is doing lots of interviews and plans more positive news about his campaign to bring common-sense leadership to the governor’s office as the State Fair progresses.

Click for larger image

The week ahead

Tom will visit with voters at the fair. Watch for him Monday on KSTP-TV and FOX-9 KMSP. Tom will also be on WCCO radio with Chad Hartman on Monday just after 1:00 p.m. Then on Friday make sure to tune in for Minnesota Public Radio’s State Fair debate at 11:00 a.m.

Live with Esme Murphy Sunday morning

Tom discussed his proposal to balance the budget with Esme Murphy on WCCO-TV Sunday morning. Tom noted the endorsement of his tax reform plan by thinkers across the political spectrum, while emphasizing its provisions to protect lower-income Minnesotans from tax increases.

“Debate Central” collects all of the debates

TheUptake.org is archiving all the debates in the governor’s race. We’ve rounded many of the recent forums up in one handy post in our ‘On the Trail’ blog.

HornerTV: Independent buffaloes video

The latest video at HornerTV takes a break from the serious policy forums of late to humorously introduce Minnesotans to the Independence Party mascot that will be making the rounds on the campaign trail this fall. Bob and Betty are on the loose and invite everyone to join Tom at the State Fair.

Building community around Horner’s Corner

Write your local newspaper editor with your reasons for supporting for Tom, and copy us at campaign@horner2010.com. E-mail us your photo for our “Victory Wall.” Visit the State Fair booth on Nelson St. across from the DNR Building.

Leadership based on what’s right

You can help spread the word about Tom’s commitment to common-sense leadership — and help keep our ads up and running on television and radio with a contribution to Horner2010. Go to www.Horner2010.com and click the “Contribute” button, or write to us at 10760 Hwy 55, Plymouth, MN 55441.

And, as always, thank you for being with us in Horner’s Corner.

Sincerely,

Stephen Imholte
Campaign Manager

[Message dated Aug. 30, 2010]

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Related reports on this site

Horner for Governor at Granite City Days parade, St. Cloud, June 26, 2010. Patrick, 4; Elizabeth, 10; Matt, 12. (Photo: Aubrey Immelman)

‘Eyeballs’ — Tom Horner TV Ad (Aug. 23, 2010)

Tom Horner Speaks in St. Cloud (Aug. 16, 2010)

Tom Horner for Minnesota Governor (Aug. 9, 2010)

Vote Tom Horner in Aug. 10 Primary (Aug. 2, 2010)

Horner 2010 Gains Momentum (July 19, 2010)

Horner Campaign at Granite City (June 26, 2010)

Tom Horner Rises in the Polls (June 8, 2010)

Tom Horner’s Statewide Swing (May 12, 2010)

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — August 30, 2009

Iraq War Destabilizes Middle East

Iraqi policemen inspect the wreckage of a vehicle used in an attack in Shirqat that killed at least nine people and wounded 17 others, police said. (Photo credit: Sabah al-Bazee / Reuters)

One year ago today, I reported that bombs struck Baghdad and remote communities in northern Iraq as the visiting Iranian foreign minister warned that Iraq’s instability affected the entire region.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: Two Years Ago — August 30, 2008

On the Campaign Trail: Day 47

Two years ago today, on the 47th day of my 2008 campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, in line with my campaign focus on national security issues, I issued my statement opposing the war in Iraq.

In the statement, I called the invasion of Iraq “a mistake,” which — more than just exacting a huge cost in American blood, treasure, and loss of international stature — created a complex set of new security challenges for the United States.

“Before the invasion,” I wrote, “we had in place a very successful containment policy against Iraqi aggression — preserving a delicate balance of power between Iran and Iraq in one of the world’s most volatile regions, the Middle East.”

I continued, “The removal of Saddam Hussein empowered Iran, with its nuclear ambitions, and placed Iraq under the control of Islamist Shiite leaders closely aligned with Iran — thereby creating an infinitely more serious threat to U.S. national security in the region than existed before the invasion.”

Finally, I noted that I was the only candidate in the 6th District congressional race with military experience, trained as an airborne soldier in counterinsurgency and anti-terrorist operations (photo, right) and with professional credentials as a military consultant on nuclear counterproliferation, threat assessment, deterrence, and psychological operations.

U.S. Wasted Billions in Rebuilding Iraq

Hundreds of infrastructure projects are incomplete or abandoned

A worker walks through the nearly-complete waste water treatment site in Fallujah, Iraq, 40 miles west of Baghdad. The system is almost finished – at a cost of more than three times the original estimate and four years past the initial deadline. (Photo credit: Hadi Mizban / AP)

By Kim Gamel

Aug. 29, 2010

Excerpts

KHAN BANI SAAD, Iraq — A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of Baghdad, empty. A $165 million children’s hospital goes unused in the south. A $100 million waste water treatment system in Fallujah has cost three times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets

As the U.S. draws down in Iraq, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in American taxpayer funds has been wasted — more than 10 percent of the some $50 billion the U.S. has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits from a U.S. watchdog agency.

That amount is likely an underestimate, based on an analysis of more than 300 reports by auditors with the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. And it does not take into account security costs, which have run almost 17 percent for some projects. …

Even completed projects for the most part fell far short of original goals, according to an Associated Press review of hundreds of audits and investigations and visits to several sites. And the verdict is still out on whether the program reached its goal of generating Iraqi good will toward the United States instead of the insurgents.

Col. Jon Christensen, who took over as commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Gulf Region District this summer, said the federal agency has completed more than 4,800 projects and is rushing to finish 233 more. Some 595 projects have been terminated, mostly for security reasons. …

The reconstruction program in Iraq has been troubled since its birth shortly after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The U.S. was forced to scale back many projects even as they spiked in cost, sometimes to more than double or triple initial projections.

As part of the so-called surge strategy, the military in 2007 shifted its focus to protecting Iraqis and winning their trust. American soldiers found themselves hiring contractors to paint schools, refurbish pools and oversee neighborhood water distribution centers. The $3.6 billion Commander’s Emergency Response Program provided military units with ready cash for projects, and paid for Sunni fighters who agreed to turn against al-Qaida in Iraq for a monthly salary.

But sometimes civilian and military reconstruction efforts were poorly coordinated and overlapped. …

In some cases, Iraqi ministries have refused to take on the responsibility for U.S.-funded programs, forcing the Americans to leave abandoned buildings littering the landscape. …

Waste also came from trying to run projects while literally under fire.

The Americans committed to rebuilding the former Sunni insurgent stronghold of Fallujah after it was destroyed in major offensives in 2004. The U.S. awarded an initial contract for a new waste water treatment system to FluorAMEC of Greenville, S.C. — just three months after four American private security contractors were savagely attacked. The charred and mutilated remains of two of them were strung from a bridge in the city. …

The Fallujah waste water treatment system is nearly complete — four years past the deadline, at a cost of more than three times the original $32.5 million estimate. It has been scaled back to serve just a third of the population, and Iraqi officials said it still lacks connections to houses and a pipe to join neighborhood tanks up with the treatment plant.

Desperate residents, meanwhile, have begun dumping their sewage in the tanks, causing foul odors and running the risk of seepage, according to the head of Fallujah’s municipal council, Sheik Hameed Ahmed Hashim. …

Full story

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Related reports on this site

Iraq Projects Down the Tubes (November 21, 2009)

An Iraqi worker at a new water treatment plant in Baghdad’s Sadr City. The $65 million plant is meant to provide water for 200,000 people – just a tenth of the population of the vast slum on Baghdad’s eastern ouskirts. (Photo credit: Erik De Castro / Reuters)

Iraqi Neglect Costs U.S. Taxpayers (April 29, 2009)

Iraqi soldiers secure the site of a roadside bomb attack in Basra, southern Iraq, April 20, 2009. (Photo credit: Haider Al-Assadee / EPA)

Iraq Rebuilding ‘$100B failure’ (December 14, 2008)

Students used water from a faucet at the Khulafa al-Rashideen school in Baghdad in October 2008. Access to potable water plummeted after the 2003 invasion. (Photo credit: Max Becherer / Polaris, for The New York Times)

Billions Lost on Reconstruction Projects in Iraq (July 28, 2008)

Empty prison in Iraq a $40M ‘failure’ (Associated Press, July 28, 2008) — In this undated photograph released by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, the Khan Bani Saad Correctional Facility, about 12 miles northeast of Baghdad, is seen with unused building materials nearby. The site is a chronicle of U.S. government waste, misguided planning, and construction shortcuts costing $40 million … Full story

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — August 29, 2009

Obama War Strategy Setback

An Afghan man wounded by Tuesday’s car bomb explosions is seen on a bed at a hospital in Kandahar, south of Kabul, Afghanistan, on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2009. (Photo credit: Allauddin Khan / AP)

One year ago today, I reported that Kandahar, Afghanistan showed signs of slipping back under Taliban control as August 2009 became the deadliest month of the eight-year war for U.S. troops in Afghanistan — a setback for President Barack Obama’s war strategy.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: Two Years Ago — August 29, 2008

Iran’s Mahmoud Amadinejad welcomes Iraq’s Nouri al-Maliki.

On the Campaign Trail: Day 46

Two years ago today, on the 46th day of my 2008 campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, in line with my campaign focus on national security issues, I addressed links between the Iraqi government and Iran and the role of the Iraq war in empowering Iran.

Parents Meet About Wetterling Person of Interest

KMSP Fox 9
Aug. 25, 2010

ST. JOSEPH, Minn. — Parents in Cold Spring met about the man who is considered a ‘person of interest’ in the disappearance case of Jacob Wetterling. He was announced as the new music teacher at a St. Boniface school. …

For the past 32 years, the man whose family farm was searched in connection to Wetterling’s disappearance, has taught sixth grade band at district schools. Due to layoffs, the district moved him to St. Boniface.

After three days of digging at the family farm, police still call the 54-year-old man a person of interest. …

Dozens of parent got together at a nearby park to talk about the teacher. They found out last week through an email that he would be the new new teacher.

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Related reports

Concerns Unfold Around Teacher in Wetterling Case

By Dave Aeikens
St. Cloud Times
August 28, 2010

COLD SPRING — Dan Rassier understands the parental concern.

The longtime Rocori music teacher who in July was named a person of interest in the 1989 abduction of Jacob Wetterling is the target of some concerned parents at the St. Boniface Catholic School. The Cold Spring school has for years shared Rassier’s music-teaching services with the nearby Rocori Middle School. Some parents have now told Principal Sister Sharon Waldoch that they are uncomfortable with Rassier’s position.

“What can you expect parents to do after law enforcement and the St. Cloud Times, after they have presented a lopsided, one-sided, incredibly impossible picture? What do you expect parents to do?” Rassier said Friday. “I can’t believe it took this long for parents to make an issue out of it.”

Rassier, who turns 55 Oct. 25, has not been named as a suspect in the case, but Stearns County Sheriff John Sanner did tag him as a person of interest in July after two days of searching the family farm where Rassier lives.

In an interview last month with the Times, Rassier said he had nothing to do with Wetterling’s disappearance and that he has cooperated with authorities.

“We are telling the parents that Dan is hired by the district and we are part of the shared-time program and he was assigned to us prior to the investigation. We have no evidence of guilt, which they know. They are fully aware,” Waldoch said Friday.

Rassier has taught at Rocori since August 1978 and has no complaints or disciplinary action in his file.

Rassier has taught band and music in the Rocori school district, which includes schools in Cold Spring, Rockville and Richmond. He is also a former volleyball, basketball and softball coach and advised the yearbook for the district. Efforts to reach Rocori administrators Friday were unsuccessful.

Rassier is scheduled to be paid $62,241 this year.

Rassier grew up in St. Joseph and graduated from Apollo High School. He graduated from St. Cloud State University in 1976. He has a master’s degree from the University of Illinois. He is the treasurer of the St. Joseph Township board and an adjunct music professor at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University.

For Rassier, it’s the latest development that has cast a cloud over him with a connection to what is probably the state’s most famous child abduction case.

“I can feel for the parents. If I had small children and didn’t know the situation — they don’t know me at all. I’m just an innocent bystander witness. This has been going on for 21 years,” Rassier said.

Budget reductions have trimmed Rassier’s teaching assignment to teaching music half-time at St. Boniface and teaching band half-time at Rocori’s three elementary schools, St. Boniface and Sts. Peter and Paul Elementary School in Richmond.

He said the reductions to Rocori’s music program is a bigger concern than the spotlight that has been cast on him this summer.

“The kids are going to be hurt by the cuts. The whole issue of who is teaching the music class, in the end, the kids have lost no matter what I turn out to be,” Rassier said.

Waldoch said the parents who have talked to her are apprehensive about an unknown.

“Everyone who has expressed their viewpoint, the number-one common denominator is we care about their children and their safety. We are not here to make judgments. We care about their safety,” Waldoch said.

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Wetterling Case Casts Cloud Over Teacher

By Allie Shah
Star Tribune
August 27, 2010

A teacher whom police call a “person of interest” in the Jacob Wetterling abduction case has been assigned to a different elementary school, provoking an outcry from some parents at his new school.

“They’ve brought concerns about placing their children in a potentially dangerous situation,” said Sister Sharon Waldoch, principal of St. Boniface School in Cold Spring, Minn.

The man will teach music at the elementary school.

Waldoch sent an e-mail Thursday to parents, addressing their concerns and explaining the school’s position.

“I said we’re faced with an unknown and the truth is not clear,” she said. “We want to safeguard the children but we also want to respect the rights of an individual who has not been charged.”

Though the man has worked with students at St. Boniface before and his identity was known to parents, his new role as a music teacher puts him in contact with more students.

An employee of the Rocori School District for more than 30 years, he has taught band at several schools in the district.

This year, he was assigned to teach music at St. Boniface as a result of layoffs in the district. The Catholic school has a partnership with the public school district to provide music and physical education instruction.

“He’s instructed us in band and in choir,” Waldoch said. “He has not been assigned as a music teacher to most of the students before.”

According to a Fox 9 TV report, about a dozen parents met Wednesday night to discuss their concerns.

Waldoch said she has received calls both from concerned parents and those who don’t have objections.

The outcry is a first, she added.

“There’s never been a complaint or concern,” she said.

Rocori Superintendent Scott Staska could not be reached for comment.

Earlier this summer, investigators returned to the St. Joseph farm where the man lives with his parents and dug up six truckloads of dirt and ash from a fire pit or dump site at the property.

They conducted the search over two days on June 30 and July 1 and found “some items of interest,” according to an investigator.

The items were sent to the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension lab in St. Paul for further testing. Results are pending.

The farm is near the place where Jacob Wetterling, 11, was abducted 21 years ago, sparking a massive search.

On the night of Oct. 22, 1989, Wetterling was heading home from a local convenience store with his brother, Trevor, 10, and his best friend, Aaron Larson, 11.

A masked man with a gun stopped them at the intersection of the farm’s driveway and the road. The man let Trevor Wetterling and Larson go, and they fled to the nearby woods. When they looked back, Jacob was gone. He has not been found.

Stearns County Sheriff John Sanner has called the man, who was home alone the night of the abduction, a “person of interest” in the case.

Investigators have searched the property several times over the years. They took DNA samples from the man in 2004.

No one has been arrested.

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Related reports on this site

Wetterling Suspect Dan Rassier (July 3, 2010)

Dan Rassier

Jacob Wetterling: Rassier Search (July 1, 2010)

Stearns County sheriff’s deputies control access to the Rassier farmstead in St. Joseph Township, Minn., while search warrants are being executed on the property in the Jacob Wetterling kidnapping investigation, July 1, 2010. (Photo: Aubrey Immelman)

Josh Guimond: New Developments (May 24, 2010)

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — August 28, 2009

Jaycee Lee Dugard Found Alive

Video

Kidnapped child found 18 years later (NBC Today, Aug. 28, 2009) — Officials in Lake Tahoe, Calif., say a woman who was abducted as an 11-year-old in 1991 has been found alive, having repeatedly been raped by her captor, Phillip Garrido. NBC’s George Lewis reports. (04:37)

One year ago today, I reported that Jaycee Lee Dugard, kidnapped in 1991 from a school bus stop at the age of 11, was found alive after being held captive by a convicted rapist in his backyard as a sex slave for nearly two decades and forced to bear two of his children.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: Two Years Ago — August 28, 2008

On the Campaign Trail: Day 45

Two years ago today, on the 45th day of my 2008 campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, I traveled to Annandale, where I appeared live with Dan “Ox” Ochsner and Mike Landy of Newstalk KNSI AM 1040 (Leighton Broadcasting) at Camp Friendship to benefit Friendship Ventures, a non-profit agency that creates educational, recreational, and social opportunities for people with mental and physical developmental disabilities.

A total of 46 students and nine teachers have been treated in a Kabul, Afghanistan, hospital after what an official at the education ministry described as “an apparent poisoning” attack by “the enemies of women’s education.”

This is not the first time an event of this nature has occurred in Aghanistan. Similar “attacks” were reported earlier this year, in April and June 2010, and before that in May 2009.

Within its sociocultural context, the epidemiological pattern of the reported illnesses bears the hallmark of a group psychological reaction known as mass hysteria. As I wrote on April 25 and June 12, “Authorities would be well advised to investigate alleged poison gas attacks as possible cases of mass hysteria, or mass psychogenic illness.”

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Taliban Poison Attack or Mass Hysteria? Chaos Hits Another Kabul Girls’ School

Dozens of pupils treated in hospital as Afghan militants accused of poison attack on girls

Afghan schoolgirls suffering from suspected poisoning are taken to hospital in Kabul. (Photo credit: Shah Marai / AFP — Getty Images)

By Jon Boone
The Guardian

August 25, 2010

When the order came to evacuate the Totia high school, hundreds of girls ran from their desks clutching handkerchiefs and their headscarves over their mouths. School bags were abandoned as some leapt out of the ground floor windows of their dilapidated two-storey school block rather than trying to push their way through a melee of teenage girls all rushing to get out to fresh air.

Teachers tried to organise an orderly departure but their efforts were in vain amid rising panic that the school had become the latest in Afghanistan to be hit by an apparent poison gas attack.

A total of 46 students and nine teachers were treated in hospital after what Mohammad Asif Nang, an official at the education ministry, described as “an apparent poisoning” attack by “the enemies of women’s education.”

According to staff, parents and onlookers, girls began fainting in the school’s main classroom block at about 10.30 this morning, during the first of three daily shifts designed to triple the number of girls at the school.

Some victims had to be carried out while others stumbled to the school gates, where about 18 slumped to the ground unconscious, said Abdul Haq, a 15-year-old boy who witnessed the incident.

Many were taken to hospital and most quickly recovered but some girls remained unconscious for several hours, doctors said. Others were vomiting and complaining of nausea.

The symptoms matched those of other cases reported around the country. Opinions are divided between those who denounce the incidents as malicious attacks by social conservatives who disapprove of female education and sceptics who think the culprit is more likely to be mass hysteria.

At the Boost hospital, the head doctor, Abdullah Abid, said four of the 22 girls admitted remained unconscious for at least two hours.

“An ordinary doctor in a hospital cannot say exactly what causes this without further tests, but I think poisoned gas is most likely,” he said. “It has happened many times before in Afghanistan.”

He said that after studying psychiatry for a year in Pakistan he had become acutely aware of the power of hysteria and its ability to cause physiological responses, but he did not think that was the cause of the latest incident.

“I think three of them were just suffering from shock from seeing their friends become ill. But something else must have happened to the others.”

Education ministry officials said five similar cases had been dealt with in Kabul this year alone and eleven more around the country.

The Taliban banned girls’ education when they were in power between 1996 and 2001 and they continue to target women and girls’ schools in the areas they control.

One of their intimidation techniques is the so-called “night letters” dropped off at homes and schools. In one case in a northern province in February a letter, which was handed to Human Rights Watch, said the school was misleading “pure and innocent girls.”

With Taliban violence surging across the country, the fear of insurgent attacks is becoming a bigger concern for ordinary Afghans, even in relatively secure cities such as Kabul.

The existence of such fears, as documented by cases in Mexico and Kosovo, can trigger mass hysteria accompanied by actual physical illness, experts say. The large number of attacks against schools reported in the Afghan media could exacerbate the problem of fretful students believing they have been poisoned.

This morning Totia high school was crowded with girls aged between 16 and 18 but witnesses did not report the presence of any strangers. The authorities are investigating.

Lal Mohammad, the school’s caretaker, said nothing untoward had been found so far. The only thing unusual was a nauseating smell, apparently similar to that of human sewage, which greeted the students when they arrived in the morning.

“It was so bad that the head said we must tell the neighbouring houses that they should only clear out their shit at the night time,” Mohammad said.

As the smell got much worse panic spread through the building, he said.

All the classroom doors along the corridor were open and the complaints of dizziness and fainting moved quickly from end of the building to the other, Mohammad said.

Western medical experts have taken blood samples from alleged victims while investigating previous incidents but have been unable to find clear evidence of poisoning. They have also questioned how such an apparently powerful gas could be spread with such apparent ease round large school buildings.

In today’s incident some girls first displayed symptoms long after everyone else. Massoud Mohammad, an 18-year-old with a younger sister at the school, said two girls only fainted some time after they had returned home and changed out of their school clothes.

But in the largely Pashtun neighbourhood in a rough area of eastern Kabul no one believed the incident was anything other than a chemical attack by people who object to female education.

“These people are not Muslims,” said Mohammad Shamin, who rushed to hospital from work to see his 14-year-old daughter, who had been taken there after feeling dizzy.

“There is nothing in Islam that says you can attack girls.”

Classroom attacks

2009 — Five girls briefly slipped into comas and nearly 100 other pupils needed treatment after an alleged gas attack on their school. The victims were vomiting and dizzy, and some lost consciousness. Taliban sympathisers hostile to girls’ education were blamed.

2008 — In Logar province a primary school was targeted by arsonists intent on preventing local girls being taught. The suspected Taliban raiders were thwarted by a gang of fathers who chased them away.

February 2006 — Armed gunmen walked through the school gates of Kartilaya school in Lashkar Gar and killed several pupils. The school consisted of mostly female students.

January 2006 — A male teacher was dragged into the courtyard of a co-educational school and beheaded by suspected Taliban militants in Zabul province. The school had received threats for continuing to teach girls.

2002 — Taliban sympathisers fired rockets at several schools in the Wardak province, near Kabul, as part of a sustained effort to stop parents from sending their daughters to study. They also raided a school at a village mosque, setting fire to chairs and blackboard.

——

Index case?

84 Afghan schoolgirls hospitalized in alleged poisoning (USA Today, May 12, 2009) – The sickness could be a result of group hysteria. A Parwan education official said they had not found any evidence of an attack in the incident. He said one student had fallen seriously ill before the others and suggested that some of the illnesses could have been psychological. Research has borne out the possibility of a psychological cause. At a Tennessee school in 1998, dozens were hospitalized for dizziness, headaches, nausea, and shortness of breath after a teacher noticed a gasoline smell in a classroom, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study found that there had been no toxic exposure and that the sickness appeared to be psychological, noting that the symptoms were subjective. … Full story

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Related reports on this site

A medic at the hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, checks on one of the hospitalized schoolgirls. (Photo credit: Fulad Hamdard / AP)

Gas Attack or Mass Hysteria? (June 12, 2010)

Poison Gas or Mass Hysteria? (April 25, 2010)

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — August 27, 2009

Ron Paul Converts Michele Bachmann

One year ago today, I reported that Rep. Michele Bachmann announced a joint town hall forum with Rep. Ron Paul as her guest. I also reported a summer of setbacks for the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan, with rising casualties, a divisive election, and growing public doubt about the war.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: Two Years Ago — August 27, 2008

On the Campaign Trail: Day 44

Two years ago today, on the 44th day of my 2008 campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, I traveled to White Bear Lake to record a candidate statement for the Ramsey / Washington County Suburban Cable Commission, through its Government Television Network (GTN). I also reported on the high human and economic cost of the Iraq war.

Dozens Killed, Hundreds Wounded in Coordinated Attacks Across Iraq 

Bombings come one day after U.S. troop level in Iraq dips below 50,000

Video

Coordinated attacks kill dozens in Iraq (NBC Nightly News, Aug. 25, 2010) — A string of coordinated bombings rocked Iraq Wednesday, just after the U.S. hit a major milestone in its mission there. NBC’s Richard Engel reports.

The Associated Press and Reuters via MSNBC.com
Aug. 25, 2010

BAGHDAD — A day after the U.S. declared the number of American troops in Iraq had fallen to their lowest level since the war began in 2003, insurgents on Wednesday launched more than two dozen attacks across the country, killing at least 56 Iraqis.

The coordinated assaults rekindled memories of the days when insurgents ruled the streets. Powerful blasts targeting security forces struck where they are supposed to be the safest, turning police stations into rubble and bringing down concrete walls erected to protect them from insurgents. …

The attacks made August the deadliest month for Iraqi policemen and soldiers in two years, and came a day after the Obama admnistration said the number of U.S. troops in the country had fallen to fewer than 50,000. …

At least 265 security personnel — Iraqi military, police and police recruits, and bodyguards — have been killed from June through August, compared with 180 killed in the previous five months, according to an Associated Press count.

In August, nearly 5 Iraqi security personnel on average have been killed every day so far. …

The scale and reach of Wednesday’s attacks in 14 cities and towns underscored insurgent efforts to prove their might against security forces and political leaders charged with running and keeping stability in Iraq. …

The deadliest attack came in Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, where a suicide bomber blew up a car inside a security barrier between a police station and the provincial government’s headquarters.

Police and hospital officials said 19 people died, 15 of them policemen. An estimated 90 people were wounded.

In northern Baghdad, a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb in a parking lot behind a police station, killing 15 people, including six policemen.

Police and hospital officials said another 58 were wounded in the explosion that left a crater three yards wide and trapped people beneath the rubble of felled houses nearby.

A police officer was also killed in Mosul where gunmen attacked a police checkpoint and one person was killed in the city of Beiji, in Iraq’s northern province of Salahuddin. …

In Tikrit, a roadside bomb killed a policeman on patrol and wounded another. …

Five others, including an Iraqi soldier and a police officer, were killed in small bursts of violence in Baghdad.

From the northern Iraqi city of Mosul to the holy Shiite shrine town of Karbala to the oil city of Basra, scattered bombings and shootings killed an additional 14 people — including 6 security forces — and injured scores more. …

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8/28/10 Update

Iraq Put on High Alert Ahead of Expected Bombing Campaign

Iraqi soldiers secure the site of a suicide car bomb attack at a police station in the Baghdad suburb of Qahira on Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2010. (Photo credit: CNN)

By Jomana Karadsheh

Aug. 27, 2010

Baghdad, Iraq – Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki warned Friday of likely attacks across the country and put all local governments and security forces on high alert.

In a statement read on state television, al-Maliki — commander-in-chief of the Iraqi Armed Forces — said there were indications that “al Qaeda and remnants of the Baath party with foreign backing are planning to carry out a series of bombings in Baghdad and the other provinces.”

The statement, which came shortly before midnight in Iraq, said the attacks would strike across the country, targeting government institutions in particular. …

The warning came two days after a wave of 20 bomb attacks struck 13 Iraqi cities, mostly targeting police. The bombs killed 48 and wounded at least 286. …

The attacks were a show of force for the insurgency, which has been dealt major blows over the past two years. The bombing campaign proved insurgents’ ability to hit key targets in what appears to have been a highly coordinated effort stretching from Basra in the far south to Mosul in the north. …

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Related report on this site

Horrific Baghdad Bombing (Aug. 18, 2010)

Iraq War: ‘Ten More Years’ (Aug. 12, 2010)

Iraq Civilian Deaths at 2-Year High (Aug. 1, 2010)

Iraq Security Remains Fragile (July 22, 2010)

Mayhem in Baghdad (July 18, 2010)

Iraq Election Violence Continues (June 20, 2010)

Explosion Rocks Iraqi Market (May 21, 2010)

‘Dark Days Soaked With Blood’ (May 14, 2010)

Cascade of Violence in Iraq (May 10, 2010)

Iraq Election Turmoil (April 26, 2010)

Bloody Easter in Baghdad (April 4, 2010)

Iraq Election Violence (March 8, 2010)

Iraq Mass Casualty Bombing (Feb. 1, 2010)

Triple Bombing Rocks Baghdad (Jan. 25, 2010)

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — August 26, 2009

A policeman at the site where five car bombs detonated simultaneously in Afghanistan’s southern city of Kandahar on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2009. (Photo credit: Allauddin Khilji / AP)

Afghan Bombing One of Largest

One year ago today — on a day four U.S. soldiers died in Aghanistan — I reported that a coordinated multiple-vehicle bomb attack in Kandahar killed more than 40 civilians in one of the largest insurgent bombings since the start of the Afghanistan war in 2001.. I also reported that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy had died at age of 77 after a year-long battle with cancer.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: Two Years Ago — August 26, 2008

On the Campaign Trail: Day 43

Arriving at City Hall in downtown Paynesville at the end of the second walking tour across Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District.

Two years ago today, on the 43rd day of my 2008 campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, I completed my second walking tour, a 50-mile campaign swing on foot across Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District from Foley to Paynesville. In line with my campaign focus on national security, I also reported multiple bombings in Iraq.

Biographical profile of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann by Paul Harris of the London Observer, republished here for informational purposes and annotated with sidebars. 

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Michele Bachmann, Queen of the Right

She says Obama is making the US ‘a nation of slaves’ — and her campaign is raking in millions. So just how far can Michele Bachmann go?

Michele Bachmann at a rally in Washington against Barack Obama’s healthcare reform. She now wants the bill repealed. (Photo credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

Paul Harris
The Observer (London)
July 18, 2010

As stereotypes go, “Minnesota nice” is not a bad one. It holds that the mid-western residents of Minnesota, with its vast rural landscape and mostly Scandinavian-descended population, are unusually pleasant.

But Minnesotans might soon have to give up some of their hard-won reputation for quiet reasonableness thanks to one of their own, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, a fiercely rightwing darling of the Tea Party, who is rapidly becoming one of the most famous politicians in America and may yet outshine Sarah Palin as a potential Republican presidential pick [link added] for 2012.

Sidebar: Heading the Tea Party

Rep. Michele Bachmann speaks at a Tea Party at Lake George in St. Cloud, Minn., after a town hall meeting, Saturday, Sept. 12, 2009. (Photo credit: Jason Wachter / St. Cloud Times)

Bachmann, whose district is a sprawling stretch of farms and small cities, has used her theoretically modest political platform to catapult herself to the forefront of conservatism in America. She does not shy away from extreme opinions, lambasting President Barack Obama as a socialist threat to the American way of life. She is stridently anti-government, pro-business and socially conservative. She has even called for her fellow congressional politicians to be investigated to see if they are “pro-America” enough.

Sidebar: Investigate Members of Congress

To many on the left of US politics, her outlandish statements seem a poor joke. She is regularly lampooned on liberal blogs in a similar manner to Palin, whose family life dominated the gossip magazines last week after the unexpected engagement of her daughter. But as Palin becomes more of a media force than a political one, Bachmann is rising to replace her. Her verve and anger have entranced a significant section of the population, one expected to vote in huge numbers in this November’s mid-term elections.

“Bachmann is media-savvy, energizing and charismatic, just like Palin. But unlike Palin, she is a seasoned politician. She is not a political lightweight; she is serious,” said Professor Shaun Bowler, a political scientist at the University of California at Riverside.

The populist Tea Party movement has shown a deep willingness to follow female leadership. Palin paved the way for Bachmann, but also other leading lights such as Sharron Angle in Nevada and Debra Medina in Texas. Some think women politicians suit its outsider mentality better than the usual Republican men.

Sidebar: The Feminization of the GOP

Bachmann seduction at the Republican National Convention in 2008. (Photo: Paul Sancya / AP)

“These woman candidates provide the leadership that traditional male leaders cannot,” said Steve Mitchell, chairman of the political consultancy Mitchell Research. Among the leading ladies of the US right, it is arguably Bachmann, not Palin, who is the biggest star. Confirmation of her rise came last week in the most definite form: cash.

Bachmann, who is campaigning for re-election in November, revealed that she had managed to raise $1.7m in the past three months. For a Minnesota congressional bid, that is a huge amount of money — far more than the $865,000 Palin raised in the same period and more, too, than was raised by the probable frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, the former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Palin and Romney, of course, do not face the costs of an election this year; but many are now wondering if Bachmann might consider a White House run.

The force that has driven Bachmann to prominence is the Tea Party and the surge of rightwing anger in the country since Obama came into office. The movement is represented by numerous often squabbling organizations, but it has sent a jolt of energy through the Republican base and pushed the party to the right.

Sidebar: A Surge of Rightwing Anger

Town Hall Face (Photos: Landov, AP, Getty Images / Newsweek)

Bachmann has been at the head of that move. She is probably the most popular elected politician with Tea Partiers. She has even sought to bring the Tea Party into Congress by setting up a Tea Party Caucus, which will be similar to congressional caucuses for black or Hispanic politicians. “The American people are doing their part and making their voices heard and this caucus will prove there are some here in Washington willing to listen,” she said in a statement launching the group.

Bachmann is not unusual in touting the Tea Party’s ideals of small government and spending cuts, but she does it in virulent language and also embraces many of the movement’s fringe beliefs or extremist figures. She is due to star in a coming rightwing documentary called Socialism: A Clear and Present Danger, in which she says American citizens have become “indentured servants” of their government. The film uses clips of Obama alongside Stalin and Fidel Castro. “We need to reverse course so we can get back to freedom,” she says.

Sidebar: Virulent Language and Fringe Beliefs

She is a very savvy user of the conservative media — a familiar voice on the radio shows popular with Tea Party members and a darling of Fox News. That allows her to tap efficiently into the emotions and support of a resurgent conservative movement that is looking at the November polls with delight and expecting to wrest control of Congress back from the Democrats.

“The Tea Party represents the wave of anger that we are seeing in America. These people can’t wait to go to the polls. There might easily be a landslide,” said Mitchell.

Sidebar: Riding the Wave of Rightwing Fervor

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s “House Call” protest against health care reform at the U.S. Capitol, Nov. 5, 2009. (Photo credit: Graham Moomaw / The Washington Independent)

Indeed Bachmann’s biography reads like that of a Tea Party member, blending politics, outrage and suburban life. She was born in Iowa and went to law school before moving to Minnesota to work for the US treasury, then left to become a full-time mother. It was a busy job. She and her husband, Marcus, have five children but have fostered 23 more.

Bachmann entered politics in 2000, after attending a political meeting for a state senate seat where she was dismayed at the liberalness of the Republican candidate. She decided to run, won the race, and then made it into Congress in 2006.

All along she has stressed her religious faith, saying that she and her husband fasted and prayed for three days before she decided to run for Congress. It is a potent mix: conservatism, Christianity and a gift for riding the biggest populist wave in American politics, all presented by a suburban mother of five.

Sidebar: Fasted and Prayed Three Days to Run for Congress

But the wave Bachmann is riding may yet fail to reach the shore. Just as her rise exemplifies much of the strength and energy of the Tea Party movement, so too does she illustrate its weaknesses.

The Tea Party’s organization is untidy and dysfunctional and prone to squabbling. So too is Bachmann’s. Last week, despite the amazing fundraising news, Bachmann’s finance director, Zandra Wolcott, quit. Her chief of staff, Ron Carey – her fifth chief of staff in four years — also left.

Such a turnover might hurt any politician. But working for Bachmann does seem to be as wild as some of her opinions. She recently told a conservative conference that America was becoming a “nation of slaves” and that the Democrats had imposed “tyranny” on the country. “We are determined to live free or not at all,” she said, using the language of the American Revolution.

Sidebar: A Nation of Slaves

Number of hate groups reach record level (The Dylan Ratigan Show, MSNBC, March 2, 2010) — According to a new report, militias and other extremist groups increasing 244 percent in 2009. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center and radio host Mark Williams of the Tea Party Express discuss. (08:33)

She wants to repeal Obama’s healthcare reform and has said that it will literally kill sick patients rather than cure them. She has said that she does not want America to be a part of the international global economy. In the coming anti-socialist documentary, she talks of an appropriate tax rate of 10% because that is what the Bible suggests in the form of tithing. “We render to God that which is God’s and the Bible calls for? … maybe 10%,” she says.

Sidebar: Repealing Health Care Reform

Battle lines drawn over health care law (NBC Nightly News, March 24, 2010) — Anger over health care reform, erupted into over-the-top rhetoric and threats were made against members of Congress who voted the bill into law. NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell reports. (03:16)

But that sort of comment — basing economic policy on scripture rather than actual economics — has a limited appeal to many mainstream voters. It causes the sort of damaging headlines that might make it impossible for Bachmann to extend her appeal beyond her base and into the vital middle ground.

Bachmann may also be limited by her apparent links to extremist groups. The anti-socialist documentary was filmed by a church group that recently caused outrage by claiming that Hitler tried to kill Jews because he believed in evolution. At a conference this September, she is scheduled to speak alongside so-called “birthers” — those who believe Obama was born outside America and is therefore constitutionally barred from the role of president.

Sidebar: Bachmann’s ‘Apparent Links to Extremist Groups’

Anger at America turns deadly (MSNBC Dylan Ratigan, March 5, 2010) — Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center offers his take on the gun attack outside the Pentagon, populist anger, and anti-government violence. (05:53)

Bachmann, like the Tea Party movement as a whole, is a double-edged sword for the Republicans. While she has raised huge amounts of cash, so too has Tarryl Clark, the otherwise unknown Democrat running against her. Clark has raised $910,000 in the past three months — also more than Palin and all because she is facing Bachmann.

The energy that the Tea Party generates brings strong support, but also guarantees fierce opposition. It could be enough to win the midterm elections, but not enough to prevent Obama winning a second term as president. It is enough to put Bachmann in the national spotlight, but not enough to put her in the White House.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — August 25, 2009

Iraq-Afghanistan Casualties

Family members receive the casket of Army Staff Sgt. Clayton Bowen, 29, after its arrival in San Antonio, on Tuesday. Bowen was killed in action Aug. 18, 2009 after he was struck by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan. As troop deaths have risen, so have doubts about the war. (Photo credit: Eric Gay / AP)

One year ago today, I provided my weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) and reported that NATO deaths in Afghanistan had hit a record high.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: Two Years Ago — August 25, 2008

Click here to see a larger image of the sample ballot.

On the Campaign Trail: Day 42

Residents wait for the funeral of suicide bomb attack victims in Baghdad. (Photo credit: Mahmoud Raouf Mahmoud / Reuters)

Two years ago today, on the 42nd day of my 2008 campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, I posted the first image of the Minnesota state partisan primary ballot, information about Minnesota’s open primary election system, and information about absentee voting. In line with my campaign focus on national security, I also posted an update on the Iraq war.

U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq

As of Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010, at least 4,416 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Since the start of U.S. military operations in Iraq, 31,926 U.S. service members have been wounded in hostile action, according to the Defense Department’s weekly tally.

U.S. Troop Casualties in Iraq

Latest identification:

Army Sgt. Brandon E. Maggart, 24, Kirksville, Mo., died Aug. 22, 2010 at Basrah, Iraq, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit using indirect fire. He was assigned to the 5th Battalion, 5th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.

U.S. Military Deaths in Afghanistan

As of Thursday, Aug. 19, 2010, at least 1,130 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department.

Since the start of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, 7,529 U.S. service members have been wounded in hostile action, according to the Defense Department’s weekly tally.

Latest identifications:

Army Pfc. Benjamen G. Chisholm, 24, Fort Worth, Texas, died Aug. 17, 2010 in Kunar province, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device caused a military vehicle roll-over. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky.

Army Staff Sgt. Derek J. Farley, 24, Nassau, N.Y., died Aug. 17, 2010 at Bala Boluk, Farah, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated as he attempted to disarm it. He was assigned to the 18th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, 16th Sustainment Brigade, 21st Theater Sustainment Command, Grafenwoehr, Germany.

Army Pvt. Charles M. High IV, 21, Albuquerque, N.M., died Aug. 17, 2010 in Kunar province, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device caused a military vehicle roll-over. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky.

Army Sgt. 1st Class Edgar N. Roberts, 39, of Hinesville, Ga., died Aug. 17, 2010 at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Md., of wounds sustained June 26 at Sayed Abad, Afghanistan, when insurgents attacked his unit using an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to 810th Engineer Company (SAPPER), Swainsboro, Ga.

Marine Lance Cpl. Kevin E. Oratowski, 23, Wheaton, Ill., died Aug. 18, 2010 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.

Navy Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) Collin Thomas, 33, Morehead, Ky., died Aug. 18, 2010 during a combat operation in eastern Afghanistan. He was assigned to an east coast-based SEAL team.

Marine Cpl. Christopher J. Boyd, 22, Palatine, Ill., died Aug. 19, 2010 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.

Army Sgt. Martin A. Lugo, 24, Tucson, Ariz., died Aug. 19, 2010 in Puli Alam, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit with small-arms fire. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, Hunter Army Air Field, Ga.

Army Spc. Christopher S. Wright, 23, of Tollesboro, Ky., died Aug. 19, 2010 in Pech, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit using small-arms fire. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, Hunter Army Air Field, Ga.

Marine Lance Cpl. Cody S. Childers, 19, Chesapeake, Va., died Aug. 20, 2010 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Army Pfc. Alexis V. Maldonado, 20, Wichita Falls, Texas, died Aug. 21, 2010 at Kandahar Air Field, Afghanistan of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit using small-arms fire in Zhari province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 20th Engineer Battalion, 36th Engineer Brigade, Fort Hood, Texas.

Marine Lance Cpl. Nathaniel J. A. Schultz, 19, Safety Harbor, Fla., died Aug. 21, 2010 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Marine Sgt. Jason D. Calo, 23, Lexington, Ky., died Aug. 22, 2010 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Army National Guard Sgt. Steven J. Deluzio, 25, South Glastonbury, Conn., died Aug. 22, 2010 in Paktika, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. He was assigned to the 172nd Infantry, 86th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Vermont National Guard, Jericho, Vt.

Army Spc. Pedro A. Millet Meletiche, 20, Elizabeth, N.J., died Aug. 22, 2010 at Arghandab River Valley, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit using an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Carson, Colo.

Army National Guard Spc. Tristan H. Southworth, 21, West Danville, Vt., died Aug. 22, 2010 in Paktika, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. He was assigned to the 172nd Infantry, 86th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Vermont National Guard, Jericho, Vt. [Update: Spc. Southworth was posthumously promoted from specialist to sergeant.]

Marine Lance Cpl. Robert J. Newton, 21, Creve Coeur, Ill., died Aug. 23, 2010 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, Calif.

Marine Sgt. Ronald A. Rodriguez, 26, Falls Church, Va., died Aug. 23, 2010 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.

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Remember Their Sacrifice

Related links

Iraq Casualties

Afghanistan Casualties

Honor the Fallen

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — August 24, 2009

Is Obama too ambitious? (CNN, Aug. 23, 2009) — In this clip from Sunday’s “State of the Union,” three senators discuss the president’s health care agenda. (07:46)

Postpone Health Care Reform

One year ago today, I reported that Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman urged President Barack Obama to postpone many of his health care reform initiatives because of the economic downturn.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: Two Years Ago — August 24, 2008

On the Campaign Trail: Day 41

Church of St. Stephen

Two years ago today, on the 41st day of my 2008 campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2008, I posted a public service announcement to publicize the St. Stephen Catholic Church Festival.