Seated in a tan leather couch, Petty Officer Sarax suddenly straightens his back and begins flailing his right arm.

“She doesn’t know what I’ve been through,” Sarax, who just returned from Iraq, says when asked about his marriage. “There are things that I just don’t want to talk about with her. And she keeps pushing.”

He talks and behaves like a soldier overcome by combat trauma, but Sarax isn’t real. He is a software program, a life-size projection on a movie screen that is reacting and responding to questions from a psychologist being trained to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

Sarax is a virtual patient, one of many computer-simulated humans created by psychologists, engineers and scientists at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. By the end of the year, the virtual patient is expected to be in use in university classrooms, and eventually in clinical hospitals and military bases.

Interactive computer patients are just one of many cutting-edge virtual technologies being developed at the institute. Many of them are used as training tools for U.S. military personnel, from fighting insurgents to calming nerves of combat-weary soldiers.

The institute’s wide-ranging virtual technologies, now found on 65 military sites across the country, have popped in and out of the public spotlight, but last week they were on full display when the institute opened the doors to its new 72,000-square-foot facility in Playa Vista.

“The move is a mark of a new era for us,” said Randall W. Hill Jr., executive director of the institute, which outgrew its facility in Marina del Rey. “But really, it’s a new era for the Army as well.”

The institute’s funding has increased from $5 million in 1999 to about $30 million today — as the Pentagon has stepped up spending on training military personnel through simulations. It has also attracted a diverse staff of more than 180 professionals, from graphic designers to former Disney artists and designers.

“Five years ago, the characters were talking heads with computer-generated voices with no emotion,” said Patrick G. Kenny, who leads the virtual patient program. “Today, it’s getting harder to distinguish what is real from what is not with virtual human characters.”

Walking through the institute’s new Playa Vista offices is like walking through a fraternity house for high-tech geeks. Cubicles have white boards on which workers can quickly jot down ideas whenever they have an “aha” moment. And a corner office is more likely to be occupied by a twentysomething in a T-shirt huddled over computer monitor than a supervisor in a suit.

On a recent visit, the institute engineers were testing one of their latest first-person, multi-player games that allows players to take part in a simulated attack that includes dealing with an improvised explosive device.

The game is designed to prepare soldiers for an insurgent ambush. It is already found on three military bases, including Camp Pendleton, in northern San Diego County.

In the training simulation, soldiers sit in mock Humvees and slowly roll through towns in either Iraq and Afghanistan, which are aesthetically true to life because the institute used satellite photographs to design the town’s landscape.

“We try to make it as real as possible,” said Todd Richmond, the game’s project director.

Richmond said he knew the institute got the game right after a Marine, who had been deployed overseas, was playing the game and pointed to a shop by the side of the road and said, “Hey, I went in that place and bought a Coke.”

In addition to mapping and satellite reconnaissance, the institute uses Hollywood movie writers to come in and make the story lines more compelling. The institute is one of the country’s only organizations that draws on the entertainment industry to do such work.

Maintaining this kind of realism is key to the institute’s success, said Peter W. Singer, author of “Wired for War,” a book that examines robotic warfare. “The stuff that ICT does is really in a class of its own.”

Singer estimates the U.S. military is spending about $6 billion each year on virtual training and expects that number to rise.

“This is a medium the iPhone generation knows,” Singer said. “You can’t simply teach them on a chalkboard anymore.”

william.hennigan@latimes.com
Computer simulation is a growing reality for instruction

If Republicans win control of the House in the Nov. 2 election, California’s congressional delegation will undergo a dramatic transfer of power, as Democrats such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Rep. Henry A. Waxman of Beverly Hills give way to a team of Republicans who could take over at least five committees.

Although Democrats are certain to remain in the majority of the state’s delegation, California Republicans hold enough seniority within their party to wield the chairmanship gavels of more committees than any other state:

•Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista, in line to chair the top investigative committee, could become the Obama administration’s chief congressional antagonist.

•Rep. Jerry Lewis of Redlands, the senior California House Republican, could return as Appropriations Committee chairman, tasked with carrying out his party’s pledge to rein in spending, even as his home state looks to Washington for more money.

•Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon of Santa Clarita is positioned to take control of the Armed Services Committee, setting up a possible confrontation with the White House it if sticks to its plan to begin drawing down troops in Afghanistan in July. He also would take over the panel at a time when budget cuts loom over the state’s defense industry.

•Rep. David Dreier of San Dimas is likely to return as chairman of the Rules Committee, which sets the procedures for considering House bills. And Rep. Dan Lungren of Gold River, if he wins his tough reelection campaign, could chair the Committee on House Administration, which oversees the day-to-day operations of the House.

Republicans feel so good about their prospects that Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) is working behind the scenes to win the Science and Technology Committee gavel. Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton), who provided more than $1 million of his own campaign funds to help elect Republicans, has been mentioned as a possible candidate for chairman of the Financial Services Committee.

And Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), in only his second term, is expected to move up in party leadership, perhaps to the third-ranking position of whip, responsible for counting votes and maintaining party discipline on important floor decisions. It would be a reward for the telegenic 45-year-old chief recruiter of Republican candidates who has traveled the country from Lake Oswego, Ore., to Frog Jump, Tenn., working to deliver a GOP majority.

California’s potential clout in a Republican-controlled House is striking given the blue tinge of the state, which still views President Obama more favorably than most other places, though six California Republicans chaired major committees before the Democrats won control of the House in 2006.

Democrats say they believe their party will hold onto the majority after Nov. 2, but are using the “what if” prospect of a Republican takeover in the campaign.

“Every time I try to encourage the White House to do more to help us elect Democrats to the House of Representatives, I send them a picture of Darrell Issa with the word ’subpoena’ underneath,” said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), in reference to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s power to drag administration officials before the bright TV lights of investigative hearings.

Democrats question how strongly California Republicans will look out for the state’s interests while shaping their party’s national agenda.

“When the Republican governor of California came to Congress with his hand out, saying, ‘I need your help,’ they all said, ‘no,’ ” said Daniel Weiss, chief of staff for Rep. George Miller of Martinez, one of five California Democrats who chair House committees.

All of the California Republicans present last summer opposed a $26-billion aid package for cash-strapped states, including $1.2 billion sought by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, attacking it as another expensive federal bailout.

“We will not be a prosperous state if our country has policies that are bringing us a trillion and a half dollars more in debt each year,” Rohrabacher said.

“Chasing after nonexistent federal dollars is hardly our priority,” added Dreier, chairman of the California Republican delegation. “Our goal is to implement fiscally responsible pro-growth economic policies so that we can get Californians working.”

Frederick Hill, a spokesman for Issa, said California Republicans would be “positioned to play key roles in addressing the failed efforts of this Congress and administration to lower unemployment — many California congressional Democrats don’t even seem to acknowledge that this administration’s job policies aren’t working as advertised.”

California Republicans could face resistance within their own party over aiding a blue state and the longtime mind-set among many lawmakers who would rather have federal resources go “anywhere but California.”

Among the biggest changes in a GOP power transfer would be Issa taking over as chairman of the oversight committee, which over the years has investigated subjects including steroid use in sports, and waste, fraud and abuse in government contracts.

Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog Project on Government Oversight, expects Issa to be “oftentimes partisan.”

But, she said, so was Waxman, an investigative pit bill while leading the panel, investigating such things as whether the George W. Bush administration sought to muzzle climate scientists in order to downplay the dangers of global warming and the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to deny California permission to implement its global warming law.

“We think it could be interesting having him as chairman of the committee,” Brian said.

But interesting isn’t a word Democrats use.

“So far, he’s given a lot of indications that he’s looking forward to using the position for partisan purposes,” Waxman said.

There is speculation that some longtime California Democrats may retire rather than try to adjust to life with less power. But if Republicans win the majority by only a few seats, those Democrats might stay on in hopes of regaining the majority in 2012.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare) is among those eager for a Republican takeover of the House. “Most importantly, it will put people in charge who are not from San Francisco or Hollywood,” he said.

richard.simon@latimes.com

Election could shift power in state’s congressional delegation

Suicide attackers burst into the main United Nations compound in the western city of Herat on Saturday, setting off a battle with Afghan police and troops. All four assailants were reported killed, but the U.N. said there were no casualties among its staff.

The incident roiled the aid community in Afghanistan at a time when a number of international humanitarian and development groups are considering curtailing or halting projects in response to an upcoming ban by President Hamid Karzai on the use of private security guards. Western diplomats are pressing the Afghan leader to ease the restrictions, which are to take effect at the end of the year.

The attack in Herat, the biggest city in western Afghanistan, began with a detonation at one of the complex’s entry gates, according to provincial officials, and three assailants then managed to push their way inside. One or more of them wore a burqa, or a body-length veil, said Naqib Armin, a spokesman for the provincial governor.

The compound, on the city’s edge near the airport, houses several U.N. agencies which employ both foreign and Afghan staff. There would have been about 40 people inside at the time, said U.N. spokesman Dan McNorton.

One of the attackers was killed at the outset of the strike when he set off explosives inside a car, provincial authorities said. Two others apparently detonated their suicide vests, and the last was shot dead by police.

Herat province is considered a relatively calm part of the country — so much so that it is being considered as one of the first places where the NATO force will attempt to hand over security responsibility to Afghan forces.

With Western military officials claiming major success in driving the Taliban from strongholds in Kandahar province, however, the insurgency has been making a push into parts of the country that were previously considered relatively safe, such as the north.

Attacks inside Kandahar have diminished since the Western military offensive began in earnest about a month ago, but insurgents are still able to move about despite the security cordon around the city. A motorcycle-borne suicide bomber at a main traffic circle in the city killed one passer-by and injured two others on Saturday, provincial authorities said.

Outside Kandahar city, veteran New York Times photographer Joao Silva was seriously injured Saturday when he stepped on a buried bomb, the newspaper reported on its website. Although NATO officials say Taliban fighters have been mainly driven out of the district, Arghandab, the insurgents have seeded the area with IEDs, or improvised explosive devices, which are the principal killer of Western troops.

Most of the 30,000 American troops who arrived this year under President Obama’s “surge” are deployed in the south, mainly in Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

NATO troops were not involved in responding to the attack in Herat, said Lt. Col. Regina Winchester, a spokeswoman for the International Security Assistance Force. However, witnesses said Western forces were seen helping cordon off the scene, and a NATO helicopter circled overhead. NATO troops in the west of Afghanistan are under Italian command.

McNorton, the U.N. spokesman, said it was “too early to speculate” about steps the world body might take in response to the attack on its compound. The U.N. sent hundreds of foreign staffers out of the country after a Taliban attack last October on a U.N. guesthouse in the capital, in which five of its foreign staff were killed.

This year has been a perilous one for foreign aid workers in Afghanistan. In August, insurgent gunmen killed a 10-member medical team, including six Americans, in Badakhshan province, in the north. Earlier this month, a Scottish development worker was killed during an attempt by American troops to rescue her after she was abducted by the Taliban.

laura.king@latimes.com
Suicide attackers hit U.N. compound in Afghanistan

A CIA investigation into a December suicide bombing in Afghanistan that killed seven agency personnel and injured six others found “systemic breakdowns” in the field and at headquarters, but no one will be fired or disciplined, CIA Director Leon Panetta said Tuesday.

In one of the most devastating attacks in CIA history, officers failed to search an Al Qaeda double agent before he entered a meeting at their base in Khowst in a remote part of Afghanistan, and he detonated a huge bomb. Two contractors and five CIA employees were killed, including the base chief, who was one of the agency’s foremost experts on Al Qaeda. Six CIA officers were wounded, some severely.

Panetta disclosed for the first time Tuesday that, 25 days before the attack, another Jordanian intelligence officer had expressed concerns to his CIA counterpart in Jordan that the bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal Balawi, could be a double agent. But the CIA officer didn’t pass those concerns to headquarters or to CIA operatives in Afghanistan.

Asked why that person wasn’t disciplined, Panetta said the suspicions about Balawi weren’t clear enough, and the officer’s decision to not pass them on was reasonable, if wrong.

Panetta said officers, some lacking war zone experience, took risks they shouldn’t have in their zeal to recruit Balawi, a Jordanian doctor who had convinced the agency that he could lead them to Al Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman Zawahiri. Balawi had been vetted by a trusted Jordanian intelligence operative, and the CIA didn’t want him searched by the base’s Afghan guards, a Panetta aide said.

Balawi also was greeted by a group of people, instead of one or two, “to make him feel welcome,” Panetta said. That decision increased the death count. Security officers were about to search him when he set off the bomb, Panetta said.

“It would be easier to go after one person for causing this so everybody could go back to business as usual,” Panetta told a small group of reporters at CIA headquarters. “This is a case where there are some systemic failures, where all of us have responsibility, and all of us need to fix it.”

A retired CIA officer was highly critical of Panetta’s conclusions.

“I think this is one of the fundamental problems that the CIA has — a lack of accountability,” said Charles Faddis, a retired CIA case officer who spent years overseas, including a stint during the Iraq war. “This review board has concluded what everybody who has ever run operations downrange knew after five minutes of reading the first accounts. These are not just mistakes, they are inexcusable. It’s gross negligence.”

Faddis said he conducted hundreds of meetings with potential agents in hostile environments, and it would have been unthinkable not to search each one, and unconscionable to then bring them in proximity to a group of CIA personnel.

“He could have been searched in the vehicle,” Faddis said. “That is an absolutely routine security measure. You don’t dispense with good tradecraft because you’re pursuing a high-profile case.”

A CIA task force made 23 recommendations in the wake of the review, all of which Panetta accepted. He also asked two outsiders, former Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former CIA official Charles Allen, to review the findings. Some of the recommendations are already being implemented, such as searching everyone who enters a CIA base.

Others include the establishment of a “war zone board” to review staffing, training and security in war zones. The chief of the Khowst base, an Al Qaeda expert and mother of three, did not have sufficient training and experience in combat areas, Panetta said.

The acknowledgment of mistakes marked a shift from Panetta’s stance in the aftermath of the attack, when he argued that criticism of security procedures or other tactics by the CIA in the attack was unfair.

Eleven days after the attack, Panetta wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece that “we have found no consolation … in public commentary suggesting that those who gave their lives somehow brought it upon themselves because of ‘poor tradecraft.’ That’s like saying Marines who die in a firefight brought it upon themselves because they have poor war-fighting skills.”

Panetta said he stood by that sentiment Tuesday, but he also acknowledged a series of breakdowns. For example, he said, so many elements of CIA were involved in the mission to recruit Balawi that no one seemed to know who was in charge. And elements of the team used e-mail and instant message software to communicate instead of official cables, meaning key information wasn’t shared with everyone who needed to know.

“This is standard agency BS,” said Faddis, whose 2009 book calls for replacing the CIA with a more nimble spy organization. “The first line was nothing went wrong. Then when that became untenable, defensive position two is, some things went wrong but they were reasonable decisions, and we’ll learn some lessons. What that means is, so many of us are in this boat that we can’t hang one of us and not hang us all.”

Panetta and his aides disclosed new details about Balawi and about the bombing. For example, they said, in the weeks leading up to the meeting, Balawi sent back information about Al Qaeda from the tribal areas of Pakistan the CIA was able to corroborate, adding to his veneer of credibility. The CIA continues to believe that he did have contact with Zawahiri, the director said.

President Obama had been briefed on the mission to recruit Balawi but not on the meeting, Panetta said.

The director said that the CIA has killed some of those who masterminded the attack. “We have also gone after the others who were involved in the planning of this and have taken many of them out too,” he said.

ken.dilanian@latimes.com
CIA inquiry finds ’systemic breakdowns’ in Afghan bombing that killed agents

Seven more Western troops were killed in attacks across Afghanistan on Thursday, military officials said, bringing the two-day fatality toll for the NATO force to 13 and illustrating the war’s widening reach.

Combat deaths are running at their highest levels of the 9-year-old war. This year has already been the most lethal for Western troops’ since the U.S. invasion that toppled the Taliban movement.

NATO’s International Security Assistance Force released few details about the latest fatalities. It did not even disclose the nationalities of those killed, and provided only general details about where the deaths occurred.

The largest single fatal incident Thursday was reported in the west of the country, where three troops were killed by a single roadside bomb. National contingents serving in the west, near the Iranian border, include Americans and Italians.

Three more of Thursday’s deaths occurred in the country’s south, two in an insurgent attack and another in a roadside bombing. Yet another fatality took place in Afghanistan’s east, where insurgents often infiltrate from Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas. The majority of the troops in the east are American, but several other NATO nations have forces there as well.

A day earlier, four service members were killed by a single IED, or improvised explosive device, in Afghanistan’s south, considered the insurgency’s heartland. IEDs — low-tech, but sometimes effective even against well-armored vehicles — are the No. 1 killer of Western troops in Afghanistan.

U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan now stands at about 100,000, bolstered by a surge ordered by President Obama last December. The bulk of the American forces are in the south, where NATO is attempting to stifle the Taliban in volatile Kandahar and Helmand provinces.

Even as the fighting pushes ahead, so do efforts by the government of Hamid Karzai to broker some kind of political settlement with the Taliban. While no formal negotiations have begun, contacts have been taking place for months.

NATO officials say the Western military is helping to facilitate the informal talks by granting a measure of freedom of movement to Taliban leaders involved.

Meanwhile, the head of a newly formed government council tasked with overseeing any negotiations with the Taliban and other insurgent groups said he believed the reconciliation effort would move forward.

“We are taking our first steps,” former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani told a news conference in Kabul.

laura.king@latimes.com
Seven Western troops killed in Afghanistan

Pakistan on Sunday reopened a key Afghan border crossing used by trucks and tankers ferrying fuel and supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan, ending an 11-day blockade imposed after a NATO helicopter cross-border incursion that killed two Pakistani troops.

The first of hundreds of trucks and tankers stranded at the Torkham checkpoint at the Khyber Pass since Sept. 30 began moving across the border early afternoon Sunday. The border reopening should ease the massive bottleneck created by the blockade, which was followed by a series of militant attacks on parked NATO oil tankers and trucks across Pakistan.

More than 150 NATO trucks were set ablaze or damaged in those attacks. At least six people were killed in the attacks.

Although U.S. officials hailed the border reopening as a welcome development, relations between Islamabad and Washington remained palpably tense. The killing of the two Pakistani border soldiers by NATO helicopters on Sept. 30 was seen in Pakistan as an intolerable violation of the country’s sovereignty and came at a time when the U.S. had dramatically stepped up its drone-missile campaign against Taliban and Al Qaeda militants hiding out in Pakistan’s largely lawless tribal areas along the Afghan border.

In September, the U.S. carried out 22 drone-missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas, most of them directed at the Afghan Taliban wing known as the Haqqani network in the North Waziristan region. Pakistan has balked at moving against Haqqani network fighters, a reluctance that has exasperated officials in Washington because Haqqani fighters use North Waziristan as a base for launching attacks on U.S., NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials decided on Saturday that they would reopen the Torkham crossing. That decision came four days after the U.S. government and NATO formally apologized for the deaths of the Pakistani soldiers, saying the helicopter crews mistook the men for insurgents they had been pursuing across the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Pakistan plays a vital role in keeping supply lines open for U.S. and Western troops battling Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. About 40% of NATO’s non-lethal supplies bound for Afghanistan move by truck from the Pakistani port city of Karachi to either the northwestern border crossing at Torkham or the southern crossing at Chaman. The Chaman crossing, located in Balochistan province, was not shut down after the Sept. 30 NATO helicopter incursion.

In recent years, U.S and NATO forces have established northern routes through former Soviet republics in Central Asia as alternate supply lines, which has allowed NATO to reduce its reliance on Pakistan as a transit nation. At one point, 80% of NATO’s non-lethal supplies moved through Pakistan.

alex.rodriguez@latimes.com
Pakistan reopens border crossing to NATO trucks

Bill and Beverly Osborn still can’t bring themselves to erase the phone message from their son Ben. He had called from Afghanistan in June to assure them that he was safe. Four days later, he was killed in a Taliban ambush.

The Osborns long ago accepted the risks faced by their son, an Army specialist. But what they can’t accept now are the military rules of engagement, which they contend made it possible for the Taliban to kill him.

“We let the enemy fire first, and they took my son from us,” Beverly Osborn said of the rules, which in most instances require U.S. forces to identify an enemy threat before firing, and to withhold fire if civilians are close by. The rules also place restrictions on close air support and artillery, prompting complaints from some service members that their lives are put at risk against an enemy that fights by no rules at all.

As American combat deaths have reached record levels this summer, public support is eroding for the 9-year-old conflict. Several recent opinion polls found that more than half of those surveyed oppose the war, with the high casualty rate among concerns most often cited. American combat deaths reached 60 in June, 65 in July, and 55 in August, according to icasualties.org. That is by far the highest three-month total of the war.

Criticism is mounting among military families too. An antiwar group of families of service members in Afghanistan and Iraq has called for an end to the Afghanistan war. At the same time, families like the Osborns, who describe themselves as conservative, are questioning the way the war is being waged.

After Bill Osborn publicly criticized the rules of engagement just before his son’s wake, he said, other families of service members killed or serving in Afghanistan contacted him to express similar concerns. They don’t want to end the war, Osborn said, but to change the way it’s being fought.

“Our soldiers are forced to fight with one hand tied behind their backs. They’re not allowed to take care of business — and they know it,” Bill Osborn said in his living room, where his son’s Bronze Star, Purple Heart and campaign ribbons are on display.

Debbie Morris of Arnold, Calif., who lost her son in Afghanistan on June 10, said the rules of engagement protect Afghan civilians at the expense of American troops. She blames the rules, in part, for the death of her son, Marine Lance Cpl. Gavin Brummund, 22, from a roadside bomb.

If the rules prevent troops from aggressively pursuing Afghan militants who plot attacks against them while posing as civilians, “then the rules aren’t working, and why are we even there?” Morris said.

Brummund’s widow, Michaela, said Marines in her husband’s unit told her they were frustrated by the rules. Protecting civilians, many of whom are hostile to U.S. forces, “isn’t worth our guys’ lives,” she said.

On June 27, the Osborns wrote an impassioned e-mail to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan. They described how Ben, 27, volunteered to man the machine gun on an armored vehicle headed out on a patrol in Kunar province on June 15.

Their son’s unit of 20 men was ambushed by a Taliban force of 70 to 100 fighters, the e-mail said. According to the Osborns, who said they talked with members of their son’s unit, Ben had to wait to return fire until ordered to do so. He got off 10 rounds before he was shot and killed, they said.

The rules of engagement “led to the demise of our son … and other warriors like him,” the e-mail said. The Osborns asked Petraeus to revise the rules and lift restrictions.

“Winning the hearts and minds of the Afghans is not what’s best for America,” they wrote. “We are at war. The rules of engagement must be to empower our soldiers, not to give aid and comfort to the enemy.”

Petraeus responded within minutes, the Osborns said. His e-mail offered condolences, and noted that “commanders have a moral imperative to ensure that we provide every possible element of support to our troopers when they get into a tight spot.”

The general added: “And I will ensure that we meet that imperative.”

Petraeus, who wrote the military’s counter-insurgency doctrine with a focus on minimizing civilian casualties, has said he is reviewing the rules of engagement. Petraeus assumed command July 4 after the ouster of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who had tightened the rules when he took command in June 2009.

Military Families Speak Out, the antiwar group, has long demanded an end to the war in Iraq but for years refrained from demanding an end to the Afghanistan conflict — which many members considered “the good war.” After U.S. combat deaths in Afghanistan rose early last year, the group formally called for ending that war and bringing troops home.

More families have joined the group since casualties jumped this summer, said Nancy Lessin, the organization’s co-founder. Military Families Speak Out, founded in 2002, represents 4,000 military families, with 25 to 30 chapters nationwide, Lessin said.

The group has no formal position on the rules of engagement, said Paula Rogovin, whose son is a Marine captain who served in Iraq. But bringing the troops home would eliminate any dangers they face as a result of the restrictions, she said.

By contrast, the Osborns say they believe the war in Afghanistan must be fought — and won. But they want it waged more aggressively.

Soon after Ben deployed in April, he began telling his parents that the rules of engagement were too restrictive and were putting him and his fellow soldiers at risk.

“He said he felt more like a Peace Corps worker than a warrior,” his father said. After Ben’s death, his comrades told his father they had the same concerns.

“I don’t know that if Ben had been able to fire spontaneously, he’d be alive today,” Bill Osborn added. “But I do know that he would have had a much better chance of surviving by being able to defend himself quickly.”

“It almost appears that our civilian leaders and military command think more of the natives than our own troops,” he said. “That’s a disturbing thought, and I don’t want to believe it.”

Ben left behind three brothers, a sister and a widow, Nicole, whom he had married in February.

“It’s too late for us and for Ben,” Bill Osborn said, sitting next to photos of his son in uniform. “But there are other families out there, and if we can help save just one soldier, it’ll be worth it.”

david.zucchino@latimes.com
As U.S. deaths in Afghanistan rise, military families grow critical

Five U.S. troops were killed by roadside bombs and insurgent fire in southern and eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, the latest casualties in a particularly bloody spell that has left 12 service members dead in two days, and 19 since Saturday.

Meanwhile, on the southern outskirts of the capital, Kabul, a gunman opened fire on a busload of Afghan Supreme Court clerks, killing three and wounding 12, the Interior Ministry reported.

Assailants on two motorcycles halted the bus Tuesday morning in the Musayi district, an area where insurgents are active, court spokesman Abdul Malik Kamawi said. One gunman then boarded the bus and opened fire with an automatic weapon, killing two people, Kamawi said. A third died later in a hospital.

“We’re trying to find out who they were. For now, we can only say they are the enemies of the Afghan people,” Kamawi said.

Suspicion immediately fell on Taliban insurgents who have waged a continuous campaign against Afghan government officials and institutions and have stepped up attacks in the run-up to Sept. 18 elections for the lower house of parliament. Candidates and their aides have been threatened, kidnapped and killed, and many voters say they plan to stay away from the polls for fear of violence.

In Tuesday’s attacks, NATO said four troops were killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan, while a fifth died in a battle with insurgents in the country’s south. No other details were given and the service members were not identified by name, as is standard procedure.

The deaths came a day after roadside bombs killed eight other members of the international force in Afghanistan, including seven U.S. troops, NATO said Tuesday. A 20-year-old Estonian soldier was also killed.

The deaths bring this month’s total to 55, including a Marine killed in fighting in the volatile southern province of Helmand on Friday whose death was not announced until Monday night. That is still fewer than the 66 killed in July, the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.

Almost all of the recent coalition deaths have come in southern and eastern Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgency is most deeply entrenched and where fighting has been heaviest.

Those areas are also closest to the mountainous border with Pakistan, where insurgents maintain safe havens and training bases to instruct recruits, including foreign fighters, who are later infiltrated into Afghanistan.

NATO commanders have warned casualties will mount as coalition and Afghan forces enter areas under longtime Taliban control, particularly in the hard-line Islamic movement’s spiritual heartland of Kandahar province. The NATO force swelled this month to more than 140,000 — including 100,000 Americans — with the arrival of the last of the reinforcements that President Barack Obama ordered to Afghanistan in a bid to turn the tide of the nearly nine-year war.

Also Tuesday, NATO also said its forces, working with Afghan army and police, had killed 19 insurgents and captured five in a major air assault on the village of Omar in the eastern province of Kunar.

Ground forces taking part in the assault that began Monday uncovered insurgent fighting positions, along with weapons caches and ammunition stockpiles inside the village, it said.

The coalition also said it killed two insurgents and wounded a third in an airstrike Monday on a Taliban commander in charge of logistics in Kandahar, including the coordination of homemade bomb attacks.

A number of Taliban and allied Haqqani Network commanders were also detained in operations Monday, including one recently returned from teaching bomb-making techniques in Pakistan, NATO said.

In Zabul province bordering Kandahar, insurgents on Monday night ambushed a convoy carrying food and other supplies, killing two private security guards and wounding five others, provincial government spokesman Mohammad Jan Rasoolyar said.
12 U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan in 2 days

Afghanistan’s attorney general denied Sunday that a prosecutor investigating allegations of corruption in the upper reaches of the government had been fired, saying the official simply had reached the point when retirement was mandatory.

Atty. Gen. Mohammad Ishaq Aloko said during an interview in his Kabul office that prosecutor Fazel Ahmed Faqiryar stopped working Thursday in accordance with Afghan law after 40 years of service. The rules state that officials must step down if they are older than 65 or have served for four decades, he said.

The prosecutor was not forced out because of any conflict with President Hamid Karzai, Aloko said. Faqiryar’s claim Saturday that he had been fired “is absolutely groundless,” he said. “He wants to be admired by the public and the media. His retirement has no relation with corruption.”

Faqiryar’s exit from his post comes amid growing concern in Washington that billions in U.S. taxpayer money have been pocketed by Karzai’s inner circle. At the same time, some U.S. officials fear that pushing the shaky government too hard on corruption could undermine the wider war effort.

A senior State Department official said Sunday that the facts of the prosecutor’s case seemed unclear and that he was unaware whether anyone in the administration was raising the issue with the Karzai government. “We are watching this very closely,” he said.

Another U.S. official said an open fight with Karzai probably would make him more intransigent and complicate relations ahead of parliamentary elections and major military operations scheduled for the coming weeks. “It’s not worth the potential trouble over one prosecutor where the facts aren’t entirely clear,” the official said.

Both officials requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

In an interview Sunday in his modest Kabul apartment, Faqiryar disputed Aloko’s account, saying he was authorized to work past 65. Like many Afghans, he doesn’t know his exact birthday but says he’s about 72. He also said he had worked only 39 years and five months, not counting schooling and five years under Taliban rule when he was off the government clock.

The prosecutor, who was also deputy attorney general, said his relations with the Karzai administration turned sour last year when he briefed a closed-door session of parliament regarding about 25 corruption cases the attorney general’s office was working on, naming governors, ministers and ambassadors who were targets of investigation.

The attorney general quickly expressed his unhappiness with the move, Faqiryar said, “so from that time, our relations went bad.”

Faqiryar said this rather tense atmosphere carried on until he sent a midlevel prosecutor to speak about corruption on a television station this month. After that, he said, his retirement was fast-tracked.

Faqiryar said he’d watched legal cases involving powerful officials delayed, sidelined and dismissed or the parties ruled not guilty. “We can implement the law on poor people,” he said, “but not on rich and influential people.”

Analysts said the Karzai administration appeared to be following a strategy used by other rulers in South Asia of diverting state resources to secure personal loyalties.

“It’s not aimed at using government money to make a good society but, rather, to cement alliances,” said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a political science professor at Pakistan’s Lahore University of Management Sciences and the author of a book on war, ethnicity and governance in Afghanistan. “It’s a very heartbreaking story in Afghanistan.”

This month, Karzai stepped in to stop the prosecution of a close aide, Mohammed Zia Salehi, who according to investigators was heard on a wiretap demanding a bribe from another Afghan hoping to foil a corruption investigation.

The Salehi case was still under investigation, Aloko said Sunday, but there was no risk of his escaping since “he’s working in a high post.” He added that Salehi would remain free until his case was in the investigation process.

In many parts of the country, the government only recently has gained a foothold amid security concerns, Aloko added, and, although many lower-level officials have been prosecuted, cases involving ministers have not gone ahead since, under the constitution, they need to be tried in special courts, which have not yet been established.

“Corruption is greatly reduced compared with before,” he said. “Today, rule of law is revived, everyone fears the law and being prosecuted, and we have made progress.”

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mark.magnier@latimes.com

Times staff writer Magnier reported from New Delhi and special correspondent Yaqubi from Kabul. Times staff writers David S. Cloud and Paul Richter in Washington and special correspondent Hashmat Baktash in Kabul contributed to this report.

Prosecutor investigating Afghan corruption wasn’t fired, official says

If Marine Lance Cpl. Kevin Oratowski was intimidated about briefing three visiting generals as he headed out on another overnight patrol chasing the Taliban, he didn’t show it.

“We’re ready to go,” the 23-year-old from Camp Pendleton said brightly, his enthusiasm seemingly undimmed by the fact that he had spent most of the last 60 days in the heat, danger and uncertainty of Helmand province.

A few hours later, he was dead from a Taliban roadside bomb.

As the three generals watched the next day, Oratowski’s casket was loaded aboard a C-130 to begin its journey home. The cargo plane lumbered down a runway that didn’t exist just a few months ago and lifted heavily into the southern Afghanistan sky.

Next to the runway, earthmovers pushed mountains of gravel for other construction projects at the base here, projects to expand the “footprint” of the Marines as they settle in for a long battle for Helmand.

A year since the U.S. troop buildup in Afghanistan began with battalions of Marines descending on the Helmand River Valley, optimism about a quick defeat of the insurgents after early small-scale routs has given way to more sober assessments.

As the death toll steadily climbs, the top Marine warns that it could take as long as five years to defeat the Taliban and help the Afghan government establish a credible presence.

The massive assault in February on the Taliban-run town of Marja has not lived up to the U.S. prediction that it would prove a “tipping point” for the province. Two battalions of Marines are still assigned to protect Marja, but Taliban fighters spread messages of terror at night and plant bombs, killing Marines and villagers.

The provincial and national governments provide only a trickle of services. The vaunted “government-in-a-box,” a promise to establish a government in Marja as soon as the fighting stopped, was largely a flop.

“I think Stan McChrystal over-promised in regards to government-in-a-box,” Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway said, referring to the Army general who was then the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan.

Even as President Obama talks of beginning a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan next July, in Helmand, the talk is of “trend lines” and “metrics” rather than a quick knockdown.

In a series of meetings with Marines of all ranks, Conway said he expected Marines — whose numbers have doubled, to 20,000, in Helmand in the last 14 months — to be here until 2014 or 2015. Be prepared for a second or third tour, he said.

“We’re still going to have to convince these people who are fighting us that we are the strongest tribe,” Conway told several hundred Marines just minutes after the C-130 with Oratowski’s casket departed.

Conway and other senior officers say they remain confident of ultimate victory. It is a confidence born of the Marines’ experience in Iraq’s Anbar province, which in 2006 was branded as a lost cause by a Marine intelligence report but within two years was considered an example of the U.S. ability to defeat a ruthless insurgency.

“I’m an inveterate optimist,” Conway said in an interview at the end of his Helmand trip. “I found things better than I would have expected based on [media reports] and on intelligence I’ve been reading.”

The Western military has lately been touting the success of pinpoint special-operations raids targeting midlevel Taliban field commanders, particularly in the south.

NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said this week that coalition and Afghan troops had conducted thousands of raids that it said had fostered “a growing sense of distrust” among the Taliban, heightening the fear of spies in their midst.

The Taliban, of course, paints a much different picture. In a statement this week, spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi boasted of expanding influence in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, the insurgency’s spiritual home.

“Helmand is … a great example of the defeat of the enemy,” Ahmadi said in a statement posted on the movement’s website. “An example of this is the Marja operation, in which thousands of [Western] and Afghan soldiers took part. They made it sound as if World War III had started, but now they are ashamed to even mention the name of Marja, due to their disgraceful defeat.”

Marines in Afghanistan prepared for a long haul