April 6, 2008
McCain Is Vocal on War, but Silent on Son’s Service

By JODI KANTOR
One evening last July, Senator John McCain of Arizona arrived at the New Hampshire home of Erin Flanagan for sandwiches, chocolate-chip cookies and heartfelt talk about Iraq. They had met at a presidential debate, when she asked the candidates what they would do to bring home American soldiers — soldiers like her brother, who had been killed in action a few months earlier.

Mr. McCain did not bring cameras or a retinue. Instead, he brought his youngest son, James McCain, 19, then a private first class in the Marine Corps about to leave for Iraq. Father and son sat down to hear more about Ms. Flanagan’s brother Michael Cleary, a 24-year-old Army first lieutenant killed by an ambush and roadside bomb.

No one mentioned the obvious: in just days, Jimmy McCain could face similar perils. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like for them as they were coming to meet with a family that ...” Ms. Flanagan recalled, choking up. “We lost a dear one,” she finished.

Mr. McCain, now the presumptive Republican nominee, has staked his candidacy on the promise that American troops can bring stability to Iraq. What he almost never says is that one of them is his own son, who spent seven months patrolling Anbar Province and learned of his father’s New Hampshire victory in January while he was digging a stuck military vehicle out of the mud.

In his 71 years, Mr. McCain has confronted war as a pilot, a prisoner and a United States senator, but never before as a father. His son’s departure for Iraq brought him the same worry that every military parent feels, friends say, while the young marine’s experiences there have given him a sustained grunt’s-eye view of the action and private confirmation for his argument that United States strategy in Iraq is working.

While Jimmy McCain’s service is a story all his own — he enlisted at age 17 — it illuminates the beliefs about duty, honor and sacrifice with which family friends say he was raised. Military ideals have defined Mr. McCain as a person and a politician, and he is placing them at the core of his presidential candidacy. Last week, he campaigned at his former stations of duty, explaining how the lessons he learned there would guide his decisions as commander in chief.

“If I had ignored some of the less important conventions of the Academy,” as a demerit-prone midshipman, Mr. McCain said Wednesday at the United States Naval Academy, “I was careful not to defame its more compelling traditions: the veneration of courage and resilience; the honor code that simply assumed your fidelity to its principles; the homage paid to Americans who had sacrificed greatly for our country; the expectation that you, too, would prove worthy of your country’s trust.”

With both potential Democratic nominees in favor of withdrawal from Iraq, debate about the war — whether it is winnable, what would happen if the United States withdrew, how much loss the country can endure — is likely to be a dominant issue in the general election. Mr. McCain’s potential opponents are already implying that he is too willing to risk American lives, too committed to stretching an already unpopular war far into the future.

Out of the Public Eye

Mr. McCain has largely maintained a code of silence about his son, now a lance corporal, making only fleeting references to him in public both to protect him from becoming a prize target and avoid exploiting his service for political gain, according to friends. At the few campaign events where Lance Corporal McCain appeared last year, he was not introduced.

The McCains declined to be interviewed for this article, which the campaign requested not be published. “The McCain campaign objects strongly to this intrusion into the privacy of Senator McCain’s son,” Steve Schmidt, a campaign spokesman, said in a statement. “The children of presidential candidates in this election cycle should be afforded the same respect for their privacy that the children of President Bush and President and Senator Clinton have been afforded.” (To protect Lance Corporal McCain in case he is again deployed to a war zone, The New York Times is not publishing recent photographs of him and has withheld some details of his service).

Born in 1988, the third of John and Cindy McCain’s children, Jimmy inherited his father’s features and slight build, outrageous humor and family tradition of military service that stretches back to the Revolutionary War. His grandfather and great-grandfather were the first parent and son to achieve four-star admiral status in Naval history.

Then there was his father’s ever-growing legend. A hell-raising Navy pilot, John McCain relied on a defiant streak to survive nearly six brutal years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. As Jimmy grew up, his father, first a congressman and then a senator, was always dashing off to speak at military events — a dedication here, a graduation there. Mr. McCain’s reputation was burnished with his memoir, “Faith of My Fathers,” and its adaptation into a television movie.

Two of Jimmy’s three older brothers went into the military. Doug McCain, 48, was a Navy pilot. Jack McCain, 21, is to graduate from the Naval Academy next year, raising the chances that his father, if elected, could become the first president since Dwight D. Eisenhower with a son at war.

The McCain children were not force-fed tales of their father’s bravery, said Orson Swindle, who was imprisoned in Vietnam with Mr. McCain. But “if you’re a man in the public eye, it’s hard for them not to know about it,” Mr. Swindle said in an interview.

Early Ambition

By the time Jimmy was in high school, he was scouting war memorabilia on eBay and playing video games like “Battlefield 1942,” classmates said. He chose sports that simulated combat, like fencing and paintball, and his prized possession was a World War II Army hat.

At Culver Academy, a military-style boarding school in Indiana, he and his friend Nick Moore would fire up “Apocalypse Now” or “Platoon” on a laptop — critiques of war, but never mind — turn the sound down and talk about serving. “The testosterone was flying,” Mr. Moore said in an interview. “He’d say, ‘I’m just going to go in there guns blazing!’ ”

Jimmy wanted to attend the Naval Academy, he told Mr. Moore, and then learn to fly. But how he would get there was uncertain. In interviews, classmates and teachers described him as the kind of kid who contributed impressive thoughts to classroom discussions but did not always turn in assignments, who was always collecting demerits for minor offenses like smoking — descriptions that echo those of his father at the same age. He left Culver after his sophomore year, making it the second school he passed through in two years.

Sometime in the next year, Jimmy enlisted in the Marine Corps. He only called his parents to tell them afterward, according to Lance Cpl. Casey Gardiner, a friend from boot camp. Iraq was tilting toward civil war, with blasts of improvised explosive devices at their highest levels yet. Jimmy McCain was 17, so young that Cindy McCain had to sign consent forms for his medical tests before he could report for duty, according to Gunnery Sgt. Edward Carter, a recruiter in Phoenix who handed her the papers.

By enlisting in the Marines, Jimmy seemed to be giving up his birthright. The Navy is, by reputation, the most aristocratic of the armed forces, the McCains among its most storied families. Now he would hold the lowest rank in a branch known for its grittiness. “The first time I heard he was going to be in the company, I couldn’t believe it,” said First Lt. Sam Bowlby, one of Lance Corporal McCain’s officers in Iraq.

“He didn’t want to be in the shadow of his father,” Lance Corporal Gardiner said.

But the new marine was fulfilling his father’s legacy in at least one way. John McCain had become a hero not for the missions he had flown or the men he had led, but for the privileges he had refused and the hardships he had endured. The North Vietnamese wanted to free Mr. McCain ahead of other captives because he was the son of a Navy admiral and Pacific commander. Mr. McCain refused. Now his son was carving a humble new path that the father, academy-bound since birth, never had.

Jimmy began boot camp on Sept. 11, 2006. He took extra abuse for his last name, said Lance Cpl. Gregory Aalto, a member of his training platoon. Recruits are not even allowed their own eyeglasses, so Jimmy had to wear the standard-issue Marine ones, so unappealing they are known as “birth-control goggles.”

As he completed his training and prepared for deployment, other marines caught only occasional glimpses of his family’s celebrity and wealth, such as when he handed out extra tickets for a Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Oscar De La Hoya boxing match he was attending with his father in Las Vegas. If anyone asked about his family, he had a sarcastic joke at the ready. When a cluster of marines asked how they could help his father’s campaign, Lance Corporal McCain pretended to call him and then passed on a message: they could carry out the contracts the senator had taken out on his rivals’ lives.

“Jimmy was just completely joking,” said Lance Cpl. Johnathan Pebley. “You can kind of tell he doesn’t want to talk about it.”

In July, days from deployment, Lance Corporal McCain, newly engaged to be married, joined his father’s struggling campaign in New Hampshire. He visited the Flanagans and sat unrecognized at campaign events.

At the last stop, a veteran asked for a round of applause for the candidate’s brave Marine son. He did not seem to know that Jimmy McCain was sitting just a few seats away. Almost no one did.

As Father of a Marine

Mr. McCain did not speak publicly about whatever anxiety he may have felt about his son’s deployment, but Mr. Swindle described the experience as difficult. “Anybody who tells you it’s not tough is not being straightforward with you,” he said.

Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, whose son served two tours in Iraq, said he and Mr. McCain privately traded their concerns. “We talked about how it affects the young men over there,” Mr. Bond said. “He’s basically a father, very anxious about what his son’s going to be doing.”

Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California, a former presidential contender whose son was serving in Afghanistan, said he and Mr. McCain would update each other at debates. “He knows what his father and grandfather went through as his sons went off to war,” Mr. Hunter said. “So he’s got a model to follow.”

Indeed, John McCain’s own parents were dressing for a dinner party in London when they learned he had been shot down. They went anyway, never telling other guests. Later, Admiral McCain ordered air strikes on Hanoi, where he knew his son was imprisoned.

Just before Jimmy’s departure, Mrs. McCain decided she had to see him one final time, according to Lieutenant Bowlby. With a few well-placed phone calls, she won permission to visit the Air Force base from which his unit would depart. When Lance Corporal McCain found out, he protested. No special favors, he said. Mrs. McCain stayed away.

“God forbid someone gave him something the rest of the marines weren’t entitled to,” Lieutenant Bowlby said.

Lance Corporal McCain and his fellow riflemen had trained for the worst in the spring of 2007, using paintball guns rigged as M-16s to apprehend costume-clad “insurgents” in fake Iraqi villages.

In the real Iraq, they saw little combat. “We were expecting to get shot at all the time,” said Lance Cpl. Justin Murdock, 20. “But 95 percent of the time, nothing was going on.”

The marines were stationed in Anbar Province, where some of the war’s bloodiest battles had been fought. But the fighting had moved on to other areas, and Lance Corporal McCain’s company mostly did security work, which meant keeping an unceasing eye on the locals, poor Sunnis who grew rice and other crops on small plots.

Lance Corporal McCain’s unit performed “soft knocks” — visits to Iraqi homes intended as reassurance as well as surveillance, said Lance Cpl. Jason Case. His platoon hunted for weapons caches and I.E.D.’s, but also distributed school supplies and candy. Relying on interpreters and the bits of Arabic they all seemed to pick up, the 19- and 20-year-old grunts taught Iraqi police officers how to hold and clean weapons, search vehicles and conduct patrols.

The hardest part, said several marines, was enduring tedium while remaining braced for mayhem. There were physical deprivations, too — searing heat, heavy gear, long hours and minimal sleep.

Fifteen marines with whom Lance Corporal McCain trained or served were interviewed for this article, and all praised his performance. He “was just always a hardworking kid,” Lieutenant Bowlby said. “He never bitched about anything,” he said, and always seemed to be laughing. “The humility of him, that’s what blew me away,” he continued.

For much of his tour, Jimmy McCain was cut off from political news. The rented Iraqi home where his platoon bunked did not have Internet service, and the 30-odd men shared one satellite phone with a shaky signal. Some news arrived via word-of-mouth, like the senator’s New Hampshire victory (Mr. McCain recounted the story at a recent Manhattan fund-raiser). Lance Corporal McCain did see his father once. On Thanksgiving, Mr. McCain visited Camp Habbaniya with Senate colleagues, and the two shared the holiday meal in the chow hall, according to several people present. Mr. McCain asked other marines if they saw security improving and seemed heartened when they told him they did.

Lance Corporal McCain and his unit returned home in February. For his father, who believed that United States strategy in Iraq was working, his son’s tour corresponded well. The company had not lost any men, though three from the battalion had died. It had arrived in a stable area and things had only improved from there. “In my seven months there, you would see drastic changes in Iraq,” Lance Cpl. Greg Jumes said.

Lieutenant Bowlby echoed his comments, as did every marine interviewed. “There were some hairy moments, but compared to the past couple of years, it’s 180 degrees,” he said, comparing his first tour in Iraq with his second.

Mixed Events

Two days after Lance Corporal McCain arrived back in the United States, his father shared his account of the war with Republican congressmen. In a private meeting on Capitol Hill, Mr. McCain mentioned the decline in I.E.D.’s that his son witnessed, the soccer balls he gave to Iraqi children. Mr. McCain’s audience responded with a standing ovation, according to a report published by CNN and confirmed by several aides who were present.

In recent weeks, the news from Iraq has been less encouraging. The cease-fire between the leading Shiite militia and American and Iraqi security forces, which overlapped with Lance Corporal McCain’s tour, has frayed. Bombings and sectarian killings have increased. Days after the fifth anniversary of the war’s start, the death toll of American troops crossed the 4,000 mark.

As Mr. McCain enters the general election, some say that his son’s service will underscore the sincerity of his stance on the war. “He has, to use a gambler’s term, skin in the game,” said Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator and longtime friend of Mr. McCain. “It’s among the most important things that people want to know about John McCain in trying to decide whether or not to trust him.”

Last month, Mrs. McCain made a similar argument at a campaign event in Houston. “I want him to represent my son at 3 o’clock in the morning,” she said of her husband, referring to an advertisement for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York that boasts of her national security credentials. She wore a blue-star pin, the mark of an American with a family member at war.

Her son is back at Camp Pendleton, where he is using the Jeep he just bought to ferry other marines to the beach. Lately he has been teased about a McCain presidency, according to Lance Cpl. Matt Drake, another company member. “Will we have to go patrolling with Secret Service?” they ask.

“Shut up,” Lance Corporal McCain tells them good-naturedly.

Kitty Bennett contributed research for this report.

April 6, 2008
Iran’s Blogs Test Political Limits

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Troll through the Iranian blogosphere and you can find all manner of unexpectedly harsh critiques denouncing the government of the Islamic Republic, from both reformists who revile it and conservative supporters.

One conservative blogger deplored the rampant inflation undermining the middle class, saying it forced girls into prostitution to support their families. Others identified themselves as fans of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, yet they condemned government corruption and what they called arbitrary arrests. A fourth declared that government statistics were a lot of nonsense.

What gets filtered out is not entirely predictable either. Even some religious topics are deemed unacceptable. The government blocked the site of a blogger advocating the Shiite Muslim custom of temporary marriage, which is legal and considered a way for the young to relieve their sexual frustration without breaking religious laws.

Over all, a new study by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School shows that Iran’s blogosphere mirrors the erratic, fickle and often startling qualities of life in the Islamic republic itself. The rules of what is permissible fluctuate with maddening imprecision, so people test the limits.

Like women who inch their head scarves back to see how much hair they can show or people who flout the ban on alcohol by drinking at home, bloggers seem to be testing just how far they can push. And, like Iran’s other rule breakers, some pay a price.

In 2004, according to Human Rights Watch, 21 bloggers or people who worked at Internet news sites critical of the government were arrested, and some of them were tortured. Periodic arrests since then have ended with jail terms.

The study, conducted over the last year by the Berkman Center, was financed by the State Department and is part of a larger and longer project on the impact new communications media are having on democracy and democratization in several countries. The research being released Sunday documents what types of blogs are being posted in Iran.

Researchers used computer software to analyze more than 6,000 blogs by subject matter to get a general sense of what issues Iranians were discussing; then the team, which included Persian-speaking students, read more than 500 of the postings.

To build a fuller picture of the Iranian blogosphere, the researchers also used the results of a parallel study that documents what blogs were being blocked by the authorities in 60 countries, including Iran. That study is also being done at the Berkman Center in collaboration with universities in Canada and Britain.

The researchers’ general conclusion was that, “despite periodic persecution,” many Iranians are able to use blogs to express “viewpoints challenging the ruling ideology of the Islamic Republic.”

The study found, for instance, that fewer than a quarter of blogs pushing for change, including those written by expatriates, were blocked. In addition, conservatives of all stripes maintain a lively debate about President Ahmadinejad.

“Arguing about stuff, arguing about public affairs, is taking root in the blogosphere on the conservative side, on the reformist side, all over,” said John Kelly, the founder of Morningside Analytics, a New York company that took part in the study and created the software that helped researchers group blogs together by subject and social networks.

“We don’t know if the government is not trying or not able to block as much as we thought,” said Mr. Kelly, who wrote the study with Bruce Etling, the director of the project at Berkman. “They may allow a certain amount of online discourse to be there because it seems to underline the legitimacy of the system.”

Political groups bash each other with gusto from both sides of the political divide. One conservative blogger mocked reformists for pretending to care about economic matters. “The nature of the reformists is actually extremism,” wrote a blogger under the name Shahrahedalat or the Highway of Justice, adding that the Iranian people would not be deceived.

Reformist supporters give back as good as they get. Even if supporting reformist politicians is nearly futile, wrote a blogger under the name Inharfha or These Talks, it is “much better that sitting back and watching how our country is being taken back to the ruins of Medieval times.”

Iran seems to handpick which blogs it blocks, but researchers admit that Iran’s filtering policy and techniques remain opaque.

“Our sense is that the government in Iran doesn’t see the blogosphere as bad as a whole,” Mr. Kelly said, noting that Iranian exiles have alleged that the government organizes and pays bloggers to put out the party line. “What they are trying to do is to promote more young religious voices, to pile as many conservatives into the network as they can.”

Researchers said many of the religious sites they found used the same artwork and linked to one another. During last month’s parliamentary elections, for example, many religious blogs displayed a banner encouraging Iranians to vote and a picture of President Ahmadinejad.

Blocked blogs discussed topics as varied as erotic poetry and computer coding. The blog of an Iranian woman who wrote about the joys of working in a relaxed, nonsegregated environment with men was blocked, as was that of a poet who used curse words.

The map of the Iranian blogosphere that the Internet and Democracy Project produced (available Sunday at cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2008/Mapping_Irans_Online_Public) resembles the night sky, with each dot representing one blog and the main constellations indicating groups of blogs that share common interests and attitudes.

Sprays of yellow and green represent secular/reformist blogs. More women and expatriates appear here than anywhere else. The points colored red, turquoise and orange show all the blogs on the religious/conservative pole.

The study found that the next largest group of bloggers, hundreds of them, concentrated on romantic poetry. So many blogging bards might be uncommon in many other countries, but in Iran it is simply a reflection of a culture that so reveres poetry, where many children grow up dreaming of becoming great poets in the way many young Americans dream of a future in sports.

The mapping program assigns each dot its place through factors including lists of words that it checks for and that indicate the likely focus of the blog: reformist, conservative or other.

For example, Masoud Dehnamaki is a conservative who helped found the Basiji, a hard-core group notorious for its bloody attacks against antigovernment demonstrators. In recent years he has become a documentary filmmaker, focusing on social problems like prostitution.

The large dot representing his blog sits almost at the middle of the map, indicating that it is popular among both conservatives and reformists. The dot representing the Web site of former President Mohammad Khatami, a moderate leader, sits to his left, deeper into the reformist field.

Mehrangiz Kar, an Iranian dissident in Boston who is aware of the project but not directly involved, said that over the long run the blogosphere would bring change within certain limits.

Bloggers are not permitted to criticize the Islamic system itself, Ms. Kar said, but they are far freer than writers for newspapers or other news media.

“These Web logs are very effective,” she said. “They create conversation. Not just about elections or democracy, but about cinema, theater, arts, literature. These fields are very important for changing that society.”

April 6, 2008
Army Worried by Rising Stress of Return Tours to Iraq

By THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON — Army leaders are expressing increased alarm about the mental health of soldiers who would be sent back to the front again and again under plans that call for troop numbers to be sustained at high levels in Iraq for this year and beyond.

Among combat troops sent to Iraq for the third or fourth time, more than one in four show signs of anxiety, depression or acute stress, according to an official Army survey of soldiers’ mental health.

The stress of long and multiple deployments to Iraq is just one of the concerns being voiced by senior military officers in Washington as Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior Iraq commander, prepares to tell Congress this week that he is not ready to endorse any drawdowns beyond those already scheduled through July.

President Bush has signaled that he will endorse General Petraeus’s recommendation, a decision that will leave close to 140,000 American troops in Iraq at least through the summer. But in a meeting with Mr. Bush late last month in advance of General Petraeus’s testimony, the Joint Chiefs of Staff expressed deep concern about stress on the force, senior Defense Department and military officials said.

Among the 513,000 active-duty soldiers who have served in Iraq since the invasion of 2003, more than 197,000 have deployed more than once, and more than 53,000 have deployed three or more times, according to a separate set of statistics provided this week by Army personnel officers. The percentage of troops sent back to Iraq for repeat deployments would have to increase in the months ahead.

The Army study of mental health showed that 27 percent of noncommissioned officers — a critically important group — on their third or fourth tour exhibited symptoms commonly referred to as post-traumatic stress disorders. That figure is far higher than the roughly 12 percent who exhibit those symptoms after one tour and the 18.5 percent who develop the disorders after a second deployment, according to the study, which was conducted by the Army surgeon general’s Mental Health Advisory Team.

The Army and the rest of the service chiefs have endorsed General Petraeus’s recommendations for continued high troop levels in Iraq. But Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, and their top deputies also have warned that the war in Iraq should not be permitted to inflict an unacceptable toll on the military as a whole. “Our readiness is being consumed as fast as we build it,” Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army vice chief of staff, said in stark comments delivered to Congress last week. “Lengthy and repeated deployments with insufficient recovery time have placed incredible stress on our soldiers and our families, testing the resolve of our all-volunteer force like never before.”

Beyond the Army, members of the Joint Chiefs have also told the president that the continued troop commitment to Iraq means that there is a significant level of risk should another crisis erupt elsewhere in the world. Any mission could be carried out successfully, the chiefs believe, but the operation would be slower, longer and costlier in lives and equipment than if the armed forces were not so strained.

Under the drawdown already planned, the departure of five combat brigades from Iraq by July should allow the Army to announce that tours will be shortened to 12 months from 15 by the end of summer.

Even so, senior officers warn that time at home must be increased from the current 12 months between combat tours. Otherwise, they say, the ground forces risk an unacceptable level of retirements of sergeants — the key leaders of the small-unit operations — and of experienced captains, who represent the future of the Army’s officer corps.

The mental health study conducted by the Army was carried out in Iraq last October and November, and does not represent a purely scientific sampling of deployed troops, because that is difficult to accomplish in a combat environment, the authors of the study have said. Instead, the study was based on 2,295 anonymous surveys and additional interviews from members of frontline units in combat brigades, and not from those assigned primarily to safer operating bases. Since the study was distributed last month, it has become a central topic of high-level internal discussions within the Army, and its findings have been accepted by Army leaders, senior Pentagon and military officials say.

The survey found that the proportion of soldiers serving in Iraq who had encountered mental health problems was about the same as found in previous studies — about 18 percent of deployed soldiers. But in analyzing the effect of the war on those with previous duty in Iraq, the study found that “soldiers on multiple deployments report low morale, more mental health problems and more stress-related work problems.”

By the time they are on their third or fourth deployments, soldiers “are at particular risk of reporting mental health problems,” the study found.

The range of symptoms reported by soldiers varies widely, from sleeplessness and anxiety to more severe depression and stress. To assist soldiers facing problems, the Army has begun to hire more civilian mental health professionals while directing Army counselors to spend more time with frontline units.

Senior officers at the Pentagon have tried to avoid shrill warnings about the health of the force, cognizant that such comments might embolden potential adversaries, and they continue to hope that troop levels in Iraq can be reduced next year. Still, none deny the level of stress on the force from current deployments.

Admiral Mullen spoke broadly to those concerns last week, saying at a Pentagon news conference that the military would have already assigned forces to missions elsewhere in the world were it not for what he called “the pressure that’s on our forces right now.”

He added that the military would “continue to be there until, should conditions allow, we start to be able to reduce our force levels in Iraq.”

One example of the pressure has come in Afghanistan, where the Pentagon has been unable to meet all of the commanders’ requests for more forces, in particular for several thousand military trainers.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters on Friday that he expected that the United States would be able to add significantly to its deployments in Afghanistan in 2009. But to do that — and to increase time at home for soldiers between deployments — probably would require further reductions in troop levels in Iraq, Pentagon planners said.

Members of the Joint Chiefs also acknowledge that the deployments to Iraq, with the emphasis on counterinsurgency warfare, have left the ground forces no time to train for the full range of missions required to defend American interests.

"The emergence of the powerful military bloc at our borders will be seen as a direct threat to Russia's security," Putin said. "I heard them saying today that the expansion is not directed against Russia. But it's the potential, not intentions that matters."

Putin Rules Out New Cold War

Apr 4 10:26 AM US/Eastern
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
Associated Press Writer

Putin Speaks to NATO Leaders As Summit Ends

Bush Wins NATO Nod on Missile Defense

Putin says U.S. listening to missile shield concerns

Putin Scores Big Win in Bucharest

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin strongly criticized NATO's eastward expansion plans Friday but ruled out chances of a new Cold War, insisting that Moscow wants to be friends with the Western military alliance.
Putin, attending a meeting with NATO leaders on the sidelines of a summit in the Romanian capital, urged them to listen to Russia's concerns—especially over NATO's plans to admit ex-Soviet republics Ukraine and Georgia.

"Let's be friends, guys, and engage in an honest dialogue," Putin said.

Putin, who had been harshly critical of NATO in the past, sought to emphasize positive elements in Russia's NATO ties, such as Russia's agreement to facilitate transit of supplies for NATO forces in Afghanistan across Russian territory. He shrugged off concerns that the world is sliding toward a new East-West divide.

"None of the global players—Europe, the United States or Russia—is interested in returning to the past," Putin said. "And we have no ideological differences."

But he also warned the alliance cannot enhance security on the continent without Russia.

"The emergence of the powerful military bloc at our borders will be seen as a direct threat to Russia's security," Putin said. "I heard them saying today that the expansion is not directed against Russia. But it's the potential, not intentions that matters."

"The efficiency of our cooperation will depend on whether NATO members take Russia's interests into account," he added. "We want to be heard, and we want see problems that divide us solved."

NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer characterized Friday's talks with Putin as "frank and open," although he conceded there were no major breakthroughs.

"It would be wrong to describe it as a clash of views," de Hoop Scheffer said.

But he conceded: "It is true that NATO enlargement is a contentious issue. The minds do not exactly meet, to put it mildly."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel described Russia as a "partner," and said that meetings like Friday's "can help avoid misunderstandings and reservations."

"NATO is not directed against anybody, certainly not against Russia," she said.

Putin's meeting with NATO leaders came a day after the alliance failed to grant membership plans to ex-Soviet Georgia and Ukraine. Despite strong U.S. backing to bring them in, Germany, France and some other alliance members opposed the move, fearing it would provoke Moscow.

De Hoop Scheffer reassured Ukraine and Georgia on Friday that there was "not a sliver of a doubt" the two countries would join the alliance before long.

He also told reporters the Western military alliance will help Ukraine in any way it can to make reforms.

"These countries will become members of NATO—there can be no misunderstanding about that," de Hoop Scheffer said.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said his country understands the challenges that delayed its bid and remains devoted to democratic and European values. He said he was confident that Ukraine would get a formal "membership action plan" at a December meeting of NATO foreign ministers.

But Putin reaffirmed his strong opposition to NATO's eastward expansion.

He also criticized NATO nations for failing to ratify an amended version of the Cold War-era Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, which limits the deployment of aircraft, tanks and other heavy weapons on the continent. Russia last fall suspended its participation in the treaty, saying its old version became meaningless when nations in the former Soviet orbit joined NATO.

Putin said Russia wants to preserve the treaty, but that the West must ratify the new version signed in 1999. He dismissed NATO's claim that Russia needs to withdraw its troops from Georgia and Moldova, saying there is no link between the issues.

Putin, however, avoided the harsh language he used at a security conference in Munich, Germany, last year.

"I don't know where this horror in expectation of my speeches came from," he said, hailing a "sincere and constructive" dialogue at the meeting.

Putin also praised Washington for trying to assuage Russia's concerns about its U.S. missile defense plans, an apparent attempt to set a positive tone ahead of his talks with President Bush over the weekend.

Bush and Putin will meet at the Russian leader's Black Sea retreat in Sochi for talks expected to focus on missile defense.

"It's positive that they have heard our concerns," Putin said, adding that the latest U.S. proposals on missile defense has shown that "our U.S. partners are thinking about ensuring transparency and mutual trust."

Putin has described the U.S. missile shield as a threat to Russia's nuclear deterrent and has shrugged off U.S. pledges that it is intended to counter a missile threat from Iran.

___

Associated Press Writers William J. Kole, Paul Ames and Claudia Kemmer contributed to this report.

Chasing the American Dream with $25

By Evan Sparks
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Filed under: Book Reviews

A fascinating new memoir challenges the notion that only dramatic government intervention can rescue the working poor.

How’s this for a crazy idea: a guy moves to a randomly selected city with $25 and plans to have a place to live, a car, and $2,500 in the bank—all within one year. Adam Shepard performed this exact feat and then wrote a book about it, titled Scratch Beginnings (SB Press, 240 pp, $13.95). According to Shepard, his experience proves that the American dream can come true.

In college, Shepard read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, which argues that only government intervention can rescue the working poor from what Ehrenreich portrays as a desperate plight. Shepard doubted her thesis and wanted to test it. So after graduating, he went to Charleston, South Carolina, with a sleeping bag, a change of clothes, $25, and a made-up tale of woe. He spent the first two months in a homeless shelter while he worked as a day laborer. He later found a permanent position with a moving company, which gave him a stable income. This allowed Shepard to buy a (very) used pickup truck, rent and furnish an apartment with a coworker, and start saving.

During this time, he was on a strict budget, buying clothes at Goodwill and lunching on peanut butter crackers and Vienna sausages. After ten months, he left Charleston due to an illness in his family. By that point, he had saved over $5,000. Along the way, he had met dozens of marginal citizens whose lives he found relentlessly fascinating.

Self-published earlier this year, Scratch Beginnings quickly climbed the charts on Amazon.com. Besides being a compelling story, it is a breezy read. Shepard excels at scene setting and description. Even readers who have never sweated through a Southern summer will feel the perspiration when he writes about manual outdoor labor in July. He also does a superb job of capturing regional accents and patois.

Shepard is an eternal optimist. But just when you worry that his tone is getting too Pollyannaish, he relates a sobering anecdote, such as the time a friend succumbed to the lure of drugs or the time Shepard broke his toe during a move and lost valuable work time. There’s also wry humor. Describing his neighbors, he writes that they are “Wal-Mart employees, welders, electricians, landscapers, people with their own car-detailing businesses—lots of people with their own car-detailing businesses.”

As the book shows, overcoming a harsh economic situation is really all about culture.
Scratch Beginnings is a book with an agenda: to disprove Ehrenreich’s argument about endemic poverty. In a recent interview, Shepard explained the differences between his approach and Ehrenreich’s: “She wrote about how tough and depressing poverty is. Really? Tough and depressing? Of course it is! I wanted to believe that there were people living in these tumultuous circumstances who weren’t living the life of cyclical misery that Ehrenreich was writing about,” he said. “The economics side of Ehrenreich’s story didn’t make sense to me from the beginning and she never proved her point. To me, anyway. She lived in a hotel, ate out, didn’t look for ways to really save money.”

In short, “She postured to fail, and she did. I postured to succeed, and I did.”

Critics have dismissed Shepard’s claims by pointing to the fact that he enjoyed an array of government services, from food stamps to bus rides to homeless services. But everyone Shepard encountered at the shelter and in the bad neighborhood he later lived in was already using the same services. It wasn’t the public services that lifted Shepard out of destitution—it was his own initiative. Indeed, if spending money on government services were the best way to cure poverty, it would no longer be a problem.

As the book shows, overcoming a harsh economic situation is really all about culture. Someone born and raised in a culture of dependency, failure, and dereliction will find it much more difficult to lift himself out of poverty than Shepard did. To be sure, Shepard denied himself his connections, his college degree, and his credit history when he went to Charleston. But he could not deny himself the behavioral and cultural instincts instilled throughout his life. Those instincts are what carried him through to success.

Meanwhile, the lack of those instincts hurt many of the people around him. Shepard offers repeated examples of friends who were paralyzed by their own destructive behavior. For example, his roommate, BG, was a half-hearted worker who would “borrow” Shepard’s car for hours at a time and then lie about where he was going. Rather than saving money, he would spend his earnings on booze, women, lottery tickets, and fast food. As Shepard left Charleston, he worried about BG: “Fifty dollars at a time, he had nearly emptied the account he had been keeping with [his brother] and was back to squeaking by, paycheck to paycheck.”

Ultimately, Shepard came away with the realization that “we are the product of our surroundings—our families, our peers, and our environment.” Fortunately, there is hope for those truly devoted to self-improvement. Of his main coworker, Derrick Hale, Shepard writes: “I knew that Derrick’s future was bright. I didn’t have to see his beautiful house or his whopping bank account to know that. He had that killer instinct, the hardworking aura emitting from him that showed that he was ready to meet, head-on, any challenge that stood in his way.”

When Shepard last sees Hale, they are at a housewarming party. Hale, who once spent two years in prison, had turned his life around, stayed faithful to his wife and daughter, worked hard, saved his money, bought a home, and tapped into the American dream. As his story shows, the United States offers far more to the working poor than mere nickels and dimes.

Evan Sparks is an editorial assistant at the American Enterprise Institute.