Afghans relieved at choice of Gen. Petraeus
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan officials expressed relief at the choice of Gen. David Petraeus to replace Gen. Stanley McChrystal as the top U.S. and NATO commander, believing the U.S. strategy aimed at minimizing civilian casualties and bolstering the Afghan government would continue.
Afghans had warned that the dismissal of McChrystal would disrupt progress in the war and jeopardize a pivotal security operation under way in Taliban strongholds in the south.
After President Barack Obama announced the selection of Petraeus, Afghan authorities said Wednesday they were relieved because the veteran war commander helped craft the counterinsurgency strategy being implemented in Afghanistan.
President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman, Waheed Omar, said the Afghan leader was informed of the change in leadership before the public announcement and that he was happy with the selection, despite his respect for McChrystal.
“He respects Gen. McChrystal but he also respects Gen. Petraeus,” Omar said. “He believes Gen. Petraeus knows Afghanistan.”
Omar described McChrystal as a “a fine soldier” and partner for the Afghan people “but we believe Gen. Petraeus will also be a trusted partner.”
Omar said Karzai believes the U.S. and Afghanistan “are in a very sensitive juncture” and that any disruption “will not be helpful.”
Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi also publicly voiced his support for McChrystal, but also for Petraeus.
“Since Gen. McChrystal took over the job as commander of the international forces, there have been a lot of changes in different departments, which are very important and positive,” Azimi said. “For example, there has been a decrease in the numbers of civilian casualties and we’re still working jointly with McChrystal to decrease it further.”
Until Petraeus is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, British Lt. Gen. Nick Parker, the deputy commander of the NATO-led forces, is assuming command of the troops, according to British Prime Minister David Cameron.
In a statement, the British prime minister’s office said Cameron had spoken to Parker on Wednesday and the general had told him that the mission in Afghanistan “would not miss a beat” during this period.
McChrystal was replaced after being summoned to Washington to explain disparaging comments published in Rolling Stone magazine that he and his top aides made about President Barack Obama and his national security team.
The remarks, which revealed divisions among U.S. officials over the war strategy, came amid rising violence. June has become the deadliest month of the nearly 9-year-old war.
In a statement issued in Kabul, McChrystal said he tendered his resignation out of a desire to see the mission in Afghanistan succeed.
“I strongly support the president’s strategy in Afghanistan and am deeply committed to our coalition forces, our partner nations and the Afghan people,” McChrystal said in the statement, released just minutes after Obama announced that he was being replaced. “It was out of respect for this commitment — and a desire to see the mission succeed — that I tendered my resignation.”
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said McChrystal should have resigned because his strategy had “clearly failed.”
“The problems between American leaders over Afghan issues very clearly show that the policy and the strategy of America has failed,” he said. “They cannot win this war because the Afghan nation is united and they are committed to defeating American forces in Afghanistan.”
The flap over McChrystal comes as NATO and Afghan forces are ramping up security in and around the key southern city of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban.
Before Petraeus’ appointment was announced, Karzai’s younger half brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, the head of the Kandahar provincial council, gave McChrystal a ringing endorsement, telling reporters that McChrystal’s leadership would be sorely missed.
“If he is fired, it will disrupt the operation,” Ahmad Wali Karzai said. “It definitely will affect it. He (McChrystal) started all this, and he has a good relationship with the people. The people trust him and we trust him. If we lose this important person, I don’t think that this operation will work in a positive way.”
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Jamaican kingpin’s reign comes to a quiet end
KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Christopher “Dudus” Coke was born into gang royalty, running a smuggling operation that supplied drugs up and down the U.S. East Coast. He used the proceeds to cast himself as a Jamaican Robin Hood, and his power grew to rival that of the prime minister.
That reign was at an end Wednesday, with Coke behind bars at a secret location and facing almost certain extradition to the U.S.
The threat of extradition sparked a week of violence in May that killed 76 people, but his capture after a monthlong manhunt was surprisingly peaceful: He was arrested at a police checkpoint while wearing a wig in a preacher’s car outside the capital.
In some ways, it was a fitting end since Coke was known as a low-key kingpin — more Godfather than Scarface — who quietly exercised his power over the most notorious Jamaican slum.
“He was perfectly calm,” Leslie Green, an assistant police commissioner, said of the arrest late Tuesday on the Mandela Highway outside Kingston. It was the reaction of a “professional and calculated” criminal, he added.
Now, much of Jamaica is on edge as people wait to see if Coke’s many supporters in the slums of West Kingston will also remain calm with the loss of a 42-year-old leader credited with providing better services than the government.
Coke is due to make his first court appearance by Thursday as proceedings begin for his extradition to New York, where he faces drug and weapons charges and the prospect of a possible life sentence if convicted.
His father, famed gang leader Jim Brown, died in a 1992 prison fire in Jamaica while awaiting extradition to the U.S. on drug charges. Coke then became the head of the Shower Posse, a name that by some accounts came from the gang’s practice of “showering” its enemies with bullets.
By all accounts, the son was a sharp contrast from his mercurial father, but he nevertheless took his inherited role to new heights.
U.S. authorities who began investigating Coke’s role in cocaine and marijuana shipments to New York and Florida in the 1990s allege he gave out cash and weapons to solidify his authority among gangs in Kingston and beyond.
He also spread his riches around the slums. In blighted downtown areas with hardly any government presence, he was credited with enforcing public order and helping families with nowhere else to turn for medical bills and other needs.
All who met the strongman inside his Tivoli Gardens base described him as a low-key, self-possessed man without the flash of other dons.
“He was extremely articulate, very bright, the kind of man who people in Jamaica would describe as cool and calculating,” said Bishop Herro Blair, who spoke privately with Coke at the behest of Prime Minister Bruce Golding shortly before the outbreak of last month’s violence. “He spoke in a calm, easy tone of voice, and at the time was carefully weighing all his options.”
Behind Coke’s desk was a framed message that read, “Jesus loves me,” and scripture verse could be seen elsewhere in the modest office, Blair said.
The one known passion of the man who organized huge street parties inside Tivoli Gardens is for dance — especially the Gully Creeper made famous by Usain Bolt at the Beijing Olympics. A former teacher told local media once that Coke had been a model student, a math whiz, said Annie Paul, a cultural critic in Kingston who has researched the island’s gang culture.
Coke apparently possessed remarkable leadership abilities since he was able to unify the country’s gang leaders, said Paul, editor of the journal Social and Economic Studies.
“There are a few little things that suggest he wasn’t your normal, flashy hard-drinking don,” she said. “I hesitate to just dismiss Dudus as a common criminal.”
In a country where gangs have long benefited from ties with political parties, Coke built his reputation inside a barricaded neighborhood that is a stronghold of the governing Jamaica Labor Party and represented in parliament by Golding — who stonewalled the U.S. extradition request for nine months. Political opponents said Golding’s dithering in the case suggested Coke was more powerful than Golding.
The violence flared last month after Golding dropped his opposition to Coke’s extradition, which had strained relations to the United States and put his political career in jeopardy at home amid growing public anger.
The extent of the community’s loyalty to Coke inside the slums immediately became clear as supporters built barricades of junked cars and sandbags, made gasoline bombs and pitched barbed wire over power lines. Gunmen from gangs across the Caribbean island fought soldiers and police in street battles that killed 76 people.
Police caught Coke only after he decided to surrender.
He was arrested at a checkpoint in a car with the Rev. Al Miller, an influential evangelical preacher who facilitated the surrender of Coke’s brother earlier this month. Miller said Coke was on his way to turn himself in to authorities at the U.S. Embassy in Kingston when police stopped him.
Green said Coke managed to elude police for weeks with help from a network of supporters.
“He’s got tremendous support from senior businesspeople and others throughout the country. He had a very extensive and vast network,” Green said.
Coke is said to fear the same fate of his father, a man that some suspect was killed to keep him from implicating others in the drug trade. But Security Minister Dwight Nelson said Coke is locked away at an undisclosed, maximum-security facility and his life will be protected.
Golding has described the pursuit of Coke as a turning point in Jamaica’s struggle with gangs, which have thrived since political factions armed criminals in the 1970s to help rally votes. While the affiliations are deeply entrenched, many say the arrest of such an important figure does make reform seem possible.
“It certainly struck a real blow against don culture here,” Paul said. “Before all this happened, Dudus was considered to be untouchable.”
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Ex-Detroit mayor in trouble with the law _ again
DETROIT (AP) — Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, already in prison for probation violations, was indicted Wednesday on federal fraud and tax charges, accused of a turning a charity into a personal slush fund for cash, travel, yoga, summer camp and even anti-bugging equipment.
The indictment was the latest blow for Kilpatrick, who in May was sent to state prison for at least 14 months for violating probation in a 2008 criminal case tied to sexually explicit text messages and an affair with a top aide.
The indictment said Kilpatrick, 40, created the Civic Fund in 1999 and gained tax-exempt status after declaring it would be a social-welfare organization to enhance neighborhoods, help youth and improve Detroit’s image.
The government, however, said the goal seemed to be to enrich Kilpatrick. He is charged with failing to report at least $640,000 in taxable income between 2003 and 2008, the value of the cash, private jet flights and personal expenses paid by the fund.
Kilpatrick used the fund to pay for yoga and golf, camp for his kids, travel, moving expenses to Texas, a crisis manager, cars, polling, political consulting and much more, including “counter-surveillance and anti-bugging equipment,” according to the indictment. It did not provide details about the equipment.
Adolph Mongo, a political consultant to Kilpatrick in 2005, told The Associated Press on Wednesday he was paid out of the Civic Fund. Mongo said the fund was tapped “like an ATM.”
The indictment said donors were fooled into believing their money would be going to other legal purposes.
“It is important that public officials not escape prosecution just because they leave office,” U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said in a statement. “Public officials need to be held accountable to deter them and others from cheating our citizens in the future.”
Kilpatrick’s lawyer, James Thomas, said he talked to the former mayor about the indictment.
“Just because the government brings a tax case doesn’t mean they’ll be successful,” Thomas said. “We have a different view than the government. We’ll be ready.”
Kilpatrick spokesman Mike Paul said his family was aware the indictment was coming. He put a positive spin on it, noting that the former mayor was not charged with public corruption after a yearslong investigation at city hall that has netted ex-councilwoman Monica Conyers and many others.
“This investigation puts an end to the ridiculous rumors that the mayor was personally involved with corruption, payoffs and bribes,” Paul said. “It is important to understand the Civic Fund is a non-political, nonprofit organization, which the mayor never ran day-to-day. We will have more on the Civic Fund in the near future.”
McQuade, however, said no one should believe the indictment brings the curtain down.
“The investigation is continuing. If we find additional charges that we can prove they will be brought,” she told The Associated Press without elaborating.
Kilpatrick’s mother, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Mich., said she was “devastated” by the charges.
“As a mother, I hope for the best for my son and will always be there for him. Beyond that, I have no further comment,” she said.
In May, Kilpatrick was sentenced to up to five years in state prison for violating probation in the criminal case that forced him out of office in September 2008. Kilpatrick was ordered to pay $1 million in restitution to Detroit for lying in a civil lawsuit that cost the city $8.4 million.
A judge said Kilpatrick flunked probation by failing to turn over money to whittle his restitution and disclose certain assets.
With his custom suits, cufflinks and shirts personalized with “Mayor” on the sleeve, Kilpatrick has been accustomed to the high life, even after moving to Texas in 2009. His family settled in Southlake, an affluent Dallas suburb, in a leased 5,800-square-foot house larger than Detroit’s mayoral mansion.
Wayne State University law professor and former federal prosecutor Peter Henning called the indictment a “garden variety fraud case” that is easier to present to a jury than a shadowy corruption scheme.
“You don’t depend on bad guys ratting out other bad guys,” Henning said. “You bring in documents. You follow the money. You put it in his pocket, and you then get some donors to come in and testify.”
The 13 fraud charges each carry a maximum punishment of 20 years in prison. Judges, however, mostly order concurrent sentences, which means Kilpatrick would not serve the rest of his life behind bars if convicted.
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Chief: No regrets not arresting Dallas chief’s son
DALLAS (AP) — A suburban police chief said Wednesday that he has no regrets about the decision not to arrest the son of Dallas police Chief David Brown hours before the son shot and killed two people, including a police officer.
Lancaster Police Chief Keith Humphrey said there was nothing his officers could have done differently when they responded to a domestic disturbance call from the younger Brown’s girlfriend at an apartment complex Sunday, seven hours before the slaying of Lancaster police officer Craig Shaw and a bystander.
The Dallas chief’s son, David Brown Jr., was shot to death by police after the killings.
“(Brown Jr.) was frustrated because she had called” the police, Humphrey told The Associated Press. “But there was no reason to arrest him. I stand by my officers. I can’t second-guess.”
Humphrey said officers found no evidence of injuries or the presence of weapons. He said they also separated the younger Brown and his girlfriend, Misti Conaway, and spoke to them for more than 30 minutes.
Conaway told police that Brown Jr. was having a “psychotic breakdown” and was bipolar, but those conditions can’t be the basis for an arrest, Humphrey said.
“It’s not against the law to be crazy,” he said. “It’s not against the law to be psychotic. You have to see behavior that goes with it, and we didn’t see that.”
Conaway, 29, did not immediately respond to a message from the AP left with her grandmother.
The elder Brown was sworn in as Dallas police chief in May after five years as the top deputy to former chief David Kunkle.
On Sunday afternoon, Brown Jr. was discovered acting erratically at the apartment complex pool. He then shot and killed Jeremy McMillian, 23, who was driving into the complex with his two children, and later Shaw, 37, who responded to calls of gunfire.
The Dallas County sheriff’s office, which is investigating the shootings, released 911 recordings Wednesday in which people can be heard frantically calling for police.
“There’s some man that was running with a gun in his underwear and a lady screaming and there was shots fired,” one resident of the apartment complex said.
On another call, a man can be heard in the background yelling, “If they’re coming here, they’re too late!”
Dash cam video from police responding to the earlier domestic disturbance captured Conaway saying her boyfriend was acting like someone on the hallucinogenic drug PCP, accusing her of having affairs and screaming about God. She also stated that the man involved in the disturbance was the son of the new Dallas police chief.
Humphrey said the supervisor on duty called him to say what had occurred. As a result, he left a message about the matter on the elder Brown’s cell phone. He said the message wasn’t returned.
“I’m just a person who likes to let people know when we come in contact with people who are throwing their names out,” Humphrey said. “If another chief would do that for me, I don’t know. I don’t worry about that. I just worry about what I do. And it was strictly a courtesy call.”
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Cops: Siblings brawl over butter in mac and cheese
WATERVILLE, Wash. (AP) — An argument over butter in a macaroni and cheese recipe churned into violence between a brother and sister. A 21-year-old man called police June 6 to say his 17-year-old sister tried to cut his neck with the serrated edge of a spatula.
The police report said the sister was making macaroni and cheese when her brother asked if she was using butter. That led to an argument over the difference between butter and margarine. And, then butter battle escalated.
The Wenatchee World reported the girl was charged in Douglas County Superior Court with fourth-degree assault.
—-Contact The Daily Reveille’s news staff at [email protected].