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Austin man ticketed for using cell phone during flight An associate said the man forgot to turn his phone off and received a message that his father was in dire health.

By Miguel Liscano
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Dallas police ticketed a Southwest Airlines passenger Monday morning after he refused to stop talking on his cell phone during a flight from Austin to Dallas, an airline spokeswoman said.

Flight attendants asked Joe David Jones, 50, president of Austin environmental technology company Skyonic Corp., to put away his phone after they noticed him using it during the flight's descent, Southwest spokeswoman Brandy King said.

An associate of Jones said he refused because Jones had received a message that his father was in dire health.

Police were called to meet flight 958 at Love Field when it landed, King said. Jones was ticketed on a disorderly conduct charge, a class C misdemeanor that carries up to a $500 fine, a Dallas police spokeswoman said.

Federal Aviation Administration regulations bar cell phone use on planes because it could interfere with the flight's navigation system, King said. She said airlines can be fined at least $25,000 for allowing cell phone use during flights.

"He was clear on the regulation; he just chose not to abide by the request," King said.

Jones had forgotten to turn off his phone during takeoff and received the message about his father as the plane moved closer to Dallas, said Mark Clayton, Skyonic's vice president of corporate relations.

"His father's heart had stopped," Clayton said. "The cardiac unit requested a call immediately to discuss decisions regarding his father's immediate care.

"So Mr. Jones attempted to call them back. And it took several tries.

"He expresses regret for the inconvenience that it caused the airline and its passengers, but he felt compelled because of the life and death nature of it to make that call."

According to a police report, Jones was on his cell phone for about 20 minutes at the end of the flight.

The report said Jones, when asked to turn his phone off, responded with an obscenity.

Clayton said Jones did not mention what was said by him and the flight attendants during the incident.

Jones was unavailable for comment Monday because he was on his way to be with his father, Clayton said.

Skyonic specializes in cleaning emissions from coal-fired power plants, Clayton said.

[email protected]; 445-3629

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Iowan student arrested for throwing M&Ms at police by cynthia yoo | May 12, 2008 at 03:53 pm | 163 views | 3 comments M&M_2 by Daniel Y. Go
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Sean McGuire, a college student in Iowa, was arrested on Sunday for throwing M&Ms at a police officer at a local convenience store.

A college student whose friend was being questioned in a hit and run found himself charged with assaulting an officer with a curious choice of weapons: M&Ms.

Sean McGuire was arrested early Sunday at a convenience store after Drake University security guards noticed the colored candies falling on the ground around the officer. When the officer turned around, an M&M hit his shoulder, according to a police report.

McGuire claimed he threw the candy because he was "sticking up for his friend," who apparently was the man suspected in the accident, the report states.

McGuire, of Glenview, Ill., was released from jail Sunday after posting $1,000 bond.

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Government Report Answers Who Lives, Who Dies in Flu Pandemic Last Edited: Monday, 05 May 2008, 9:43 PM CDT Created: Monday, 05 May 2008, 5:44 AM CDT or just enabling jstl so that we can just write ${bean.property} and jsp takes care of the new lines. -->
05/05/2008  -- 

Should doctors be allowed to play God?

In the case of a flu pandemic — yes, say government officials in a new report.

Doctors know some patients needing lifesaving care won't get it in a flu pandemic or other disaster. The gut-wrenching dilemma will be deciding who to let die.

Who will die in the event of a pandemic? The very old, seriously hurt, severely burned and those with severe dementia, according to an influential group of physicians.

The group has drafted a grimly specific list of recommendations for which patients wouldn't be treated.

The suggested list was compiled by a task force whose members come from prestigious universities, medical groups, the military and government agencies. They include the Department of Homeland Security, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The proposed guidelines are designed to be a blueprint for hospitals "so that everybody will be thinking in the same way" when pandemic flu or another widespread health care disaster hits, said Dr. Asha Devereaux. She is a critical care specialist in San Diego and lead writer of the task force report.

The idea is to try to make sure that scarce resources — including ventilators, medicine and doctors and nurses — are used in a uniform, objective way, task force members said.

Their recommendations appear in a report appearing Monday in the May edition of Chest, the medical journal of the American College of Chest Physicians.

"If a mass casualty critical care event were to occur tomorrow, many people with clinical conditions that are survivable under usual health care system conditions may have to forgo life-sustaining interventions owing to deficiencies in supply or staffing," the report states.

To prepare, hospitals should designate a triage team with the Godlike task of deciding who will and who won't get lifesaving care, the task force wrote. Those out of luck are the people at high risk of death and a slim chance of long-term survival. But the recommendations get much more specific, and include:

— People older than 85.

— Those with severe trauma, which could include critical injuries from car crashes and shootings.

— Severely burned patients older than 60.

— Those with severe mental impairment, which could include advanced Alzheimer's disease.

— Those with a severe chronic disease, such as advanced heart failure, lung disease or poorly controlled diabetes.

Dr. Kevin Yeskey, director of the preparedness and emergency operations office at the Department of Health and Human Services, was on the task force. He said the report would be among many the agency reviews as part of preparedness efforts.

Public health law expert Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University called the report an important initiative but also "a political minefield and a legal minefield."

The recommendations would probably violate federal laws against age discrimination and disability discrimination, said Gostin, who was not on the task force.

If followed to a tee, such rules could exclude care for the poorest, most disadvantaged citizens who suffer disproportionately from chronic disease and disability, he said. While health care rationing will be necessary in a mass disaster, "there are some real ethical concerns here."

James Bentley, a senior vice president at American Hospital Association, said the report will give guidance to hospitals in shaping their own preparedness plans even if they don't follow all the suggestions.

He said the proposals resemble a battlefield approach in which limited health care resources are reserved for those most likely to survive.

Bentley said it's not the first time this type of approach has been recommended for a catastrophic pandemic, but that "this is the most detailed one I have seen from a professional group."

While the notion of rationing health care is unpleasant, the report could help the public understand that it will be necessary, Bentley said.

Devereaux said compiling the list "was emotionally difficult for everyone."

That's partly because members believe it's just a matter of time before such a health care disaster hits, she said.

"You never know," Devereaux said. "SARS took a lot of folks by surprise. We didn't even know it existed."

— The Associated Press

Posted on Tue, Apr. 29, 2008

Mexican gangs provide most U.S. `meth'
Franco Ordonez | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: April 30, 2008 04:55:59 PM

MEXICO CITY — A U.S. crackdown on domestic methamphetamine labs has created opportunities for Mexican drug cartels and their "superlabs" to fill the void.

Law enforcement agencies now consider "meth" produced in Mexico to be the greatest drug menace in the Western United States and a growing concern across the southeast and mid-Atlantic states, according to a Department of Justice report released this year.

Mexican drug gangs now produce 80 percent of the methamphetamine consumed in the United States, and Mexican officials say the Mexican manufacturers have become adept at meeting the shifting demands of U.S. addicts.

"U.S. consumption patterns are changing," Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora recently told reporters. "You are getting new entrants into the market that are essentially not choosing cocaine any more, but meth."

In the first three weeks of April, U.S. officials confiscated more than $30 million worth of methamphetamine destined for distribution points in California, Washington, Dallas, Kansas City, and Atlanta, Ga.

"These seizures are just a reminder that this stuff is coming to your neighborhood," said Steve Robertson, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration special agent.

Last year, at the six border crossings from Mexico into California, Customs and Border Protection agents stopped more than 2,000 lbs of methamphetamine, worth approximately $220 million on the street.

Authorities say the ease with which meth can be manufactured in clandestine labs from readily available materials has allowed established gangs to take advantage of the growing demand for the drug.

In fact, the chemicals used to make methamphetamine are so common that the biggest bust linked to meth manufacturing in the Western Hemisphere last year wasn't of one of Mexico's powerful drug cartels, but of a relatively unknown Chinese businessman, Zhenli Ye Gon, who had $207 million in cash stashed in his Mexico City home.

On April 17, federal agents in Arkansas announced the arrests of 65 people and seizure of more than 100 lbs of Mexican "ice," as a more concentrated form of methamphetamine is known, destined for Dallas, Memphis, Kansas City, and Des Moines.

On April 2, officials arrested 22 members of the Barragan family drug organization and seized nearly 90 pounds of methamphetamine, 50 firearms and more than a quarter million dollars in an operation that required 300 federal, state and local law enforcement agents and 14 months of planning.

Authorities said the Barragans — led by brothers Adiodato, Ulises and Herminio — had been smuggling hundreds of pounds of meth a month from their hometown of Arteaga in central Mexico to distribution points in California, Washington state, Wisconsin, and Georgia.

"Drug trafficking organizations based in Mexico do not confine themselves by our boundaries, borders or laws," Arnold Moorin, the DEA Special Agent in Charge in Seattle, said following the arrests.

The Barragan family worked hard to not get caught. They used multiple cell phones, arranged their drug exchanges in populated places such as supermarkets and hotels, and always rode in non-descript cars. They spoke in code, with "stamps" meaning money and "fish" or "pure cream" meaning methamphetamine. They stuck to family for the most important business matters. They used their own children for cover.

"Herminio expressed it's always safer to travel with family," DEA Special Agent Jeff Hayes wrote in an affidavit filed with the indictment.

But the smuggling operations are also low tech. One 24-year-old Tijuana man was caught with 45 lbs of methamphetamine, worth almost $900,000, when customs agents at San Ysidro, Calif., noticed his face was "flushed and his hands were shaking."

Another man, Ramon Lopez, 41, was arrested on April 8 trying to smuggle 53 lbs of meth through a crossing point at Calexico, Calif. He told federal officers he was to be paid $1,500 to deliver the drugs to a drop off point at the local Wal-Mart.

In a recent report, the National Drug Intelligence Center said that Mexican gangs have opened distribution points in North Carolina and Georgia to reach new markets along the East Coast.

Nashville, Dallas, and Fort Worth law enforcement agents also report that traffickers distribute meth locally through connections with Hispanic and African American gangs.

Meth "superlabs" have been opened throughout Mexico, but particularly in the states of Michoacan, Baja California, Colima, and Jalisco, officials said. There, "cooks" combine the volatile mixture of pseudoephedrine, taken from common cold medications, with ammonia and other toxic chemicals to make the crystalized white powder.

The drug can be swallowed, smoked, snorted, or injected. Sometimes called the "poor man's cocaine," methamphetamine is a powerful stimulant like cocaine that produces a "rush" and euphoria. The effects of methamphetamine last much longer than those from cocaine, yet it generally costs less.

It cost only 20 cents to produce a $20 worth of methamphetamine, officials said.

"The profits involved are immense" Special Agent Robertson said.

Methamphetamine-related admissions to publicly funded drug treatment facilities have surged to 149,415 in 2006 from 64,481 in 2000, according to the latest data available from Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The National Drug Intelligence Center attributes the rise in addiction to the increasing prevalence of Mexican "ice," a more concentrated form of the drug that like crack cocaine is usually smoked.

(Ordonez reports for The Charlotte Observer.)

McClatchy Newspapers 2008

print email Digg it del.icio.us AIM Ohio judge to decide man's fate for sharing snack cake
The Associated Press

http://www.dispatch.com
A judge in southern Ohio must decide whether to send a man to prison for sharing a Little Debbie snack cake. The case involves 21-year-old Timothy Caudill, who last year was held in a residential community corrections program in Nelsonville for breaking into a bar.

While there, prosecutors said he bought the oatmeal creme pie from a vending machine and shared it with a fellow inmate who was on restriction and wasn't allowed access to snacks.

Prosecutors in Vinton County have asked Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Simmons to revoke Caudill's probation and put him in prison for nine months.

Caudill's attorney Claire Ball said that's outrageous. Ball says keeping Caudill out of a state prison would leave cell space for a more serious offender.


Information from: The Columbus Dispatch, http://www.dispatch.com

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Boy Scout J.R. Bouterse does the right thing by turning in wallet with $800 Posted by Tom Rademacher | The Grand Rapids Press April 29, 2008 05:53AM Categories: Breaking News, Top Photos Press Photo/T.J. HamiltonBoy Scout John Robert Bouterse, 11, found a wallet belonging to Jessica Cutler, of Wayland, in the parking lot of Open Door Reformed Church in Dorr. He was honored by the Michigan State Police, the Gerald R. Ford council and Jessica Cutler.

DORR -- When 11-year-old Boy Scout J.R. Bouterse discovered a wallet containing more than $800 peeking out from a melting mound of snow and debris, he heard at least two voices.

One asked, "Should I keep it?" The other wondered, "Should I go tell?"

The latter won out, when "after only a glimpse of a second, I ran to go get the adults."

But J.R. also acted on another impulse in addition to the one that rules our consciences.

Empathy.

"I knew exactly," J.R. says., "how she felt."

"She" in this case is Jessica Cutler, the 20-year-old manager of a Burger King on M-40 near Allegan. It was five or six months ago that she cashed two weeks' salary and stashed it in her wallet, planning to buy herself an aquarium.

Things tanked, however, after leaving a Dorr-area church with boyfriend Gabriel Grevenstuk, 24. She found she had her purse, but no wallet. Frantic, the two searched the vehicle, church and parking lot. Bottom line? Go fish.

Press Photo/Rex LarsenBoy Scout John Robert Bouterse, 11, is interviewed by a television crew."I work hard for my money," said Cutler, who puts in as many as 60 hours a week. "I was freaking out. I didn't know where it could have gone. We re-traced our steps that day and the next day.

"It was a lot of money to lose. I'm on my own, with my own bills to pay. I was definitely devastated."

Enter J.R. Just over a week ago, he was exiting a Boy Scout meeting at the same church -- Open Door Reformed -- and was reveling in a spirited game of Capture the Flag atop plowed mounds of old snow and grime.

"I got caught and had to go to jail," he said, "and I saw this shiny thing like a rock. I went to put it in my rock collection, and thought, 'Boy, what a neat rock.'"

As J.R. neared his find, he started digging, and "it started getting bigger and bigger."

Suddenly, it wasn't a rock, but a wallet, "with cash and receipts falling out of it."

It is not that he couldn't use the money. J.R. has a mess of hobbies outside of rock collecting, with one or two of them requiring an occasional outlay of cash.

He is saving right now, for instance, to buy a CB radio and has about $120 of the $129 needed to get "the one with everything that I want on it."

He is also into go-karting and says that with $800, he could have upgraded to new tires and a more powerful engine.

That he is not $800 richer at Jessica Cutler's expense is a feather in their son's cap, says mom Michelle Bouterse, 41. "We're just so proud of him. We can't say enough."

Michelle describes J.R. -- short for John Robert -- as "extremely mature and intelligent," the oldest of five children born to her and husband Robert, 43. Both work in engineering, a career path that interests J.R., who is a fifth-grader at Wayland's Pine Street Elementary School.

To reward J.R., state police from the Wayland post threw a pizza party Monday night, not only for their law-abiding hero, but all 30 Boy Scouts belonging to Troop 90.

To top things off, J.R. was surprised to come face-to-face with Jessica Cutler, so she could personally thank him for the wallet, returned to her by a law enforcement official.

"I can't believe someone would find a wallet with that much money in it and not take some," Cutler said. "A lot of people maybe wouldn't have done that same thing. I'm just glad he found it, and not someone else."

And glad she should be.

Because just a month prior to finding Cutler's wallet at the church, J.R. Bouterse was not a quarter-mile from that site, observing his younger siblings engaged in an Easter Egg Hunt at a neighborhood park.

By the time he returned home, he was, in the words of his mother, "very upset with himself."

J.R. had lost the wallet given to him last Christmas, and inside it, the $45 he received March 27 for his 11th birthday. It remains lost today.

So now you know how he felt to find not a rock last week, but someone else's treasure.

Chilean town giving free Viagra to senior citizens The Associated Press

A working class suburb of Chile's capital began handing out free Viagra to senior citizens on Wednesday. Lo Prado Mayor Gonzalo Navarrete said he launched the program because "an active sexuality improves the overall quality of life."

About 1,500 residents of the working-class area are eligible to receive as many as four pills of the erectile dysfunction drug each month, the mayor said. They have to be at least 60 and be registered with the municipality's health service.

"A doctor will have to certify that they suffer from erectile dysfunction and that their condition would not put them in danger of suffering cardio-respiratory side effects," Navarrete told The Associated Press by telephone.

He said he has assured about US$10,000 (euro6,400) in financing for the program through the end of the year.

Some government insurance plans in the United States and elsewhere provide Viagra, but Lo Prado hands the 50mg pills out free, with no membership in any public or private insurance plan required.

Navarrete said some other mayors in the Santiago area, which includes 34 municipalities, have told him they plan similar programs.

Navarrete said he did not know how many pills had been distributed so far.

 

 

ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- A Greek court has been asked to draw the line between gay women and the natives of the Aegean Sea island of Lesbos.

Inhabitants on the Greek island of Lesbos, pictured, have launched a lawsuit against a gay rights group.

Three islanders from Lesbos -- home of the ancient poet Sappho, who praised love between women -- have taken a gay rights group to court for using the word lesbian in its name.

One of the plaintiffs said Wednesday that the name of the association, Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, "insults the identity" of the people of Lesbos, who are also known as Lesbians.

"My sister can't say she is a Lesbian," said Dimitris Lambrou. "Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos," he said.

The three plaintiffs are seeking to have the group barred from using "lesbian" in its name and filed a lawsuit on April 10. The other two plaintiffs are women.

A spokeswoman for the Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece said the action was "a joke in bad taste that borders on discrimination."

"I don't see how the word can be an insult," Evangelia Vlami said. "We don't think doubt can be cast on dictionaries ... even the United Nations refer to us as Lesbians."

Also called Mytilene, after its capital, Lesbos is famed as the birthplace of Sappho. The island, particularly the lyric poet's reputed home town of Eressos, is a favored holiday destination for gay women.

"This is not an aggressive act against gay women," Lambrou said. "Let them visit Lesbos and get married and whatever they like. We just want (the group) to remove the word lesbian from their title."

He said the plaintiffs targeted the group because it is the only officially registered gay group in Greece to use the word lesbian in its name. The case will be heard in an Athens court on June 10.

Sappho lived from the late 7th to the early 6th century B.C. and is considered one of the greatest poets of antiquity. Many of her poems, written in the first person and intended to be accompanied by music, contain passionate references to love for other women.

Lambrou said the word lesbian has only been linked with gay women in the past few decades. "But we have been Lesbians for thousands of years," said Lambrou, who publishes a small magazine on ancient Greek religion and technology that frequently criticizes the Christian Church.

Vlami, the gay group spokeswoman, said any misunderstanding can easily be resolved through linguistics.

"Most people from Lesbos prefer to use the word Mytilene, which is the more ancient version and because some people may be afraid of being misunderstood," she said. "I don't see what the problem is ... Can't a woman just say: I am from the island of Lesbos?"

Very little is known of Sappho's life. According to some ancient accounts, she was an aristocrat who married a rich merchant and had a daughter with him. One tradition says that she killed herself by jumping off a cliff over an unhappy love affair.

Lambrou says Sappho was not gay. "But even if we assume she was, how can 250,000 people of Lesbian descent -- including women -- be considered homosexual?" E-mail to a friend

Duct tape can’t fix man’s holdup plan

By KENNETH HART
The Independent

ASHLAND — It has been said that duct tape is a product with a million uses.

Make that a million and one.

The man whom police say tried to rob a local liquor store on Friday came up with what may have been a heretofore unknown application for that particular product.

He used it to fashion a holdup mask.

“Mask” might not be the appropriate word, either. When the robber, whom police identified as 24-year-old Kasey G. Kazee, entered Shamrock Liquors at 13th Street and Pollard Road, his entire head was wrapped in the sticky substance “like a mummy,” store employee Craig Miller said.

Kazee had left openings for his eyes and mouth, but, other than those, his entire head was a solid, silver-colored mass, Miller said.

Miller said he also told police the robber had his shirt pulled up over his head in a manner that was very much reminiscent of “Cornholio,” the hyperactive alter ego of Beavis, from the “Beavis and Butthead” cartoon series.

The robbery occurred about 1:15 p.m. According to police, Kazee entered the store through its main entrance, walked up to the cash register and threatened to do bodily harm to the female clerk if she didn’t give him money. The clerk complied and Kazee turned and exited the building.

He didn’t get far.

Miller — a stocky, muscular man who said he had previously worked as a bouncer and a security guard — and an unidentified customer, who was in the business at the time of the holdup, went after the suspect. Miller waylaid him with a flying tackle near the store’s Pollard Road exit.

Miller said Kazee’s face hit the blacktop when he tackled him, and he also punched the would-be thief in the groin area a couple of times. Miller said he, the customer and several men who came running over from the Foodland store next door detained the suspect until police arrived.

The officers were highly amused by the method Kazee used to conceal his identity, Miller said. One of them, he said, commented that he’d seen all types of items used as disguises — from pantyhose to cardboard boxes — but never duct tape.

Shamrock General Manager Bill Steele said Friday’s holdup was the store’s first since its opening in 1982.

Steele said he knew something strange was going on when he returned from a bank run and saw the duct tape-wearing man climbing over a rail that runs along the edge of the store’s parking lot. A creek lies on the other side of the rail.

Steele said his first thought was that the man was Tony Artrip, the convicted bank robber who has been on the run since escaping from a northern Kentucky jail in June.

But, when the man started walking down the sidewalk, in full view of the numerous people who were driving by on one of Ashland’s busiest thoroughfares, Steele said he realized the man probably wasn’t the most sophisticated of criminals.

After he entered the store, Steele said one of the first things he did was retrieve a club he keeps near the drive-through register. The weapon is an old-fashioned wooden bludgeon with its handle wrapped in — ironically enough — duct tape.

Police didn’t say how much cash Kazee allegedly took from the store, but Steele said the register came up $15 short. Most of that apparently was in change, he said.

“Quarters flew everywhere when I tackled him,” Miller said.

Kazee was lodged in the Boyd County Detention Center, charged with one count of first-degree robbery.

KENNETH HART can be reached at [email protected] or (606) 326-2654.

Posted on Tue, Apr. 29, 2008 Iranian general is a key player in Iraq By HANNAH ALLAM, JONATHAN S. LANDAY and WARREN P. STROBEL
McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD | He’s one of the most powerful men in Iraq, and he isn’t an Iraqi government official, a militia leader, a senior cleric, or a U.S. military commander or diplomat.

He’s an Iranian general — and at times he’s more influential than all of them.

Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani commands the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, an elite paramilitary and espionage organization whose mission is to expand Iran’s influence.

As Tehran’s point man on Iraq, he funnels military and financial support to various Iraqi factions, frustrating U.S. attempts to build a pro-Western democracy.

According to Iraqi and American officials, Suleimani has ensured the elections of pro-Iranian politicians, met frequently with senior Iraqi leaders and backed Shiite elements in the Iraqi security forces that are accused of torturing and killing minority Sunni Muslims.

“Whether we like him (Suleimani) or not, whether Americans like him or not, whether Iraqis like him or not, he is the focal point of Iranian policy in Iraq,” said a senior Iraqi official who asked not to be identified so he could speak freely.

McClatchy Newspapers reported on March 30 that Suleimani intervened to halt the fighting between mostly Shiite Iraqi security forces and radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia in the southern city of Basra.

Iraqi officials now confirm that in addition to that meeting, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani personally met Suleimani at a border crossing to make a direct appeal for help.

Iraqi and U.S. officials told McClatchy that Suleimani also has:

•Slipped into Baghdad’s Green Zone, the heavily fortified seat of the U.S. occupation and the Iraqi government, in April 2006 to try to orchestrate the selection of a new Iraqi prime minister. Iraqi officials said that audacious visit was Suleimani’s only foray into the Green Zone, but American officials said he may have been there more than once.

•Built powerful networks that gather intelligence on U.S. and Iraqi military operations. Suleimani’s network includes every senior staffer in Iran’s embassy in Baghdad, beginning with the ambassador, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.

•Trained and directed Shiite Muslim militias and given them cash and arms, including mortars and rockets fired at the U.S. Embassy and explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, part of the roadside bombs that have caused hundreds of U.S. and Iraqi casualties.

“I’m extremely concerned about what I believe to be an increasingly lethal and malign influence by (Iran’s) government and the Quds Force, in particular in Iraq and throughout the Middle East,” Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week.

U.S. intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because intelligence information is classified, said that Suleimani’s Quds Force has provided arms to Taliban insurgents fighting U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan and supported Islamist militant groups such as Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which are Sunni, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which is Shiite.

U.S. military officials also charge that Suleimani has brought in Hezbollah fighters to train Iraqi Shiite cells, which the Americans call “special groups,” that specialize in attacking American forces.

The U.S. officials said that Suleimani’s organization is the main source of EFPs planted by the “special groups” and other Shiite militias. The weapons, used in improvised explosive devices (IEDs), can shoot plugs of molten copper through armor.

Iran’s embassy in Baghdad didn’t respond to a formal request for information, and its mission in New York had no comment. Iran has repeatedly denied U.S. charges that it’s arming Shiite militants in Iraq.

One of Suleimani’s first major victories against the United States in Iraq, however, was the product of political shrewdness, not military force. It came in January 2005, when Iraqis voted for the first time since Hussein’s ouster.

The Bush administration pulled out all the stops to keep secular interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi in office, aiding him with broadcast airtime and slick campaign ads.

Suleimani countered with a covert PR campaign, and he sent printing presses, consultants and broadcasting equipment, said a senior Iraqi official who’s known Suleimani for years. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive relationship between Iraq and Iran.

When the ballots were counted, Allawi and his bloc were out, and Iran’s allies were in.

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