4A
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2008
GOVERNMENT
ASSOCIATED PRESS
House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., right, accompanied by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., takes part in a briefing Monday in Washington to discuss President Bush's proposed fiscal 2009 Federal Budget. The budget, which was released Monday, allocated money to build another prison in Leavenworth.
Prison proposed for Leavenworth
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — President Bush's $3.1 trillion budget proposal includes money to evaluate Leavenworth as the likely site for a new Midwestern prison, Sen. Sam Brownback said Monday.
The budget plan directs the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to spend about $1.4 million to study construction of the new prison facility in Leavenworth.
Brownback, R-Kan., and Leavenworth officials have been pushing the agency to build a new maximum security prison near the
city's current facility, which was converted to a medium security prison in 2005. The site also contains an adjacent minimum-security federal prison camp.
The Bureau of Prisons had previously indicated that Leavenworth was among several sites in the Midwest region being considered for a new prison, but the president's budget proposal offers the first public confirmation that the agency has settled on a single site.
"The Leavenworth community is
Willing and able to house a new federal prison facility." Brownback said, "The city of Leavenworth for a long time has been prepared to work with the Prison Bureau to build and operate a new prison."
The budget directive does not specify what type of prison might be constructed. A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons could not immediately comment on how long the evaluation might take.
Local officials have long encouraged the development of another prison to give the city an economic boost. About 1,900 medium- and minimum-security inmates are currently housed at Leavenworth. A new prison could provide 300 to 350 new jobs in the community.
Charlie Gregor, executive vice president of the Leavenworth-Lansing Area Chamber of Commerce, called Monday's news a positive development in the city's quest to land a new prison.
"Those are good-paying jobs, the kind of jobs that people stay in and retire from." Gregor said.
One reason locating the new prison in Leavenworth makes the best economic science, Gregor said, is because the Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Justice already own land near Fort Leavenworth.
"If you own the land and you have two functioning facilities on it already, that means the infrastructure is already there," Gregor said. "You would have one warden and one staff overseeing three facilities rather than two, so you have economies of scale."
Bureau of Prisons director Harley Lappin toured Leavenworth with Brownback last year and met with Brownback's staff to discuss the possibility of locating a new prison in Kansas.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WAR
Military admits it killed civilians in Iraq
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAGHDAD — The U.S. military said Monday it accidentally killed nine Iraqi civilians during an operation targeting al-Qaida in Iraq — the deadliest known case of mistaken identity in recent months.
In northern Iraq, Turkish warplanes on Monday bombed some 70 Kurdish rebel targets, the Turkish military said. It was the fifth aerial attack against Kurdish rebel bases there in two months.
An Iraqi police officer secures the area after their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb in central Bara, ira, on Monday. Four police officers and one civilian were hurt in the blast, police said.
Also Monday, 15 suspected militants were killed in U.S. raids targeting a possible hideout for a senior al-Qaida in Iraq leader northeast of Baghdad, the military said.
Evans did not say exactly how the civilians died, but said the killings occurred as U.S. forces pursued suspected al-Qaida in Iraq militants. The incident is under investigation, he said.
Iraiq police said the victims, including two women, were in two houses in the village of Tal al-Samar, which was bombed by American warplanes late Saturday. They were all Sunnis, an officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The Iraqi civilians were killed Saturday near Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of the Iraqi capital, Navy Lt. Patrick Evans told The Associated Press.
"We offer our condolences to the families of those who were killed in this incident, and we mourn the loss of innocent civilian life," Evans said in a statement e-mailed to the AP.
The U.S. planes struck after an American convoy came under enemy fire in Tal al-Samar and soldiers called for air support, the Iraqi officer said.
Since Dec. 16, the Turkish military has confirmed five cross-border aerial raids into Iraq, though Iraqi Kurdish officials have reported other airstrikes. Turkey's military says the raids have killed as many as
The Turkish bombings early Monday hit the Avasin-Basyan and Hakurk regions of northern Iraq, the Turkish military said on its Web site.
Turkey has frequently targeted members of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, in cross-border raids into Iraq, where thousands of the rebels are based. The PKK has been fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey for more than two decades.
175 PKK rebels
Adem Uzun, a member of the rebel command, said 15 to 20 Turkish jets bombed rebel areas in northern Iraq, according to Fiat, a Kurdish news agency. Uzun told a Denmark-based Kurdish television station that the rebels had not suffered casualties, the agency reported.
The United States — which like Turkey and the European Union considers the PKK a terrorist organization — has cautioned Ankara against a large incursion into Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, fearing it could disrupt one of Iraq's more stable regions.
U. S. and Iraqi officials said Monday they will meet later this month to negotiate future relations and the long-term presence of American forces in Iraq. The U.S. currently has about 160,000 troops in Iraq under a United Nations mandate that has been extended on a yearly basis since the 2003 invasion, but Iraqi officials have said they will not renew it after 2008.
Separately, 14 al-Qaida linked militants were detained in other raids Sunday and Monday in northern Iraq, including four
In the raids targeting a possible al-Qaida in Iraq hideout northeast of Baghdad, the military said it had no information about whether the targeted leader was among those killed or captured. Eight suspected militants were detained in the raids.
suspects seized during an operation targeting the leader of a suicide bombing cell in the volatile city of Mosul.
Iraiqi police said at least five Iraqis died in separate attacks elsewhere, including a Foreign Ministry attache, Waleed Haitham, when gunmen opened fire on his car in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Mansour.
Two policemen were also killed when a roadside bomb exploded on their patrol in northeast Baghdad's Azamiyah area. And gunmen opened fire on a bus east of Baquba, killing two passengers, police said.
An al-Qaida front group said in a statement posted on the Web that it was launching its own campaign in Mosul, and urged volunteers to carry out suicide attacks on U.S. troops, Iraqi Shiites and Kurdish troops.
The Sunni militant group, known as Mosul's regional command of the Islamic State of Iraq, said its campaign would be a "vengeance raid" but gave no details.
Iraki officials have said a military push to clear al-Qaida-linked insurgents from Mosul is imminent.
Also Monday, criticism mounted among some Sunni lawmakers over a new law that will allow thousands of Saddam Hussein-era officials to return to government jobs.