THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, MARCH 24, 2008
NEWS
9A
IRAQ WAR
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Army says Sgt. James W. McDonald suffered a severe head wound in Iraq in a bomb blast but what caused his death six months later was undetermined, which keeps him off the casualty list. The family of McDonald, 26, of Neenah, Wis., has asked Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., for help in getting more answers.
Family wants son's death acknowledged by Army
BY ROBERT IMRIE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WAUSAU, Wis. — Joan McDonald believes her son was a casualty of the war in Iraq, but the Army says that while he did suffer a severe head wound in a bomb blast, the cause of his death is undetermined, keeping him off the casualty list.
She and her family are demanding more answers in the death of Sgt. James W. McDonald.
"I don't want it to be an undetermined cause of death," said Joan McDonald. "That is ridiculous."
McDonald, 26, was injured in a roadside bomb blast in Iraq last May. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment based at Fort Hood, Texas. After treatment in Germany, McDonald returned to Fort Hood and underwent extensive facial surgery in August.
His body was found in his barracks apartment Nov. 12, a Monday. He was last seen alive the previous Friday.
The Army ruled out suicide and accidental factors, but an autopsy could not determine the exact cause of death, in part because of the decomposition of the body, said Col. Diane Battaglia, a base
spokeswoman
As a result, McDonald's death is considered noncombat-related, with the caveat that medical experts couldn't rule out that "traumatic brain injury" may have been a factor, Battaglia said.
Joan McDonald, of Neenah,
has no doubts about her son's
death.
"If my son was not at the war, he would not be dead, plain and simple," she said. "He was a strong healthy boy. Don't tell me it was unrelated to the war. I will never accept that."
Tom Wilborn, a spokesman for Disabled American Veterans in Washington, said the question of whether McDonald was a war casualty is the first that he was aware of from the Iraq war.
"But it happened a lot during Vietnam," he said. "There's a long history where guys would be wounded in the jungle and they might live long enough to come home. And then they would pass away and were not counted as a combat casualty."
According to an Army study in 2007, 1.4 million people in the U.S. suffer traumatic brain injuries each year. Of those, 50,000 die, 235,000 are hospitalized and 1.1 million are evaluated, treated at a hospital emergency depart-
A Government Accountability Office study found that of soldiers who required a medical evacuation for battle-related injuries in Iraq or Afghanistan, 30 percent suffered a traumatic brain injury. But it was unknown how many soldiers suffered more mild forms of brain injury.
The family has asked Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., for help. McDonald has a copy of a March 11 letter Feingold sent to Maj. Gen. Galen Jakman at the Pentagon outlining her concerns.
McDonald said her son was a strapping 6-foot-3,200-pound soldier who served two tours of duty in Iraq and loved the military.
"He was having a problem sleeping since he came back from the war. I don't think it had anything to do with sleep apnea. I think it had to do with bombs," she said. He also had seen a doctor because of severe nose bleeds but was told the symptoms were not that unusual, given his August surgery, she said.
Before he died, McDonald had worked on the base at a weapons room and the post office, she said. He had planned to leave the Army in January to pursue a career in firefighting.
WASHINGTON
McCain compares scandal Senator contrasts Keating incident with Vietman
The investigation ended in early 1991 with a rebuke that McCain "exercised poor judgment in intervening with the regulators." But the Senate ethics committee also determined McCain's actions "were not improper nor attended with gross negligence."
BY LARRY MARGASAK ASSOCIATED PRESS
McCain has claimed the Keating scandal sensitized him even to the appearance of potential conflicts of interest. But in recent weeks, McCain has defended himself anew over another instance in which he intervened with federal regulators on behalf of a prominent campaign contributor — years ago but after the Keating rebuke. Again, McCain denies acting
Keating and his associates raised $1.3 million combined for the campaigns and political causes of all five. McCain's campaigns received $112,000.
WASHINGTON — Sen, John McCain's ethics entanglement with a wealthy banker ultimately convicted of swindling investors was such a disturbing, formative experience in his political career that he compares the scandal in some ways to the five years he was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
"I faced in Vietnam, at times, very real threats to life and limb," McCain told the Associated Press. "But while my sense of honor was tested in prison, it was not questioned. During the Keating inquiry, it was, and I regretted that very much."
In his early days as a freshman senator, McCain was known for accepting contributions from Charles Keating Jr., flying to the banker's home in the Bahamas on company planes and taking up Keating's cause with U.S. financial regulators as they investigated him.
The Keating Five was the derisive name given McCain and four Democratic senators who were defendants in a congressional ethics investigation of their connections to Keating. McCain is the only one still in the Senate. They were accused of trying to intimidate regulators on behalf of Keating, a real estate developer in Arizona and owner of Lincoln Savings and Loan based in Irvine, Calif.
improperly.
McCain wrote two letters in late 1999 to the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of Florida-based Paxson Communications. He urged quick consideration of a proposal to buy a television station license in Pittsburgh, although he did not ask the FCC commissioners to approve the proposal. At the time, one FCC commissioner's formal nomination was pending before McCain's Senate committee, and the FCC chairman complained that McCain's letters were improper.
McCain wrote the letters after receiving more than $20,000 in contributions from the company's executives and lobbyists. Chief executive Lowell W. "Bud" Paxson also lent McCain his company's jet at least four times during 1999 for campaign travel.
In the Keating investigation, the committee said more than one year had passed — a "decent interval" — between the last contributions Keating raised for McCain and the two 1987 meetings he attended with banking regulators. McCain later paid $112,000 — the amount Keating raised for him — to the U.S. Treasury.
None of the five senators were punished by the Senate. The harshest rebuke went to Alan Cranston, D-Calif., who accepted $1 million in contributions tied to Keating. The ethics committee said Cranston "engaged in an impermissible pattern of conduct in which fundraising and official activities were substantially linked." Cranston died in December 2000.
The ethics committee said McCain took no further action on Keating's behalf after regulators dropped a bombshell during a meeting with the senators: They intended to recommend a criminal investigation of Keating and his savings and loan.
"The appearance of wrongdoing, fair or unfair, can be potentially as injurious as actual wrongdoing," McCain told the AP, reflecting on what he said were his lessons from the scandal. "Also, when questions are raised about your integrity or for that matter anything involving your public career, even, for example, a controversial position on the issues, it is best not to hide from the media or
public."
Now famously accessible to reporters as a presidential candidate, McCain conducted a poisonous newspaper interview nearly 20 years ago with his hometown Arizona Republic. Flashing his quick temper, he insulted, cursed and hung up on reporters questioning him about his ties to Keating. He said he now recognizes it was the worst way to respond.
"Taking all the questions and making your arguments is the only way you can prevent an unfair or injurious public perception becoming fixed," McCain said.
Former Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H., a Republican on the ethics panel who investigated McCain, said McCain's political comeback and his personal rehabilitation from his time as a POW were his biggest personal obstacles.
"What happened in Vietnam and the Keating Five, those two were life altering." Rudman said in an interview. "He would not put a losing campaign in the same box. But not wallowing in self pity and doing something positive, that is absolutely John McCain."
Republican Trent Lott of Mississippi, the former Senate majority leader, said McCain's political revival after the investigation was no accident.
"He was so upset at the charges and the impact, he felt an extra need to deal with the kind of things that led to the situation he found himself in," Lott said in an interview. "You can go away disillusioned and angry and just leave, or you can go back to work and try to compensate for it. And that's what John has been about in the years since. He just went back to work. He bent over backwards to be extra careful about ethics."
Keating went to prison for more than four years after a federal fraud conviction. The conviction was reversed on appeal after he argued that jurors improperly had knowledge of a prior state conviction on related charges. He was to be retried in federal court but instead pleaded guilty to four federal fraud counts. Keating admitted he siphoned nearly $1 million from his S&L's insolvent parent company. He was sentenced to time he already had served.
SOUTH AMERICA
Ecuador awaits DNA test before accusing Colombian military of murder
BY GABRIELA MOLINA ASSOCIATED PRESS
QUITO, Ecuador — President Rafael Correa on Saturday threatened to seek international condemnation against Colombia if DNA tests confirm that Colombia's military killed an Ecuadorean citizen during its raid on a rebel camp in Ecuador's jungle.
Ecuador and Venezuela sent troops to their borders with Colombia after the March 1 cross-border raid. Tensions were largely defused at a regional summit days later.
Relatives of missing Ecuadorean Franklin Aizalia say to have seen news photos that indicate a body that Colombia removed from the camp is that of their son. They will travel to Colombia on Monday in a bid to confirm the body's identity.
Correa urged the Organization of American States to "act forcefully" if tests confirm that Colombia killed an Ecuadorian citizen, saying he did not want a precedent set in the region.
If the body proves to be Aizalia, rather than a Colombian, Correa vowed "to start an extremely strong diplomatic fight, because we will not leave this killing unpunished."
Correa has not renewed diplomatic ties severed with neighboring Colombia after the raid on a jungle camp of the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC — an act he denounced as an attack on his country's sovereignty.
"How can we renew relations if they keep trying to link us to the FARC to justify their aggression?" he said.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, a close U.S. ally, says documents seized at the camp from the computer of slain rebel leader Raul Reyes show that the FARC gave money to Correa's 2006 presidential campaign. He also says Correa's ally, Venezuelan President
more than three weeks. His family's lawyer said for unknown reasons he had been in the FARC camp for more than a week before the raid.
Correa said he has requested those documents, which he said lack "technical and legal" validity, from Uribe's government through Argentina's embassy in Colombia.
A body identified as rebel Guillermo Enrique Torres, alias Julian Conrado, was brought to
Aizalia has been missing for
Hugo Chavez, planned to give the rebels US $300 million.
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Life is calling How far will you go?
Around the World With the Peace Corps University of Kansas Wednesday, March 26 Noon -1 p.m. Kansas Union International Room
For information contact campus representative Heather Sutter 110 Burge Union 785-864-7679 peacecorps@ku.edu
peacecorps.gov