Tucson Marines Kyle Heppler and Shelby Shields are engaged to be married, which will happen when he returns from his deployment.

Shelby Shields and Kyle Heppler are engaged to be married, but their engagement is a bit different than most.

Rather than picking out dinnerware patterns or cake designs, Shields, 19, is stationed in Japan while Heppler, 20, is being deployed for the third time in his military career. The first two deployments took him to Iraq. This time he’s going to Afghanistan.

Most newly engaged couples don’t have to wonder if the groom will be alive to see the wedding.

“I think the scariest moment in my whole career was when I got orders for another deployment, just a week after asking Shelby to marry me,” Marine Lance Cpl. Heppler wrote in an e-mail from North Carolina, where he was sent from Japan to await his deployment.

“I remember the exact moment Kyle told me he was being deployed again. We were walking to the PX and he stopped me on the side of the road and said, ‘I have some really bad news,’” Marine Lance Cpl. Shields wrote in an e-mail from Okinawa.

“I felt my heart drop into my stomach and all I could do was hug him and hold on for dear life because my legs felt like Jell-o and I thought if I let go I might fall.”

The couple figured since Heppler had already been to Iraq twice in his three years with the Marines, they could make plans without worrying about another deployment.

“But that’s the Marine Corps,” Shields wrote, not with malice but with simple truthfulness.

Besides, based on the way that they met, the two are pretty used to drama.

They met in 2001, when Heppler was Shields’ friend’s boyfriend.

“I know, bad,” Shields wrote. “But she introduced me to him and we didn’t talk again until the messy breakup.”

Shields even played “middle man” on the phone when the actual breakup was going down. She kept Heppler’s number. He kept hers.

“Very soon after we were talking on the phone every night and the rest is history,” she said.

Their mutual love for service got them both into the military. Sort of.

“I joined the Marines in order to give back to my country what it’s given me, become a master at the Marine Corps martial arts program and to see the world,” Heppler said.

Shields signed up, in part, because Heppler was already enlisted. And she couldn’t stand the thought of four years of college after high school.

“If you would have asked me three or four years ago if I ever saw myself in the military I would probably laugh at you,” Shields said. Her original career goal, decided at age 3, was to be dolphin trainer. She later became interested in design.

Neither regrets their decision to become a Marine, regardless of how many times Heppler may get sent to Iraq.

“Every time I go home I’m reminded of what a good decision the Marine Corps was for me,” Shields said. “I love my friends dearly but a bunch have dropped out of college or are close to it, or still have no idea what they want to do with their life and wasted all that money.”

Both miss Tucson, their family, their dogs. Both also look forward to the care packages sent from home.

Shields especially appreciates the packages from Tucson Area Marine Moms, of which her mother is a part.

Heppler has gotten a laugh from a do-it-yourself Brazilian waxing kit and a half-empty tube of toothpaste a Maryland fifth grader stole from his parents.

“His mother apparently told him that we can’t shave or brush our teeth very often,” Heppler said.

Even the dangerous deserts of Iraq have humorous moments.

“The funniest thing I’ve ever seen was in Iraq during a sandstorm,” Heppler wrote. “A Marine I knew was in a Port-O-Potty while it was happening. Wind gusts of near 100 mph blew the stall over while he was in it. It took us 30 minutes to get him out because we were laughing so hard.”

Please note: this story was written last week and never published due to circumstance beyond our control.

U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Shelby Shields in uniform.

U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Kyle Heppler

Bishop John Tong smiles in front of Catholic Cathedral of Immaculate Conception in Hong Kong. The new head of Hong Kong's Catholic church is promising to help unite China's Catholics and work toward religious freedom. Tong assumed his role as head of Hong Kong's diocese in April. He replaced the long-serving Joseph Zen, an outspoken champion of religious liberty who was mistrusted by Beijing.

At a time when religious persecution is at the heart of the world’s most violent conflicts, religious freedom matters.

That’s why the 2009 report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom should be required reading for policymakers in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.

The report, released May 1, documents in chilling detail the global assault on freedom of religion and belief, making a powerful case for the need to take religious freedom more seriously in U.S. foreign policy.

The report doesn’t come from the left or the right. It comes from a federal commission that is independent and bipartisan under the leadership of 10 commissioners who did their homework.

This year, the commission names 13 “countries of particular concern” – Burma, North Korea, China, Vietnam, Eritrea, Nigeria, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – that engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” violations of religious freedom.

Another 11 countries are on the commission’s watch list: Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, Laos, Russia, Somalia, Tajikistan, Turkey and Venezuela.

The worst of the worst include China, where unregistered Protestants are frequently arrested, Falun Gong practitioners are imprisoned and tortured, Catholics are detained and harassed, and Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists are repressed in growing numbers.

Conditions are less severe, but still serious, in “watch list” countries. Venezuela, for example, is now a hotbed of anti-Semitism fomented by the anti-Jewish rhetoric and actions of the government under President Hugo Chavez. As a consequence, many Jews have fled the country.

Religious freedom is practically nonexistent in Saudi Arabia, an ally of the United States with a long history of promising, but failing, to do better.

Members of minority Muslim groups – including Shiites, who make up 10 percent to 15 percent of the population – are frequently detained and harassed.

Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and others among the nearly three million expatriate workers must conform to Saudi religious customs.

Although non-Muslim workers are supposed to be permitted to worship in private, their services are often subject to surveillance and raids by Saudi authorities.

Just about every religious group, it seems, suffers persecution somewhere in the world today. Christians are targeted in Iraq, Baha’is are arrested in Iran, Jehovah’s Witnesses are banned in Tajikistan, Muslims suffer discrimination in Russia, and the list goes on.

Beyond delivering bad news, the commission also makes extensive policy recommendations to the Obama administration and Congress, including asking the secretary of state to designate “countries of particular concern.”

Under the International Religious Freedom Act, the president is required to take action opposing violations of religious freedom in countries so designated.

Given the complex economic and political realities of American ties with some of the worst offenders, religious freedom and other human rights issues often take a back seat in U.S. foreign policy. Saudi Arabia, for example, has been a CPC since 2004 – but a State Department waiver lets the Saudis off the hook.

Even in Iraq and Afghanistan, countries where the U.S. is deeply involved in nation-building, conditions for freedom of religion and belief continue to deteriorate.

A strong case can be made that the lack of religious freedom is one of the greatest barriers to peace and security in both societies.

We ignore this global crisis at our peril. Consider the hard reality behind the idealism that animates the commission’s report: International religious freedom is both an issue of national security for the United States and an essential condition for building societies that are free and democratic.

Assaults on freedom of religion and belief aren’t side issues; they are urgent matters of conscience that must be at the center of U.S. foreign policy.

Charles C. Haynes is senior scholar at the First Amendment Center (www.firstamendmentcenter.org). E-mail: chaynes@freedomforum.org

———

FULL REPORT

To read the full 2009 report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom go to: www.uscirf.gov

SEOUL, South Korea – South Korea said Friday that it wants to meet with North Korea early next week to discuss a South Korean worker detained in the North and a joint industrial project that has been troubled by tensions between the sides.

It was unclear if the North would agree to the offer. Pyongyang did not accept an earlier proposal to discuss the industrial zone due to differences over whether the detained worker should be on the agenda.

The Unification Ministry said it sent a new proposal for a meeting next week. “We hope the North will accept our proposal,” ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon said.

South Korea says the detained worker is its top priority in such talks, but the North says any meeting should focus only on its industrial zone in Kaesong where more than 100 South Korean companies run factories, according to Seoul officials.

North Korea detained the Seoul worker at the zone on March 30 for allegedly denouncing Pyongyang’s political system.

Relations between the two Koreas have significantly deteriorated since Seoul’s conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office in February last year. Since then, reconciliation talks have been cut off and all key joint projects — except the factory park — have been suspended.

Pyongyang also has ratcheted up tension in its standoff with foreign governments over its nuclear programs. The regime has quit nuclear disarmament talks, expelled all inspectors and threatened to conduct nuclear and missile tests.

The two Koreas had their first government-level talks under Lee last month, but the meeting produced little progress, with the North refusing to free the detained worker while demanding that Seoul pay more for using North Korean workers and the land in Kaesong.

North Korea later proposed that a follow-up meeting be held earlier this week, but the South requested in a counterproposal that they meet on Friday. The North did not accept the proposal due to its opposition to Seoul’s demand that the issue of the detained worker should be on the agenda, officials said.

Last weekend, the North’s committee handling ties with the South said that the country would not even consider talking with South Korea, lashing out at Seoul for criticizing the isolated country’s human rights record.

North Korea has also been holding two American journalists since March 17. Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for former Vice President Al Gore’s San Francisco-based Current TV media venture, were detained while reporting on North Korean refugees living in China.

Pyongyang said Thursday that it will put the reporters on trial on June 4.

VIENNA – Roxana Saberi, the American journalist freed after about four months in an Iranian prison on spying charges left the country, flying to the Austrian capital with her parents and a friend early Friday.

After landing at the airport, Saberi said she planned to spend a few days in Vienna to recover from her ordeal.

“I came to Vienna because I heard it was a calm and relaxing place,” Saberi said. “I know you have many questions but I need some more time to think about what happened to me over the past couple of days.”

Her father, Reza Saberi, said they were staying with a friend in Austria.

Saberi, poised and smiling, thanked all those who supported her during her ordeal — including Austria’s ambassador to Iran and his family.

“Both journalists and non-journalists around the world, I’ve been hearing, supported me very much and it was very moving for me to hear this,” Saberi said.

Saberi, referring to several statements made about her case over the past few days, stressed she was the only one who knew what really happened.

“Nobody knows about it as well as I do and I will talk about it more in the future, I hope, but I am not prepared at this time,” she said.

The 32-year-old journalist, who grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, and moved to Iran six years ago, was arrested in late January and was convicted of spying for the United States in a brief, closed-door trial that her Iranian-born father said lasted only 15 minutes.

She was freed on Monday and reunited with her parents, who had come to Iran to seek her release, after an appeals court reduced her sentence to a two-year suspended sentence.

The United States had said the charges against Saberi were baseless and repeatedly demanded her release. The case against her had become an obstacle to President Barack Obama’s attempts at dialogue with the top U.S. adversary in the Middle East.

At one point, Saberi held a hunger strike to protest her imprisonment, but she ended it after two weeks when her parents, visiting her in prison, asked her to stop because her health was weakening.

Saberi had worked as a freelance journalist for several organizations, including National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Corp.

After her arrest, Iranian authorities initially accused her of working without press credentials, but later leveled the far more serious charge of spying. Iran released few details about the allegations that she passed intelligence to the U.S.

KABUL – Insurgents attacked a prison in eastern Afghanistan before dawn Friday, sparking a gunbattle with guards during which one prisoner was killed and another escaped, police said.

Meanwhile, NATO forces said one of its service members was killed Thursday by a bomb strike in southern Afghanistan. The international force did not provide further details or the nationality of the victim, under its policy of waiting for national authorities to announce deaths.

Prisons, along with police stations and other government buildings, have been repeated sites of Taliban attacks as the extremist religious group has stepped up its battle against the Afghan authorities in the past three years.

The militants did not manage to break into the prison in eastern Laghman province on Friday, but a group of more than a dozen prisoners charged an interior gate, breaking through to the outer wall, said provincial Police Chief Gen. Abdul Karim.

One prisoner managed to get away by jumping over the wall, while police shot another one dead as he attempted to flee, Karim said. Both of the men had been imprisoned for criminal offenses and were not known to have Taliban connections, he said.

Police captured one of the attackers and wounded some others, he said. No police or guards were injured.

Last summer, Taliban fighters attacked the prison in southern Kandahar province in a multi-pronged assault that included a suicide truck bomb, a suicide bomber on foot and gunmen freeing the prisoners. About 870 prisoners escaped, including roughly 400 jailed insurgents. The government has since worked to improve security at prisons across the country.

This week, President Barack Obama put his stamp on the bloody eight-year conflict by replacing the general in charge of the effort and installing a new ambassador. The Obama administration hopes the leadership shake-up — along with an additional 21,000 troops deploying this summer — will help reverse the militants’ momentum.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – A top U.N. official headed to Sri Lanka on Friday on an urgent mission to safeguard civilians trapped by fighting as thousands of desperate war refugees escaped across the front lines into government territory.

Government officials say they have cornered the Tamil Tiger rebels in a tiny coastal strip and stand poised to end this island nation’s quarter-century civil war.

However, international concern has grown for tens of thousands of civilians under threat from the heavy artillery bombardments shaking the war zone, and the Red Cross warned of “an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe” for the hundreds of wounded trapped without treatment.

Nearly 4,000 civilians waded across a lagoon overnight and broke out of the war zone, while another thousand waited to flee, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said Friday. The rebels fired on those leaving, killing four and wounding 14 others, he said.

About 200,000 civilians have escaped the war zone in recent months and are being held in overwhelmed displacement camps.

The rebels have denied accusations they were holding the civilians as human shields and shooting at those trying to flee. Reports of the fighting are difficult to verify because the government has barred journalists and most aid workers from the conflict zone.

Hoping to end the bloodshed, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sent his chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, to Sri Lanka for a second time to try to bring the conflict to a peaceful conclusion.

Nambiar is expected to meet with top government officials after he arrives Saturday and push for ways “to secure the safety of the 50,000 to 100,000 civilians remaining inside the combat zone,” U.N. spokesman Gordon Weiss said.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that in light of the ongoing war, the United States had raised questions about Sri Lanka’s application for a $1.9 billion IMF loan that the government desperately needs.

“We think that it is not an appropriate time to consider that until there is a resolution,” she said in Washington.

The U.N. says 7,000 civilians were killed and 16,700 wounded in the fighting from Jan. 20 until May 7, according to a U.N. document given to The Associated Press by a senior diplomat. Since then, doctors in the war zone say more than 1,000 civilians were killed in a week of heavy shelling that rights groups and foreign governments have blamed on Sri Lankan forces. Sri Lanka denies firing heavy weapons into the war zone.

On Thursday, doctors and health aides abandoned the only hospital in the war zone because of the intense shelling, according to a health official in the war zone who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

About 400 badly wounded patients remained inside in desperate need of treatment, along with more than 100 bodies waiting to be buried, the official said. The medical staff huddled in a nearby bunker and tried to ignore the cries of patients begging for help, he said.

A Red Cross ferry attempting to deliver desperately needed food aid and evacuate the wounded had to turn back for the third day Thursday because of the violence.

“Our staff are witnessing an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe,” Pierre Krahenbuhl, the International Committee of the Red Cross’ director of operations, said of the patients in the hospital.

The Red Cross said the trapped civilians inside the war zone were taking cover in bunkers they had dug in the ground and were finding it even more difficult to get scarce drinking water and food.

“We need security and unimpeded access now in order to save hundreds of lives,” he said in a statement from Geneva.

Protesters against torture gather Thursday near the U.S. Capitol.

In reversing itself and blocking the release of photos of U.S. military personnel abusing detainees, the Obama administration claims to have found a new legal argument. It hasn’t.

What the administration has found is a way to pass the buck to the courts.

President Barack Obama was criticized for last month’s release of memos authorizing harsh interrogation techniques. If the photos are now made public over White House objections, the inevitable outrage might be deflected toward the courts and away from the president.

The administration has also found a way to avoid distribution of the photographs just before Obama travels to Egypt to speak directly to Muslims. Government lawyers had promised a federal judge that they would turn over the photos by May 28 – a week before the president’s trip.

Wednesday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the president will try to block the court-ordered release of hundreds of photos showing U.S. troops abusing prisoners, reversing his position after military commanders warned that the images could stoke anti-American sentiment and endanger soldiers.

Those same arguments were made last month against releasing so-called torture memos, Bush-era documents outlining often-harsh methods CIA agents could use when interrogating terror suspects. Obama released the memos anyway.

The pictures, said to show mistreatment of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, are the subject of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The government recently had agreed to release 44 photographs and said in court papers it was “processing for release a substantial number of other images,” for a total expected to be in the hundreds.

Gibbs said the president wants administration lawyers to challenge the photos’ release based on national security concerns. He said that argument was not used before.

“The president does not believe that the strongest case regarding the release of these photos was presented to the court,” he said.

But the Bush administration already argued against the release on national security grounds – and lost. ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer said that argument “has been made by the government multiple times, and has been rejected unequivocally every time.”

In September 2008, a three-judge federal appeals panel in New York wrote, “It is plainly insufficient to claim that releasing documents could reasonably be expected to endanger some unspecified member of a group so vast as to encompass all United States troops, coalition forces, and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The court also rejected another argument Obama wants to revive. The White House says releasing the photos “would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals.”

The federal appeals court, in the same September ruling, found that claim “disregards FOIA’s central purpose of furthering governmental accountability.”

Pressed by top military commanders, Obama concluded that he did not feel comfortable with making the photographs public. Gibbs said the president was concerned about inflaming already tense situations in Iraq and Afghanistan and making the U.S. mission in those two wars more difficult.

White House concern is probably well founded, given the reaction in 2004 to publication and broadcast of photos from the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison showing grinning U.S. soldiers posing with detainees – some of the prisoners naked and some being held on leashes. The photographs incited protests domestically and abroad, particularly in Muslim countries.

By trying to keep the most recent batch of photos secret, Obama appears to be ignoring his pledge to be more forthcoming with information that courts have ruled should be made available to the public.

Gibbs said the latest decision does not contradict Obama’s promises of transparency since details about investigations into detainee abuse are available on the Pentagon’s Web site.

Obama’s decision to fight dissemination of the photos was welcomed by Republican lawmakers and at least one military group that were among his critics when the interrogation memos were brought to light as part of another ACLU lawsuit.

This time he’s kicking the decision back into court, where his administration still may be forced to hand over the photos.

Devlin Barrett covers justice for The Associated Press.

Pope Benedict XVI leaves after his visit to the Grotto of the Annunciation in the northern Israeli town of Nazareth.

JERUSALEM – Even if he had said all the right things about the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews, the German-born Pope Benedict XVI would have had a hard time winning over Israelis on his visit to the Jewish state.

His background as a German who served under the Nazis, the Roman Catholic Church’s history of anti-Semitism, his predecessor’s extraordinary outreach to Jews and a series of public relations gaffes – not to mention a longstanding dispute over the conduct of the Holocaust-era pope – created formidable obstacles for Benedict to overcome in his relations with the Jews.

So, it was not surprising that Israelis criticized the pope for failing to apologize for Catholic wrongdoings during a speech Monday at the country’s national Holocaust memorial.

“The thorough preparations for his visit to Israel, the complex traffic and security arrangements, and the millions of shekels that were earmarked for his hospitality evaporated as if they did not exist thanks to a speech that was missing one word – ‘sorry,’ ” said Wednesday’s lead editorial in the Israeli daily Haaretzy.

Regardless of whether Benedict deserves the criticism, it’s clear he miscalculated the impact of what he chose to say and not say at the memorial.

Before he assumed the papacy, his decades of involvement in fostering Jewish-Catholic relations made him a favorite among Jewish leaders to become pope, said Rabbi David Rosen, one of Israel’s leading voices in interfaith ties.

The apology Israeli critics said was so sorely missing from Benedict’s speech Monday at Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial has actually been made by the pontiff in the past.

In an audience with Jewish leaders at the Vatican earlier this year, Benedict recalled a prayer by his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, at the Western Wall in Jerusalem asking for God’s forgiveness for the treatment of Jews and said “I now make his prayer my own.”

Benedict’s speech at Yad Vashem contained a powerful pledge to never forget the victims’ names and a poignant allusion to the “joyful expectation” of victims’ parents anxiously awaiting the births of their children.

“What name shall we give this child? What is to become of him or her? Who could have imagined that they would be condemned to such a horrible fate,” the pope said.

Shortly after he said all this, however, the top two officials at Yad Vashem said they found the speech lacking because it failed to specifically mention the words “murder” or “Nazis” and left out the exact figure of 6 million Jews killed – in addition to the absence of a John Paul-like apology.

The speaker of Israel’s Parliament, Reuven Rivlin, criticized Benedict for coming off as detached, “as somebody observing from the sidelines.” Tom Segev, a prominent columnist and Holocaust historian, characterized the pope as “restrained, almost cold.”

Even Rabbi Arthur Schneier, a Holocaust survivor and a leader in interfaith relations, saw the speech as problematic despite his overall praise for Benedict.

“We should not be focusing just on an omission that took place at Yad Vashem, as painful as it might be,” said Schneier, who joined the pope on his visit Tuesday to the Western Wall.

Benedict has been warmly welcomed at every stop in Israel and the Palestinian territories and has been praised for his unequivocal calls for unity among religions.

But the flap over his Holocaust speech had the potential to eclipse his goodwill mission. If that happens, it wouldn’t be a first for Benedict.

There were uproars over his questioning of condoms as a valid weapons against AIDS during his pilgrimage to Africa, his quoting of a medieval text three years ago that characterized some of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad’s teachings as “evil and inhuman,” and his decision earlier this year to lift the excommunication of a bishop who denies the Holocaust.

Jewish leaders have only grudgingly accepted Benedict’s explanation that he did not know that Bishop Richard Williamson was a Holocaust denier when he lifted his excommunication from the church.

Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi defended Benedict against criticism of his Yad Vashem speech, saying the pope “can’t mention everything every time he speaks.”

In the end, Lombardi seemed to confuse the issue as much as clarify it. At one point, the spokesman said Benedict had “never, never” been a member of the Hitler Youth movement. A short while later, he backtracked, acknowledging that Benedict had in fact joined when membership was compulsory.

Sixty-four years after the last Nazi gas chamber closed, the Holocaust remains a raw wound across Israel’s national psyche. Many Israelis were deeply moved by John Paul’s stunning gesture at the Western Wall nine years ago, giving Benedict a hard act to follow during this, only the second official papal visit to the Jewish state.

The Vatican and Jewish leaders remain at odds over the conduct of Pius XII, the pope who reigned during World War II. Jews say he failed to do enough to stop the Holocaust and Catholic leaders insist he worked diligently behind the scenes to save Jews.

After John Paul’s death four years ago, Holocaust survivor Idit Tzirir described how that pope, as a young seminary student named Karol Wojtyla in Nazi-era Poland, trudged through the snow for miles carrying her – emaciated and suffering from tuberculosis – after her release from a German labor camp.

By contrast, Benedict by his own admission was a member of Hitler Youth during the war, albeit an unwilling one.

Steven Gutkin is the AP bureau chief for Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Police vehicles guard the site where a woman was found dead inside a car, two blocks away from a police station in Tijuana, Mexico, on Thursday.

TIJUANA, Mexico – The bodies of four U.S. citizens were found strangled, beaten and stabbed in a van in this border city, two days after they reportedly left their southern California homes for a night at the Mexican clubs, U.S. officials said Thursday.

The victims, ages 19 to 23, were found tied up on Saturday, but their deaths were not reported earlier because they were under investigation, said Fermin Gomez, an assistant state prosecutor in Baja California.

U.S. consular officials in Tijuana said the victims – two men and two women from the San Diego and Chula Vista areas – were U.S. citizens. The state attorney general’s office in Baja California said one of the women was Mexican.

Their deaths are the latest in a string of violence in Tijuana that authorities blame on a bloody turf war between drug cartels.

“I just don’t think kids should be going to Tijuana right now,” Chula Vista police Lt. Scott Arsenault told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “They ran into the wrong people, obviously.”

Bernard Gonzales, a spokesman for the Chula Vista Police Department, said a friend told the women’s parents they were headed to nightclubs in Tijuana on Thursday night. They were reported missing the next day when they did not answer their cell phones.

A plainclothes police officer, wearing a face mask, stands near a house where a methamphetamine lab was found on the outskirts of Tijuana, Mexico, on Wednesday.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – A team of specialized American sailors apprehended 17 suspected pirates who attacked an Egyptian merchant ship in the dangerous waters off Yemen, the U.S. Navy said Thursday.

The sailors from the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg also seized eight assault rifles and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher when they boarded the pirates’ vessel Wednesday in the Gulf of Aden, said the Navy’s Bahrain-based 5th Fleet.

The Gettysburg launched the operation with the help of the Korean Destroyer ROKS Munmu the Great after the pirates fired at the Egyptian-flagged Motor Vessel Amira about 75 miles south of Yemen’s al-Mukalla port, the Navy said. Both ships dispatched helicopters during the mission.

The Gulf of Aden is one of the world’s most important shipping lanes, connecting Europe and Asia via the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. It is used by 20,000 ships a year and has become the world’s hot spot for pirate attacks.

The 17 pirates seized were taken aboard the Gettysburg for further questioning, said the Navy. They were operating from a “mothership” — a larger vessel pirates often use to resupply the small speedboats that attack ships far offshore. The Navy did not say what happened to the mothership after the operation.

Also Thursday, Iranian state television said the country will send two warships to join an international flotilla protecting cargo ships from pirates off the Somali coast.

Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Khazaei, made the commitment in a letter he sent to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday, according to a report on the Web site of Iran’s press TV.

The ships will leave within the next two days for a five-month assignment and will join vessels from the U.S., Denmark, Italy, Russia, China and other countries.

Somali pirates have significantly stepped up their attacks in recent years. They hijacked a cargo ship operated by Iran off the Somali coast in November, the second in the past six months.

At least 19 ships and over 250 sailors are now being held hostage by Somali pirates. Last year, 42 ships were seized and pirates earned an estimated $1 million or more in ransom each time they freed a ship.

The pirates operate freely because Somalia has had no effective central government in nearly 20 years. Nearly every public institution has crumbled, and the U.N.-backed government controls only limited territory and is fighting an Islamic insurgency.

An internally displaced Sri Lankan ethnic Tamil woman tends to an injured boy at a makeshift hospital in Mullivaikal, Sri Lanka, Wednesday.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Artillery shells tore through a hospital packed with wounded civilians in Sri Lanka’s war zone for a second day Wednesday, killing at least 50 people, setting an ambulance ablaze and forcing the medical staff to huddle in bunkers for safety, doctors said.

Health workers at the makeshift medical facility said they were so overwhelmed by the crush of the wounded and the unrelenting shelling of the area they could do little but give gauze and bandages to the roughly 1,000 patients waiting for treatment.

The strike on the hospital came as the government marched on with its offensive to destroy the reeling Tamil Tiger rebels and end their quarter-century quest for a separate homeland.

There has been a wave of artillery bombardments across the war zone that began over the weekend and has barely let up in five days, health workers said. The weekend attacks alone may have killed as many as 1,000 people, doctors said.

The government says its troops are not responsible for the shelling and that the military has not fired heavy weapons in the area in weeks.

But Human Rights Watch says satellite images and witness testimony contradict that claim and has accused both sides of using the estimated 50,000 civilians packed into the tiny coastal strip controlled by the rebels as “cannon fodder.”

The shelling was so intense Wednesday that a Red Cross ferry waiting off the coast to deliver food aid and evacuate the wounded had to turn back for a second day, the agency said.

Two artillery shells hit the medical facility about 1 p.m., slamming into an administrative office and a ward filled with patients already wounded by previous shell attacks, Dr. V. Shanmugarajah told The Associated Press by telephone.

Dr. Thurairaja Varatharajah, the top health official in the war zone, said the attack killed at least 50 people, including patients, relatives and a health aide, and wounded about 60 others.

Heavy shelling of the war zone continued throughout the day, he said.

“We are unable to treat the people properly because a lot of aides have fled the hospital. We go into bunkers when there is shelling and try to treat them as much as we can when there is a lull,” he said by telephone.

One shell that struck the compound set an ambulance on fire, according to video footage of the aftermath of the attack. Scores of people crowded beneath tarps outside the hospital building waited for care as someone wailed in the background.

More than 1,000 civilians — many with amputations or chest wounds — had been waiting for treatment at the hospital when it was struck, and every 10 minutes or so another one or two died from lack of care, said a third hospital official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because the government had not authorized him to speak to the media.

Overwhelmed doctors have been reduced to handing out bandages to the seriously wounded, the official said. More than 100 dead bodies have been left inside the compound because no one will risk burying them amid the constant shelling, he said. The strike was the third to hit the hospital this month.

A Red Cross worker and his mother were also killed in shelling, the third Red Cross staff member killed by shrapnel in the war zone in the past two months, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

“This latest tragic incident shows how dangerous it is for everyone in the area,” said Paul Castella, the head of the Red Cross delegation in Colombo.

Rebel spokesman Seevaratnam Puleedevan said shells also hit a home for mentally handicapped women, killing 38 and wounding more than 40.

Reports of the fighting are difficult to verify because the government has barred journalists and aid workers from the war zone.

The government has come under heavy international criticism for the large civilian toll of its offensive against the rebels, who are cornered in a two square-mile (five square-kilometer) strip of land.

The military said it pressed ahead with its offensive into that strip Wednesday, capturing one of the rebels’ heavy guns and fending off a suicide attack by four rebel boats laden with explosives.

The U.N. Security Council demanded Wednesday that the Tamil Tigers stop fighting and allow tens of thousands of civilians being used as human shields to leave the war zone. It also called on the government to stop firing heavy weapons, help trapped civilians evacuate and allow for the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid.

The council press statement — which is not legally binding — expressed grave concern at the worsening humanitarian crisis.

MEXICO CITY – Swine flu has infected Mexico’s relations with China and other countries that have canceled airline flights and halted some trade. But its most prickly neighbor — the United States — now seems like the country’s most loyal friend.

Mexico is smarting from what it considers discriminatory actions by countries it had considered friendly, insisting the world should be grateful for its open and aggressive efforts to stem the spread of swine flu. The shutdown of public life cost Mexico $2.2 billion in the first 10 days after the epidemic was announced.

The government sent a plane to pick up 70 of its citizens quarantined in China. It rebuked Cuba, Ecuador, Argentina and Peru for banning flights to Mexico, saying they were acting “incongruously with our traditional ties of friendship.”

France tried — and failed — to win a European Union-wide ban on flights to Mexico.

Particularly insulting for Mexico: Haiti rejected a Mexican ship last week carrying 77 tons of much-needed food aid because of swine flu fears.

All of that put the U.S. response in a very favorable light. Neither the United States nor Canada banned flights or restricted trade with Mexico. The three countries are partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement.

President Obama forcefully rejected the idea of closing the border, despite arguments from conservative talk show hosts that swine flu showed immigration from Mexico was a threat.

The Obama administration cast the decision as a recognition of reality: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said sealing the border would be extremely costly and pointless since the virus was already in the United States. Obama likened the idea to “closing the barn door after the horses are out.”

Even so, it was symbolically significant in Mexico, which protested when the U.S. began building a border fence under former President George W. Bush.

While Obama has also beefed up border security, he has pledged to renew efforts to push through immigration reforms that eluded the Bush administration, including extending a citizenship path for illegal immigrants. His emphasis on open borders during the swine flu outbreak could help set the tone.

“There was a very explicit recognition that the U.S. and Mexico cannot close their borders,” said Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Washington-based Wilson Center. “Maybe that tells you that Mexico is really more integrated with its neighbors to the north than the rest of Latin America.”

Mexico took note. The Foreign Relations Department held a special ceremony to thank the U.S. government both for keeping the border open and for providing aid and medical expertise.

“The way in which the border between Mexico and the United States stayed not only open but alive in the past days has been exemplary,” said Carlos Rico, Mexico’s deputy secretary for North American relations. “The open border is something that has not been recognized enough.”

Even members of the opposition leftist Democratic Revolution Party — long known for its nationalistic wariness of the United States — were impressed.

“I thought the reaction and response from the three countries — Mexico, the United States and Canada — was definitely laudable,” said Alfonso Suarez de Real, a lawmaker from the party. “It contrasted with the reaction that other countries have had.”

The experience added momentum to increasingly warming relations, coming on the heels of Obama’s April 16 visit to Mexico and his acknowledgment that Americans share the blame for violence south of border because of drug consumption and gun trafficking. Mexico, for its part, has set aside traditional sovereignty concerns in welcoming increased U.S. border security and even U.S. training for Mexico’s navy.

In contrast, relations with China have been frayed, threatening to undermine trade and investment between the two countries just as it has been picking up, said Hector Cuellar, president of the recently formed Mexico-China Chamber of Commerce.

Prominent Mexican companies have started opening operations in China in the last three years, while Mexican exports to China have jumped ninefold over the past decade to some $2 billion.

But Mexicans were angered when China banned the direct flights that leading Mexican airline Aeromexico started offering in October, and then quarantined Mexican travelers. Mexico canceled its participation at a Shanghai trade fair where it had meant to showcase its pork products — now banned in China and at least four other nations even though health experts say people can’t catch swine flu from meat.

The epidemic also set back Mexico’s efforts to improve ties with Cuba, which soured during the 2000-06 presidency of Vicente Fox, when Mexico voted at the U.N. in favor of monitoring human rights on the communist island.

Fox’s successor, Felipe Calderón, had planned a conciliatory trip to Cuba this year. That’s up in the air after Calderon said he may have to cancel because Cuba grounded flights to and from Mexico.

Mexican officials also didn’t take kindly to Fidel Castro lashing out after Cuba confirmed its first swine flu case, accusing Mexico of waiting to disclose the epidemic until after Obama visited, even though Canadian and U.S. scientists did not identify the virus in Mexican patients until a week later.

In Europe for a summit Tuesday, Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinosa told Cuba’s foreign relations minister, Bruno Rodriguez, that such remarks “hurt bilateral relations.”

Deputy Health Secretary Mauricio Hernandez said Wednesday that Mexico would support a global compensation fund for countries that suffer from epidemics, and warned that the threat of trade and travel restrictions could provoke governments to hide future outbreaks.

“We were responsible, and we ended up with trade sanctions — we were discriminated against,” Hernandez said at an academic forum on swine flu. “So, the question is: What is the incentive (for countries to be open)?”

Burst of gunfire from U.S. soldier touches varied lives

ABOVE: A family photo shows Pfc. Michael Edward Yates Jr. and his son Kamren. BELOW: Licensed clinical social worker Cmdr. Charles Keith Springle

Keith Springle, who grew up swimming and fishing off the North Carolina coast and seemed destined as a boy to join the Navy, was in Iraq because it was his duty as a military psychologist. Dr. Matthew Houseal, a 54-year-old Army reservist and psychiatrist, was there because he felt he needed to be.

Regardless of how they came to be there, both made it their mission to help their fellow service members cope with the stress of life in the combat zone. Soldiers like the Maryland rebel who liked tinkering with guns and despised “pencil pushers”; or the Peru native who, whether he was walking the streets of New Jersey or the dirt roads of Iraq, was a magnet for candy-seeking kids; or the shy video gamer from Missouri whose refusal to back down probably cost him his life.

Stress brought the five together earlier this week at a Baghdad clinic, the emotionally wounded and the healers. And stress is what killed them.

Authorities say Sgt. John M. Russell, who was nearing the end of his third tour in Iraq, was deeply angry at the military when he walked into the combat stress clinic at Camp Liberty on Monday and opened fire.

Killed were Springle, 52, a Navy commander from Beaufort, N.C.; Houseal of Amarillo, Texas; Army Sgt. Christian E. Bueno-Galdos, 25, of Paterson, N.J.; Spc. Jacob D. Barton, 20, of Lenox, Mo.; and Pfc. Michael E. Yates Jr., 19, of Federalsburg, Md., who had met Russell shortly before the shootings.

The paths that brought these six men together traced a grid across the globe, from South America to rural Missouri, from the islands of Alaska to deepest Antarctica, before intersecting so tragically in an Army clinic.

Family and teachers said Jacob Barton was a quiet student who loved graphic novels and science fiction. Growing up with his grandmother in the house, he sometimes had trouble relating to kids his own age.

“His grandmother was foremost on his mind at all times,” said Rod Waldrip, Barton’s high school English teacher at Rolla High School, where Barton graduated last year. “He sometimes wouldn’t do after-school activities because he had to see if she was OK. She was his main concern.”

Rose Coleman said her grandson was adjusting to life in the Army and that he “seemed to like it.”

Although he was reserved, he wasn’t afraid. Waldrip remembers seeing Barton come to the rescue of somebody who was getting bullied.

“He wouldn’t say much unless there was some injustice being done, and then he would speak up.”

Coleman said the Army told the family that Barton died trying to shield another man from the shooting.

“And he tried to talk the guy with the gun to put his gun down,” she said.

Springle knew mental health issues in the past weren’t being addressed and wanted to be proactive in treating the issues faced by soldiers and their families, said Staff Sgt. Robert Mullis of the Boone-based 1451st Transportation Company of the N.C. National Guard, who was part of a civilian outreach program with Springle.

“He saw it as preventive maintenance,” Mullis said of Springle. “They’ve just been through some tough experiences. He was reaching out trying to try and stop a big beast before it got started.”

Springle grew up in the little fishing village of Lewiston, N.C., just east of Beaufort. Cousin Alton Dudley said the pair were a kind of saltwater Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.

“It was a carefree life,” said Dudley, a fishing boat captain who was nine years older than Springle. “I am sure that he joined the Navy so that he could be at sea or close to it.”

All who knew him talked about Springle’s sense of humor and upbeat attitude. But Springle, whose son and son-in-law have each done a tour in Iraq, took the issue of combat stress very seriously. While deploying to Iraq was his duty, his work on the homefront with the Citizen-Soldier Support Program was a labor of love.

“This was volunteer work,” said Bob Goodale, director of behavioral mental health for the Chapel Hill-based program. “He was doing this because it was the right thing to do: training civilian providers so they were better equipped to serve the families and the service members.”

At 54, Houseal, a major in the Army Reserves, was under no obligation to go to Iraq. But he was already something of an adventurer.

For 11 months in 1991, the University of Michigan graduate served as the physician for about 20 people working at the Amundsen-Scott Station near the South Pole in a climate research project funded by the National Science Foundation, said Mike O’Neill who was the group’s electronics technician.

“He came in at the last minute not knowing anybody,” said O’Neill, who works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Colorado. “That’s one of the reasons I really respected him.”

The Amarillo man had worked for a dozen years at the Texas Panhandle Mental Health and Mental Retardation clinic, said executive director Bud Schertler. He left Texas for Iraq in late January and was assigned to the 55th Medical Company in Indianapolis, which ran the clinic where the shootings occurred.

Bueno-Galdos couldn’t wait to serve his adopted country and did so exceptionally, earning three Army Commendation Medals.

He was 7 when his family emigrated from Mollendo, Peru, for better economic opportunities. The youngest of four children, Chinito – a term of endearment that literally means “little Chinaman” – became a U.S. citizen in high school and joined the Army as soon as he graduated.

Back home in Paterson, he never made a trip to the corner bodega without a group of neighborhood children tailing behind, knowing he would buy them candy or a soda, his family recalled. It was the same in Iraq, where he was on his second tour.

Yates displayed zeal for serving in the Army, but perhaps not the locale where he was serving, as evidenced by his MySpace page.

His profile lists his location as “(expletive), Iraq.”

Yates’ mother, Shawna Machlinski, said her son joined the Army, not out of a sense of duty, but because he didn’t see many other options. Besides, his stepfather and two stepbrothers were all military men.

Yates liked the military, especially going out on what he called “stealth missions.” His problems started when he went back after spending nearly the entire month of April at home. His son, Kamren Mister, celebrated his first birthday on April 7.

But the visit left him anxious. He wasn’t home long enough, but he’d still been away from “my military family” too long. Once back in Iraq, his mother said, he began to think about things he wished he’d done while visiting Maryland.

When the strong emotions began surfacing, she said, he was transferred to headquarters company “so he could stay out of combat.”

“He didn’t like headquarters at all,” said Machlinski. “He said they’re stupid pencil pushers.”

Despite the stigma, Yates volunteered to go to the stress clinic.

“I need help dealing with this,” he told his mom.

Yates had been at the clinic nearly a week when he called home Sunday for Mother’s Day.

Sometime during that time, he bumped into Russell.

Yates told his mother that Russell seemed like a nice enough guy, but after three tours, he clearly hated the Army.

“Man, this guy’s got issues,” she remembers him telling her.

Russell, 44, who was a little more than a month shy of finishing his third tour, told his family that the clinic was hurting him more than helping.

Now, he faces charges of murder and aggravated assault.

King Abdullah II of Jordan, shown meeting with President Obama in the Oval Office in April, has predicted war if the Palestinian side doesn't see real progress toward its own state.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington next week.

If anyone wants an appropriate song to characterize the buildup to his meeting with President Obama, it should be the old Sammy Cahn-Jule Styne number “I’ve Heard That Song Before.”

It goes: “It seems to me I’ve heard that song before; it’s from an old familiar score; I know it well, that melody.”

This time, there is a twist. King Abdullah II of Jordan, in an interview this week with the Times of London, raised the stakes by predicting war if the Palestinian side doesn’t see real progress toward its own state.

Abdullah said a 57-state, not a two-state solution, is what’s needed, which means all Arab and Muslim states, as part of any deal, would need to recognize Israel. Good luck with that.

Last week in London I spoke with Liam Fox, a conservative Member of Parliament and the “shadow defense secretary” in Great Britain. Fox told me, “There is a belief in some quarters that if only you can resolve the problems between Israel and Palestine, all the other problems in the Middle East, in a domino-like fashion, will fall into place. That is absolute nonsense.”

Indeed, it is.

Fox said on a recent visit to Iran that Iranian politicians told him they realize they lack an air force to fight back if they are attacked by Israel, so they would use Hezbollah and Hamas.

“They are part of our defense policy against Israel,” Fox quoted them as saying, “Hamas is not part of the Palestinian problem. Hamas is the foreign-policy wing of Iran in Israel.”

If words mean anything, consider these from the Hamas Charter:

“The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf (endowment) consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. …

“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”

Hezbollah has its own charter. It says in part:

“Our primary assumption in our fight against Israel states that the Zionist entity is aggressive from its inception, and built on lands wrested from their owners, at the expense of the rights of the Muslim people.

“Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease-fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.”

Anyone see any wiggle room there? Have the actions of these two radical Islamic organizations, and their many cousins, demonstrated that they don’t mean what they say?

As I have previously – and repeatedly – noted, the pressure from the United States ought not to be on Israel, which has mostly lived up to every agreement – from Oslo, to Madrid, to Wye River.

U.S. pressure should be directed at those bent on Israel’s destruction. Israel’s enemies lost land through military action aimed at destroying Israel.

They are winning it back through diplomacy, pressure and terrorist acts carried out by their proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel’s enemies have used this newly acquired land to launch attacks.

Gaza is the latest example. Israel unilaterally ceded Gaza to the Palestinians, and it has been used as a terrorist base for firing missiles at civilians inside Israel.

Why would anyone think that additional concessions, including an autonomous Palestinian state, would deter Islamic extremists from fulfilling the mandates of their charters?

For people who regard any presence by Jews on “Muslim land” as a religious and personal affront and negotiations with “infidels” (that would be we American “crusaders” and the “Zionist entity”) as against the will of their god, why should they be expected to compromise on a matter of doctrinal “truth”?

The Palestinians will deserve a state when they and their Arab-Muslim supporters prove by their actions and a reconsideration of their religious doctrines that they are prepared to allow Israel to exist in peace and have no intention of flooding a Palestinian state with “refugees” who might very well be used to finish the job so many of them wish Hitler had completed.

The question Netanyahu should ask President Obama is this: Does the United States want to sustain the first democracy in the Middle East or does it wish to create another terrorist state?

Cal Thomas is an author and broadcast commentator. His e-mail address is calthomas@tribune.com.

U.S. Army Gen. David D. McKiernan, commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force and the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, is seen during a visit this month with U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to the Forward Operating Base Airborne in Wardak Province, Afghanistan. The Pentagon is replacing McKiernan as President Obama tries to turn around a stalemated war.

The Obama administration is struggling to confront a central reality of the Afghanistan war it inherited: More troops, more aid and a retooled strategy alone are not enough.

It wants to energize the effort with new ideas, too, and do it before American public patience runs out.

It’s a grim given that U.S. casualties are likely to increase in the months ahead as additional soldiers and Marines arrive to take on the Taliban in their southern strongholds. Already some prominent members of Congress, including from Obama’s party, are questioning whether Afghanistan is a lost cause.

That concern may explain, in part, the decision Monday to sack Gen. David McKiernan as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan and replace him with an officer known for innovative action, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Pentagon chief Robert Gates said it was time for “new thinking and new approaches.”

Yet it seems unlikely the switching of commanders portends a new U.S. war strategy. Obama announced a revised plan just two months ago. Instead the administration is hoping that a military command shake-up will lead to a more effective implementation of the existing strategy, which is aimed at defeating al-Qaida terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan and preventing their return to either country.

William Fallon, the retired Navy admiral who was responsible for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and the broader Middle East in 2007-08, is optimistic that new leadership will make a difference.

“I have the highest confidence in his judgment,” Fallon said of McChrystal. “He gets it.”

The change at the top in Afghanistan won’t mean new marching orders for arriving Marines, said Lt. Gen. Dennis J. Hejlik, a U.S.-based Marine commander. However, Hejlik, too, suggested that McChrystal will do things differently.

“He really does understand that you’re not going to win the war by killing all the enemy. That’s just not going to work,” he said.

McKiernan recently described the war as “stalemated, at best” in the southern part of Afghanistan where the Taliban are strongest. For months he has called for an increase in U.S. forces, but during the Bush administration his requests went unmet as Iraq dominated the White House’s focus.

Obama entered the White House promising to make Afghanistan and Pakistan the higher priority, arguing that stopping al-Qaida from launching new attacks was of greater strategic importance than the task in Iraq. He also said he would “not blindly stay the course” in Afghanistan and would regularly review his approach. Since then the situation — militarily and politically — has arguably gotten worse.

The boldness of the insurgency was underscored Tuesday. Eleven Taliban suicide bombers struck government buildings in a daylong assault in the eastern city of Khost. The assault led to running gunbattles with U.S. and Afghan forces that killed 20 people and wounded three Americans.

At the heart of Obama’s approach to the war is his view, shared by senior commanders, that military power alone will not lead to success — and that stability in Afghanistan is not possible without stability in neighboring, nuclear-armed Pakistan, where the radical Taliban movement has been on the rise.

That means Obama will look to McChrystal to find more effective ways of linking military action with an accelerated effort to build workable Afghan government ministries, to expand and improve Afghan security forces, to promote Afghan reconciliation with more moderate elements of the Taliban, and to improve the U.S.-led coalition’s ability to overcome remarkably effective propaganda efforts by the Taliban and al-Qaida.

It also means that turning around the war in Afghanistan will require changes beyond Obama’s control – perhaps most importantly a more effective Pakistani government response to the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan.

Two months after announcing his new strategy, Obama has little to show for it, although the extra 21,000 troops he approved as reinforcements are only now beginning to arrive and there is the prospect of a further restructuring of the U.S.-NATO command in Afghanistan. Also, the new U.S. ambassador in Kabul, retired Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, just arrived in the capital last week.

The outlook is not bright. At a hearing Tuesday, Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, painted a grim picture, saying he was stunned by a lack of progress in Afghanistan, which he called a “black hole” with no bottom.

“It is just breathtaking, the amount of money, the American lives we’ve spent there, and you have a government that has control maybe to the outskirts of the capital,” Risch said.

The man to whom Risch was speaking, Richard Holbrooke, the veteran diplomat who is coordinating the administration’s policy on Pakistan and Afghanistan, responded that his own initial assessment was not much different. Holbrooke insisted, however, that the administration has a workable strategy and that dismantling the terrorist network that attacked the U.S. on 9/11 is too important not to press ahead.

Obama needs Congress to go along with the piece of his strategy that calls for providing billions more in aid to Pakistan with the aim of preventing a collapse into chaos that could spill over into Afghanistan. But it was evident from Holbrooke’s appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that some of the most skeptical and reluctant members of Congress are from Obama’s own party.

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., said he feared that adding U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan would only expand the trouble in Pakistan.

“You are absolutely correct that an additional amount of American troops, particularly if they are successful in (southern Afghanistan), could end up creating a pressure in Pakistan, which would add to the instability,” Holbrooke said. He said this would require closer coordination with the Pakistani government.

Another obstacle to progress in Afghanistan that has seemed beyond U.S. efforts to overcome is the recurrence of civilian casualties. It’s a problem that has undercut Afghan public support for the U.S. mission and assisted the Taliban in promoting the notion that the Afghanistan government is a U.S. puppet.

One more problem demanding an innovative solution.

Robert Burns has covered national security affairs for The Associated Press since 1990.