LAKE CITY REPORTER


NATION & WORLD


SUNDAY, MAY 15, 2011


Page Editor: C.J.Risak, 754-0427


 ASSOCIATED PRESS
In this Friday photo, Mississippi flood waters creep up the flood walls of downtown Vicksburg, Miss. Army engineers prepared
Saturday to slowly open the gates of an emergency spillway along the rising Mississippi River, diverting floodwaters from
Baton Rouge and New Orleans.


Preparations set: Floodgate to open

for first time in nearly 40 years


By MARY FOSTER
and MELINDA DESLATTE
Associated Press

 MORGANZA, Louisiana -
Engineers made final preparations
Saturday afternoon to slowly open a
10-ton, steel emergency floodgate for
the first time in nearly four decades,
purposefully inundating farmlands
and homes in Louisiana's Cajun coun-
try to drain the swelling Mississippi
River and avert flooding in New
Orleans.
 Across the countryside, people fled
to higher ground, shored up levees
that held the last time the Morganza
spillway was opened and built new
walls of sand and dirt to hold back
the flood they have known was com-
ing for weeks. Sheriffs and National
Guardsmen were warning people in a
door-to-door sweep, and shelters were
ready to accept up to 4,800 evacuees.
 "We're using every flood control tool
we have in the system," Army Corps
of Engineers Maj. Gen. Michael Walsh
said Saturday from the dry side of the
spillway, which was expected to be
under several feet of water Sunday.
 It will take about 15 minutes for one
of the 28-feet gates to be raised, then
several hours before any of the water
hits sparsely populated communities.-
The corps plans to open one or two,
more gates Sunday in a painstaking
process that gives residents and ani-
mals a chance to get out of the way.
 About 25,000 people and 11,000
structures could be in harm's way
when the Morganza spillway is
unlocked for the first time since 1973,
but diverting the river water will
help take the pressure off levees
downstream. Easing the strain on
the river walls helps make sure the
river doesn't flood more populated
cities like Baton Rouge and New
Orleans, and the numerous oil refin-
eries and chemical plants along the
lower reaches of the Mississippi.
 In Krotz Springs, Louisiana, one
of the towns in the Atchafalaya River
basin bracing for floodwaters, Monita
Reed, 56, recalled the last time the
Morganza was opened in 1973.
 'We could sit in our yard and hear
the water," she said as workers con-


 ASSOCIATED PRESS
 A crew of workmen carry drainage hose
 along a temporary seawall adjacent
 to the Ameristar Casino in Vicksburg,
 Miss., as Mississippi River floodwaters
 creep up the flood walls Saturday. The
 waters from the Mississippi River and
 its tributaries are not expected to crest
 in Vicksburg until Thursday.
structed a makeshift levee of sand-
bags and soil-filled mesh boxes in
hopes of protecting the 240 homes in
her subdivision.
 Some people living in the threat-
ened stretch of countryside an
area known for small farms, fish
camps and a drawling French dialect
- have already started heading out.
Reed's family packed her furniture,
clothing and pictures in a rental truck
and a relative's trailer.
 "I'm just going to move and store
my stuff. I'm going to stay here until
they tell us to leave," Reed said.
"Hopefully, we won't see much water
and then I can move back in. "
 Opening the spillway will release
water that could submerge about
3,000 square miles (7,770 square kilo-
meters), some places would be under
as, much as 25 feet (7.5 meters) in
some areas.
 Engineers feared that weeks of
pressure on the levees could cause
them to fail, swamping New Orleans


under as much as-20 feet (six meters)
of water in a disaster that would have
been much worse than Hurricane
Katrina in 2005.
 Instead, the water will flow 20
miles (30 kilometers) south into the
Atchafalaya Basin. From there it will
roll on to Morgan City, an oil-and-
seafood hub and a community of
12,000, and eventually into the Gulf
of Mexico.
 The Krotz Springs area was in a
sliver of land about 70 miles (115
kilometers) long and 20 miles (30
kilometers) wide, north of Morgan
City. The finger-shaped strip of land
was expected to be inundated with
10- to 20-feet (three- to six-meters) of
water, according to estimates by the
Army Corps of Engineers.
 It will take days for the water to run
south, and it wasn't expected to reach
Morgan City until around Tuesday.
 The corps employed a similar cities-
first strategy earlier this month when
it blew up a levee in Missouri inun-
dating an estimated 200 square miles
(520 square kilometers) of farmland
and damaging or destroying about
100 homes to take the pressure
off the levees protecting the town of
Cairo, Illinois, population 2,800.
 The disaster was averted in Cairo,
a bottleneck where the Ohio and
Mississippi rivers meet.
 This intentional flood is more con-
trolled, however, and residents are
warned by the corps each year in
written letters, reminding them of the
possibility of opening the spillway,
which is 4,000 feet (1,200 meters)
long and has 125 gate bays.
 At the site of the spillway, a verti-
cal crane was in position to hoist the
gate panel and let water out one of
the bays. On one side of the spillway,
water was splashing over the gates.
The other side was dry.
 Typically, the site of the spillway is
dry on both sides. But when the river
rises to historic levels, like the ones
seen over the past couple of weeks, it
holds the Mississippi in place.
 The spillway, built in 1954, is part
of a flood plan largely put into motion
in the 1930s in the aftermath of the
devastating 1927 flood that killed
hundreds.


Kerry: Pakistan

can be better ally

against terror


- 7 ,77"l-^


By RAHIM FAIEZ
Associated Press

 KABUL, Afghanistan -
 Pakistan could be a better
 partner in the fight against
 terrorists, U.S. Sen. John
 Kerry said Saturday on
 the first leg of a visit to
 Afghanistan and Pakistan
 to patch up relations fol-
 lowing the U.S. killing of
 Osama bin Laden.
 Kerry, chairman of the
 powerful Senate Foreign
 Relations Committee, said
 the United States wants
 Pakistan to be, a real ally in
 combatting terrorism.
 "We believe there are
 things that can be done
 better," he said in a visit to
 Mazar-i-Sharif, a large city
 in the north.
 Kerry's trip to
 Afghanistan and later
 Pakistan comes as the
 relationship between
 Washington and Islamabad
 is frayed over the U.S. uni-
 lateral raid on Pakistani
 soil that killed bin Laden.
 Pakistani officials have
 denied that they knew that
 the world's most-wanted
 terrorist was hiding for
 years in the northwest gar-
 rison city of Abbottabad.
 They are angry at U.S. offi-
 cials for not alerting them
 'to plans for the May 2 raid.
 Speaking to reporters,
 Kerry was asked if the
 United States would be
 putting more pressure
 on Pakistan because bin
 Laden was tracked down
 there, and whether the
 U.S. would go after the
 Taliban's leader, Mullah
 Omar, who could be hid-
' ing in Pakistan as well.
 Kerry said only: "It's a
 legitimate question and it's
 certainly a question that's
 on the minds of every
 American and lots of other
 people in the world."
 Kerry also said that


 ASSOCIATED PRESS
U.S. Senator John Kerry (center left) talks to reporters after
he arrived at Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan, Saturday.


Bin Laden in Pakistan: Potent but past his prime


By CALVIN WOODWARD
Associated Press

 WASHINGTON Surrounded
by the din of his multiple families
within walls that were both his
sanctuary and prison, Osama bin
Laden pecked endlessly at a com-
puter, issuing directives to his
scattered and troubled terrorist
empire. It's not clear who really
listened.
 Go big,-he told al-Qaida opera-
tives and affiliates.
 They mostly went small.
 The latest intelligence from the
wealth of material found at bin
Laden's last hideout paints a com-
plicated picture of the fugitive,
both deeply engaged in his life's
violent mission and somewhat
out to pasture.
 InsidetheAbbottabad,Pakistan,
compound, he kept busy schem-
ing plots, rehearsed and record-
ed propaganda and dispatched
couriers to distant Internet cafes
to conduct his email traffic, using
computer flash drives to relay
messages he would write and
store from his shabby office. He
dyed his gray beard black to keep
up appearances for the videos.
 To U.S. officials, who possess
bin Laden's handwritten personal
journal as well as an enormous
cache of his digital documents,
the still-unfolding discoveries
show he was more involved in


 ASSOCIATED PRESS
This image made from television shows Osama bin Laden holding an
AK47 automatic rifle in an undated recruitment video tape for his organi-
zation, viewed by The Associated Press in Kuwait City on June 19, 2001.
There is no dispute that bin Laden spent time in his lair dreaming up
ways to kill Americans in great numbers again, for the terrorist believed
that only mass casualties could move U.S. policy. -


trying to plan al-Qaida's post-911
operations than they had thought
possible for a man in perpetual
hiding.
 Even so, he was disconnected
from his organization in real time,
lacking phones or the Internet


at his hideout and with loyalists
hunted at every turn. Essential
elements of a command and con-
trol function from Abbottabad
appear to be missing.
 A discovered video shows him
channel surfing with a tiny TV


while wrapped in a wool blanket,
wearing a knit cap and looking
anything but content. Toward its
own propaganda ends, the U.S.
released selective excerpts of
these odd home movies, choos-
ing clips that only show the
Prince of jihad in an unflattering,
even pathetic, light.
 For a man working from home,
there seemed to be many distrac-
tions.
 The U.S. raiders who killed
him, a grown son and others May
2 encountered 23 children and
nine women on the grounds of the
three-story complex behind walls
stained with mold, including three
of his wives, officials said after-
ward. The U.S. has questioned
those widows, the Pentagon said
Friday without revealing if any-
thing was learned.
 U.S. officials also said the raid-
ers found a collection of por-
nography in the materials they
confiscated but it was not clear
who owned it or had seen it.
 The compound is hardly the
plush redoubt U.S. officials
described in the immediate after-
math of the Navy SEALs assault.
Yet the Saudi son of privilege,
who long ago renounced wealth
and creature comforts, had lived
in far more Spartan circumstanc-
es even if he was not quite the
cave-dweller of Western lore.
 As bizarre as it might be to


know he spent his last months
surrounded by children, any
thought of domestic tranquility is'
probably a stretch.
 This was a man who forced his
family to live without air condi-
tioning or a refrigerator in stifling
heat in pre-terrorist days, who
beat them and ket his fighters
experiment on their pets with
poison gas, and made his fam-
ily dig and sleep in ditches on a
desert camping trip, according to
a son and another wife who col-
laborated on the book "Growing
Up Bin Laden."
 Such a harsh disposition with
family was disputed by Ahmed
Abdel-Fatah al-Sada, a father-in-law,
who told The Associated Press in
Yemen that bin Laden was a "kind
and noble" man, "easygoing and
modest, giving you the feeling that
he was sincere." Al-Sada's daugh-
ter, Amal, 29, was shot in the leg
during the raid as she rushed the
Navy SEALs, U.S. officials said.
 There is no dispute that bin
Laden spent time in his lair dream-
ing up ways to kill Americans
in great numbers again, for the
terrorist believed that only mass
casualties could move U.S. policy.
Communicating both with his core
group and al-Qaida affiliates, he
advised plots against cities spared
on Sept. 11, 2001, such as Los
Angeles, and wanted to explore
attacking trains.


President Barack Obama
and the American people
were committed to work-
ing with Afghans who have
a long history of fighting
for their own indepen-
dence. His visit comes just
two months before Afghan
security forces are to begin
to take the lead for secur-
ing Mazar-i-Sharif and a
handful of other areas of
the nation.
 "We're committed to
working with you to say
no to terrorism, no to vio-
lence and yes to economic
possibilities," he said.
 Separately, insurgents
 attacked a private secu-
 rity company in Andar dis-
 trict of Ghazni province
 in eastern Afghanistan
 on Saturday, killing four
 guards and setting a vehi-
 cle on fire, the Afghan
 Ministry of Interior said.
 Also in the east, more
 than 100 people demon-
 strated Saturday to pro-
 test the accidental death
 of a teenage boy by U.S.-
 led coalition forces in
 Nangarhar province. The
 protesters shouted slogans
 against the coalition force
 and the Afghan govern-
 ment, said Abdul Khaliq
 Marouf, chief of Hisarak
 district.
 Taliban insurgents
who were in the crowd
exchanged gunfire with
Afghan policemen outside
the district office. One pro-
tester died in the shootout,
Marouf said.
 NATO said that a 15-
year-old boy was killed
in Hisarak district Friday
when he reached for a
weapon as coalition and
Afghan forces were search-
ing a room. The joint force
was in the area looking for
a Taliban leader suspected
of distributing weapons
and roadside bombs in the
area.


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