Two years after signing up with the U.S. Marine Corps partly because he couldn't get a job in his own country, Jonathan Porto was killed in Afghanistan on Sunday, leaving behind a new bride and an infant daughter he never got a chance to hold.

"I'm going to ask people to refer to him only in the present,'' his father, Steve, said while en route to Dover Air Force Base to receive the 26-year-old Largo man's coffin.

"He has a spirit, he has a life, he has a soul," Steve Porto said. "Jon IS a good guy." Also receiving the coffin were Jonathan Porto's mother and his wife of 10 months, Rachel.

A corporal, Porto was a small arms repair technician assigned to 1st Battalion 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Sonya Porto, 33, said her brother was in a convoy in the Helmand province of Afghanistan when the truck he was in went off course and tumbled. He got caught underneath and was killed.

"It's pretty haunting, it's pretty sad," she said from her home in Missouri.

"He's one of eight kids. We're grieving. We're really close."

She said her brother and his wife were married in May and had a daughter in January. Porto's father said his son never got a chance to hold his newborn daughter and saw her only in pictures.

Sonya Porto described her brother as "probably the most fun" of the eight siblings. "He had a heart of gold and he really wanted to make sure everyone was OK."

Porto joined the Marine Corps in March 2008 and was promoted to corporal on Dec. 1. That same month, he deployed to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

"A lot of reasons he was in the military is jobs are so hard to find," Steve Porto said.

Porto's awards include the Afghanistan Campaign Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and NATO International Security Assistance Force Medal.

COLUMBUS, GA - Soldiers from the 3^rd Infantry Division saluted the body of a fallen comrade.

A vehicle accident in Iraq claimed the life of Sgt. Lakeshia Bailey, while she was serving her second tour of duty as a motor transport operator. 

Spc. Mairama Awudu was stationed with Sgt. Bailey and remembered her this way, "She is really kind hearted and even when it comes to doing missions she is really motivational and you will notice that she is there."

Sgt. Bailey's Squad Leader said it still hasn't sunk in that Bailey won't be coming back.  "I keep expecting her to come up, come around. I was here when she left, and I knew I'd be here when she got back, but not like this," said Sgt Daniel Wilson.

Wilson says the unit is finding comfort by sharing memories with the soldiers still in Iraq.

Officers sent back a message of condolences to the 3rd ID.  Col. Peter L. Jones said from Iraq, "We recently had a service out here. We honored their lives in service to our country and the country of Iraq.  In coming days they and their families will remain in our thoughts and prayers."

Sgt Bailey will be remembered as a great driver for those that rode with her and a soldier that encompassed the Army spirit.

"Everybody loved her, yeah, everybody loved her.  They did, she was really funny," remembered Awudu.

Wilson said, "she's going to be missed, forever. She was the kind of person where you could meet people all day and you're never going to find another Bailey," said Wilson.

Lakeshia Bailey was posthumously promoted to sergeant.  She was a Columbus native and graduated from Spencer High School in 2004.

Her funeral is Wednesday at 1:00 p.m. at the Follow Me Chapel on Fort Benning.

After a bumpy freshman year at Eugene's Sheldon High School, Erin McLyman didn't return to class the next fall.

Instead of giving up, McLyman worked twice as hard when she came back a year later, said a former teacher, Fran Christie. Each day, after a full class schedule, she would come back in the evenings to make up courses she had missed.

As a result, not only did she graduate on time in 2001, said Christie, director of Sheldon's alternative learning program, but she was named the school's "Turnaround Achievement Award" student, an honor that recognizes select middle and high school students who work to overcome barriers to their personal success.

That perseverance and constant energy were trademark qualities for McLyman, who died Saturday of wounds from a mortar attack on her base while she was serving with the Army in Balad, Iraq.

Her father, Robert McLyman, of Coburg, said it was those kind of qualities that led his daughter to pursue a career in the military.

"If the guys were doing it, she'd do it," he said. "She'd do it twice as good just to prove a point."

Robert McLyman spoke hours after he and McLyman's mother, Flora Neustel of Eugene, returned Tuesday from Dover Air Force Base, where their daughter's body was flown.

McLyman, 26, was a private first-class assigned to the 296th Brigade Support Battalion, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division out of the Lewis-McChord joint base in Washington.

Raised in Eugene, she is the 112th person with ties to Oregon or southwest Washington to die in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. She is also the third woman from the area to die in those wars.

"She wanted to go fight for her country," said her husband, Brian Williams, of Roy, Wash. "She did whatever they asked her to do," he said, adding that she worked primarily as a mechanic. "She gave it 110 percent."

The two met in Washington and married in 2007.

"She was by far the most outgoing woman I ever met in my life," Williams recalled, adding that she was working three or four jobs when they met.

At the time, Williams was enlisted in the Army and McLyman joined his brigade in January 2009. They last saw each other a month ago, he said, when she returned home on leave.

McLyman was "not the sit-down-and-watch-TV kind of person," her father said. She made a statement just by her presence, he said.

"You see her walk into the room with that bright red hair and big blue eyes," he said. "She was loud and fun. You knew it when she came in the room."

In addition to her husband, mother and father, she leaves sisters Mischa of Seattle and Nancy of Portland. Services have not yet been set.

Well, well, it looks like the Stooges crashed someone's party.

The Michigan-bred band injected a thoroughly rock ‘n' roll moment into the otherwise low-key proceedings Monday night as it was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at New York's Waldorf-Astoria.

Iggy Pop launched two middle fingers in the air as he took the podium to accept the honor, typically defiant toward a music industry establishment that long overlooked the band.

“Roll over, Woodstock,” he declared. “We won.”

From there it was to the performance stage, where Iggy, Scott Asheton and James Williamson unfurled raucous renditions of “Search and Destroy” and “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”

The latter provided one of the liveliest moments the ceremony has seen in years: Just minutes after Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong had introduced Iggy Pop as “the most confrontational singer we'll ever see,” the shirtless, combustible dynamo strode to the ballroom floor, surely unnerving the tuxedo-and-gown crowd at the ritzy front tables.

Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder was among a small gang that hopped onstage at Iggy's behest to bring the song to a flailing close. “Show me you're not too rich to be cool,” Iggy taunted the crowd.

With the looming sense that he could at any moment push it all over the edge of chaos, there had to be at least a few in the hall of fame audience wondering if they should have rejected the Stooges for a record eighth time.

The odd tension between rock ‘n' roll and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — the paradox of counterculture as a museum piece — is the stuff of cliché at this point. But it's nevertheless worth noting just how unorthodox a setting this was for the Stooges, a band that long operated in music's back alleys and gutters even as it helped prompt the cultural sea change of punk.

Still, there was a wink in the group's provocative approach Monday night, and the band seemed genuinely humbled by the honor. Iggy choked up as he finished his speech, nodding toward his band mates: “This particular group of friends has had the fortune of having a lovely, lovely second act. So thanks.”

Dave Alexander and guitarist Ron Asheton were both posthumously acknowledged. It was an especially emotional night for the latter's brother, drummer Scott Asheton.

“I've got to say, I really miss making music with him,” he said, “and I probably will for the rest of my life.”

Also inducted during Monday night's casually paced ceremony were ABBA, Genesis, the Hollies and Jimmy Cliff.

Washington - Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, who became a household name for protesting outside of former President Bush's Texas ranch, is now camping out on the soggy grounds of the Washington Monument in an effort to draw attention to her cause.

Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq, said she and her fellow anti-war protestors are demanding that a representative from the peace movement have a seat at the table when war is being considered.

"We are committed to doing this until we see activity from the government," said Sheehan, referring to the anti-war protestors resolve to remain on the National Mall.

Sheehan said that each day this week there will be "teach-ins and training for non-violent civil resistance until Monday when the action starts."

The "action" will be blocking intersections in the nation's Capital as well as protesting at offices, she said. But Sheehan noted "we don't want to divulge what we are doing because we don't want law enforcement to be able to organize against us beforehand for our actions."

After a trip to Target to load up on necessary camping supplies as well as tables and chairs it would appear that Sheehan has no plans on leaving.

PCCC says there are 51 Senators that will vote for the public option IF THE HOUSE passes it first.

Washington, DC -- Tents are going up near the Washington Monument as anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan has renewed her campaign to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Sheehan and her group, Peace of the Action, has initiated what is called "Camp OUT NOW," where she and others in the group are teaching protest seminars. Sheehan's outcry is directed toward President Obama and Democrats, who she believes have abandoned the anti-war cause. The group plans to hold seminars on civil disobedience and organizing, all a precursor to a planned peace march this coming Saturday. Sheehan returns to the peace movement after leaving the cause due to, what she claims, was politicians playing politics with people's lives by continuing both wars. Sheehan thrust herself into peace activism after her son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004. She would later gain notoriety by camping outside then-President George W. Bush's Crawford, Texas ranch demanding a meeting with the commander-in-chief.

Dubbed "Camp OUT NOW," the protest is geared to pressure President Obama and Democrats, whom Sheehan says have abandoned the anti-war cause now that they have control of the White House and Congress.

"Obama said there'd be one combat battalion coming home per month, and that has not happened," Sheehan says. "We still have significant troops in Iraq, and he's ramped up in Afghanistan.

"I don't think this is what people understood they were voting for. I think they were voting for a change."

White House officials declined to comment.

The number of U.S. servicemembers in Iraq have declined to 98,000 in February from a peak of 170,000 during President George W. Bush's surge. Obama has presided over plans to send 30,000 more servicemembers to Afghanistan and has expanded missile strikes against suspected militants in Pakistan and Yemen.

Sheehan's group, Peace of the Action, will hold seminars on grass-roots organizing and civil disobedience near the Washington Monument, leading up to a peace march Saturday. Sheehan says the group plans to "start doing actions" on March 22, although she wouldn't discuss details or how long they might last. Possible actions include blocking Washington, D.C., intersections and offices in Congress, she said.

"We're demanding that we see some movement in the direction toward peace and bringing our troops home, and we're determined to stay there until that happens, so it's an indefinite thing," she says.

Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in 2004 in Iraq, gained national attention in 2005 when she camped outside Bush's ranch near Crawford, Texas, demanding an audience with the Republican president.

She was embraced by the political action group Moveon.org, which had raised $2 million to air anti-war commercials before the 2004 elections and then launched numerous vigils on her behalf in 2005.

In 2007, Sheehan announced that she was leaving the peace movement, saying that "Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives" by continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2008, Sheehan ran for Congress against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. She lost with 17% of the vote.

Since then, she has hosted her own radio show, dubbed Cindy Sheehan's Soap Box, and traveled to Venezuela to meet with anti-U.S. President Hugo Chávez. On her blog, she has praised Chávez as a leader who — unlike her U.S. homeland, she says — has launched no "foreign wars of aggression."

Now she's back, targeting Democrats as she once targeted Republicans. She notes that the peace movement has lost much of its steam since Bush left office.

"The energy was for electing Democrats. Now the energy is for keeping the Democratic majority," she says. "Even though we're still in Iraq and Afghanistan and now in Pakistan and Yemen."

Two Rapid City police officers are accused of deliberately bringing the same-sex marriage of an Ellsworth Air Force Base sergeant to the military's attention, allegedly costing Staff Sgt. Jene Newsome her military career.

The American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota has filed an internal affairs complaint with the Rapid City Police Department questioning the conduct of Det. Tom Garinger and Officer Jeremy Stauffacher, according to Robert Doody, state ACLU director.

Doody believes that the officers maliciously sent a copy of a police report to the military that resulted in Newsome's dismissal from the service.

Police Chief Steve Allender said his department has not completed its investigation into the ACLU's allegations.

"I will report the outcome at a later date but will probably not discuss the fine details," Allender said.

Newsome was given an honorable discharge early this year; she was a nine-year military veteran who planned to make it a career, Doody said. Newsome's discharge came after the police officers notified the Air Force that she was married to another woman.

Officers serving an out-of-state fugitive warrant on Newsome's spouse, Cheryl Hutson, allegedly noticed an Iowa marriage certificate. According to the ACLU's complaint, Hutson was questioned about the marriage certificate, and that information was included in the police report.

Hutson waived extradition in December back to Fairbanks, Alaska, where she is accused of felony theft for taking more than $3,600 from a former employer.

"From reading the report that was sent to the United States Air Force there does not seem to be any legitimate reason as to why Cheryl Huston was questioned about the Iowa marriage certificate or why that information was included in the police report," according to the complaint.

Doody said Garinger sent the police report of Hutson's arrest to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, along with a cover letter noting that Newsome was uncooperative when officers went to arrest her "wife."

"They specifically put in ‘wife'," Doody said, adding that Garinger noted that the department "is interested in what the outcome of this situation might be. ..."

Newsome was never charged with a crime and never committed any crime, Doody said.

"Once the police report was sent to the Air Force, they had to start an investigation," Doody said.

Under the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, service members cannot be asked about their sexual orientation, but under federal law, evidence of homosexual behavior is grounds for discharge from the military.

By sending a copy of the report to the military, Doody said, the officers violated Newsome's civil rights and department policy. Garinger did not have the authority to release the information, according to Doody.

Allender said that it is routine to notify the base of criminal matters involving military personnel.

Ellsworth Air Force Base officials' only response to questions about Newsome's discharge was that the base's "procedure is to follow all laws promulgated by the U.S. Congress and policy established by the Department of Defense."

Officials also noted that "the Air Force expects its members to abide by all laws, to include state, federal and military."

Kevin Thom, community resources director for Rapid City, said that if the officers did violate department policy, any disciplinary action would be handled internally through the police department.

Jene Newsome played by the rules as an Air Force sergeant: She never told anyone in the military she was a lesbian. The 28-year-old's honorable discharge under the "don't ask, don't tell" policy came only after police officers in Rapid City, S.D., saw an Iowa marriage certificate in her home and told the nearby Ellsworth Air Force Base.

Newsome and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint against the western South Dakota police department, claiming the officers violated her privacy when they informed the military about her sexual orientation. The case also highlights concerns over the ability of third parties to "out" service members, especially as the Pentagon has started reviewing the 1993 "don't ask, don't tell" law.

"I played by 'don't ask, don't tell,'" Newsome told The Associated Press by telephone.

"I just don't agree with what the Rapid City police department did. ... They violated a lot of internal policies on their end, and I feel like my privacy was violated."

The "don't ask, don't tell" policy has come under renewed debate after Defense Secretary Robert Gates called for a sweeping internal study on the law earlier this year.

As the review is under way, officials were also expected to suggest ways to relax enforcement that may include minimizing cases of third-party outings. In particular, Gates has suggested that the military might not have to expel someone whose sexual orientation was revealed by a third party out of vindictiveness or suspect motives.

The Rapid City Police Department says Newsome, an aircraft armament system craftsman who spent nine years in the Air Force, was not cooperative when they showed up at her home in November with an arrest warrant for her partner, who was wanted on theft charges in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Newsome was at work at the base at the time and refused to immediately come home and assist the officers in finding her partner, whom she married in Iowa — where gay marriage is legal — in October.

Police officers, who said they spotted the marriage license on the kitchen table through a window of Newsome's home, alerted the base, police Chief Steve Allender said in a statement sent to the AP. The license was relevant to the investigation because it showed both the relationship and residency of the two women, he said.

"It's an emotional issue and it's unfortunate that Newsome lost her job, but I disagree with the notion that our department might be expected to ignore the license, or not document the license, or withhold it from the Air Force once we did know about it," Allender said Saturday. "It was a part of the case, part of the report and the Air Force was privileged to the information."

He said his department does not seek to expose gay military personnel or investigate the sexuality of Rapid City residents.

Allender said the department was finishing its internal investigation and has determined the officers acted appropriately. They have not been placed on leave during the investigation.

Newsome's partner is currently out on bail on one felony and three misdemeanor counts of theft stemming from an incident last year, court officials in Fairbanks said. More information was not immediately available, and Newsome said she didn't know the status of the case and didn't provide more details about it.

In the complaint filed last month with the department, ACLU South Dakota said police had no legal reason to tell the military Newsome was a lesbian and that officers knew if they did, it would jeopardize her military career.

Newsome, who was discharged in January, said she didn't know where the marriage license was in her home when police came to her house on Nov. 20 and claims the officers were retaliating because she wouldn't help with her partner's arrest.

"This information was intentionally turned over because of 'don't ask, don't tell' and to out Jene so that she would lose her military status," said Robert Doody, executive director of ACLU South Dakota. The ACLU is focusing its complaint on the police department, not the military, and Newsome said she and her attorney have not yet decided on whether to file a lawsuit.

"The 'don't ask, don't tell' piece is important and critical to this, but also it's a police misconduct case," Doody said.

A U.S. Air Force spokesman, Senior Airman Adam Grant, said Ellsworth follows all laws set out by Congress and the Defense Department, and he would not comment specifically on Newsome's discharge, citing privacy policy.

More than 13,500 service members have been discharged under the law since 1994, according to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which is lobbying for its repeal. Kevin Nix, communications director of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, couldn't speak about Newsome's case, but said when "someone is outed by a third party, which it sounds like this was, or by a police officer, then, yeah ... I'm not surprised the person was discharged."

Though rare, third-party outing can be especially damaging to service members who wanted to keep their sexual orientation hidden, experts say.

Even though 80 percent of "don't ask, don't tell" discharges come from gay and lesbian service members who out themselves, third-party outings are "some of the most heinous instances of 'don't, ask, don't tell,'" said Nathaniel Frank, a research fellow with the Palm Center think tank at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a New York University professor.

Newsome, who is originally from Harrisburg, Pa., is currently on the road, driving to Alaska. She said she'd been looking forward to the time when the military would alter its policies regarding gays and lesbians. But that change didn't come in time to save her career.

"I felt like it was getting close," she said. "I was really hopeful."

New York City and a group of contractors have agreed to pay up to $657 million to more than 10,000 workers who alleged that rescue and cleanup efforts around the World Trade Center made them sick.

A worker at Ground Zero on October 9, 2001. More than 10,000 workers alleged they were sickened.

The settlement, announced Thursday night, sets up a system to compensate thousands of firefighters, police officers, contractors and volunteers based on the severity of their medical problems. "This settlement is a fair and reasonable resolution to a complex set of circumstances," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement.

The awards would range from $3,250 to seven figure sums. By agreeing to the settlement, the plaintiffs release the city and its contractors from any future damage claims.

Mr. Bloomberg commissioned a task force in 2006 to develop a coordinated plan for responding to the massive health problems associated with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

That panel projected roughly 43,000 people might ultimately seek treatment for exposure to the dust and smoke that permeated lower Manhattan after the towers toppled.

The settlement, coming just months before the first trials were to begin, comes after years of contentious arguing in court. Many of the sick workers have accused the city of failing to respond quickly and humanely to what were in many cases devastating health problems, a charge the Bloomberg administration has rejected.

In 2008, the city sparked outrage when it argued a third of the Ground Zero workers who sued the city had minor health problems, such as runny noses or trouble sleeping.

"This agreement enables workers and volunteers claiming injury from the WTC site operations to obtain compensation commensurate with the nature of their injuries and the strength of their claims, while offering added protection against possible future illness," said Christine LaSala, president of the WTC Captive Insurance Company, formed in 2004 to insure the city and nearly 140 other parties against claims connected to 9/11.

The settlement will cost the federally funded WTC Captive Insurance Company $575 million if 95% of the plaintiffs participate, and would rise to as much as $657 million if more plaintiffs opt-in.

WTC Captive was funded with $1 billion from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The plaintiffs in these lawsuits will have 90 days to review the terms of the settlement. They will be required to submit proof that they participated in the rescue, recovery and cleanup efforts at ground zero, in addition to detailed medical documentation of their illnesses and injuries.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs and WTC Captive will select an independent third party expert to review each claim in an attempt to protect against fraud or errors.

The judge in the case must still approve the settlement. A hearing in the matter is scheduled for Friday.

The settlement came amid negotiations between developer Larry Silverstein and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, who are trying to resolve an impasse over the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site. An arbitration panel in January gave the parties until Friday to come to an accord or allow the panel to resolve it.

Officials on both sides said they were making progress in reaching an agreement that would put the massive reconstruction project back on track, but serious differences remain, mainly over how to pay for the new complex.

The final moments of Rachel Corrie, the American peace activist crushed to death beneath a pile of earth and rubble in the path of an advancing Israeli army bulldozer, were described to an Israeli court by an eyewitness yesterday.

The parents of the 23-year-old, who was killed by the bulldozer in March 2003, were present to hear the harrowing account on the first day of hearings in a civil lawsuit they have brought against the state of Israel. The country has never acknowledged culpability over Ms Corrie's death.

Richard Purssell, a British activist with the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement (ISM), said he watched in horror as Ms Corrie was dragged four metres by the bulldozer moving forward at a "fast walking pace".

He told how her fluorescent orange jacket became invisible beneath a pile of earth churned up by the blade of the 56-tonne D9 Caterpillar machine. Mr Purssell explained that he and two other ISM volunteers had been summoned from the Rafah neighbourhood of Tel Sultan earlier in the day to help five activists prevent bulldozers from carrying out what they feared would be the demolition of Palestinian homes. The five, including Ms Corrie, were in the suburb of Hai Salaam, close to the border with Egypt.

Mr Purssell said the incident took place about 20 metres from the house of Dr Samir Nasrallah, a pharmacist well known to ISM activists, who often place themselves between Israeli forces and Palestinians to try to stop the Israeli military from carrying out operations. Ms Corrie climbed on to the earth mound being created in front of the bulldozer, with her feet just below the top of the pile.

"She is looking into the cab of the bulldozer," Mr Purssell recounted. "The bulldozer continues to move forward. Rachel turns to begin coming back down the slope ... As she nears the bottom of the pile, something happened to cause her to fall forward. The bull- dozer continues to move forward and Rachel disappeared from view. The bulldozer moves forward approximately another four metres before it stops." Mr Purssell, who works as a landscape gardener in the UK, said that before the bulldozer came to a stop, other activists started running towards her – as he himself did a few seconds later.

"I heard a lot of people shouting and gesturing to the bulldozer to stop," he told the court, adding that the bulldozer then "reversed back in the tracks it had made, in a straight line; Rachel is lying on the earth".

He said three ISM activists – Alice Coy, Greg Shnabel and Will Hewitt – rushed to adminster first aid. "They began to support her neck," he added. "They were holding her. She was still breathing. I did not get involved because I am not first aid trained." He insisted "everything that could be done was done" by the volunteers. Ms Corrie died of her injuries soon afterwards.

Asked in cross-examination by the state's attorney why Ms Corrie acted as she did by standing in front of the bulldozer, Mr Purssell said he did not know but could only speculate that "she didn't want the bulldozer to go any nearer Dr Samir's home".

Ms Corrie's parents, Craig and Cindy, from Olympia in Washington state, have brought their civil action in part to challenge the military's account of their daughter's death. Israel claims its troops were not to blame and the bulldozer driver did not see her or run her over deliberately, even though witnesses insist she was clearly visible.

Within weeks of her death, the Israel Defence Forces accused Ms Corrie and the ISM of behaviour that was "illegal irresponsible and dangerous". In 2004, Lawrence Wilkerson, an aide to the then US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, wrote to the Corries saying Israel had failed to carry out the "thorough, credible, and transparent" investigation promised at the time by Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon.

The Corries' attorney, Hussein Abu Hussein, claimed before the hearing began that the troops "acted in violation of both Israeli and international law prohibiting the targeting of civilians, and the disproportionate use of force against non-violent protest with blatant disregard to human lives".

Mr Corrie said the family had been seeking justice for seven years. "I think when the truth comes out about Rachel, the truth will not wound Israel, the truth is the start of making us heal."

His wife said they were still waiting for an open investigation. "I just want to say to Rachel that our family is here today trying to just do right by her, and I hope she will be very proud of the effort we are making," she added.

Um Nour checked her watch. It was close to midnight and my guide to the Iraqi refugee underworld in Damascus wanted to get to the nightclub so she could start making money. I had failed the dress test, attempting to camouflage myself in an alluring outfit and eliciting only a pursed-lips stare, but Um Nour's transformation was remarkable. I would not have recognized her on the street. On the many daytime occasions we had met during my reporting trips to Damascus in 2008, she dressed in baggy track pants, black hair tied back in a ponytail, her face lined and tired. This time, her long black hair was shiny and brushed with thick bangs that framed her face. She wore a tight-fitting black T-shirt sprinkled with sequins and black stretch pants tightly cinched at the waist. Her lipstick was deep red, her eyeliner heavy and black. She wore two rhinestone rings, her stubby fingers extended by fake red nails curled around an expensive cell phone.

Um Nour escorted me into the club, past men in black dinner jackets at the front door. Syrians owned the club, paid off the Syrian police when necessary, and called them in when there was trouble. Most of the clientele were Iraqis. The room was vast and dark, with spotlights trained on the dance stage. A live band played somewhere in the gloom behind the stage, making conversation almost impossible. There were at least a hundred tables. Most of the customers sat in small groups near the stage, drinking watered arrack and Johnnie Walker, sipping in the low haze of smoke from apple-infused tobacco in bubbling water pipes. Family groups sat farther back: mothers, fathers, and young daughters. Single women in their 20s and 30s had claimed seats in the darkest places, the better to survey the room. Um Nour picked a table near the back entrance, secured our spot, and gestured to the ladies' restroom. We had gotten past the Syrian owners, but I would have to fit in with the mostly Iraqi clientele.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the Iraqi exiles in Syria had turned to the sex trade for survival. In Damascus, refugees were not permitted to hold jobs. As resources dwindled, many were led into the underground economy. Female-headed households accounted for almost a quarter of the refugees registered with the U.N. refugee agency. Widowed, divorced, or separated from husbands by the war, many women had children or elderly parents to support. Sex was often their only marketable asset.

"I will never dance until I get so drunk," said a woman in a pink latex jumpsuit with clear-plastic shoulder straps that kept the tight fabric in place. She was bent toward the mirror in the ladies' room, applying eyeliner, next to a line of Iraqi women in the same pose. It was an utterly familiar female ritual: women gathering in front of a public bathroom mirror. It could have been anywhere, but for the outfits of tight fabrics and silver spandex revealing tactile, soft, full breasts served up for inspection. Clinging fabric over ample round backsides. Long skirts, slit to the thigh, bellies exposed. Gleaming black hair. High-heeled boots. Young faces. Curvaceous bodies. One last look? Enough eyeliner? Another pat of powder? Anxiety also filled the room, because of the deals that would have to be concluded later in the evening. One woman, maybe 20 but probably younger, was dressed as a schoolgirl. As we all prepared for the night ahead, the Iraqi women chatted, traded names and phone numbers. They flipped open cell phones and showed the pictures of their young children. Lingering together in this comfortable female place, homesick, they were preparing to live off their bodies.

Another woman said her name was Abeer. "My husband tried to smuggle the kids to Sweden, but they got caught and are back in Baghdad," she told me. She had divorced her husband when he set off for Sweden. She had agreed to the separation for the sake of her two children. Now, she lived with her sister, and worried about her kids. She sent her club earnings home for them. But why had she come to Damascus, I asked; what had driven her to come here in the first place? "I was a journalist," she said. In 2007, she was hired by a television station based in Baghdad. She worked as a correspondent until the day her mother found a letter that had been thrown into the family garden: "Leave in 48 hours or we will kill you." Syria was the only open border. While I was pondering Abeer's choices, she clicked her cell phone shut, took one last look at her mirror image, and moved toward to door. "Have a good night," she said knowingly, one businesswoman to another, as she made her way into the dark nightclub.

I could see why this was Um Nour's favorite club. The system of cost and rewards favored women who wanted some control over their work. It was a freelance market. We had walked in through the front door for "free," while the male patrons paid a steep cover charge and even more for the alcohol and snacks delivered to the table. Um Nour explained that women paid the Syrian men at the door at the end of the night -- but only if they left with a man.

Iraq has a long historical connection to prostitution. The Whore of Babylon is a character in the Bible's Book of Revelations, the symbol of all things evil. The world's oldest profession was first recorded in Mesopotamia in the second millennium B.C. The code of Hammurabi, the ancient world's first fixed laws for a metropolis, acknowledged prostitution and gave prostitutes some inheritance rights. But Iraq's modern dictator, Saddam Hussein, had set the stage for the moral decline of his population.

That he did so came as no surprise even to the Iraqis I knew who were most disturbed by the rampant prostitution among the exile community. Many had lived in Baghdad when prostitution was public. At the close of the Iran-Iraq War, prostitutes, protected by the regime, were encouraged to welcome the returning troops -- a benevolent "victory present" from Saddam. In the 1990s, another time of hopelessness, prostitution became more widespread. The United Nations sanctions, imposed in 1991 to force Saddam to reveal and destroy Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction, ushered in a decade of deprivation and corruption. Saddam was unmoved by the punishing financial and trade embargo, but ordinary Iraqis were impoverished, humbled by destitution, as the social fabric of the country unraveled. I had heard many stories about these years. Iraqis poured out searing memories that were as clear and important as the current U.S. occupation. "My father always said one Bush starved us, the other Bush drove us from our homes," as an Iraqi doctor put it. His wealthy father had been ruined by the U.N. embargo, which reduced the family's daily diet to tomatoes, bread, and onions, with small bits of meat for special occasions. Even the most common illnesses, previously treatable, could be a death sentence as medical supplies dried up. An Iraqi actor told me his bitterest memories came from the sanctions decade as his father moved the large family to cheaper and cheaper accommodations and his sister died prematurely due to inadequate medical care. In those desperate times, Iraqi women had also turned to prostitution to survive.

Another friend who had lived in Baghdad throughout this period observed: "You cannot overestimate the damage those sanctions did to the society. It was a casual thing for an Iraqi brother to help his sister, escorting her to a paying customer because it was improper for her to go alone. University students engaged in prostitution because they needed the cash for food. The administrative staff at the universities would take the role of pimps." Iraqis keenly recalled not only the social wreckage but also the period in the 1990s when Saddam turned to Islam to shore up his legitimacy and suddenly acquired a new moral censoriousness.

Saddam's national faith campaign had singled out prostitutes and included a public campaign to halt their activities. Appearing on Iraqi television, Saddam announced that these Iraqi women "were dishonoring their country." Between 2000 and 2001, he unleashed the Fedayeen Saddam, a militia created by his son, Uday, to send an unmistakable message to a beaten-down population. Women accused of prostitution were rounded up and publicly beheaded in Baghdad and in other cities. The executioners carried out their work with swords. The severed heads of the condemned women were left on the doorsteps of their homes. Honor is a deeply held concept in Iraqi identity and women play a significant role. The horrific beheadings, the public humiliation of entire families, amplified Saddam's cruelty and turned the punishment into a state-sanctioned desecration of a family's name. But in the moral landscape of exile -- shaped, in part, by Iraq's sectarian civil war -- honor was abandoned in the struggle to survive.

* * *

I would have to dance. In the dark at the back of the room the stage seemed like a bright planet, a place so distant I could barely make out the life forms. Um Nour had left me sitting alone. She was wandering around the club, greeting old friends. She had explained to the group of men sitting behind us that I was Ukrainian and therefore didn't speak Arabic, but that didn't stop them from sending drinks to the table and trying to engage me in drunken conversation. When one kissed me on the top of my head, I decided that I'd be safer on stage.

I climbed up into the bright lights. Most of the dancers seemed alone in the crowd. An older woman, in a simple red dress more appropriate for a day at the market, had been on the dance floor all night. She appeared to be listening to music from some distant time inside her head; eyes closed, she mouthed the lyrics of traditional laments of loss. With each refrain, her eyes moistened and she took the cigarette she was holding and brought the burning tip close to the exposed skin above her breasts. Over and over she brought the smoldering tobacco near her naked skin, about to inflict pain, but stopping short of contact. When the music ended she left the stage for a refresher of tobacco and alcohol.

Two girls danced together, fingers locked, madly twirling waist-long dark hair in circles to the beat of the music. One of them I recognized from the ladies' room; no longer wearing her schoolgirl's outfit, she had changed into a still more revealing costume and had paired herself with another long-haired beauty. Were they a package deal? Did they even know each other? They embraced like old friends but did not make eye contact with each other or with any other dancer on the stage. Beside them were two little girls, no more than 12 years old, in party dresses and lipstick. They copied the faces of the older women on stage -- giddy, shiny-faced dancers at 3 o'clock in the morning.

The undeclared rules of the dance floor segregated the dancers. Men danced with men, arms entwined over shoulders, in short lines, flinging out one leg at a time and moving in a circle. Women danced alone or in pairs. Breaking the rules, pairing a man and a woman, would imply a business arrangement, and it was too early in the evening for that. The men mounted the stage to scout, to get a better look at the merchandise on offer.

The entertainment was tailored to an Iraqi audience, the music a medley of emotional, nostalgic old favorites from home. A comedian pumped up the audience by calling out the names of Iraqi cities. Baghdad! Sulaymaniyah! Mosul! The applause built for each constituency. He told jokes about the hard life in Damascus and played to the overwhelming longing for home. Then the band struck up another familiar tune and the next singer started the first few words of a song the audience knew well, a song of praise for Saddam. A blue laser light shot out from the audience and tapped the singer's face. In mid-lyric, he switched to a tribute to the Iraqi national football team, eliciting widespread applause and calming the crowd of drunken men.

Abeer discovered me on the dance floor. I hadn't seen her since our conversation in the ladies' room. She wanted a dance partner and we were now old friends. She grabbed my hand and I was grateful. What choice was there? I was out of place, uncomfortable, a little scared in this crowd. My limited Arabic would not get me out of trouble. I needed a friend and Abeer had offered her hand, a partner for my charade. We danced. We rolled our eyes at the little girls on the stage as they became clumsy and tired and knocked into the other dancers. The red lady with the cigarettes was still with us and we shook our heads and wondered what trauma she was playing out. We moved around the dance floor, took in the details, looked at the faces, and then I saw Nezar Hussein, my translator and friend.

He was dancing, too, arms tangled in a line of men, smiling broadly when I finally noticed him. Unknown to me, he had been at the club all night, sitting across the room, my silent protector. I was relieved to see him. We made a plan to meet at the back entrance and share a cab for the trip home to compare notes on the rest of the dancers.

The man in the black dinner jacket at the front door demanded 500 Syrian liras, equivalent to about $15. He stretched out his hand and looked at me. He wanted his commission. I was leaving with a man, albeit Nezar, and I was now expected to pay up out of my expected proceeds. "But he's my friend!" I said blurting it out in English, momentarily forgetting Um Nour's instruction. Nezar and I had walked out together, reclaiming our identities at the front door, but to the Syrian controllers we were still part of the nightclub clientele. The dinner jacket stretched out his hand again and repeated, more forcefully this time, his demand for a cut of the deal. Five hundred, he said. We kept walking toward the cab and he watched us go. "Don't ever come back here again," he said glaring. That was easy. I did not ever want to come back again. The undertow of despair was too great.

In the taxi, Nezar and I marveled at the dancer in the red dress, the cigarette lady, who had sat out the intermissions on Nezar's side of the room. "I saw her beating herself every time the singer started a song about mothers. She beat her breast really hard. When she saw me watching her, she came over to my chair and kissed me on my eyes. And she was crying." We both shook our heads at the unimaginable calamity. We were tired, emotionally exhausted, and completely sober.

"I saw Um Nour showing pictures on her mobile phone," said Nezar. He had saved this detail for last. "I mean, I wasn't far from her when she came to my side of the room. Photos of almost-naked girls," he said. Um Nour was a madam? She was trafficking young girls when she got up from the table and circulated among the male customers in the club? She was tough, a survivor. I should not have been so surprised. Each time I had asked her about her own daughter Um Nour had proudly answered that both of her children were in school. She was making sure they had a good future. Her children were Iraqis and one day they could go home.

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan

The men come at dawn, a ragged, anxious collection of faces peeking through scarves and hoping for work as they stand in a traffic circle beneath billboards advertising war heroes and washing machines.

They are bricklayers, gardeners, hole diggers and carpenters. Sometimes they are tapped on the shoulder, most times they are not, so they hunch amid the cars and fruit stands, knowing that the higher the sun climbs the lower their chances of returning home with money in their pockets.

"One day we work, three days we don't. How can life be good?" said Ahmed Jalal, poking his red-bearded chin through a crowd of laborers. "The Americans are sending cash to Afghanistan to build factories, but our officials are taking it for themselves. If there were factories do you think we'd be standing in this dusty place?"

As war with the Taliban rattles in the provinces, here in the capital,unemployment, poverty and corruption are regarded as more potent enemies. The national government extols the recent success of U.S. and Afghan troops pushing back militants in Marja, but jobless computer technicians and laborers who can't buy bread have folded away all the pretty promises they have heard.

"If the U.S. and other countries want a stable Afghanistan, they don't need war, they need to build industries," said Ahmad Morid Rahimi, a coordinator with a relief and job placement agency. "People join the Taliban. Why? To feed their families. Instead of sending 15,000 soldiers to fight in Marja, why didn't the U.S. spend those millions of dollars creating jobs?"

The country's economy has grown since the days of the Taliban. International aid has created thousands of jobs in fields such as communications, but deeper problems persist in a nation lacking in infrastructure and plagued by mismanagement.

Since 2001, Congress has authorized more than $39 billion in humanitarian and reconstruction aid for Afghanistan. But hundreds of millions of dollars that would lead to new factories and dams have been eroded by power shortages, wasteful contractors, security dangers and corruption.

What has emerged across the provinces and throughout Kabul is a cruel economic pecking order of an unfinished war. Afghan businessmen dealing in imports are thriving, their new marble and tinted-glass houses rise like jewels on rough streets. Those working with foreign governments and international organizations are also prospering. But the rest, the majority, barely survive and wait for jobs that pay more than peddling oranges or washing cars.

Outside Rahimi's office, men in blazers, resumes rolled in hand, squinted in the sunlight and scanned job postings on a bulletin board. There were openings in forestry, the beverage industry and emergency services. But the men were discouraged; in their experience, jobs vanish as quickly as they appear, many filled as a result of bribes or family connections.

"I don't know what to do," said Mohammad Yaqub, who studied agriculture in Russia, but has no money for a kickback. "I can't leave Afghanistan for work. Who would feed my family?"

Amil Zamuny, a driver in a black leather jacket and polished shoes, said he had applied for 20 jobs. His resume is written in English and begins with, "Respected Sir." Next to him, Hekmatullah Haidery ran his finger over the postings, bemused by all his days peering at salaries and titles he has yet to find in a nation with a 40% unemployment rate.

"I'm a graduate of a technical institute. I want to be a computer programmer or in administration," Haidery said. "I've been coming here for two months and have nothing."

Kabul is a place of desperate men searching to little avail. They wander through traffic past firewood sellers and boys hawking balloons; the war often seems distant, echoes in faraway mountains. But the unemployed are occasionally reminded that bloodshed can strike the capital with unnerving abandon. Suicide bombers and militants recently attacked two guesthouses, killing 16 people, mostly foreigners, near the circle where the laborers gather.

"Things are getting worse, not better," said one man whose white cap matched his beard. "There's fighting across the land. Solving the problems of this country is not in the hands of Afghans but in hands of other nations who meddle and cause trouble here."

The laborers know that bombs frighten off investors. Buildings don't get built and those who are poor, nearly half the population, stay that way. The other day at late morning most of the men lucky enough to be picked to haul cement or paint walls for $3 a shift were gone. Hundreds were left behind, to loosen their scarves, and pick at the patches on their coats.

"If the government could just improve security, maybe that would help," Mohammed Hossain, a father of five, said as fellow laborers pressed around him, wrongly thinking a hiring man had come. "I cannot remember when I had my last job. I think it was two months ago."

Faces, cheek-to-cheek, bore in like a weathered collage of a lost army. The men traded stories.

A slight laborer pushed to the front. As is customary for many Afghans, he gave only a single name, Omara. It's been 13 days since he last worked. The men shake their heads; for some it's been longer, for others shorter.

"I've been here since 6 a.m.," said Hatallah, who supports his mother and three sisters. "I'll do any kind of construction. I carried bricks four days ago. I'm engaged but I can't afford to marry. On the days I don't find work it's difficult to return home without food for the family."

The talk went on amid faint scents of diesel, dust and glue. Traffic clogged the circle, police whistles blew, buses skidded. Girls ran through market stalls, and farther on, mechanics fixed engines, black and glistening in the sun near men carrying blocks of cash and selling phone cards.

The laborers in the circle waited. A carpenter rode up on his bike. He opened a wooden box, showing off, to anyone who might need him, saws, files, rulers and a hammer.

Cindy Sheehan is about to start another anti-war camp. This one will be in Washington, and it could conceivably last for months. The problem?

“I’m kind of over the whole camping thing,” she admits.

It’s a fair enough statement for Sheehan, who gained international attention in 2005 for “Camp Casey,” a five-week protest outside of then-President George W. Bush’s Crawford, Texas, ranch during which she demanded a meeting with the commander in chief to hear an explanation for her son Casey’s death in Iraq. She spent most of that time in a ditch on the side of a road leading to the president’s grounds.

Five years and a new president later, however, Sheehan will be sleeping under the stars again, and for the same cause. Her new coalition, Peace of the Action, is launching the Camp OUT NOW! tent city at the base of the Washington Monument next week in an effort to get President Barack Obama to pull troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan immediately. (Sheehan concedes that this time around, she will rent a bedroom in which to store her belongings, take showers and occasionally sleep.)

Sheehan could also be over the whole camping thing for another reason: After shutting down Camp Casey, she went places, did things and had experiences previously unthinkable to her. She ran against Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in the 2008 congressional election. In 2009, she went on a 40-city tour for her book Myth America: 10 Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and the Case for Revolution! And just this month, she flew with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on his official plane to conduct an interview for her radio show, “Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox.”

So it’s no wonder there’s a flatness in her voice when she describes her newest push to end America’s wars in the Middle East. Not only has she soared to places far beyond a tent city in Texas, but despite her efforts, she feels her cries have so far gone unheard.

“I’ve [protested] outside the system, I’ve tried to do this inside the system … it’s time to get together and organize things. That’s how you get something done,” she says during a phone interview from Philadelphia, where she is preparing to speak at a conference about how the anti-war movement can work with the 9/11 Truth movement. A day earlier she had returned from a whirlwind trip to Venezuela, where she accompanied Chavez on his trip to Uruguay for new President Jose Mujica’s inauguration.

“It wasn’t closure at all for George Bush to leave office,” she says.

Detours Pelosi, Chavez

Sheehan decided to ride the wave of celebrity when she announced her 2008 bid to challenge Pelosi for her San Francisco House seat.

“I decided to run against Pelosi because she refused to end the wars and impeach Bush,” she explains. “I didn’t think I was going to win, but I thought it would be a real challenge to bring up these issues.”

Sheehan, who ran as an Independent, achieved ballot status after four months — a major victory unto itself, she says — and raised more than $700,000 for the bid, but she came in a distant second.

“The one thing I learned, I think, was that it’s practically impossible to get our voices heard that way,” she says. “The electoral system is stacked against challengers in the first place.”

Sheehan says she came away from the experience realizing that directing her protests at just one public official — Bush or Pelosi, for instance — wasn’t fruitful.

“I know I came to this really late in life, but I realized it was the system that we should fight against, not just a certain politician,” she says.

Sheehan expanded her breadth of work to include America’s military presence around the world and what she calls the U.S. efforts at imperialism. She put in a request to interview Chavez for her radio show and also began planning to film a documentary on Venezuela. Her interview request was granted in six weeks — lightning speed compared to the months she heard it can normally take.

“I think this is really important to get this out,” she says. “[In the U.S.] there’s just one way that Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution are portrayed, and that’s in a very negative way.”

She says her radio interview is scheduled to air on the Pacific networks later this month, and the documentary’s release is planned for June.

A lonely year

Meanwhile, Sheehan didn’t think the anti-war movement could get much worse than during the George W. Bush administration, but then Obama was elected, and it all but died, she says.

“It was very lonely at the beginning when Barack Obama was elected because I lost a lot of friends and contacts who worked for him and supported him,” she says. Sheehan voted for Green Party candidate and former House member Cynthia McKinney in the 2008 presidential election. “How could I support somebody who said he was going to send more troops to Afghanistan?”

Sheehan’s book came out in March 2009 and her tour kept her busy until September. She says during that time she saw many of her comrades in the anti-war movement give Obama “a free pass.”

“I felt like I was one of the lone ones out there saying, ‘C’mon, people, people are still dying,’ ” she says.

That brought her to her latest idea, Peace of the Action. She decided the anti-war movement needed to be a broader coalition — “When George Bush was president, I’m sorry to say, but it was basically a bunch of older white people” — and be based on a clear list of demands.

Her new organization has reached out to groups like Students for a Democratic Society, The World Can’t Wait!, the Campus Anti-War Network and the Black is Back Coalition. Its demands are: removal of American and allied troops from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan; stoppage of drone bombings; and closure of permanent bases and military prisons. Sheehan also wants the president to convene a peace council composed of grassroots members of the anti-war movement.

The coalition is planning to set up camp on the lawn of the Washington Monument on Monday, and its first act of civil resistance is scheduled for March 22 somewhere around the White House, she says. The group plans to concentrate its efforts around Congress later this spring when legislators are expected to consider the president’s request for supplemental war funding.

This strategy, Sheehan says, is a result of what she characterized as politicians’ empty promises and dead-end meetings in her previous push for peace.

“I’m not about meetings; I’m not about signing petitions,” she says. “I’m about direct action, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Michael Heaney, a University of Michigan political science professor who studies the anti-war movement, says Sheehan felt alone after Obama was elected because she was. His research shows that the number of Democrats publicly turning out to protest the wars dropped after Obama took office because their partisan loyalty trumped their alliance to the peace movement. Sheehan’s top priority, on the other hand, is an issue rather than a political party, he says, adding that she may be able to breathe life back into the cause with this new effort.

“She’s got attention, and she’s got resources, and you know what? Nobody else does,” he says.

Sheehan contends that she continues to operate on a “shoestring” budget. Her book sales have provided cash, she says, and she often gets funded for special appearances. (In December, for instance, she went to Oslo to protest Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize at the invitation and expense of an independent group.) She says her radio show also brings in donations.

The question now is whether she has the stamina. She says she’s physically tired — her voice confirms that — but not emotionally. Her two grandchildren “give me more inspiration to work every day,” Sheehan claims, and she still feels the sense of urgency that inspired her to start Camp Casey.

“I love doing what I’m doing. I wish I didn’t have to,” she says after expressing optimism for her latest effort. “I think it might happen like it happened in 2005: If we build it, they will come.”