Prince Harry arrives in Afghanistan at start of four-month tour as Apache helicopter pilot

Prince Harry arrives in Afghanistan at start of four-month tour as Apache helicopter pilot - Prince Harry has arrived in Afghanistan to begin a four-month tour of duty as an Apache attack helicopter pilot, the Ministry of Defence has announced.

The 27-year-old arrived in Camp Bastion in Helmand in the early hours of this morning, where he will be based for the duration of his tour with 622 Sqn, 3 Regiment Army Air Corps.

His role will be to kill insurgents as he operates the aircraft's weapon systems, which include Hellfire missiles and a 30mm chain gun. He will also be expected to provide air cover on missions by special forces.

Prince Harry is shown the Apache flight-line by a member of his squadron at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan (John Stillwell/PA)

He spent his first morning at Camp Bastion checking over the state-of-the-art Army aircraft he has likened to a "robot".

He looked relaxed, if slightly tired, and gave a thumbs-up after a long journey on a standard troop flight from RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. He climbed up to peer into the cockpit of one of the helicopters he will fly and crouched down to inspect its weapons.

Royal sources said Captain Wales, as he is know in the Army, was full of "pride and anticipation" as he returned to Afghanistan four and a half years after his last tour, as a Forward Air Controller with the Household Cavalry, was cut short because of a media blackout being broken.

The Prince of Wales was said to be "immensely proud of his son" and wished him well when Prince Harry stayed at Birkhall on the Balmoral estate over the bank holiday weekend.

His brother, the Duke of Cambridge, said his goodbyes at Kensington Palace earlier this week, where the two Princes have their London homes.

In stark contrast to the media blackout imposed when the Prince undertook his previous tour, the Ministry of Defence has taken the decision to inform the public about his presence in Afghanistan from the word go, and arranged for a reporter and photographer from the Press Association news agency to fly to Camp Bastion to provide coverage on a pooled basis.

The BBC's Kabul team was given the job of providing pooled film footage.

MoD sources said the Ministry had decided on the change of tack because the Prince's role this time around is markedly different from his tour of 2007-2008. Back then, as an infantry soldier, there were fears that if the Taliban knew of his presence it would put his comrades at greater risk than usual, because insurgents would concentrate their efforts on trying to kill or capture such a prized target.

This time, however, the Prince is flying in a two-man helicopter, meaning he will be no more or less of a target than any other Apache pilot. The fact that he will be based at Camp Bastion, the main British base in Helmand, also means he will be virtually impossible to get at.

After about 10 days of acclimatisation and training to hone his skills, the Prince will be ready to go out on operations in his role as co-pilot gunner.

Commander of the Joint Aviation Group, Captain Jock Gordon (Royal Navy), who will be Prince Harry's commanding Officer at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan (John Stillwell/PA)

"His commander's assessment is that he is fully ready and trained. He will be treated exactly the same as any other pilot while he is there.

"The Queen and the Prince of Wales have been kept informed all the way along and have known for a long time the window in which he would most likely deploy."

The Prince, who graduated from his training course as "Top Gun" among more than 20 other co-pilot gunners in his class, will be part of the unit with the greatest "kill rate" of any in Afghanistan, currently averaging around two Taliban killed every week.

"Killing insurgents is what the machine Prince Harry flies is there for; you cannot put it any other way," said one defence source.

His spokesman said killing Taliban fighters was "not an issue at all" for the Prince, adding: "He is a soldier so soldiers do what they are required to do."

Although he is on attachment to the Army Air Corps, the Prince remains a cavalry officer in the Blues and Royals, meaning he wears a Blues and Royals uniform with an Army Air Corps beret and badge for formal occasions.

The Prince was "incredibly frustrated" to be pulled out of Afghanistan 11 weeks into his last tour because of US media reporting on his presence there, said his spokesman, though the fully understood why the decision had been taken.

"He has made no secret of the fact that, like any soldier, he wants to fight in theatre," the spokesman said. "When he entered the Army Air Corps two and a half years ago it gave him an opportunity to train in a role that could allow him to do that.

"He considers himself first and foremost to be a soldier and he is doing the most natural thing in the world to be going there."

The Prince qualified as an Apache pilot in February, having undergone 18 months of training at RAF Wattisham in Suffolk and also at air bases in the US, where he first acquired his taste for partying in Las Vegas.

His training also included a survival course during which he was hooded and interrogated in a simulated Taliban kidnapping.

Prince Harry was greeted at Bastion by the commander of the Joint Aviation Group, Captain Jock Gordon (Royal Navy).

He said: "I extend an extremely warm welcome to 662 Squadron, including Captain Wales, who with his previous experience as a forward air controller on operations will be a useful asset to the Joint Aviation Group.

"And working together with his colleagues in the squadron, he will be in a difficult and demanding job, and I ask that he be left to get on with his duties and allowed to focus on delivering support to the coalition troops on the ground."

The Duke of Cambridge is said to be "incredibly proud" of his brother. When he qualified as an Apache pilot a royal source said: "There's lots of banter between them because of them both being helicopter pilots.

"Prince Harry tells Prince William he is flying a washing machine, because the Sea King is such an old, reliable workhorse, and William tells Harry he is flying a computer game because the Apache is so sleek, fast and advanced." ( telegraph.co.uk )

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Veterans and Brain Disease

Veterans and Brain Disease - He was a 27-year-old former Marine, struggling to adjust to civilian life after two tours in Iraq. Once an A student, he now found himself unable to remember conversations, dates and routine bits of daily life. He became irritable, snapped at his children and withdrew from his family. He and his wife began divorce proceedings.

This young man took to alcohol, and a drunken car crash cost him his driver’s license. The Department of Veterans Affairs diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder, or P.T.S.D. When his parents hadn’t heard from him in two days, they asked the police to check on him. The officers found his body; he had hanged himself with a belt.

That story is devastatingly common, but the autopsy of this young man’s brain may have been historic. It revealed something startling that may shed light on the epidemic of suicides and other troubles experienced by veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His brain had been physically changed by a disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E. That’s a degenerative condition best-known for affecting boxers, football players and other athletes who endure repeated blows to the head.

In people with C.T.E., an abnormal form of a protein accumulates and eventually destroys cells throughout the brain, including the frontal and temporal lobes. Those are areas that regulate impulse control, judgment, multitasking, memory and emotions.

That Marine was the first Iraq veteran found to have C.T.E., but experts have since autopsied a dozen or more other veterans’ brains and have repeatedly found C.T.E. The findings raise a critical question: Could blasts from bombs or grenades have a catastrophic impact similar to those of repeated concussions in sports, and could the rash of suicides among young veterans be a result?

“P.T.S.D. in a high-risk cohort like war veterans could actually be a physical disease from permanent brain damage, not a psychological disease,” said Bennet Omalu, the neuropathologist who examined the veteran. Dr. Omalu published an article about the 27-year-old veteran as a sentinel case in Neurosurgical Focus, a peer-reviewed medical journal.

The discovery of C.T.E. in veterans could be stunningly important. Sadly, it could also suggest that the worst is yet to come, for C.T.E. typically develops in midlife, decades after exposure. If we are seeing C.T.E. now in war veterans, we may see much more in the coming years.

So far, just this one case of a veteran with C.T.E. has been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal. But at least three groups of scientists are now conducting brain autopsies on veterans, and they have found C.T.E. again and again, experts tell me. Publication of this research is in the works.

The finding of C.T.E. may help answer a puzzle. Returning Vietnam veterans did not have sharply elevated suicide rates as Iraq and Afghan veterans do today. One obvious difference is that Afghan and Iraq veterans are much more likely to have been exposed to blasts, whose shock waves send the brain crashing into the skull.

“Imagine a squishy, gelatinous material, surrounded by fluid, and then surrounded by a hard skull,” explained Robert A. Stern, a C.T.E. expert at Boston University School of Medicine. “The brain is going to move, jiggle around inside the skull. A helmet cannot do anything about that.”

Dr. Stern emphasized that the study of C.T.E. is still in its infancy. But he said that his hunch is that C.T.E. accounts for a share — he has no idea how large — of veteran suicides. C.T.E. leads to a degenerative loss of memory and thinking ability and, eventually, to dementia. There is also often a pattern of depression, impulsiveness and, all too often, suicide. There is now no treatment, or even a way of diagnosing C.T.E. other than examining the brain after death.

While the sports industry has lagged in responding to the discovery of C.T.E., and still does not adequately protect athletes from repeated concussions, the military has been far more proactive. The Defense Department has formed its own unit to autopsy brains and study whether blasts may be causing C.T.E.

Frankly, I was hesitant to write this column. Some veterans and their families are at wit’s end. If the problem in some cases is a degenerative physical ailment, currently incurable and fated to get worse, do they want to know?

I called Cheryl DeBow, a mother I wrote about recently. She sent two strong, healthy sons to Iraq. One committed suicide, and the other is struggling. DeBow said that it would actually be comforting to know that there might be an underlying physical ailment, even if it is progressive.

“You’re dealing with a ghost when it’s P.T.S.D.,” she told me a couple of days ago. “Everything changes when it’s something physical. People are more understanding. It’s a relief to the veterans and to the family. And, anyway, we want to know.” ( nytimes.com )

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Cops release teen in Jewish temple shooting

Cops release teen in Jewish temple shooting. A gunman shot and wounded two men in the parking garage of a North Hollywood synagogue Thursday, frightening worshippers who heard gunshots and screams before the bleeding victims stumbled in during morning services.

Authorities initially put Jewish schools and temples on alert before saying the attack appeared to be isolated.

Police detained a 17-year-old high school student near the temple because he matched a "very loose" description of the attacker, who was described as a black man wearing a hoodie, Deputy Police Chief Michel Moore said. They later released the youth and said he is no longer a suspect.

Mori Ben-Nissan, 38, and Allen Lasry, 53, were shot in the legs in the parking garage underneath the Adat Yeshurun Valley Sephardic Orthodox synagogue in the San Fernando Valley, said police Detective Steve Castro. The men, both synagogue members, arrived in separate cars for the morning service shortly before 6:30 a.m. and were in a stairwell leading up to the synagogue sanctuary when the gunman shot them several times, police said.

The victims, who were hospitalized in good condition, told police the attacker did not speak, Moore said.

‘Maybe it was a crazy person’

One worshipper, Yehuda Oz, said he and about 14 others were praying in the temple when they heard four gunshots and screams from the parking area. Two men stumbled into the temple, Oz said, and people rushed to stop their bleeding.

No one saw the attacker, he said.

"Maybe it was crazy person," Yehuda told the Los Angeles Times. "Maybe he was drugged up. Maybe it was a Jew. We don't know."

Even as investigators tried to find a motive, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other officials moved to calm fears that the attack was part of any organized anti-Semitic violence.

"We certainly recognize the location and we're sensitive to that," Moore said. "But we do not know that this was a hate crime at all."

Police searched the area for several hours but found no one. An alert that sent extra police patrols to local Jewish schools and synagogues was called off.

Camera footage not useful

Initial security camera footage from the synagogue shows the suspect but not the shooting, and the quality is too poor for investigators to identify the man, Cmdr. Jorge Villegas said.

But Castro said detectives later found more security cameras at the synagogue and were reviewing those tapes for possible clues.

Castro said information showed different scenarios for a possible motive, including a personal business dispute.

The attack occurred 10 miles from a Jewish community center where white supremacist Buford Furrow wounded three children, a teenager and an adult, in 1999. Furrow later killed a Filipino letter carrier on another street, and is serving a life sentence without chance of parole.

The synagogue is in an area of long boulevards with commercial districts, tree-studded blocks of post-World War II stucco homes and apartment complexes on the north side of the Hollywood Hills. It has the second-largest concentration of Jews in the city, said Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish rights group with more than 400,000 members in the United States.

Many Jews live nearby

About 6,000 Jews live within walking distance of the synagogue, among many more thousands who live in the San Fernando Valley, Cooper said.

"Adat Yeshurun is a Sephardic synagogue, which means it would attract primarily Jews from Morocco, Yemen, Israelis, some Persians," Cooper said.

It would be easy to scope out synagogue members because they show up every morning at the same time, Cooper said. The synagogue is not on a busy thoroughfare, and Cooper said he believed the gunman may have gone out of his way to attack the men.

"It's a bit of an anomaly about what was that guy doing there, and if he targeted, why there?" Cooper said.

LAPD First Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell said investigators were trying to determine whether a similar suspect might have been involved in robberies or other crimes in the area.

Shayan Yaghoubi, 13, was walking with his mother to the synagogue's adjoining school but wasn't allowed to cross the police line.

"The cops told us we can't go," he said. "I feel very bad because this is my favorite school ... I have a lot of friends over there. I hope everyone is OK. There's never been a problem with fighting."

Michael Bloom, 30, an Orthodox organizer with Hatzolah, a Jewish volunteer medical response team, grew up in the diverse neighborhood. He said there had been instances of Jews being insulted as they walked to the synagogue on the Sabbath.

"This has been going on for years. Everything from "death to Israel" to "dirty Jew,'" he said. "There are gangs in the area. It's not the safest neighborhood." / msnbc.msn.com

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