Report: U.S. troops undersupplied in Iraq
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- The former U.S. commander in Iraq issued an urgent plea to the Pentagon last winter for supplies, saying he was "unable to sustain readiness."
In a memo obtained by the Washington Post, Army Lt.-Gen. Ricardo Sanchez wrote: "I cannot continue to support sustained combat operations with (supply) rates this low."
Sanchez, who was the senior commander on the ground in Iraq from the summer of 2003 until this summer, said in his letter that Army units in Iraq were "struggling just to maintain ... relatively low readiness rates" on combat systems, such as M-1 Abrams tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, anti-mortar radars and Black Hawk helicopters.
There were 131,000 U.S. troops in Iraq at the time.
Senior Army officials said most of Sanchez' concerns have since been addressed, but that they continue to keep a close eye on the problems he identified. The situation is "substantially better" now, said Gary Motsek, deputy director of operations for the Army Materiel Command.
Japanese official says N.Korea has nukes
TOKYO, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- A Japanese official, after stating that North Korea had developed a plutonium-based nuclear weapon, said Monday Pyongyang might not be ready to launch it.
Speaking at a press conference Monday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosada commented that Pyongyang "might not be at the stage of loading a nuke onto a missile yet."
Over the weekend, Hosada claimed that Pyongyang had already completed the development of a plutonium-based nuclear weapon with the help of Pakistan, the Sankei Shimbun reported. It was the first statement by a Japanese official confirming Pyongyang's claim to have developed such a weapon.
Hosada reiterated the government's insistence that it would seek complete, verifiable and irreversible scrapping of the North's nuclear program.
He added that Japan might consider taking the matter to the U.N. Security Council if the six-party talks, including the United States, China, South Korea and Russia, failed to achieve a breakthrough with North Korea.
Hungarian deputy quits over Holocaust row
BUDAPEST, Hungary, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- A Hungarian socialist parliamentarian resigned Monday after making a joke about the Holocaust.
Janos Zuschlag, 27, was caught on camera last week at an outdoor Holocaust memorial gathering appearing to make light of the suffering of Jews in the Nazi genocide of World War II.
Hungary's Duna TV caught Zuschlag reacting to a bystander's comment about how cold conditions must have been for the victims of the Holocaust. He then said, laughing: "For them, it wasn't cold any more."
The comments exploded in the Hungarian media and Zuschlag has apologized for the offensive nature of his remarks.
In mid-1944 nearly half-a-million Hungarian Jews were deported to Nazi death camps, forming one of the last major contingents of European Jews to die in a genocide that cost 6 million lives.
Germany reels over hospital serial killer
SONTHOFEN, Germany, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- Exhumation orders have been issued for 42 bodies in Sonthofen, Germany, where a hospital orderly has admitted to giving lethal injections to 16 patients.
Stephan Letter, 25, has admitted administering a cocktail of killer drugs to the patients, but has told police "there may be more," the Times of London reported Monday.
All the patients died while Letter worked the night shift at the Sonthofen Clinic between January 2003 and the day he was arrested in July.
Letter told investigators he injected elderly patients to relieve suffering but the prosecutor is pressing murder charges. The police priority is to establish how close the patients were to dying before Letter came to their bedsides. Some were apparently on the way to recovery or had insignificant ailments at the time of death, the newspaper said.
He told police that he would sometimes hear doctors discussing a patient and determine the patient was unlikely to survive the night.
His trial is expected to begin sometime next year.
