supporter of the nonprofit, andhis daughter, Susie Buffett,serves on Girls Inc.’s board. War-ren Buffett sat with his wife anddaughter at a front-row table onTuesday.
Obama later appeared at a pri-vate fundraiser in the Des Moinesarea and headlined a rally forcampaign volunteers and sup-porters in a community center ata suburban park.
She ticked through PresidentBarack Obama’s signature ac-complishments, including the2009 federal stimulus packageand 2010 health care legislation.She credited the Democratic in-cumbent’s administration witheasing the economic downturnthat met him when he took office.
Yet, she warned supportersthat the general election wouldbe close. Iowa, which Obama car-ried in 2008, is among about adozen states expected to beamong the most closely con-tested in November. The presi-dent plans to campaign in IowaCity on Wednesday.
“Understand with every dooryou knock on, with every call youmake, with every conversationyou have, this could be the onethat makes the difference,” shetold about 400 people during her20-minute talk. “Treat it thatway.”
Obama encouraged Girls Inc.supporters in the audience tokeep believing in girls and givingthem the confidence they needto be themselves.
“You’re not just giving themsomething to do. You’re givingthem something to be,” Obamasaid.
Before Obama’s speech, sev-eral members of Girls Inc. talked
about what the programs havemeant to them. A video the girlsproduced also showed some ofthe tutoring and social activitieswith an emphasis on activity be-cause Obama promotes fitnessand healthy eating.
The lunch event’s master ofceremonies, Rhaniece Choice, 20,said she was impressed byObama’s personable manner.
“She was just so down-to-earth,” said Choice, who is now asophomore at the University ofNebraska-Lincoln. “She justwanted to get to know us back-stage on a personal level.”
Chanecia Martin, 15, who in-troduced Obama, said she was
impressed by how cool the firstlady seemed.
“It was a once-in-a-lifetime ex-perience,” Martin said.
Obama told all the young girlsin the audience that she tells hertwo daughters that they have topractice who they want to beevery single day. But she said ithelps to have some strong sup-porters in your corner when yougo after dreams.
“Focus on the people in yourlife who give you positive rein-forcement,” she said. “Gravitatetoward the positive. Stay awayfrom the ‘haters.”’
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PAGE 12 PRESS & DAKOTAN n WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2012
BY RODNEY MUHUMUZAThe Associated Press
DJEMA, Central African Republic —The hunt for alleged war criminal JosephKony is heating up on internationalradars, but Ugandan foot soldiers whohave spent years searching for the manare starting to ask a question their topcommanders prefer to ignore: Is it possi-ble he is dead?
Ugandan army officials say the Lord’sResistance Army leader is alive and hid-ing somewhere within the Central AfricanRepublic. Rank-and-file soldiers, however,say intelligence on Kony is so limited thatif he dies, or is already dead, his foesmight never know and could wind upchasing a ghost through this vast CentralAfrica jungle.
In interviews last week with an Associ-ated Press reporter who trekked withthem in the jungle, soldiers in one ofmany Kony-hunting squads said theirtask in the Central African Republic couldno longer be described as a manhunt.The soldiers, who requested anonymityfor fear of punishment, said for years
there has been no LRA presence in theareas they patrol.
The soldiers are growing increasinglydisillusioned, complaining of boredomand having to carry around heavy gunsthey never expect to use.
“Our commanders don’t want you toknow the truth,” one of them said on thebanks of the Vovodo river, his colleaguesnodding in approval. “They want to keepus here, but up to now our squad hasnever come across any rebels.”
Another soldier said: “We are bored.We have nothing to do. We are mobileevery day but we never see the enemy.”
Kony, an enigmatic rebel leader whohas lived in the bush for the last 26 years,last month became the subject of intenseinternational focus after U.S. advocacygroup Invisible Children made a popularonline video purporting to make him fa-mous. He has been silent since 2008,when the Ugandan army raided hisforested base in northeastern Congo.
Ugandan officials say Kony, who iswanted by the International CriminalCourt for war crimes and crimes againsthumanity, fled to the Central African Re-
public hours before the aerial attack, butLRA attacks have been frequently re-ported in Congo recently. Ugandan troopsleft the Congo last year after Congoleseauthorities asked them to go.
Soldiers told the AP they should be inCongo for the hunt.
Ugandan officials say the LRA, whichhas no more than 200 men scattered insmall groups all over Central Africa, ishard to eliminate completely because thejungle is where the rebels are most com-fortable. Last year U.S. President BarackObama sent 100 troops to help regionalgovernments fight the LRA. The Ameri-cans play an advisory role in Uganda, theCongo, South Sudan and the CentralAfrican Republic, countries that havebeen affected by the LRA over the years.
Even in extremely dry spells, accord-ing to the accounts of Ugandan soldierswho have fought Kony since the 1990s,the rebels can survive on filtered clay,which they mix with honey and then rollinto something that resembles a sausage.One piece is enough to satiate a man forseveral days. Ugandan soldiers call thisconcoction Kony’s dry ration.
Col. Joseph Balikuddembe, the topUgandan commander of the anti-Konymission, said the war on the LRA cannotbe rushed. To eliminate the rebels andtheir top leaders, he said, Ugandantroops must live like the rebels, on scantprovisions, to catch them in the jungles.
But this method is a source of discon-tent among soldiers who are poorly paid— most earn about $100 per month —and who feel that they are being used tojustify an expensive war against a de-graded rebel force that offers no resist-ance. Some openly wonder if Kony is stillalive.
Their amusement comes from usingtheir cell phones to watch pornographyand charging the phones’ batteries withsolar panels during long treks. Otherwise,they are forced to walk miles every daythrough unforgiving terrain, facing junglethreats including crocodiles, elephantsand poachers.
The makeshift clinic at a military basein Nzara, South Sudan, is packed withanti-malaria medication that will be spentwhen the rains fall and mosquitoes be-come rampant. The jungle experience
also demands personal sacrifice from thesoldiers because they can’t communicatewith their families for months and thenyears, and sometimes go hungry.
In February, when supplies were slowin arriving, some members of a 60-mem-ber Kony-hunting squad tried and failedto eat a wild yam that is a favorite of theLRA’s. It is called abato, and a mature oneis about the size of a baby’s folded hand.
“We tasted the yams and they weresour,” said Ugandan Pvt. Godfrey Asi-imwe. “I don’t know what the LRA do tothose yams to make them edible and deli-cious. We hear they enjoy them.”
And some soldiers, in an impossibletest of endurance, are forced to walk onbroken limbs.
Last Thursday, halfway through a 14-kilometer walk through the jungle, a sol-dier stumbled and fell badly. He tried tostay the course but eventually brokedown and asked to be carried around. Hiscolleagues resisted and he limped on.The next day he was bundled onto a mili-tary helicopter that also carried the stink-ing remains of a soldier killed in acrocodile attack on Wednesday.
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Boredom, Discontent Set In Among Kony Hunters
BY DONNA BLANKINSHIPAND SETH BORENSTEINAssociated Press
SEATTLE — Using space-faringrobots to mine precious metalsfrom asteroids almost soundseasy when former astronaut TomJones describes it — practicallylike clearing a snow-covereddriveway.
Jones, an adviser to a boldventure that aims to extract gold,platinum and rocket fuel from thebarren space rocks, said manynear-Earth asteroids have a looserocky surface held together onlyweakly by gravity.
“It shouldn’t be too hard to in-vent a machine like a snow blowerto pick up material,” explained
Jones, a veteran of four spaceshuttle missions.
But it will be risky and mon-strously expensive, which is whysome of the biggest and richestnames in high-technology — in-cluding the barons of Google andfilmmaker James Cameron — arebehind the project.
If the plan gets off the groundas planned, robots could be ex-tracting cosmic riches within 10years.
Outside experts are skepticalbecause the program would prob-ably require untold millions orperhaps billions of dollars, plushuge advances in technology. Yetthe same entrepreneurs behindthis idea also pioneered the sell-ing of space rides to tourists — a
notion that seemed fanciful notlong ago.
“Since my early teenage years,I’ve wanted to be an asteroidminer. I always viewed it as aglamorous vision of where wecould go,” Peter Diamandis, oneof the founders of Planetary Re-sources Inc., told a news confer-ence Tuesday at the Museum ofFlight in Seattle. The company’svision “is to make the resourcesof space available to humanity.”
The inaugural step, to beachieved in the next 18 to 24months, would be launching thefirst in a series of private tele-scopes that would search for theright type of asteroids.
The proposal is to use com-mercially built robotic ships to
squeeze rocket fuel and valuableminerals out of the rocks that rou-tinely whiz by Earth.
Several scientists not involvedin the project said they were si-multaneously thrilled and wary,calling the plan daring, difficult —and pricey. They don’t see how itcould be cost-effective, even withplatinum and gold worth nearly$1,600 an ounce. An upcomingNASA mission to return just 2ounces (60 grams) of an asteroidto Earth will cost about $1 billion.
The entrepreneurs of Plane-tary Resources have a trackrecord of profiting from spaceventures. Diamandis and co-founder Eric Anderson led theway in selling space rides totourists, and Diamandis has a sep-
arate company that offers“weightless” airplane flights.
Investors and advisers to thenew company include Google CEOLarry Page, Google ExecutiveChairman Eric Schmidt andCameron, the man behind the Hol-lywood blockbusters “Titanic”and “Avatar.”
Extracting water is key to deepspace exploration, as well as fordriving costs down, Andersonsaid. The water can be convertedinto fuel by separating the hydro-gen and oxygen. On a mannedflight, it could also be used fordrinking and growing food.
The plan is to take water froman asteroid to a spot in spacewhere it can be broken down intofuel. From there, it can easily and
cheaply be shipped to Earth orbitfor refueling commercial satellitesor spaceships from NASA andother countries.
Anderson acknowledged themany potential pitfalls.
“There will be times when wefail,” he said. “There will be timeswhen we have to pick up thepieces and try again.”
The mining, fuel processingand later refueling would all bedone without humans, Andersonsaid.
The target-hunting telescopeswould be tubes only a couple offeet long, weighing only a fewdozen pounds and small enoughto be held in your hand. Theyshould cost less than $10 million,company officials said.
Asteroids Could Yield Precious Metals, Cosmic Riches
