Obama touts his capacity to unify

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Drawing a sharp contrast with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), his main rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said in an interview that he has the capacity she may lack to unify the country and move it out of what he called "ideological gridlock."

"I think it is fair to say that I believe I can bring the country together more effectively than she can," Obama said. "I will add, by the way, that is not entirely a problem of her making. Some of those battles in the '90s that she went through were the result of some pretty unfair attacks on the Clintons. But that history exists, and so yes, I believe I can bring the country together in a way she cannot do. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be running."

Consistently trailing Clinton in national polls, Obama has sought recently to make more explicit comparisons between his views and what he has portrayed as the conventional thinking and behavior that have caused problems for the country, especially in the rest of the world. He did that again in an interview Monday afternoon, defending himself against criticism from Clinton and other Democratic rivals for a series of statements on foreign policy and arguing that Clinton's foreign policy views risk continued international perceptions of U.S. arrogance.

But in the interview he also made a broader argument that more than a change in parties is needed to fix the country's problems. At one point, Obama said he was not singling out Clinton in saying that he is better able to pull the nation together than any of his challengers, but over the course of the 40-minute interview, he volunteered a number of contrasts between his views and Clinton's.

"Her argument is going to be that 'I'm the experienced Washington hand,' and my argument is going to be that we need to change the ways of Washington," he said. "That's going to be a good choice for the American people."

Saying that Bill Clinton's presidency was good for America, he added, "The question is, moving forward, looking towards the future, is it sufficient just to change political parties, or do we need a more fundamental change in how business is done in Washington? Do we need to break out of some of the ideological battles that we fought during the '90s that were really extensions of battles we fought since the '60s?"

Jailed immigrants die within month

WASHINGTON — Three detainees died within weeks of one another while in federal immigration custody, adding to a toll of more than 60 who perished in recent years and fueling complaints of medical maltreatment from civil rights advocates.

The dead were a pregnant Mexican woman who lost consciousness at a facility in El Paso, Texas, a Mexican AIDS patient whose condition steadily deteriorated in a San Pedro, Calif., prison and a Brazilian man whose family implored authorities to give him medicine for his epileptic seizures in Rhode Island, according to the American Civil Liberties Union and published reports.

With the exception of the pregnant woman, Rosa Isela Contreras-Dominguez, 38, [a legal permanent resident,] those who died were illegal immigrants being processed for deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the Department of Homeland Security. The two others were identified as Edmar Alves Araujo, 34, of Brazil, and Victoria Arellano, 23, of Mexico.

An ICE spokesman, Marc Raimondi, acknowledged the deaths and called the demise of any detainee "a sad occurrence." He said his agency cannot be held responsible for the deaths of Contreras-Dominguez and Araujo. He declined to comment about the Arellano case.

ICE spends more than $98 million a year to provide "humane and safe detention environments" to nearly 30,000 detainees, Raimondi said.

A December report by the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security concluded that the detention system is generally well run but noted that four of the five facilities it studied had "instances of non-compliance" regarding health care, "including timely initial and responsive medical care."

At least 62 people have died in ICE custody since 2004, immigration officials said. Scores of others have taken ill, some complaining of life-threatening ailments such as cancer and gangrene infections that went untreated. The inspector general is investigating two detainee deaths, in New Mexico and Minnesota.

Truck bombs kill 175 in Iraq's north

BAGHDAD, Iraq — At least 175 people were killed Tuesday night by four truck bombs in a massive coordinated attack in northern Iraq against Yazidis, members of a small religious sect, the Iraqi army said.

The nearly simultaneous explosions in three Yazidi communities near the town of Sinjar added up to the deadliest attack in Iraq this year and one of the most lethal since the U.S. invasion in 2003. Hundreds of wounded people were flown or driven to hospitals, overwhelming every emergency room in the region, said George Shlimon, vice mayor of the nearby city of Dahuk.

In Baghdad, the U.S. military reported the deaths of nine American military personnel in three separate incidents, including the crash of a twin-rotor Chinook helicopter. A truck bomb rendered a bridge impassible on a major route from Baghdad to the north.

Khidr Farhan was on his way to buy vegetables when the first truck bomb exploded near the market in his tiny Yazidi enclave. "I found myself flying through the air, and my face was burning," he said from his hospital bed in Dahuk, where he was recovering from a concussion, a broken leg and a broken rib.

"I felt my leg hurting, and I knew my head was bleeding," he said. "Then I couldn't feel anything. When I woke up, I was in the hospital."

During an interview with a Washington Post special correspondent, Farhan began to cry. "Where is my family?" he said. "I left my wife and my four children at home. Did they die?"

Haji Sido was driving from his workplace to his home in the Tall Aziz community when another of the bombs exploded there. He was not injured, but most of the mud-walled huts in the village collapsed and dead bodies littered the ground, he recounted.

"I ran past people screaming on the ground," he said. "I didn't care, because I had to get to my family. When I got home, my wife said, 'Calm down and thank God. We are safe.'"

Like other recent large-scale bombing attacks, Tuesday's violence took place in an area with a relatively small military presence. Since the United States sent an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq earlier this year, insurgents have increasingly targeted areas outside military control. Last month, a bombing near the city of Kirkuk — another northern city that did not receive additional troops — killed about 150 people.