SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – In the 2008 presidential race, Barack Obama was famously effective in using new technologies to raise money, mobilize voters and target his message of change.

In this year’s campaign, his opponents are determined to turn the tables.

Republican political operatives, some with deep financial backing from the billionaire Koch brothers and others, are unleashing about a half dozen major projects that take advantage of advanced database technologies to manage campaigns and target voters with personalized messages.

Few doubt that political parties and factions that can gain an edge in the data wars will be in a good position on election day – and could potentially build institutional advantages that will pay dividends for years to come.

IPhone apps, Web-based campaign management and micro-targeting of voters with personalized messages are a few of the services built around database technology that the left has used to find and motivate voters, most impressively in 2008.

People in the increasingly competitive political technology business say the industry is still in an early phase, with the massive data-collection potential of social media and mobile computing only beginning to be tapped.

Nevertheless the field is already creating tension between grassroots activists suspicious of big, centralized databases and political professionals who say they are essential.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The civilian attorney representing the U.S. soldier accused of murdering 17 Afghan villagers wants to replace the military lawyer assigned to the case after disagreements over how to handle his defense.

“You are fired, sorry, but we have much more experience than you,” Seattle-based John Henry Browne, the outspoken lawyer who has been the public face of the defense of Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, said in an email to military lawyer Major Thomas Hurley.

The Army assigns defense counsel such as Hurley to soldiers facing court martial but defendants also have the right to hire additional civilian counsel, in this case Browne. Any change in military counsel would have to be approved by the Army.

Browne’s associate Emma Scanlan confirmed the decision, saying she and her boss looked forward to working with another lawyer. “We wish Major Hurley the best in his future endeavors,” she said by email. Hurley declined to comment.

Browne’s team wants to work with a military attorney with death penalty case experience, the email to Hurley from Browne, part of a chain obtained by Reuters, showed. Hurley has more than 60 military cases under his belt, with three involving homicide charges, but none were capital cases.

The decision comes after friction between the civilian and military lawyers over Browne’s aggressive media strategy, and each side has accused the other of not being team players.

“Major Hurley is not a team player and has no experience in murder cases, we do,” Browne wrote in a separate email to Reuters. “We have gotten 17 not guilty verdicts in murder cases and have gotten life verdicts in all our death penalty cases.”

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A woman living near the U.S. base of a soldier accused of killing 17 Afghan civilians remembered him on Friday as an “obnoxious drunk” who pressed her hand into his crotch and picked a fight with her boyfriend.

Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, 38, was charged on Friday with murdering 17 civilians and trying to kill six more on the night of March 11 near his army base in Afghanistan. His lawyer has admitted that Bales had had something to drink on that night but played it down as a factor.

Washington state police reports show that Bales had three brushes with the law over the last decade, all of which mention alcohol. The first was in 2002 and the last two were in 2008, in between his second and third tours in Iraq. He went to war a fourth time in December, to Afghanistan.

“He was an obnoxious drunk,” Myra Jo Irish said by telephone on Friday, describing the night of April 5, 2008, at the Paradise Village Bowl bowling alley in Tacoma, near Bales’ U.S. base, Lewis-McChord, in Washington state.

She made a report to police that night but never pressed charges.

She said Bales followed her outside when she went for a smoke. “He said ‘you are beautiful’ and grabbed my hand and put it on his crotch,” she said. Her boyfriend asked for an apology, she remembered.

“Next thing I knew, he had my boyfriend on the ground and started wailing on him,” she said. “His friends told me, ‘please don’t report this, cause he’s married, he’s drunk, and he’s in the service, and that would just devastate his life.’”

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 civilians in Afghanistan left for war without paying a $1.5 million judgment for defrauding an elderly client in a stock scheme, and remains shielded from the obligation as long as he remains in the military, legal experts said.

Before beginning his military career in November, 2001, Robert Bales worked almost five-and-a-half years at a series of largely intertwined brokerages that received repeated regulatory censures, according to regulatory records.

Bales joined the Army 18 months after an Ohio investor filed an arbitration complaint alleging unauthorized trading, breach of contract and other abuses against him, his securities firm and the firm’s owner. In 2003, the arbitration panel ordered them to pay the investor $1.2 million, including $637,000 in punitive damages for willful or malicious conduct and $216,500 in attorneys’ fees.

Bales never appeared before the panel and did not hire a lawyer to represent him.

Earle Frost, a lawyer for the victim, Gary Liebschner, said his client never received any of the payment ordered by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) panel.

He said Liebschner could have taken Bales to court to enforce the award, but “we couldn’t find him.”

By that time, Bales had embarked on an Army career that included three tours of duty in Iraq and a fourth in Afghanistan.

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 civilians in Afghanistan left for war without paying a $1.5 million judgment for defrauding an elderly client in a stock scheme, and remains shielded from the obligation as long as he remains in the military, legal experts said.

Before beginning his military career in November, 2001, Bales worked almost five-and-a-half years at a series of largely intertwined brokerages that received repeated regulatory censures, according to regulatory records.

Bales joined the Army 18 months after an Ohio investor filed an arbitration complaint alleging unauthorized trading, breach of contract and other abuses against him, his securities firm and the firm’s owner. In 2003, the arbitration panel ordered them to pay the investor $1.2 million, including $637,000 in punitive damages for willful or malicious conduct and $216,500 in attorneys’ fees.

Bales never appeared before the panel and did not hire a lawyer to represent him.

Earle Frost, a lawyer for the victim, Gary Liebschner, said his client never received any of the payment ordered by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) panel.

He said Liebschner could have taken Bales to court to enforce the award, but “we couldn’t find him.”

By that time, Bales had embarked on an Army career that included three tours of duty in Iraq and a fourth in Afghanistan.

SEATTLE/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The wife of the U.S. soldier suspected of gunning down 16 Afghan civilians broke her silence on Monday to say she did not know what happened half a world away, but felt for the families of the victims while loving her husband very much.

U.S. authorities say Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, 38, walked out of his camp in Kandahar province just over a week ago to kill the Afghans, including nine children, before turning himself in.

“I too want to know what happened. I want to know how this could be,” Karilyn Bales, who is also 38 and has two small children with her husband, said in her first public statement on what she called a “heartbreaking tragedy”.

“Our family has little information beyond what we read in the media,” she said in a statement released by Seattle lawyer Lance Rosen. “What has been reported is completely out of character of the man I know and admire.”

She said she could not shed any light on the incident, but added: “The victims and their families are all in my prayers, as is my husband who I love very much.”

The children and Karilyn Bales have been sequestered on a military base in the Seattle area.

Their house, for sale at less than the family paid, stands empty in a lakeside neighborhood. About 30 miles away, Karilyn Bales’ parents have posted bright red “No Trespassing” signs on trees surrounding their own lakeside home since her husband’s name was made public.

TACOMA, Washington (Reuters) – Robert Bales built a life around a call to arms. A call that emanated from the ashes of the World Trade Center in New York and took him to the mayhem of faraway Iraq and Afghanistan. A call he may have heard one time too many.

The 38-year-old U.S. Army staff sergeant suspected of gunning down 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, had struggled to make financial ends meet and was disappointed at being sent back into a war zone for a fourth time rather than an easier posting in Germany or Hawaii.

Bales was a high school football star from Ohio who enlisted in the Army after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. He married Karilyn Primeau in 2005 and soon they moved into a four-bedroom house near a clear Seattle lake. The couple had two children, but Bales was absent for three tours in Iraq, where he was commended for valor. His wife, a public relations executive, blogged enthusiastically about their life.

Today, his family has the lake house on the market for less than they paid for it and a second home, with a mortgage larger than its market value, has been abandoned for two years, a red notice from the city warning it is uninhabitable.

Bales was denied a longed-for promotion to Sergeant First Class in March 2011. Then his family missed out on the adventure they felt they deserved – a posting in Europe or Hawaii – when Sergeant Bales was sent to a fourth tour abroad, in Afghanistan.

In Iraq, he was celebrated and proud of the heroism of U.S. troops. “We ended up helping the people that three or four hours ago were trying to kill us,” he said in a 2009 Army publication describing the rescue of a downed helicopter that turned into a pitched battle, after which victorious U.S. troops gave aid to enemy casualties.

“That’s the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy,” he said.

TACOMA, Washington (Reuters) – Robert Bales built a life around a call to arms. A call that emanated from the ashes of the World Trade Center in New York and took him to the mayhem of faraway Iraq and Afghanistan. A call he may have heard one time too many.

The 38-year-old U.S. Army staff sergeant suspected of gunning down 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, had struggled to make financial ends meet and was disappointed at being sent back into a war zone for a fourth time rather than an easier posting in Germany or Hawaii.

Bales was a high school football star from Ohio who enlisted in the Army after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. He married Karilyn Primeau in 2005 and soon they moved into a four-bedroom house near a clear Seattle lake. The couple had two children, but Bales was absent for three tours in Iraq, where he was commended for valor. His wife, a public relations executive, blogged enthusiastically about their life.

Today, his family has the lake house on the market for less than they paid for it and a second home, with a mortgage larger than its market value, has been abandoned for two years, a red notice from the city warning it is uninhabitable.

Bales was denied a longed-for promotion to Sergeant First Class in March 2011. Then his family missed out on the adventure they felt they deserved – a posting in Europe or Hawaii – when Sergeant Bales was sent to a fourth tour abroad, in Afghanistan.

In Iraq, he was celebrated and proud of the heroism of U.S. troops. “We ended up helping the people that three or four hours ago were trying to kill us,” he said in a 2009 Army publication describing the rescue of a downed helicopter that turned into a pitched battle, after which victorious U.S. troops gave aid to enemy casualties.

“That’s the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy,” he said.

TACOMA, Washington (Reuters) – A lawyer representing the U.S. soldier implicated in the massacre of 16 villagers in Afghanistan said on Saturday he and other members of the defense team would spend several days with him in the week ahead.

U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales is in solitary confinement at a military detention center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he arrived late on Friday.

Bales, 38 and a four-tour combat veteran, is suspected of walking off his base in southern Afghanistan on Sunday and gunning down the 16 civilians, including nine children and three women, in a massacre that sent American-Afghan relations into a tailspin.

Bales, whose military unit is based south of Tacoma, Washington, had been held in Kuwait after he was flown out of Afghanistan on Wednesday. He has not yet been charged.

Bales’ civilian attorney, John Henry Browne, said in a statement he was being joined in the defense effort by Emma Scanlan, also a civilian, and a military defense counsel, Major Thomas Hurley.

“Public reports that Sergeant Bales’ supervisors, family and friends describe him as a level-headed, experienced soldier are consistent with information gathered by the defense team,” Browne’s statement said.

“It is too early to determine what factors may have played into this incident and the defense team looks forward to reviewing the evidence, examining all of Sergeant Bale’s medical and personnel records and interviewing witnesses.”

SEATTLE (Reuters) – The U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians was upset at having to do a fourth tour of duty in a war zone and was likely suffering from stress after seeing colleagues wounded, his defense lawyer said on Thursday.

Seattle defense attorney John Henry Browne said the 38-year-old staff sergeant accused of gunning down children and families on Sunday had already been wounded twice in three tours in Iraq and had been told he would not be sent back to a war zone.

“He and his family were told that his tours in the Middle East were over. His family was counting on him not being redeployed,” said Browne at a news conference in Seattle. “Literally overnight that changed. So I think it would be fair to say that he and the family were not happy that he was going back.”

An unnamed U.S. official told The New York Times the killings were a result of “a combination of stress, alcohol and domestic issues – he just snapped.”

Asked about the Times report, Browne said he did not know about alcohol and acknowledged that stress was a factor, but he dismissed the domestic issue as “nonsense.”

Browne said he had not discussed details of the incident with his client but added that the man’s unit had sustained casualties about the time of the civilian killings.

“I don’t know if I’d call them friends, but other people deployed in that base were seriously injured and/or killed shortly before these allegations,” he said.