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I've decided that the Dawn Patrol should be of our MilBlogs and not of the MSM. I'd rather promote Free Speech from those who help make it possible than those who take it for granted. I know alot of you liked the Dawn Patrol before, but let's give this a whirl.
It has proved to be a daunting task since we now have 211 members in the MilBlog Ring and 40 perspective ones in the Queue waiting to get their code up, so bear with me. If you know a milblogger with a story who's not in the ring, send me the title, top paragragh and a link and I'll happily post it (keep in mind lewd offensive ones will not be) If your in the Ring and I've missed you, send me the same.
This is the first run, there is no special order. I'll be tweaking as I go.
No, not our boys. These boys. This morning, a very, very early morning, the Fighting Aces were kicking in doors with the IA and raiding houses. Our target was a cell of Ansar al-Sunna operating in my Nahiya. I was pretty nervous about this one, given the targets and their location. The town that they were in is a maze of family blocks, narrows streets and alleys, and only has one way in or out. Potentially, it could have become a hornet?s nest, with us surrounded and bad guys running amok. Luckily, the town is supportive of the ISF and Coalition Forces. The town?s Sheikh is a really good guy, and his son led the raid on one of the objectives.
An IED just went off about 20 meters to our left on the median, throwing a big mushroom cloud of sand and dust in the air. It went off 3 bobtails in front of us.
As the family of a Fallen Hero, we are so proud of our loved ones who knowingly put themselves in harm's way so that they could make a difference in the lives of others.
I would like to share an excerpt from a sermon by John Hagee
"I gave you a birthright of freedom born in the Constitution and now your children graduate too illiterate to read it. I fought in the snow barefoot to give you the freedom to vote and you stay at home because it rains. I left my family destitute to give you the freedom of speech, and you remain silent on critical issues, because it might be bad for business. I orphaned my children to give you a government to serve you and it has stolen democracy from the people.
IRAQ?S most wanted terrorist has fled the country for emergency surgery after an American airstrike left him with shrapnel lodged in his chest, according to a senior insurgent commander in close contact with his group.
E-mail, satellite phones and now Web logs are bringing home up-to-the-minute personal accounts from troops on the front.
"If stuff happens, the next day I find out," she said. Her husband, Army Spc. A.J. Stickney, is an infantryman on his second tour in Iraq.
...While dismayed by Iran's efforts, the CIA believed Iran needed at least another three years before it could assemble an atomic bomb.
US Marine Maj. Steven Lawson, of Columbus, Ohio, walks outside a house that Marines believe is owned and was once occupied by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Haditha, 220 kilometers (140 miles) northwest of Baghdad, Thursday, May 26, 2005.
Insurgents said Wednesday in interviews and statements on the Internet that the leader of the group al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi, was struggling with a gunshot wound to the lung. One of Zarqawi's commanders said the Jordanian guerrilla was receiving oxygen, heightening suspicion that the groundwork was being laid for an announcement of his replacement or death.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted insurgent in Iraq, has been wounded in fighting, the group he leads said on Tuesday. A statement issued by al-Qaeda in Iraq said the Jordanian ...
President Bush promised Monday to continue U.S. military and economic aid to Afghanistan, but resisted pressure from Afghan President Hamid Karzai to yield control of Afghan prisoners and U.S. military operations in the country.
Newsweek - In the week since our Periscope item about alleged abuse of the Qur'an at Guantanamo Bay became a heated topic of national conversation, it will come as no surprise to you that we have been engaged in a great deal of soul-searching and reflection. Since cutting short a trip to Asia on the weekend we published our account of how we reported the story, I have had long talks with our Editor Mark Whitaker, Managing Editor Jon Meacham and other key staff members, and I wanted to share my thoughts with you and to affirm?and reaffirm?some important principles that will guide our news gathering in the future.
A disgruntled former CIA operative hoping to hurt President Bush was likely Newsweek's source on the fake Quran-in-the-toilet story, says geopolitical expert Jack Wheeler, and his action now means journalists will no longer trust the ex-Langley agents forced out by chief Porter Goss.
Army Staff Sgt. Heath Calhoun lost his legs in Iraq in a rocket-propelled grenade attack. But for the next 59 days, it's his arms that he is worried about.
Hunched down on his silver hand cycle, Calhoun embarked on an epic journey Saturday. He and two other cyclists, one of them also a veteran wounded in Iraq, are attempting to ride from Marina del Rey to Montauk Point, N.Y., to raise money for people injured in the war who, they say, often struggle when returning to civilian life.
Donations can be made at Soldier Ride's website,
Thin Mints, they ain't.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai heads to the United States in a visit that threatens to be overshadowed by the most violent anti-US protests to rock Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban and new allegations of prisoner abuse by US soldiers.
The US military said yesterday that it does not tolerate any mistreatment of detainees, in response to allegations of repeated abuse by ''young, poorly trained soldiers" at its main base in Afghanistan.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Saturday he was shocked by a U.S. army report on abuse of detainees in Afghanistan, saying his government wanted custody of all Afghan prisoners and control over U.S. military operations.
The Jordanian terrorist behind much of the violence in Iraq is positioned not just to destabilize that country but to become a global power on par with or eclipsing Osama bin Laden, according to French terrorism expert Alexis Debat.
I See England, I see France, but I never needed to see this...
Saddam Hussein plans to take legal action after a British newspaper published photos of him half-naked in his prison cell and doing his washing.
"We will sue the newspaper and everyone who helped in showing these pictures," said Saddam Hussein's chief lawyer Ziad Al-Khasawneh, speaking from Jordan.
The Sun newspaper said it would fight any legal action and said it planned to publish more photos on Saturday.
The U.S. military condemned the publication Friday of photographs showing an imprisoned Saddam Hussein naked except for his white underwear, and ordered an investigation of how the pictures were leaked to a tabloid. Some Iraqis expressed anger, but President Bush said he did not think the images would incite further anti-American sentiment.
A British tabloid published more revealing photographs of Saddam Hussein in U.S. custody on Saturday, a day after it ran a front-page picture of the former Iraqi leader naked except for his underwear.
Thousands of Shiites stomped on American flags painted on roads outside mosques in a show of anger over the U.S. presence in Iraq, while Sunni leaders called Friday for a closure of places of worship to protest the sectarian violence many fear may erupt into civil war.
Muslim protesters today called for the bombing of New York in a demonstration outside the US embassy in London.
There were threats of "another 9/11" from militants angry at reports of the desecration of the Koran by US troops in Iraq.
Two gay Israeli men have installed a huge double bed in a New York art gallery and are inviting Arab men to become their "lover" as part of an exhibition called "Sleeping with the Enemy."
Rush Limbaugh sounds off on controversy as many urge boycotts, firing of president.
An apology by PepsiCo's president who likened the United States to a middle finger is apparently doing little to calm outrage caused by her remarks.
A bomb exploded in an apartment building in southern Russia's Dagestan region Friday, killing the area's minister for ethnic relations and his bodyguard, police said.
Zagir Arukhov, 45, was the second minister for ethnic policy to be killed in two years. His predecessor died in August 2003 when his car was blown up. Dagestan is a volatile mix of dozens of ethnic groups.
Gov. Mitt Romney signed a bill Friday repealing a 330-year-old law that barred Indians from setting foot in Boston.
Plenty of gadgets shown at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo had absolutely nothing to do with the next generation of video game consoles from Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Nintendo Co. and Sony Corp. (SNE)
We'll get our hands on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Revolution eventually. But until that distant day, we happily made do with a treasure trove of nifty video game gear.
A brief look at some of the more eye-catching stuff.
As a member of the Elite Operations Division in the video game "True Crime: Streets of LA," the character Nick Kang must find his way to a truck heist at the flagship Puma sportswear store. Lucky for him, he has a Motorola handset with built-in global positioning system technology.
In the online game Everquest II, players don't need to leave their fantasy world to satisfy hunger pangs. They can click an icon and have food delivered from the nearest Pizza Hut ? within 30 minutes.
The last of the "Star Wars" movies has done what no movie in history has ever accomplished - sold $50 million worth of tickets in a single day.
After starting the day with $16,912,367 from midnight shows alone, Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith closed Thursday with $50,013,859 from an estimated 9,400 screens at 3,661 theaters. That's the biggest day ever for a single movie in history.
NASA conducted a second fueling test Friday on space shuttle Discovery to try to figure out why sensors and a valve did not work properly during a previous run-through.
UNITED NATIONS -- A scientists group on Thursday warned the United States against weaponizing space, saying the move would be prohibitively expensive and could set off a new arms race.
The world's most wanted fugitive is alive and on the run with a small group of fighters, Pakistan's foreign minister said, claiming army operations had "paralysed" al-Qeida
The US military launches an "aggressive" investigation after British media show Saddam Hussein half naked.
...The greatest respect we can show to Arabs and Muslims - and the best way to help Muslim progressives win the war of ideas - is to take them seriously and stop gazing at our own navels. That means demanding that they answer for their lies, hypocrisy and profane behavior, just as much as we must answer for ours.
A crowd of 600 Afghan clerics gathered in front of an historic mosque yesterday to strip the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar of his claim to religious authority, in a ceremony that provided a significant boost to the presidency of Hamid Karzai.
If Iran ignores U.S. pleas not to make nuclear fuel, the United States lacks support from China in the U.N. Security Council to punish Iran, a State Department official said Thursday
Three teenage hooligans thought they were being funny when they set fire to a plastic bag attached to disabled Vietnam veteran Francis Abrams' wheelchair Tuesday, the New York Post and Daily News reported.
Iraq's al-Qaeda leader, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi has purportedly defended the killing of "innocent Muslims" in suicide bombings aimed at international troops, saying it is in the name of religion.
American administrators spent at least $15 million turning an opulent sandstone building, shaded by date palms along the western bank of the Tigris River, into a state-of-the-art command center for the rapidly growing Iraqi Defense Ministry. Now the Iraqi National Assembly wants it, and the U.S. military is struggling to hang on.
An unknown Islamic group has announced that 7 pm Wednesday (local time) will be the deadline for the settlement of the kidnapped Italian aid worker.
Newsweek's story about the desecration of the Quran at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba didn't pass the sniff test, but that's not all that stinks about this tale and its aftermath.
IT WAS front-page news this week when Newsweek retracted a report claiming that a US interrogator in Guantanamo had flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet. Everywhere it was noted that Newsweek's story had sparked widespread Muslim rioting, in which at least 17 people were killed. But there was no mention of deadly protests triggered in recent years by comparable acts of desecration against other religions.
A man claiming to have kidnapped Italian aid worker, Clementina Cantoni, in Kabul on Monday, delivered an ultimatum in an interview on Afghan TV on Wednesday, threatening to kill Cantoni unless his demands were met. ''If the Afghan government does not meet our demands,we will take some serious steps," said the man, who identified himself as Timor Shah. Shah set a 7 pm local time deadline for the settlement of the kidnapping of the Care International aid worker.
Shah is reported to have listed his conditions for Cantoni's released in a telephone call to the Kabul bureau of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty service.
The Uzbek government Wednesday took foreign diplomats and journalists to the eastern town of Andijan, showing them a prison and the local administration building, said news from the central Asian country.
But it was the press's turn to fight back as Bush spokesman Scott McClellan opened his briefing to questions.
[Joined in progess]
Q With respect, who made you the editor of Newsweek? Do you think it's appropriate for you, at that podium, speaking with the authority of the President of the United States, to tell an American magazine what they should print?
MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not telling them. I'm saying that we would encourage them to help --
Q You're pressuring them.
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I'm saying that we would encourage them --
Q It's not pressure?
"They shouldn't have reported it, knowing that people would die,' he said.
"The crusaders' hag (Rice) came to sully the land of the caliphate...and wants the participation of apostates and secularists claiming to be Sunnis," the group led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said in the statement posted on Tuesday on a Web site used by Islamists on Tuesday.
AP Video report
Three Iraqis were found shot dead near a Baghdad dam on Monday and a slain Iraqi Kurd was left in a garbage dump in northern Iraq, raising the number of bodies found in recent days to 45. The government vowed to find those responsible, saying insurgents were seeking to exploit sectarian rivalries.
Update to Dawn Patrol coming soon.
Newsweek magazine said on Sunday it erred in a May 9 report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to the victims of deadly Muslim protests sparked by the article.
A year ago, the southeastern Afghan province of Nangrahar was covered with pink and white poppies, producing a quarter of the nation's opium crop. This year, after President Hamid Karzai announced a jihad against drugs, the province is almost 80% free with U.S. and European help.
After five days of anti-American protests that left 14 people dead, Afghan officials charged Saturday that outside forces had hijacked many of the demonstrations in a bid to destabilize the government.
Iraqi fighters toting machine guns and grenade launchers swaggered through the rubble-strewn streets of this town on the Syrian border Friday, setting up checkpoints and preparing to do battle despite a major U.S. offensive aimed at rooting out followers of Iraq's most-wanted militant.
There were brown welts on his back where he had been flogged. There were small circular burns on his legs. He lifted his upper lip and revealed broken teeth. He held out his hands and displayed red lines where handcuffs had cut into his skin during eight days of captivity.
At least 50 people are reported to have been killed in violence in the central Asian country yesterday.
Col. Winn recommended that Lt. Pantano face administration punishment for firing too many rounds at the two men.
Gen. Huck can accept the recommendations or overrule them and order a court-martial of Lt. Pantano.
LOTS OF NEWS COVERAGE!
...The source of anger was a brief report in the May 9 edition of Newsweek that interrogators at Guantanamo placed Qurans on toilets to rattle suspects, and in at least one case "flushed a holy book down the toilet."
It is not the anti-American sentiment. It is a protest over the news of the desecration of the holy Koran in Guantanamo," said Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai on Wednesday, referring to the hundreds of students who rioted in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad over a news report that the Koran was desecrated at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba. Karzai was speaking to journalists after meeting the NATO secretary general Jaap De Hoop Scheffer in Brussels.
Demonstrators against the alleged desecration of the Koran at a US military jail took to the streets of Kabul in a third day of protests across Afghanistan that have left four people dead, witnesses said.
Demonstrators angry over a report of the desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, smashed car and shop windows and stoned a passing convoy of U.S. soldiers yesterday in eastern Afghanistan. Police opened fire on the protesters, killing four and injuring at least 71.
...If there?s good news, it?s that while the Pentagon may obscure this grim reality in public presentations, it doesn?t seem to be kidding itself, as it did in Vietnam. An accidentally declassified Pentagon report about a killing on the road to Baghdad airport at the beginning of March shows quite clearly how much worse the overall situation is than the Bush administration would like us, or even its allies in the Coalition forces, to believe.
The Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is "serious injured, possibly dead" according to Colonel Fouad Hani Hassan, commander of the fifth division of the Iraqi armed forces, cited by 'Elaph', a popular website in the Arab world. Al-Zarqawi, considered al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, is believed to have been injured in the major offensive US-led forces have been carrying out in the western Anbar province over the last few days.
Suspected insurgents killed a brigadier general as he drove to work at the Ministry of Defense in Baghdad on Thursday, police said.
In a war where intelligence is as important as guns, leaks of information from Iraqi soldiers are undermining the battle against insurgents, senior U.S. and Iraqi officers say.
Staff Sergeant Sherri Nabors reports in this edition of Operation Iraqi Freedom Today. Stories include: Soldiers, acting on a tip, find bomb-making materials in a Baghdad home and an individual was caught placing an improvised explosive device on the side of the road. Video from American Forces Network Iraq.
Marines Who Survived Ambush Are Killed, Wounded in Blast
The explosion enveloped the armored vehicle in flames, sending orange balls of fire bubbling above the trees along the Euphrates River near the Syrian border.
Marines in Iraq race to rescue a stranded tank crew, only to make a wrong turn into the enemy's cross hairs
A highly decorated Marine from New Jersey was killed Monday while on patrol in western Iraq, the Pentagon announced Wednesday
A Tucson-based company says it has an answer to one of the deadliest threats facing U.S. troops and civilians in Iraq: roadside bombs.
...But just as it is important not to be demoralized when the terrorists achieve their horrific "successes," it is equally important not to dwell for too long about the victories we win.
WHAT IF worse is yet to come in Iraq? What if there's a civil war?
Akihiko Saito, the Japanese man who went missing after an attack in western Iraq on May 8, may have died from his wounds during the firefight, his employer Hart Security Ltd. said.
A video image of Australian man, Douglas Wood, who has been kidnapped by Iraqi militants. One of Australia's most senior Muslim clerics says he has heard unconfirmed reports that the Iraqi captors of Douglas Wood have extended their deadline.
The newly-appointed governor of the Anbar province in western Iraq was kidnapped by gunmen on Tuesday, along with four of his bodyguards. Raja Nawaf Farhan al-Mahalawi was only awarded the post a few days ago. His brother said the kidnappers later called the family and said the governor would be held until US forces pulled out of the town of Qaim, on the Syrian border.
A longtime ally of French President Jacques Chirac and a leading British critic of the Iraq war received huge contracts to resell Iraqi oil from Saddam Hussein under the U.N. oil-for-food program, Senate investigators have found.
A U.S. congressional committee probing the defunct U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq alleges that two politicians from Britain and France personally received millions of dollars worth of oil allocations from Saddam Hussein's regime.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro has called for a demonstration next Tuesday to protest against what he described as the support of the United States to an individual involved in terrorist acts against the island
The Bush administration has offered Air Force transport planes and crews to airlift thousands of additional African peacekeeping troops into Sudan's war-torn Darfur region this summer, State Department officials say.
President George W. Bush was not told for nearly an hour while he finished a bike ride about a breach in White House airspace on Wednesday that prompted the highest alert since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the White House said.
A pilot and student pilot, en route from Pennsylvania to an air show in North Carolina, were taken into custody after their flight sparked a frenzy of activity that tested the capital's post-Sept. 11, 2001, response system.
Hayden "Jim" Sheaffer deftly piloted a glider the other day, coasting on thermals and easily keeping the small craft aloft for an hour. Recently, he purchased detailed aviation maps for the North Carolina region to ensure that he properly navigated his way Wednesday to a much-anticipated air show
A pilot and a student pilot were released without criminal charges Wednesday after their plane flew within three miles of the White House, prompting evacuations throughout the capital, officials said.
Until yesterday, federal officials felt confident enough in new air security procedures to consider lifting a ban on small aircraft flying in and out of Reagan National Airport, possibly by the end of the year.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Wednesday that U.S. officials never believed President Bush's life was in danger from an inactive grenade that was found 100 feet from the site where the president made a speech in the Georgian capital Tuesday.
A top Al-Qaeda operative arrested in Pakistan will not be handed over to the United States at present, visiting Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said, while leaving open the possibility of a later transfer.
The Pakistani army's drive against Al-Qaeda has paralysed its communications network and "vastly reduced" its capacity for terrorism, Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said.
A U.S. colonel at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq ? where American soldiers abused detainees ? has been reprimanded and fined $8,000.
A military judge Wednesday rejected defense attempts to keep some of the notorious Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse photos from a jury in the scandal's second trial.
Since January, Spc. Sabrina Harman has sat through each of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse trials, watching quietly as fellow soldiers were punished for tormenting Iraqi detainees.
Responding to reports about widespread abuses of the rules for recruitment, Army officials said yesterday that they would suspend all recruiting on May 20 and use the day to retrain its personnel in military ethics and the laws that govern what can and cannot be done to enlist an applicant.
A House subcommittee voted Wednesday to keep women out of combat support jobs that could lead to direct-combat involvement, which is banned, but there is a sharp division about the ramifications of the vote
A US sailor who refused to board a warship bound for Iraq because he objects to the American invasion on moral grounds was convicted in a court martial on Wednesday.
A chaplain at the Air Force Academy has described a "systemic and pervasive" problem of religious proselytizing at the academy and says a religious tolerance program she helped create to deal with the problem was watered down after it was shown to officers, including the major general who is the Air Force's chief chaplain
An Air Force Academy chaplain who co-wrote a report last year that criticized "strident" evangelizing of cadets by Christian officers said Wednesday that she was fired by the academy's head chaplain.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is required to submit his list of recommended military base closures and realignments to Congress and to an independent base-closing commission by Monday. Sources say the announcement will likely come sometime Friday.
The Pentagon will recommend joining elements of different branches of the armed services on some military bases when it announces proposed base closings in upcoming days, defense officials say
In his opening statement in the trial of Hillary Clinton's finance director David Rosen, Justice Department prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg seemed to spend as much time insisting that Mrs. Clinton was an innocent victim as he did laying out his case against her underling.
Television has developed an insatiable hunger for a soap opera saga with twists and turns that can be endlessly trumpeted in order to hook viewers. The rest of the media, including The Washington Post, often feel they have to play along, because the story is creating "buzz" and no one wants to seem culturally clueless.
Imagine some of the soldiers who survived the Battle of Gettysburg stopping the next day to write their dramatic tales ? and people around the world instantly reading them. If that battle had been fought today, no imagination would be necessary.
The blogs that soldiers are writing from Iraq and Afghanistan may not be as valuable to historians as the letters and journals that troops, as warriors have done for centuries, are writing by hand.
... The problem with blogs like The Huffington Post is that they divert our attention from real and serious journalism. ... Blogs have their place.
The blogosphere gives me a headache! I'm the type who likes to stay informed about everything and, until recently, have been holding my own with three or four newspapers, a dozen magazines, a few dozen Web sites and an obsession with hitting the "reload" button on my Google news page every few seconds.
DESPITE strong requests from their PR department, top CEOs are refusing to pen blogs.
The dollar rallied against its main rivals as an unexpected narrowing of the US trade deficit eased concerns about global imbalances and boosted the outlook for the US economy.
The dollar slipped against the euro and the Swiss franc on Wednesday after witnesses said the U.S. Capitol and White House were being evacuated.
The Secret Service was investigating a report Tuesday that a hand grenade was thrown at the stage during President Bush's speech in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
A hand grenade was found at a square in Georgia where President Bush made a public speech on Tuesday, but it was incapable of exploding, a top Georgian security official said on Wednesday.
North Korea intensified its nuclear confrontation with the United States on Tuesday, calling President George W. Bush "Hitler, Junior," while South Korea warned the Communist state against taking "extreme measures," in an apparent reference to a nuclear test.
The announcement appeared to undercut the Bush administration's strategy to pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
Car bombs reportedly struck three Iraqi cities Wednesday, killing at least 26 people, as U.S. troops battling insurgents near Iraq's border with Syria encountered uniformed fighters.
Gunmen kidnapped the newly elected governor of Anbar province yesterday, demanding that U.S. forces stop their offensive against foreign insurgents in western Iraq in return for his release. U.S. officials said they had no plans to end their offensive in the area around the town of Qaim, near the Syrian border.
Capitalizing on a lull in fighting Tuesday, hundreds of U.S. Marines pushed through a lawless region on the Syrian frontier after intense battles along the Euphrates River with well-armed militants fighting from basements, rooftops and sandbag bunkers.
U.S. forces on an offensive across a remote desert region in western Iraq have encountered surprisingly stiff resistance from insurgents who have established a base of operations near the Syrian border.
Screaming "Allahu Akbar'' to the end, the foreign fighters lay on their backs in a narrow crawl space under a house and blasted their machine guns up through the concrete floor with bullets designed to penetrate tanks. They fired at U.S. Marines, driving back wave after wave as the Americans tried to retrieve a fallen comrade
Intense fighting in a string of towns along the Syrian border in northwestern Iraq showed signs of subsiding Tuesday, as U.S. forces wound down an assault on foreign insurgents
U.S. Marines rolling though towns on the upper Euphrates River said yesterday that they found dead insurgents wearing bulletproof armor and foreign clothes. In the towns, they reported finding caches of weapons and suicide-bomb vests, as well as car bombs rigged to explode.
...A plan to aid severely injured soldiers who face long recoveries and unplanned expenses won its final congressional approval Tuesday and a presidential signature is expected shortly afterward.
...Crook says the idea behind his site was "to call attention to what I feel is excessive pay and benefits given to our military."
Forsake The Troops is no longer a customer of SMIS Hosting. Their website is no longer hosted by our company. We intitally gave them the courtesy of more than 24 hours' notice to terminate their account, but due to their threats and vile behavior, which violated our TOS, they were removed as of 5pm on Thursday, February 24th, despite a grass-roots campaign to attempt to flood our e-mail boxes and telephone lines with cries of "Save our Ship!"
American and Pakistani intelligence agents are exploiting a growing rift between Arab members of al-Qaida and their Central Asian allies, a fissure that's tearing at the network of Islamic extremists as militants compete for scarce hideouts, weapons and financial resources, counterterrorism officials say.
In the shadow of their better-known Army and Navy counterparts, Air Force commandos have been sent into Iraq and Afghanistan so frequently that strains are showing in many corners of their secretive world.
The Marine Corps flatly rejects charges that the protective vests issued to thousands of deployed Marines don't offer the ballistic protection they were designed to provide, but is recalling 5,277 of them to remove doubts about their effectiveness.
Japan says the kidnapping of a Japanese national in Iraq will not affect its military deployment there. The Islamic militant group, Army of Ansar al-Sunna announced Monday through its website
Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar has rejected an offer of amnesty and ordered his men to continue fighting U.S. and Afghan government forces, a Taliban spokesman said yesterday.
Iran on Tuesday officially launched production of its first locally built submarine, a craft that can fire missiles and torpedoes at the same time, state-run television reported.
Sixteen months after the earthquake that devastated the historical Iranian city of Bam, reconstruction work is now at a "turning point", said Seyed Mohammad Beheshti, head of the country's Cultural Heritage Organisation (ICHTO) in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI). Attending a meeting of international experts in Rome on the rehabilitation of Bam and, in particular, its famed 2000-year-old citadel, Beheshti said that it was important for countries with the right expertise to help Iranians preserve their cultural heritage.
The government on Tuesday hinted at the possibility of initiating legal actions against reported desecration of the Holy Quran by the US military interrogators and publication of an allegedly derogatory cartoon about Pakistan by an American newspaper.
Several thousand Afghans chanting "Death to America" protested for a second day on Wednesday over a report that U.S. interrogators in Guantanamo Bay had desecrated the Koran.
The State Department described Tuesday as "reprehensible" reports that U.S. troops at the American prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have desecrated copies of the Quran.
Congress approved an additional $82 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan and combating terrorism worldwide on Tuesday, boosting the cost of the global effort since 2001 to more than $300 billion. The Senate approved the measure by a 100-0 vote Tuesday. The House easily approved the measure last week. It now goes to President Bush for his signature, which is certain.
The Supreme Court has been asked to throw out contempt orders against two journalists who refused to reveal sources in the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger does not want to destroy the moon. A U.S. political commentator has admitted he failed to check his facts when he erroneously reported on the MSNBC cable news network last month that Schwarzenegger had jokingly advocated doing away with the moon.
People around the world have talked about the life and death of Terri Schiavo, but Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner Jon hogmartin will get the last word.
Washington isn't taking "the common bargain" of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as seriously as it once did, and that's dimming global support for the U.S. campaign to shut down the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector said.
Former U.N. chief arms inspector Hans Blix urged Iran and Israel on Monday to support a ban on nuclear enrichment across the Middle East as a possible compromise on curbing Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
The first of Iran's presidential hopefuls put their names forward to stand in the June 17 battle to succeed incumbent reformist Mohammad Khatami, with suspense still surrounding the intentions of top cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
An Islamic militant group said it was holding a badly wounded Japanese man after an ambush near a U.S. base in Iraq, but Japan's government said on Tuesday the incident would not affect its troop deployment in the country.
Two of Washington's staunchest allies in Iraq grappled with hostage crises on Tuesday as Japan confirmed one of its citizens was missing and a deadline set by the captors of an Australian passed with no word on his fate.
A Marine task force swept through a wide area of western Iraq near the Syrian border, killing 100 insurgents and raiding desert outposts and city safe houses belonging to insurgents who have used the area to import cars, money, weapons, and foreigners to fight United States and Iraqi forces in Baghdad, Mosul and other cities, American military officials said Monday.
A combination of coalition and Iraqi forces track down, capture, and secure a vehicle born improvised explosive device in Tikrit, Iraq before it is detonated by insurgents. Soundbites from 1.) First Lieutenant Eric Belisle, 3rd/133rd Field Artillery Regiment from San Antonio, TX 2.) Sergeant Jose Pena, Team Leader of the 133rd Field Artillery Regiment 3.) Sergeant First Class Gary Sundgren, Platoon Leader of the 133rd Field Artillery Regiment from Liberty, TX. Video from the 22nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment.
Iraqi Army Soldiers from the Baghdad, 1st Infantry Battalion, 2nd Infantry Brigade of the 6th Iraqi Army Division, found a large weapons cache and detained 4 individuals during an early morning raid May 9 in north central Baghdad.
A car bomb exploded in a business district of central Baghdad on Tuesday morning, and a police officer said at least seven people were killed and 16 wounded.
If a man-bites-dog story is news and dog-bites-man isn't, why are journalists still so interested in man-blows-up-self stories?
I realize that we have a duty to report suicide bombings in the Middle East, especially when there's a spate as bad as in recent weeks. And I know the old rule of television news: if it bleeds, it leads. But I'm still puzzled by our zeal in frantically competing to get gruesome pictures and details for broadcasts and front pages.
...Following the money and resource trail leads a cynic to conclude that that this administration values the lives of its pilots more than its soldiers and Marines. I speak for a generation of former ground soldiers who believe that those who do virtually all of the fighting and dying in this war should receive more attention from those who are paying for it. I sincerely hope they are listening.
Two years ago, there was a moment when the Americans might have molded Iraq after their own desire, for better or worse. Their incompetence surprised no one more than the Iraqis. The country has long since hardened into its own shape, and whether it holds together or breaks into pieces is largely up to the Iraqis who now have it in their hands. But the least debt that Americans now owe Iraq is to realize that the footnotes will control the lives of Iraqis for years to come, with plenty of time left for great improvement or great damage.
KABUL: Some 800 Afghans including 109 women have registered as candidates for the country?s first post-Taliban parliamentary and council elections to be held in September, officials said on Monday.
U.S. forces here are beginning to hand over security responsibilities to the Afghan National Army. As the Bobcats of B Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment, pull their troops from the Tarin Kowt area, the ANA's 3rd Kandak, 1st Brigade, 205th Corps, is moving in.
Insurgents trying to escape U.S. Marines took refuge in a cave and killed two Americans during a five-hour battle in eastern Afghanistan that left an estimated 23 rebels dead, the U.S. military said yesterday. The clash, which also involved U.S. attack planes, was the latest in a string of battles that the military says has inflicted heavy losses on insurgents who have intensified attacks since winter snows melted.
Afghan singer Nasrat Parsa died after an attack outside his hotel following a weekend performance at a downtown Vancouver theater, police said Monday. He was 36.
The Marine Corps is recalling 5,277 combat vests issued to troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Djibouti after a newspaper article raised concerns that they failed a test to determine whether they could stop a bullet.
The planned withdrawal of tens of thousands of U.S. troops from Europe would reduce by nearly one-half the number of bases maintained by the Army in Europe, a senior Defense Department official said yesterday. Ray DuBois, the acting undersecretary of the Army, told a Pentagon news conference that savings gained from abandoning those bases will be reinvested in new facilities for soldiers at U.S. bases.
The transfer of U.S. Army troops from Europe and Asia to bases in Texas would be slowed down under a proposal offered Monday by members of a congressional commission. The commission, composed of six military experts who reviewed Pentagon plans to bring back 70,000 service personnel from overseas bases by 2009, recommended that an Army armored brigade stay in Europe indefinitely.
The Pentagon's plan to withdraw 70,000 troops from bases overseas and transfer them back to the United States could hurt the military's ability to respond to emergencies and threatens U.S. influence in Europe and elsewhere. Those are among the conclusions of a report released Monday by an independent commission in Washington.
The Pentagon on Monday rejected calls by a congressionally chartered panel for a slow-down of its plan to withdraw 70,000 troops from Europe because the plan was not well coordinated.
In a military courtroom in Texas last week was a spectacle worthy of "As the World Turns": Pfc. Lynndie R. England, the defendant, holding her 7-month-old baby; the imprisoned father, Pvt. Charles A. Graner Jr., giving testimony that ruined what lawyers said was her best shot at leniency; and waiting outside, another defendant from the notorious abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Megan M. Ambuhl, who had recently wed Private Graner - a marriage Private England learned about only days before.
An investigation into the sourcing and accuracy of news stories by a freelance journalist at a leading Internet news site concluded that the existence of dozens of people quoted in the articles could not be confirmed.
For the most part, blogging belongs to the underground: obscure writers who opine on everything from cover stories to the selection of the pope. But now, Arianna Huffington is bringing stars into the blogosphere.
Judging from today's horrific debut of the humongously pre-hyped celebrity blog the Huffington Post, the Madonna of the mediapolitic world has gone one reinvention too many. She has now made an online a...
National Public Radio host Garrison Keillor has his knickers in a twist about conservative radio hosts, who he describes in an article in The Nation as ??evil, lying, cynical bastards who are out to destroy the country I love and turn it into a banana republic, but hey, nobody's perfect.?
The incident seemed alarming enough: a breach of a Cisco Systems network in which an intruder seized programming instructions for many of the computers that control the flow of the Internet.
A newborn girl abandoned in a Kenyan forest was saved by a stray dog that apparently carried her across a busy road and through a barbed-wire fence to a shed where the infant was discovered nestled with a litter of puppies, witnesses said yesterday
The United Nations' main nuclear watchdog believes that North Korea has up to six nuclear weapons, its chief said yesterday.
President Bush pressed Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin on the touchy issue of democracy in Russia on Sunday but top aides went out of their way to describe the talks as amicable and open.
President Bush met Sunday night with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in what was widely expected to be a tense encounter after days of recriminations over Russian rollbacks of democracy and the Soviet Union's actions in the World War II era, but the top foreign policy advisers to both men swiftly pronounced the meeting a success.
Speaking at a cemetery in the Netherlands where thousands of U.S. war dead are interred, President Bush commemorated the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe on May 8 by proclaiming that by that day in 1945 "the world tyrants learned a lesson: There is no power like the like the power of freedom, and no soldier as strong as a soldier who fights for that freedom.?
Hollywood's top Democrat diva, Barbra Streisand, is blasting President Bush for "controlling" the nation by ginning up fears of another terrorist attack, saying the president's tactics remind her of Nazi Luftwaffe Commander Hermann Goering.
Dutch police arrested six activists on Sunday who said they wanted to enter President Bush's Netherlands hotel and look for the suitcase which allows him to activate nuclear weapons.
A little known group known as the Soldiers of Levant (Jund al-Sham) has claimed responsibility for Thursday's explosions outside the British Consulate in New York. In a statement published via the Internet, the group said the attack was "the start of war inside America". No-one was injured in the pre-dawn blasts which shattered windows at the consulate. Soldiers of Levant claimed responsibility for a fire several weeks ago at an oil rig in Texas.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair resisted a chorus of calls over the weekend to resign before he finishes the historic third term he just won, amid discontent over his leadership from fellow party members.
A suicide car bomb has been detonated at a checkpoint in southern Baghdad, killing the three occupants of the vehicle along with another two people, police told CNN.
Senior U.S. commanders say their view of the Iraqi insurgency has begun to shift, with higher priority being given to combating foreign fighters and Iraqi jihadists.
Insurgents in Iraq are drawing on dozens of stockpiled, bomb-rigged cars and groups of foreign fighters smuggled into the country in recent weeks to carry out most of the suicide attacks that have killed about 300 people in the last 10 days, senior American officers and intelligence officials say.
Multinational force operations netted 109 terrorists and suspects throughout Iraq today and May 7, and included finding large weapons caches.
An aide to terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been captured by Iraqi security forces, Cable News Network reported on its Web site, citing the U.S. military.
An Iraqi man suspected of leading a terrorist cell loosely tied to al-Qaida and considered a ?high-valued target? for his alleged role in crimes ranging from beheadings to bombings, has surrendered to coalition forces, the U.S. Army announced Friday. Nabil Badriyah Al Nasiri turned himself in after a number of his bodyguards and associates were arrested during a series of recent raids in Bayji, according to Army officials with the 42nd Infantry Division
An Australian Muslim leader is heading for Iraq in a bid to help secure the freedom of an Australian hostage, as a deadline set by his captors draws near.
The family of an Australian held hostage by Iraqi militants pledged a donation to the Iraqi people on Monday as a deadline loomed to meet his captors' demands and the leader of Australia's Muslims made a mercy dash to Baghdad.
A secret study urges that U.S. agencies at least agree on how to measure success or failure in Iraq.
One of four Sunni Arabs picked this weekend to join Iraq's new Shiite-controlled cabinet abruptly rejected the job on Sunday, saying he first learned of his selection from a television news report on Saturday night. He added that he felt his selection would further a quota system for Sunnis that would only make sectarian problems worse.
Fakhri al-Qaisi, a rumpled, 51-year-old dentist, is an unlikely statesman - and just the kind of person both Iraqi leaders and Americans say they need to enlist to bring Iraq's recalcitrant Sunni minority out of the armed resistance and into mainstream politics.
The Marine Corps issued to nearly 10,000 troops body armor that military ballistic experts had urged the Marines to reject after tests revealed life-threatening flaws in the vests, an eight-month investigation by Marine Corps Times has found.
Skimming low over hills in eastern Afghanistan, the 11 Marines packed into an Army Black Hawk helicopter asked for an exciting flight on an otherwise dull mission, demonstrating for visiting dignitaries how troops are sped into battle.
Marine Lt. Gen. James Mattis told congressmen Thursday that a captain relieved of his command after complaining about the lack of armored Humvees was disciplined for unrelated reasons.
The former assistant manager of a Papa John's pizza shop in Virginia who snapped many of the infamous photographs of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison faces court-martial Wednesday, and unlike Pfc. Lynndie England, she won't try to plead guilty.
I was disappointed when I read the April 26 editorial "Impunity." What it proclaimed to be facts were really distortions and inaccuracies disguised as fact.
A YEAR AGO this week, the release of shocking photographs of naked and hooded Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison alerted the world to serious human rights abuses by U.S. forces
When mothers raise their daughters to be independent, strong-willed and successful they often don?t think of them growing up and joining the military.
The Marine Corps offers the ?buddy program? for new recruits who want to enlist with a friend and ship to boot camp at the same time instead of going alone. When the friend happens to be your twin brother, the program takes on a whole new meaning.
...President Bush has recommended a 3.1 percent raise for the military next year and a 2.3 percent raise for the civil service. Administration officials oppose pay parity increases, in part because they say boosting raises in non-Defense agencies diverts critical money from programs and operations
Hundreds of tribal leaders backed President Hamid Karzai's plan for a "strategic partnership" with the United States on Sunday, a government spokesman said, a pact that could cement a long-term U.S. military presence in Central Asia
...Operation Blue to Green?trading blue service uniforms for Army green?this year was expected to turn 3,500 airmen and sailors into soldiers and help the military adjust to quick-deployment, land-based warfare. More than halfway into the fiscal year (which ends Sept. 30), Blue to Green has produced 189 soldiers, according to the Army.
The US is losing billions of dollars as international tourists are deterred from visiting the US because of a tarnished image overseas and more bureaucratic visa policies, travel industry leaders have warned.
Given the Islam-Christianity conflict that's central to Ridley ScottRidley Scott's Crusades epic "Kingdom of Heaven," the film's release across the Mideast was nonetheless generating huge interest -- and nervous speculation.
?Kingdom of Heaven,? Ridley Scott?s extremely boring (so boring that film critics at the screening I attended fell asleep) movie version of the Crusades, is Twain?s words in action. Scott is serial killer of truth?giving immortality to 1,000 lies?in this propaganda film.
A combative Vladimir Putin tells Mike Wallace he should question his own country's democratic ways before looking for problems with Russia's. The Russian president also says the U.S. shouldn't try to export its democracy, as it is trying to do in Iraq, in an exclusive interview to be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday May 8 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
President George W. Bush does not back calls by US congressmen to link Russia's membership in the G8 group of industrialized nations to democratic reform, the US ambassador to Moscow said ahead of major commemorations of the end of World War II.
When President Bush brings his whistle-stop tour to Moscow today, he will find himself on a collision course with Russian President Vladimir Putin and speaking to a populace that increasingly views democracy as a dud.
Russian President Vladimir Putin spurned calls by Baltic nations for atonement for five decades of Soviet occupation yesterday and defiantly hailed the Red Army as the liberator, not the oppressor, of Eastern Europe.
As the United Nations continues a review of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty's mission to stem the spread of nuclear weapons, President Bush meets with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow tomorrow to discuss, among other things, what more can be done to speed a lagging effort to disable existing Russian nukes.
U.S. officials are working feverishly to decipher numbers and apparent codes in a notebook retrieved from suspected al Qaeda leader Abu Faraj al-Libbi, ABC News has learned.
THE capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last week was hailed by President George W Bush as ?a critical victory in the war on terror?. According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists? third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as ?among the flotsam and jetsam? of the organisation.
Intelligence officials who have been questioning Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the senior al-Qa'eda suspect arrested last week, have cast doubt over claims by the Pakistani prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, that the interrogation is "proceeding well".
Coalition forces killed six terrorists in raids targeting the terror network of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi near the Syrian border on Sunday, the U.S. military said.
The last reliable sighting of Iraq's most wanted man was six months ago, in Haqlaniyah, where townspeople reported he was preaching in a mosque.
Troops on the ground can now directly download images from an unmanned RQ-4 Global Hawk reconnaissance jet.
In the months that have passed since Iraq's much-hyped democratic elections, one word keeps creeping into my mind as I assess the tragic events unfolding in Mesopotamia today: Vietnam.
The Bush administration is closely examining several satellite pictures of North Korea to see if there are indeed preparations for a nuclear weapons test, The New York Times is reporting citing American and foreign officials who have been briefed on the photos.
The United States said on Saturday it had a "robust" ability to deter North Korea in the face of worries that the reclusive state might be planning to test a nuclear weapon.
Syria's finance minister expressed regret on Saturday that President Bush had decided to extend Washington's sanctions on Syria for another year, the official Syrian news agency reported.
Syria is free of any activities of the al-Qaida terror network and the Afghan Taliban movement, Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan said Saturday.
Iraq's parliament approved ministers for six contested government posts on Sunday, ending months of stalemate that hampered efforts to tackle an escalating insurgency
Iraq's new Shiite majority government announced Saturday that it had overcome weeks of wrangling and would present nominees for six vacant appointments, including Sunni Arabs to the top posts of deputy prime minister and defense minister, for parliamentary approval on Sunday.
At a checkpoint on a bridge into this volatile Sunni Muslim city, an Iraqi platoon frisked a row of men and rummaged through their cars and trucks for explosives. The men scowled silently, making the soldiers uneasy.
As President Bush seeks to promote democracy around the globe, he paused Sunday to pay homage to the ``terrible price'' paid by World War II soldiers who never came home but helped win the fight against tyranny.
Sixty years after the end of the Second World War in Europe, British people are still obsessed with Nazism, and ignorant about Germany, said the German ambassador to London, Thomas Matussek.
US employers added a surprisingly large 274,000 jobs in April and payrolls grew in each of the two prior months more than first estimated, the Labor Department said on Friday in a report that eased fears about economic growth.
Women activists said Saturday they are fed up with unending debate on a bill to let them run in municipal elections and want full rights to run for office and vote in Parliamentary elections in two years.
What's a mother worth? The obvious answer, as a gazillion Mother's Day cards will say in one way or another Sunday, is that ? as in the MasterCard ad ? she's priceless.
Mothers across the country like being mothers, but they also tend to feel underappreciated and less valued by society, according to a study on motherhood being released Monday.
The old adage that "a mother's work is never done" remains as true now as ever. Today's stay-at-home Moms are learning what their predecessors always knew -- they'd be making a lot of money doing their job outside the home.
Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday that the media can spread peace but also foment violence, and he called on journalists to exercise responsibility to ensure objective reports that respect human dignity and the common good.
Bloggers like to demonize the MSM (that's Mainstream Media), but it is increasingly hard to think of the largest news blogs as being outside the mainstream. Bloggers have been showing up at national political conventions, at the World Economic Forum at Davos and on the cover of Business Week. Establishment warhorses like Arthur Schlesinger Jr. are signing on to write for Arianna Huffington's blog collective. And Garrett Graff, of FishbowlDC, broke through the cyberceiling recently and acquired the ultimate inside-the-Beltway media credential: a White House press pass.
For all the rancour over the Iraq war, Tony Blair's historic British election victory makes him the third major leader of the 2003 invasion to be safely returned to power after US President George W. Bush and Australia's John Howard.
The Iraq war inflicted serious damage on the Labour Party in Britain's general election as Muslim voters ousted a loyal ally of Prime Minister Tony Blair in London and boosted the anti-war Liberal Democrats.
One militant group gave Canberra a hostage ultimatum and another said it had kidnapped six Jordanians as insurgents stepped up attacks in Iraq, killing at least 40 people in two suicide car bombings.
The family of an Australian man held hostage by Iraqi militants made another televised plea for his freedom on Saturday after his captors released a second video demanding Australia start withdrawing its troops within 72 hours.
Insurgent car bombs struck a market and a police bus Friday, killing at least 25 people, and a dozen bodies were uncovered in a garbage dump on the outskirts of Baghdad ? some victims blindfolded and shot execution-style.
Iraqi Army Soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 3rd Division and observers from the 98th Division talk about a recent weapons cache found near Al Kase
Insurgent car bombs struck a market and a police bus yesterday, killing at least 25 people, and a dozen bodies were uncovered in a garbage dump on the outskirts of Baghdad, some victims blindfolded and shot execution-style.
Over the past several months, Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces have captured or killed more than 20 of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi?s trusted lieutenants and other high-ranking network members.
From the minute FBI Special Agent Thomas A. Cottone Jr. saw Walter K. Carlson, he suspected that something wasn't quite right about the decorated war hero. The two men met at a Washington Township, N.J., funeral service for Marine Second Lt. John Thomas Wroblewski, 25 years old, killed in Iraq in last spring.
The editor of the Jesuit weekly America is leaving the magazine after the Vatican received complaints about articles he published on touchy issues such as same-sex marriages and stem cell research, Jesuit officials said Friday
The government will file new charges soon against Pfc. Lynndie R. England, whose guilty plea was thrown out and her court-martial canceled Wednesday over testimony by the convicted ringleader in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, an Army defense lawyer said Thursday after meeting with military prosecutors.
Lynndie England, "the pointer,'' as some have called her, the one holding the leashed Iraqi prisoner, the soldier with the smirk, pointing at the genitals of the naked men -- that Lynndie England -- has admitted her wrongdoing and, before the military judge ruled otherwise, pleaded guilty to seven counts of mistreating prisoners. She said she was talked into it. For what it's worth, I believe her
One night, Staci Morris awoke to find then husband Charles Graner holding a large knife to her throat and openly pondering whether to kill her. In subsequent days, he pretended nothing had happened.
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He would send photos of "these beat up prisoners and blood and talk about how cool it was - look what daddy gets to do," she said, adding that she did not show them the correspondence.
The former US commander in charge of the Iraqi prison at the centre of the abuse scandal has been demoted on the orders of President George W Bush.
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She was found guilty of dereliction of duty and accused of concealing a past shoplifting arrest, the army added.
President Bush approved yesterday an order demoting Army Reserve Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, the only general to be punished in connection with investigations into detainee abuse at U.S. military prisons.
'No official intent to deceive" has become the official mantra of the United States military. It is stamped on every report of alleged military wrongdoing, no matter how egregious.
Pakistani soldiers swooped on two dozen suspected al-Qaeda fighters after interrogating the man believed to be the terror network's third in command, officials said on Thursday.
Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi addresses parliament on the death of Italian intelligence agent Nicola Calipari in Baghdad and on Italy's military mission in Iraq, but insisted the slaying wouldn't affect relations with Washington or Italy's troop commitment in Iraq.
Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, promised yesterday that his centre-right government would not unilaterally withdraw Italian troops from Iraq in spite of a disagreement with the US over how American forces in Baghdad killed an Italian intelligence agent.
In a setback to the United States and its allies in Iraq, the departing Parliament in Bulgaria voted on Thursday to pull all its troops out of Iraq by the end of the year, with some leaving next month.
Any remaining support among Iraqis for fugitive Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is fading as his network's attacks continue to take aim at their country's security forces and civilians, the director of operations for the Joint Staff said at a Pentagon news conference today.
Sunni Arab politicians, increasingly frustrated at being shut out of key cabinet posts, say that a meaningful role in Iraq's new government would help them restrain insurgent violence.
Foreign civilians in Iraq for years to come will remain "prize targets" for terrorist and criminal gangs that have been able to act with growing impunity in the chaos of Iraq's streets, according to a top British security company.
The Pentagon wants to replace the Humvee, which is carrying as much armor as possible on current models but is still getting blown up by increasingly powerful roadside bombs in Iraq.
New 5-ton armored "gun trucks" fielded in Iraq are providing U.S. troops with effective protection against insurgents' improvised explosive devices and small-arms fire, a senior military researcher said today on Capitol Hill.
Soldiers, by the hundreds, surround the town of Al Mukhisa and move closer, tightening their grip on the terrorist forces living there. One by one, helicopters land and armored vehicles move in during the largest air assault mission since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom III.
...In the violence and chaos that has smashed so many lives across Iraq in recent weeks, there are quieter stories of people coping with the relentless barrage of car bombs and kidnappings that have become so much a part of the daily rhythm of life: the man who grows anxious in his car, after his wife was shot to death in traffic; the schoolchildren who no longer play hopscotch in a neighborhood frequently hit by suicide bombings; the young kidnapping victim no longer permitted a life outside her home.
A wide majority of Iraqi citizens are optimistic about the future of their country, according to a survey of public attitudes by the International Republican Institute that is scheduled for release today.
There are no walls here, just some patched razor wire on mounds of dirt and sand. There are no attack helicopters patrolling the sky, just a few lonely guard shacks atop cement towers ? no elaborate fortifications, just tents and a small number of battle-ridden buildings.
State Treasurer Mike Coffman, once an aspiring candidate for governor, announced Thursday that he will step down to rejoin the Marines in Iraq.
U.S. Marines landed on Somalia's coast in one of their most visible hunts for militants in the country since they set up a Horn of Africa counter terrorism force in 2002, Somali officials said on Thursday.
An Army sergeant who left his Georgia post six months ago was tracked down at his parents' home after a notebook with anti-American and anti-Semitic writings was found in his discarded backpack.
President Hamid Karzai has summoned hundreds of representatives from across Afghanistan for talks that will include the sensitive issue of a strategic partnership with the United States, a presidential official said on Thursday.
SOME 200 women staged a rally in Kabul today to denounce violence against females, including the murder of three women workers in northern Afghanistan.
A senior Russian parliamentarian is positive that North Korea will conduct the tests of a "nuclear device" this June.
The U.S. military is beefing up its military capabilities in the Pacific by deploying high-tech aircraft and Navy vessels amid worsening assessments of the prospects of an early solution of the North Korean nuclear standoff
President Bush has extended US economic sanctions against Syria for one year, saying its government still posed a threat to national security, foreign policy and the economy.
Shortly after the White House announced that President Bush would expand his trip to Moscow on Monday with stops to promote democracy in the former Soviet republics of Latvia and Georgia, the Russian foreign minister took the unusual step of sending a letter of protest to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Tony Blair won a historic third term as prime minister Thursday but his Labour Party suffered a sharply reduced parliamentary majority in apparent punishment for going to war in Iraq, according to projections based on exit polls. A chastened Blair said "we will have to respond to that sensibly and wisely."
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement appeared to have survived a challenge from the Islamist militant group Hamas in municipal elections yesterday, giving a boost to Abbas' flagging leadership.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday scaled back the projected impact of closing and consolidating military bases, saying the United States may have much less excess capacity at its domestic installations than previously thought.
Tom Squitieri, a 16-year veteran of USA Today, resigned from the newspaper yesterday after his editors said he lifted quotations from other newspapers without attribution.
With the Internet's No. 1 search engine under fire for playing political favorites with content, a search of Google's political contributions as recorded by the Federal Elections Commission shows a staggering $463,500 went to Democrats in the last three election cycles with a paltry $5,000 going to Republicans.
Web search leader Google Inc. has applied for U.S. and international patents on technology to rank stories on its news site based on the quality of the news source, according to patent applications obtained by Reuters on Thursday.
Scientists have prolonged the lives of laboratory mice by 20 per cent using a technique that boosts the natural antioxidants of the body.
Two "improvised explosive devices" made from "novelty-type grenades" exploded in front of the building that houses the British Consulate in New York, police said.
British voters went the polls on Thursday, with surveys suggesting Prime Minister Tony Blair will win a third consecutive term despite anger over his decision to go to war in Iraq.
The U.S. military is examining reports that insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi was present last week at a hospital in Anbar province and the possibility that he may be ill or wounded, officials said Wednesday.
The US military is examining reports that terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was at a hospital in Anbar province last week and may be ill or wounded, officials said Wednesday.
The Al Quds news report out of London that Secretary Rumsfeld recently met with Saddam Hussein is not only false but the allegation that he negotiated with Saddam is absolutely ludicrous. One can only view this as an attempt to undermine the integrity of the Iraqi government and its new judicial system.
Pakistani commandos nabbed a senior al-Qaida leader, described by U.S. officials as the group's No. 3 operative, after a shootout near one of his barren hideouts. Jubilant Pakistani officials said Wednesday his arrest would help in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
The arrest of al Qaeda's No. 3 man, Abu Farraj al-Libbi, in Pakistan promises to provide new information on Osama bin Laden's life on the run and deprives the terror network of its chief operating officer, according to counterterrorism and defense officials.
Calling it "a critical victory in the war on terror," President Bush today praised the Pakistani government for capturing Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the No. 3 man in Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terror network.
Shortly after the 11 September 2001 attacks, the US issued a list of al-Qaeda suspects. Some have now been captured or killed, and some new names have been added to those still at large.
Why life as a top Al Qaeda operative is not good for your health and well-being,
Terrorist organizations such as al-Qaida and HAMAS are finding it increasingly difficult to raise and move money around the globe, a top U.S. Treasury Department official says.
Iraqi Army Soldiers, Iraqi Police and U.S. Soldiers apprehended 84 suspected terrorists in nineteen different combat operations conducted in and around Baghdad over the last 24 hours.
American troops and Afghan police killed about 40 rebels and captured six during a battle in the mountains of southern Afghanistan, U.S. officials said Thursday, the latest in a string of clashes in an insurgent hotbed near the Pakistani border.
Hunting farm-to-farm for insurgents, Staff Sgt. Jeremy Daniel tramped through chest-high green wheat, drenched in sweat under his armor and helmet, boots caked with mud.
...In all, 14 women from Combat Logistics Battalion 8 were called away from their usual jobs of supplying ammunition, food, water, fuel and mail for the three-day offensive that kicked off in the pre-dawn hours Saturday about 15 miles northeast of Fallujah. Cultural sensitivities precluded male Marines from searching women, so the female Marines were meant to deflate fears of Iraqi men and women, said the battalion executive officer, Maj. Larry Miller.
Marines are trained to be leaders, but some Marines find themselves in leadership positions sooner than planned when faced with the unexpected conditions in Iraq.
For the last 10 years, children attending the Alzebn Village primary school here have had to make do with precious little.
...Americans' attitude toward war in general and this war in particular would change drastically if the censor's veil were lifted and the public got a sustained, close look at the agonizing bloodshed and other horrors that continue unabated in Iraq. If that happened, support for any war that wasn't an absolute necessity would plummet.
Search teams have recovered the body of a second American pilot missing after two F-18 Marine Corps planes disappeared over Iraq earlier this week, a U.S. statement said on Wednesday.
Powerful improvised explosive devices set off by cell phones, doorbells, toy remotes and tripwires are the leading cause of death among U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
Q&A with Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey
Francis Harvey became secretary of the Army six months ago, and the laundry list of challenges hasn't gotten any shorter. Troops are still engaged in daily battles to pacify an Iraqi insurgency, and remnants of the Taliban still demand attention in Afghanistan. Recruitment efforts have fallen short as extended tours of duty in combat zones have become commonplace. Meanwhile, the latest poll numbers show that support for the war in Iraq is waning. Harvey discussed these and other issues Wednesday with USA TODAY editors and reporters. His comments were edited for length and clarity.
Media reports in the US and around the world have taken note of a new classified report from the top US military advisor, which indicates that the US military's current commitments overseas may prevent it from adequately fighting future conflicts
President George Bush made a personal telephone plea yesterday to Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, in an effort to end the row between the two countries over the killing by American troops of an Italian intelligence officer.
A military judge declared a mistrial yesterday in the case of Pfc. Lynndie R. England after testimony from her one-time boyfriend, the reputed ringleader of the Abu Ghraib
A Marine corporal who was videotaped shooting an apparently injured and unarmed Iraqi in a Fallujah mosque last year will not face a court-martial, the Marine Corps announced Wednesday. A review of the evidence showed the Marine's actions were "consistent with the established...
Since the shooting in the Mosque, I've been haunted that I have not been able to tell you directly what I saw or explain the process by which the world came to see it as well. As you know, I'm not some war zone tourist with a camera who doesn't understand that ugly things happen in combat. I've spent most of the last five years covering global conflict. But I have never in my career been a 'gotcha' reporter -- hoping for people to commit wrongdoings so I can catch them at it.
Kevin Sites, a freelance photojournalist for NBC, will be awarded the 2005 Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism on May 12 for his decision-making process after he witnessed and taped a U.S. Marine killing an unarmed Iraqi man in a mosque
Iraqi special forces soldiers Ali Jabbar and Mohammed Ali insist they mete out justice fairly. They beat only the prisoners they know did something wrong, not the innocent ones.
It's a test of Arab democracy. It's a challenge to Israel. It's a referendum on suicide bombing. Today's municipal elections in the West Bank and Gaza are getting more attention from the...
Investigators have opened a criminal inquiry into millions of dollars missing in Iraq after auditors uncovered indications of fraud in nearly $100 million in reconstruction spending that could not be properly accounted for.
The U.S. government has opened a criminal inquiry into suspected embezzlement by officials who failed to account for almost $100 million they disbursed for Iraqi reconstruction projects, federal investigators said Wednesday.
American officials rushing to start small building projects in a large swath of Iraq in 2003 and 2004 did not keep required records on the spending of $89.4 million in cash and cannot account at all for another $7.2 million, a federal watchdog reported yesterday.
A U.S. congressman is blasting President Bush as someone who surrounds himself with yes men, labeling Vice President Dick Cheney "the biggest a-- kisser of all."
The Freedom Tower, the iconic spire at the center of Ground Zero's rise from the ashes, was sent back to the drawing board Wednesday to address the NYPD's security concerns.
India's space agency launched a high-tech mapping satellite on Thursday that could track every house and street in the sprawling nation of over a billion people, state television said.
A leaked classified report shows the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told congress that the US military may not be able to win any new wars as quickly as planned. A senior defence official says General Richard Myers, has warned that the US military is in a period of increased risk because conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are straining manpower and resources.
QUESTION: What?s the bottom line of your 2005 Chairman?s risk assessment? How would you characterize the message your sending to Congress?
GEN. RICHARD B. MYERS: The message I?m sending to Congress is that the United States military can fulfill its tasks under the Nation Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy and the National Military Strategy and we will be successful and prevail in anything that our Nation asks us to do under those strategies and that?s the bottom line.
...But Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday that no matter what threat occurs, the United States is prepared to take down any enemies.
The U.S. military can accomplish all the tasks laid out for it in the National Military Strategy, according to the yearly risk assessment completed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers submitted his yearly risk assessment to Congress May 2.
The admission by the nation's top general that the demands of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are hurting U.S. military readiness indicates that common sense continues to have its place. The blunt honesty of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, is a bracing change from repeated claims by Pentagon civilians and President Bush that everything is fine.
House and Senate negotiators agreed yesterday to an emergency spending bill to fund Iraq and Afghanistan war costs, provide international food aid and tsunami relief, and curtail illegal immigration while expanding a popular guest-worker visa program.
The 256th Brigade Combat Team "Murder Board" forum participants aim to thwart insurgent attacks by staying one step ahead of the insurgents.
The most famous battlefield of the American Civil War might seem an unlikely place to look for lessons about Iraq. But as historian James McPherson leads a group of Pentagon officials in a discussion of postwar reconstruction, some startling common themes emerge
Sixty years ago this week, battle-weary American GIs and their allies were mopping up the last pockets of resistance in the collapse of Nazi Germany.
In a nightmare future of nuclear conflict, megatonnage would matter. But in today's real world, at a crucial U.N. nuclear conference, diplomats can still limit their wars to words.
With Tehran announcing it will shortly resume some nuclear activities in spite of ongoing negotiations with European countries, a private report that was issued to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon urging an American or Israeli pre-emptive strike against Iran has been gaining some steam here.
The short-range missile North Korea is thought to have tested at the weekend was a Soviet-era rocket modified so it could reach new US bases in South Korea, a South Korean newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Iraq's first democratically elected government in 50 years was sworn in yesterday with key Cabinet positions still vacant, as last-minute negotiations failed to produce an accord with representatives of the Sunni Arab minority.
Iraq's first democratically elected government was sworn in Tuesday, and in his first official act, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari made a conciliatory appeal to those who have taken up arms against his Shiite-dominated government.
An Iraqi carrying hidden explosives set them off in a police recruitment center in northern Iraq Wednesday, killing at least 50 Iraqis, the U.S. military said.
French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier met with Washington Post editors and reporters on Monday. Following are excerpts of his remarks :
Support for the decision to go to war in Iraq has fallen to its lowest level since the campaign began in March 2003, according to a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll released Tuesday. The findings, made public on the same day that Iraq's first democratically elected government in 50 years was sworn in, show that 41% say the war was worth it; 57% say it wasn't
Commentators yesterday heaped scorn on Italy's "face-saving" report on U.S. soldiers' shooting of the top Italian intelligence agent in Baghdad as Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi fought off mounting pressure to withdraw Italian troops from Iraq.
A former Taliban official urged the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan on Tuesday to show it was serious about talks with rebels, saying it should be patient and not impose tough conditions.
Sweden will take over Britain's military command of security for reconstruction efforts in north Afghanistan around Mazar-i-Sharif to let British troops focus on fighting insurgency in the south, Sweden said on Tuesday.
...Inspired by Bollywood romance and emboldened by wider social freedom, increasing numbers of starry-eyed young Afghans are defying an age-old custom of arranged marriage in favour of "love marriages".
Defense lawyers sought leniency for Pfc. Lynndie England at a hearing Tuesday to determine her punishment in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, with a psychologist testifying that the reservist was oxygen-deprived at birth, speech impaired and had trouble learning to read.
Private Lynndie England has revealed she laughed and joked while Iraqi detainees were being forced into a naked human pyramid at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, prosecutors at her court martial said.
A military judge asked on Tuesday if Army Reservist Lynndie England, a key figure in the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal, wanted to withdraw her guilty plea after a witness appeared to indicate she might have trouble telling right from wrong.
The reputed ringleader in the Abu Ghraib scandal said he was unhappy that Pfc. Lynndie England pleaded guilty to mistreating Iraqi detainees at the Baghdad-area prison in 2003. In a handwritten note given to reporters Tuesday, Pvt. Charles Graner said he wanted England to to fight the charges.
The conviction of Army Reserve Specialist Charles Graner is hardly the last word on what really happened at Abu Ghraib prison. But the 10-year sentence for the abuse ringleader shows that the military justice system is taking the issue as seriously as it should. And the Army jury that handed it down clearly didn't buy his "just-following-orders" defense.
The military will resume giving the anthrax vaccine to volunteers as soon as this week, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.
A veteran GOP operative launched an anti-Hillary Rodham Clinton Web site Tuesday, complete with an unflattering photo and a warning that she and her husband are trying to "pull the wool over America's eyes once again."
After a decade of silence, Terry L. Nichols, who was convicted in the Oklahoma City bombings, has accused a third man of being an accomplice who provided some of the explosives used to kill 168 people at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building 10 years ago.
Students at Kendall Demonstration Elementary School at Gallaudet University had used e-mail and a school Web log to get first-hand accounts of the insurgency in Iraq and the daily survival of a U.S. Marine stationed there. Yesterday, the 42 students met their personal link for the first time.
Heard, understood, acknowledged: A toothsome U.S. Army secret is about to go civilian. It's sweet. It crunches. It remains fresh for three years. And come June, the HooAH! nutrition bar arrives on store shelves nationwide for red-blooded Americans who fancy a special-forces snack
At a recent convention, Microsoft's front man revealed the plans to release Microsoft's console this year. According to a report on Gamesindustry.biz, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has confirmed that the next Xbox will be released this year.
Cable movie operator Showtime Networks said on Tuesday it will give away games for Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox video game console throughout the summer to its new subscribers.
The burger war is growing. Literally. Denny's Beer Barrel Pub, which lost its crown as the home of the world's biggest burger earlier this year, is now offering a new burger that weighs a whopping 15 pounds.
The accuracy of the following statements is not only personally important to your health, but it may be politically important to your freedom.
Gary Schroen is one of the CIA's most repected and experienced spies. Two days after terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001, his bosses handed him a new mission targeting Osama bin Laden: "bring his head back in a box." Days later, Schroen and his team were on a plane.
A recent security operation in the lawless tribal zones of Pakistan resulted not only in the arrest of several militants linked to Al-Qaeda, but also revealed the terrorist network's ability to channel funds from one place to another and maintain a pension system for its cadres. Counter-terrorism officials in Pakistan said they learned about the financial dealings of Osama bin Laden's network when they arrested two Alegerian militants in the Pakistani city of Peshawar in April.
IRAQI politicians backed by Iran have been plotting to assassinate Saddam Hussein in his jail cell, the ousted dictator?s chief lawyer claimed yesterday.
A search is under way for the crews of two Marine F/A-18 fighter jets that were lost Monday while flying in support of the war in Iraq, the US military said
The U.S. military found the body of an American pilot while searching Tuesday for two Marine fighter jets that disappeared while flying in support of operations in Iraq, the military said.
A clique of US soldiers tormented Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison for "amusement," not for any authorized military mission, Pfc. Lynndie England testified Monday as she pleaded guilty to seven abuse-related charges.
Terrorists launched fresh attacks across Iraq yesterday, killing a US soldier and at least 17 Iraqis and wounding more than 40 in a second day of violence aimed at shaking the country's newly formed government.
A car bomb exploded in an upscale shopping district of Baghdad yesterday, killing at least six Iraqis and setting fire to an apartment building, in a surge of violence that has left at least 140 persons dead since a new government was formed last week.
Iraq's incoming prime minister struggled to find a Sunni Arab to run the key Defense Ministry in time to join Iraq's first democratically elected government when it takes office Tuesday. A torrent of bloodshed - at least 140 killed in five days - followed the approval of a Cabinet that mostly shut out members of the disaffected Sunni minority.
Rubar S. Sandi, an Iraqi businessman, wants the American public to know U.S. troops killed in Iraq have not died in vain.
Coalition soldiers fought suspected insurgents near a Syrian border town in a battle that killed 12 militants, injured a 6-year-old Iraqi girl and wounded six coalition soldiers, the U.S. military said Tuesday.
U.S. Marines entered an Iraqi cement factory in Kubaysah, April 15, to search for weapons and insurgent activity, in conjunction with a larger mission, Operation Spring Cleaning, intended to uncover insurgent hiding spots.
Random attacks on coalition forces with improvised explosive devises, rocket propelled grenades and mortars is a telltale sign insurgents are in the city here.
...Together with the Iraqi Security Forces, the battalion conducts counter-insurgency operations to neutralize the insurgents and establish a secure environment within which political, social, and economical progress is possible.
...It is a glance at one of the most unexpected developments of the war in Iraq. Even as the conflict drags on, undermining recruiting efforts and testing the patience of the nation, American soldiers are so far continuing to reenlist at levels that surprise the Pentagon and pundits alike.
Australia will send an emergency team to Iraq to seek the release of a kidnapped Australian contractor but will not bow to the militants? demand to withdraw its troops, Prime Minister John Howard said today.
THE federal government had no new information on the kidnapping of an Australian man held hostage in Iraq, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said today.
Hundreds of Afghan villagers and police dug with spades through the rubble of flattened homes on Tuesday in a hunt for survivors after an explosion killed 29 people and wounded 70 at an illegal ammunition dump.
Authorities have found the bodies of three Afghan women, one of whom worked for an aid group, who were raped, strangled and dumped with a note warning women not to work for such groups, an official said yesterday.
The voice was soft, calm, familiar. But the scenario Kofi Annan sketched out was chilling.
US intelligence authorities have detected signs that North Korea may be preparing to carry out an underground nuclear test in its northeast, a South Korean official said in a newspaper report today.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reminded North Korea on Monday the United States has extensive military might in the Pacific after a suspected North Korean missile test over the weekend.
South Korea's defense ministry denied a Wall Street Journal report that the U.S. government alerted it to signs that North Korea was preparing for a nuclear test.
A top North Korean official said over the weekend that it was pointless for Kim Jong Il to continue to negotiate with the US "as long as [President] Bush stays in power," explaining that Pyongyang would be better off waiting for a friendlier administration in Washington.
Democrats and their mainstream media allies have been peddling a new and highly inventive theory about North Korea's nuclear-weapons program: that Pyongyang only makes nukes when Republicans hold the White House.
Congress is moving quickly toward setting strict rules on how states issue driver's licenses, requiring them to verify whether each applicant for a new license or a renewal is in this country legally.
A Mexican senator from President Vicente Fox's party is pushing a bill that would dispatch federal, state and local law enforcement personnel to the border to stop migrants from crossing into the U.S., saying he wants to cut down on the death toll suffered by illegal aliens.
Italian investigators have blamed stress, inexperience, poor procedures and fatigue among American troops for the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence agent on a Baghdad road.
The Italian government has conducted its own investigation into the shooting incident that left journalist Giuliana Sgrena wounded and her bodyguard dead. Their stunning conclusion: it was not an assassination attempt by the Americans.
Every May 3 is dedicated to world press freedom, a day to remember and stress the importance of a free press in a free society. Yet, Somkiat Juntursima is a name that barely registers on the radar of Thailand's media world. Nor the publication he edits, 'Prachatai', an on-line news website in Thai
The Zimbabwe Union of Journalists and other media organizations in the country have organized events to commemorate United Nations World Press Freedom Day on Tuesday.
The Philippines, Iraq, Colombia, Bangladesh, and Russia are the world's ''most murderous'' countries in which to be a journalist, New York-based media watchdog the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Average daily circulation of the nation's 20 biggest newspapers for the six months ended March 31, as reported Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The percentage changes are from the comparable year-ago period.
Circulation fell 1.9 percent at major U.S. newspapers in the six-month period ending in March, an industry group reported Monday, marking one of the worst declines in recent years.
The Audit Bureau of Circulations' March 2005 Fas-Fax report won't be released until mid-afternoon, but the Newspaper Association of America did a preview analysis of the numbers and found to be true what has largely been anticipated: Daily and Sunday circulation took greater hits this period than in periods past.
For the six months ended March 31, 2005, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday-Saturday average daily circulation of 907,997, a decline of 6.5 percent compared with the prior year, and Sunday circulation of 1,253,849, a decline of 7.9 percent from the prior year, according to figures filed with the Audit Bureau of Circulations, subject to audit.
Two would-be idols with arrest records, one of whom also is guilty of felony cockiness. Allegations of judicial activism ? in the bedroom. A phone voting gaffe. Or was it a conspiracy?
FOX executives have declined to answer any and all questions posed by ABCNEWS regarding claims AMERICA IDOL judge Paula Abdul personally "coached" a favorite contestant and then tried to cover up the breach, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
During the annual meeting of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, Bill Gates mentioned that the software menu of Xbox 360 would be similar to Microsoft?s Media Center version of Windows, which is meant to be located in the living room.
A firefighter brain-damaged in a 1995 roof collapse had an "amazing" weekend, recognizing and speaking with his four sons and other family and friends for the first time in years, a family spokesman said Monday.
Italy is expected to pick apart U.S. conclusions on the shooting by American soldiers of an Italian agent in Baghdad, challenging a report that cleared U.S. troops of any wrongdoing in the incident.
A U.S. military probe into the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq has found that the soldiers who opened fire had only recently been trained on how to conduct a roadblock, did not know that the Italians' car was expected along their stretch of road, and, because of a communications breakdown, were manning their irregular nighttime post long after they should have been.
Italian media have published classified sections of an official US military inquiry into the accidental killing of an Italian agent in Baghdad.
A car bomb exploded at the funeral of a Kurdish official in northern Iraq on Sunday, killing about 30 Iraqis and wounding more than 50, the U.S. military, as the death toll in a wave of violence against Iraq's new government rose to at least 120.
Task Force Baghdad soldiers this morning rescued a man apparently blackmailed into a suicide-bombing mission by terrorist master Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Iraqi militants have kidnapped an Australian man living in California who pleaded for U.S.-led coalition forces to leave Iraq to save his life, according to a videotape released Sunday.
Australia's leader said Monday he won't bow to kidnappers' demands for the country to withdraw troops from Iraq despite a videotape showing an Australian man appealing at gunpoint for US-led forces to leave the country to withdraw troops from Iraq despite a videotape showing an Australian man appealing at gunpoint for U.S.-led forces to leave the violence-ravaged Arab country.
Five men in Madain, Iraq, Sunday confessed to the kidnapping and slaying of British aid worker Margaret Hassan, who was abducted last October.
Sheik Hakim Kareem Mohammed al-Kraeem says the leaders of his tribe resolved countless disputes during British rule in the 1920s by lobbying the crown's emissaries over plates of roasted lamb.
Shiite Islamists with links to Iran dominate the new government, but many believe the religious surge will subside as democracy grows.
The American military has set a target of December for handing over responsibility for security to Iraqi army and police units, says a classified document being circulated among senior officers.
North Korea test fired a short-range missile that plunged into the Sea of Japan Sunday, the White House chief of staff said, adding he wasn't "surprised by this," noting Pyonyang had conducted similar tests in the past.
North Korea apparently launched a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan on Sunday, a move likely to raise tensions on the eve of a United Nations conference on nuclear nonproliferation.
South Korea on Monday played down the significance of a North Korean missile test the day before, saying it involved a short-range missile without nuclear capabilities and warning against linking the issue to a dispute over the North's atomic ambitions.
The spiritual leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is warning the U.S. to stay out of his country's business ? and, in particular, its nuclear program, which is set to resume this week.
Tony Blair has secretly decided that Britain will build a new generation of nuclear deterrent to replace the ageing Trident submarine fleet at a cost of more than ?10bn - a move certain to dismay thousands of Labour Party loyalists in the approach to polling day.
Two leading Germany magazines reported on Saturday that a company is under suspicion of selling weapons technology to Iran.
For the seventh time since it took force in 1970, the world's nations gather Monday to reassess how well the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is keeping the lid on man's most terrible weapons.
NEW YORK Thousands of anti-nuclear and anti-war activists marched past the United Nations and held a rally in Manhattan's Central Park yesterday.
As the review conference of the Nonproliferation Treaty convenes in New York this month, we can only be appalled at the indifference of the United States and the other nuclear powers. This indifference is remarkable, considering the addition of Iran and North Korea as states that either possess or seek nuclear weapons programs.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has claimed that a "lynch mob" is out to "destroy" him in the wake of the Iraq oil-for-food debacle and other U.N. scandals.
FOX executives have declined to answer any and all questions posed by ABCNEWS regarding claims AMERICA IDOL judge Paula Abdul personally "coached" a favorite contestant and then tried to cover up the breach!
CBS news has reported that a U.S. satellite had filmed the shooting and that it had been established the car carrying Calipari was traveling at more than 60 mph per hour as it approached the U.S. checkpoint in Baghdad.
The United States and Italy disagreed Friday in the conclusions of a joint investigation into the slaying of an Italian agent by U.S. troops in Iraq, further straining ties between the two allies.
This morning?s L.A. Times publishes an article about the March 4 shooting by U.S. soldiers of a car bearing Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena. The shooting killed Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari, and created an international controversy, which strained U.S.-Italian relations.
Iraq's Shiite Muslim leadership, alarmed by a surge in attacks as the new government prepares to take office, plans to crack down on Sunni-led insurgents and purge suspected infiltrators and corrupt officers from the nation's security forces, officials and lawmakers say.
Insurgents unleashed a series of deadly bombings in Iraq's capital and beyond Saturday, staging a series of carefully coordinated and increasingly sophisticated assaults that killed at least 65 over two days and appeared timed to deflate hopes in Washington and Baghdad that the nation's first democratically elected government would curb spiking violence.
A tiny cry rose from among corpses as Iraqi soldiers dug through the wreckage of a minibus caught in the rampage of suicide bombings that shook Baghdad on Friday.
The soldiers followed the wail to two slumped passengers, one headless and the other burned beyond recognition. They gently lifted up the bodies to find 8-month-old Sajjad Hassan, bloodied but alive, spared from the blast by the bodies of his dead mother and grandmother.
Turkey's prime minister said Saturday that no ethnic group should hold sway over the new Iraq or try to carve up the country amid regional concerns that violence in the country could spread across their borders.
A military prosecutor pressed the claim Saturday that the shootings of two Iraqis by a Marine officer last year were executions, and said the officer should be court-martialed for premeditated murder and related charges.
A key prosecution witness in the case of a Marine officer accused of killing two Iraqi detainees acknowledged yesterday that the defendant had stripped him of a unit leadership role days before the shootings
...Coburn testified Saturday that he was ordered to return to the stand after he was granted immunity. He spent about seven hours testifying as Gittins relentlessly unveiled inconsistencies within statements Coburn has made to investigators, reporters, his wife and in court.
Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa said Saturday that his country was restoring relations with Iraq after a break of more than two-decades in ties between the two neighbors.
Syrian President Bashar Assad could be ousted from power as his regime fractures under immense political pressure, the head of Israeli military intelligence said in an interview published Friday.
Germany is willing to take on a bigger role in Afghanistan if NATO wishes and the German parliament agrees, German Defense Minister Peter Struck said April 26, adding that his country could take over responsibility for all the north.
Every Friday afternoon, four undergraduates from Columbia University put on military uniforms and travel to the Bronx campus of Fordham University. There, the students - cadets in the Army's Reserve Officers Training Corps, a military leadership program that has been banned from Columbia's own campus since 1969 - study topics not listed in the course catalog, including land navigation and marching in formation.
Troops have written expressions of appreciation to the thousands of e-mails people from around the country have sent via the www.americasupportsyou.mil Web site.
First lady Laura Bush stole the show with a surprise comedy routine that ripped President Bush and brought an audience that included much of official Washington and a dash of Hollywood to a standing ovation at a dinner honoring award-winning journalists.
