By ROBERT BURNS
Evidence collected on the deaths of 24 Iraqis in Haditha supports accusations that U.S. Marines deliberately shot the civilians, including unarmed women and children, a Pentagon official said Wednesday.
By Kristin Roberts
A U.S. Marine suspected in the killing of 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, sued a congressman for libel on Wednesday after the lawmaker, a prominent war critic, publicly accused servicemen of murder.
A group of Marines, while suspected, have not been charged, and official results from the military’s investigation remain outstanding. A U.S. defense official said on Wednesday, however that evidence indicates Marines deliberately shot to death unarmed civilians.
By Saul Hudson
The United States sharply rebuked the No. 2 U.N. official on Wednesday for his repeated criticism of Washington after he said America should allow others to share the lead in solving the Lebanon crisis.
"We are seeing a troubling pattern of a high official of the U.N. who seems to be making it his business to criticize member states and, frankly, with misplaced and misguided criticisms," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.
By Carol Giacomo
Diplomatic Correspondent
President George W. Bush has described the Israel-Hizbollah crisis as another opportunity to remake the Middle East in his democratic vision.
But as civilian casualties from the Israeli-Hizbollah conflict in Lebanon mount, the situation looks increasingly chaotic, and a damage-control operation will make it harder to advance U.S. foreign policy interests, analysts say.
Pentagon officials were so evasive on details surrounding its reaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, that some members of the 9/11 commission wanted to refer their actions to the Justice Department for possible criminal action.
By PAULINE JELINEK
The beleaguered Iraq reconstruction effort was beset by problems from the very start and is also hampered by a long pattern of corruption in the country, a new report finds.
For several months before the war, government agencies didn’t consult each other on what they were doing because their work was classified.
By LARA JAKES JORDAN
Undercover investigators entered the United States using fake documents repeatedly this year — including some cases in which Homeland Security Department agents didn’t ask for identification.
By LOLITA C. BALDOR
More than two-thirds of the Army National Guard’s 34 brigades are not combat ready, mostly because of equipment shortages that will cost up to $21 billion to correct, the top National Guard general said Tuesday.
By JOHN R. MACARTHUR
The Providence Journal
If you’re having trouble understanding why America has been sitting on its hands while Israel devastates Lebanon and Hezbollah fires missiles at Haifa, I refer you to the fall of 1990, when American diplomacy attained a new level of cynicism in its dealings with the Arab world.
By MARTIN SCHRAM
As days stretched into weeks, as rockets and bombs killed many civilians in Israel and even more civilians in Lebanon, the world’s leaders made their plans for dispatching to southern Lebanon what news reports keep calling a "peacekeeping force."