Armed Forces

Presidential election exit polls showed that the economy was uppermost on the minds of most Americans. But when Baghdad-based Army Maj. Ian Howard cast his ballot, his top concern was whether this would be his last deployment to Iraq. So Howard, a lifelong Republican, threw his support to Barack Obama, who has advocated a swift withdrawal of U.S. forces. "I don't want to come back here for another tour," Howard said Wednesday.

The Marine Corps is moving to boot a Marine for having made "political statements" about the commander in chief on a Facebook page. Sgt. Gary Stein, 26, a nine-year veteran, put comments on the Armed Forces Tea Party page that said he would not follow unlawful orders from President Obama such as ordering the killing of Americans or taking guns away from Americans. The Uniform Code of Military Justice prohibits uniformed personnel from making comments critical of their chain of command, including the commander in chief.

The U.S. military command has quietly shifted and intensified the mission of clandestine special operations forces in Afghanistan, senior officials said, targeting key figures within the Taliban, rather than almost exclusively hunting Al Qaeda leaders. As a result of orders from Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and allied commander in Afghanistan, the special operations teams are focusing more on killing militants, capturing them or, whenever possible, persuading them to turn against the Taliban-led insurgency.

The walls are bare and the bedroom is still missing a television, but Thomas Simmons couldn't be prouder of his new home. "It's all mine," the 35-year-old says, looking around. "My couch, my bed, my gas stove. It's finally mine. " For nearly a decade, the veteran of Afghanistan lived in homeless shelters and in his car, wandering from Georgia to Nevada to California, his clothes crammed in his trunk and his life in disarray. He was among the estimated 7,400 veterans who are homeless in Los Angeles County — battling post-traumatic stress, substance abuse, alcoholism and mental issues.

The question was direct. So too was the answer. "Where's your biggest threat area?" asked Marine Maj. Phillip Zeman. "Anywhere, everywhere, sir," answered Cpl. Phil Shy as their Humvee sped through what was left of Fallouja's commercial district Friday. Two months after Marines wrested control of the Sunni Triangle city from insurgents in a weeklong battle, some of the war-weary units involved in the fight are close to going home. But the U.S. job here is far from over.

The Pentagon was warned repeatedly going back a decade that it was accepting military recruits with criminal histories and was too lenient with those already in uniform who exhibited violent or other troubling behavior. Six studies prepared over 10 years by an outside expert at the Pentagon's request found that too little was being done to discipline lawbreakers in uniform or even identify problem recruits. A 1998 study estimated that one-third of military recruits had arrest records.

Ruby Pierce was packed in body armor and a Kevlar helmet, ready for the 15-minute drive from the military landing strip to her new posting at Forward Operating Base Courage. Four blue Ford Expeditions crusted with dirt to the roofline pulled up with her escorts: 14 hard-faced soldiers of fortune in black armor. The convoy, a private security escort hired by the U.S. military, hit the streets of Mosul at 70 mph, lights flashing and a siren screaming.

They're a ragtag team of about 1,000 young, impoverished men who sometimes shoot one another by accident or stick machine guns out windows and spray the area without looking. Yet they've also set up clever ambushes, demonstrated surprising resilience and executed defensive maneuvers that have impressed the U.S. military. After a week of butting heads with Muqtada Sadr's Al Mahdi army, U.S.

Philippine troops Wednesday rescued a kidnapped American businessman who had been chained by his neck and feet for 22 days, Philippine and U.S. officials said. Alastair Joseph Onglingswan, 35, was rescued in a house in Bacoor, south of Manila, by a government anti-kidnapping force and military intelligence agents, officials said. A suspect was arrested and was being interrogated, officials said.

The elected president of Mauritania was ousted Wednesday in a bloodless military coup that appeared to spell the end for the Arab nation's experiment in democracy. A council led by a military commander ousted President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi and placed him and other government officials in the North African country under house arrest. There were no reports of gunfire or violence.

The court-martial of Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich at Camp Pendleton for his role in two dozen civilian deaths in the Iraqi village of Haditha has highlighted a legal peril for modern military personnel: determining who is the enemy. Troops these days fight in tense, foreign enclaves where terrorists wear no uniforms and take cover among women and children. They are on a mission to engage the enemy but are expected to hold their fire against civilians, a sacred tenet of international law. Military and international law experts say the case against Wuterich has shown that some troops have little understanding of the laws of war and nagging mistrust of local townfolk on dusty streets and courtyards that quickly ignite into battlefields.

In a rocky valley at the northern tip of Lebanon, three generations of a Syrian farming family cluster around a small gas heater in the derelict schoolhouse that has become their refuge. When there is electricity, they are glued to the television, which transmits grainy amateur video of chanting protesters and bloodied bodies just across the border in their strife-torn home province of Homs. Interrupting one another in a rush to be heard, family members describe communities under siege by an iron-fisted state, and village turning against village in a chilling cycle of abductions, beatings and killings.

Four military hostages who had been held for as long as 14 years were executed by Colombian rebels during a rescue attempt by the army in a southern jungle, Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon said Saturday. He said three of the hostages were shot in the head and the other was shot in the back by fighters with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials, FARC. One of the dead was a soldier; the other three were members of the national police. "We regret profoundly that these victims were killed in cold blood, in a state of absolute defenselessness," Pinzon said at a hastily called news conference in Bogota, the Colombian capital.

Although Colombia's armed forces delivered a serious blow to the country's largest rebel force with the killing of its leader, analysts Saturday held out little hope for a peace initiative by the decimated but still potent leftist insurgent group. The 63-year-old rebel leader, who went by the alias Alfonso Cano, was killed Friday in a military operation in southwestern Colombia. At a news conference Saturday, President Juan Manuel Santos called on the rebels to lay down their arms.

Irom Sharmila's mother has a simple dream: sitting down to a meal with her daughter. Irom hasn't willingly ingested food or water for 11 years, in protest of a law granting legal immunity to the armed forces for human rights abuses. As the anniversary of her hunger strike nears, her mother imagines what might be. "I'm still waiting for her to come home," said Shakhi Devi, 78, holding an album of her daughter's photos. She rarely visits the 39-year-old, the world's longest-serving hunger striker, because it's too painful.

A high-ranking member of the Zetas crime group suspected of widespread drug trafficking has been arrested, Mexican officials said Thursday. Carlos Oliva Castillo, known as "Frog," was captured Wednesday in the northern city of Saltillo, where he allegedly ran drug-trafficking operations spanning several states, said Col. Ricardo Trevilla, spokesman for the armed forces. Gunmen sought to rescue Oliva by trying to distract soldiers with gunfire around the city, authorities said.

When Cody Alexander Morris returned from the war last fall, he carried home a burden -- a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder -- and a new way of playing with guns. The gun game was called "Do You Trust Me?" Morris, 19, learned it from his Kentucky National Guard buddies in Iraq. He taught the game to his roommates: best friend and fellow guardsman Casey Lee Hall, 18, and a 16-year-old cousin, Cory Adams.

The helicopter went down in a sandstorm, half a world away in Iraq. But with word that at least 27 of the dead were from the Marine Corps air station at Kaneohe Bay, grief spread across the islands as Hawaii sought to cope with the biggest one-day loss of its troops since the attack on Pearl Harbor more than 63 years ago. "I'm not really a woman with words.

Images of the lanky soldier with dark eyes have haunted Israel for five years, but Gilad Shalit may finally be heading home. Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas announced an agreement Tuesday to free Shalit, who was seized in 2006 in a cross-border raid near the Gaza Strip, in exchange for the release of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. The Israeli soldier's capture pushed Israel to tighten a punishing blockade around the seaside enclave, where 1.5 million Palestinians continue to grapple with widespread poverty.