Armed Forces

Poor planning, weak oversight and greed combined to soak U.S. taxpayers and undermine American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, government watchdogs tell a new commission examining waste and corruption in wartime contracts. Since 2003, the Pentagon, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development have paid contractors more than $100 billion for goods and services to support war operations and rebuilding.

Army Sgt. Michael Kyle Clark put his young son and family above everything but service to his country. Clark, 24, probably could have avoided his second tour in Iraq. Just after Thanksgiving in 2006, shortly after coming home from his first deployment, he shattered his pelvis while horsing around with buddies on his Yamaha motorcycle. "We thought we were going to lose him," recalled his wife, Nalini. "Then we thought he would never walk."

Lance Cpl. Daryl Crookston knew there would be casualties. That inevitability had been drummed into him as far back as boot camp, by drill sergeants and infantry school instructors, by fellow Marines. But when two Marine buddies went down on a combat patrol in the flat scrub desert of western Afghanistan, it was so shocking that Crookston felt overwhelmed. One minute the two men were alive, and in an instant they were dead.

Every week, Air Force cargo jets land and taxi down the runway at Dover Air Force Base, Del., carrying the remains of fallen U.S. troops. After a chaplain says a simple prayer, an eight-member military honor guard removes the metal "transfer cases" from the planes and carries them to a mortuary van. The flag-draped coffins are a testament to the toll of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as of the sacrifice borne by those who serve in the military and their families.

Ghazi Gul keeps the pictures of the dead in a pocket near his heart -- his father, two brothers, a cousin, a nephew. Gul works for the Afghan intelligence service, fighting militants on behalf of the U.S.-backed government. But he blames the U.S. for killing eight of his relatives, including his mother and two nieces. And he wants revenge.

President Obama ordered his first major deployment of U.S. combat troops Tuesday, authorizing 17,000 additional soldiers and Marines for Afghanistan in what he described as an urgent bid to stabilize a deteriorating and neglected country.

A day after President Obama ordered additional soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan, the top U.S. commander there said Wednesday that he may need still more troops in coming months to bolster an intensified war effort that could last as long as five more years. Army Gen. David D. McKiernan plans to use the 17,000 soldiers and Marines Obama authorized to try to break an impasse in fighting with the Taliban in the southern part of the country.

Three U.S. soldiers and an interpreter were killed Monday in fighting northeast of the Iraqi capital, the military announced. The statement did not provide details of the incident in Diyala province. According to the independent website icasualties.org, at least 4,250 members of the U.S. military have died in the war since it began in March 2003.