Department Of Defense U S

As the Bush administration began assembling its case for war, analysts across the U.S. intelligence community were disturbed by the report of a secretive Pentagon team that concluded Iraq had significant ties to Al Qaeda. Analysts from the CIA and other agencies "disagreed with more than 50%" of 26 findings the Pentagon team laid out in a controversial paper, according to testimony Friday from Thomas F. Gimble, acting inspector general of the Pentagon.

Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Tuesday that he could not explain the apparent contradiction between a military dossier on Iranian interference in Iraq and comments by the Pentagon's top general. White House spokesman Tony Snow said that he had phoned Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and that there was no disagreement. A military official on Pace's staff said the general stood by his comments.

The CIA's former No. 3 official and a defense contractor pleaded not guilty to federal charges resulting from an investigation that has sent former U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Rancho Santa Fe) to prison. Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo used his position as executive director of the CIA to steer business to San Diego defense contractor Brent R. Wilkes, who offered his lifelong friend a job and lavished him with vacations and other gifts, according to a federal indictment.

About $10 billion has been squandered by the U.S. government on Iraq reconstruction aid because of contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses, and federal investigators warned Thursday that significantly more taxpayer money was at risk.

Facing opposition from two Western states, the Pentagon on Thursday scrapped plans for a 700-ton non-nuclear test blast that would have produced the first mushroom cloud of dust over the Nevada desert in decades. Officials in Nevada and Utah said there was concern that the blast would scatter decades-old radioactive material from previous Cold War-era tests. The Defense Department said it would find other ways to test the nation's ability to penetrate underground bunkers.

The Pentagon filed a war crimes charge against Australian David Hicks on Thursday, making the former kangaroo skinner the first target of new military commissions designed by the White House and endorsed by Congress to try terrorism suspects imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.

Iraqi forces began taking a back seat in combat operations in Iraq last autumn, even before President Bush started deploying 21,500 more troops chiefly to spearhead a security crackdown in Baghdad, according to a new Pentagon report. The report shows that Iraqi military units began assuming greater responsibility for operations in the earlier part of last year. But the trend has reversed. In October, U.S. forces were conducting 8% of the combat operations, while 72% were joint missions.

President Bush, members of Congress and virtually all counter-terrorism experts have acknowledged that defeating terrorists cannot be accomplished solely by dropping bombs on them. Ultimately, they say, ending terrorism will come only by addressing its underlying causes. "Our long-term strategy to keep the peace is to help change the conditions that give rise to extremism and terror by spreading the universal principle of human liberty," Bush said in March 2005.

Congress should force the State and Defense departments to cooperate in planning and overseeing any future wartime reconstruction to prevent the kind of problems that befouled rebuilding efforts in Iraq, according to an investigative report to be issued today.

In the latest allegations of poor treatment for veterans, the Pentagon said Thursday it was investigating conditions at a veterans' retirement home in the capital. A medical team went for an inspection Wednesday after Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates received a letter from congressional investigators about allegations of a rising death rate and rooms spattered with blood, urine and feces at the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington.