Iraq War 2003

Large swaths of Iraq remain outside the control of the interim government, major highways are fraught with attackers, and interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi -- along with the U.S. Embassy and much of the international community -- must conduct business in fortified compounds guarded by tanks, blast walls and barbed wire. In Washington, Allawi gave Congress an upbeat assessment Thursday, but the situation in Iraq is more complicated.

Defending the most controversial decision of his career -- if not his life -- former British Prime Minister Tony Blair declared Friday that he had no regrets over going to war in Iraq, calling it the right decision in a post-Sept. 11 world and one he "would take again." For more than six hours, Blair gave a stout defense of the war before an investigative panel whose proceedings were televised nationwide in a riveting moment of political theater. Britons who ditched soap operas and game shows to watch their former leader submit to a prolonged public grilling saw Blair insist that he tried to resolve the standoff with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein diplomatically, that he made the best judgment he could and that the Iraqi people are better off for it. "I had to take this decision as prime minister.

The families of U.S. soldiers killed in action or in accidents during the Iraq war are eligible for death benefits that could range from $250,000 to more than $800,000. The benefits are generally extended to the people who would have relied on the service member's income for economic security, and some can endure for the lifetime of the survivor. Dependent children are eligible for additional compensation, although many of those benefits are terminated if a surviving spouse remarries.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney waded into another roiling public debate Monday, saying he supports same-sex marriage as long as the issue is decided by states rather than the federal government. Cheney, whose youngest daughter has a longtime lesbian partner, said at the National Press Club that "people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish, any kind of arrangement they wish."

At some point early in his new life in Canada, Don Gayton stopped being "Don Gayton the draft dodger" and became simply Don Gayton. It was no magical moment, no grand transfiguration. It was, he says, "a matter of moving on." Life had turned tumultuous for him in the early 1970s. Gayton, who spent his childhood in Los Angeles, had received a draft notice and been denied conscientious objector status.

The United States gave its official reasons for invading Iraq to the U.N. Security Council late Thursday, saying Baghdad had broken a cease-fire resolution adopted after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Britain and Australia, two other nations in the U.S.-led coalition, wrote similar, shorter, letters to the 15-member council. None of the letters mentioned "regime change," an aim of the invasion but never authorized in any council resolution. U.S. Ambassador John D.

As a boy, Abdul Jawad Jasem used to wander in the lush greenery of his father's 3,000 date palm trees. He could never have imagined then that wars would someday destroy the huge, thriving date industry here, leaving him a single tree to bequeath to his grandson. Not far from the lone tree, across a patch of arid soil covered in spindly weeds, are the ruins of his old house, which was destroyed during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. He cannot look at this place without tears.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney waded into another roiling public debate Monday, saying he supports same-sex marriage as long as the issue is decided by states rather than the federal government. Cheney, whose youngest daughter has a longtime lesbian partner, said at the National Press Club that "people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish, any kind of arrangement they wish."

When Army Sgt. Keicia M. Hines was buried last week in Sacramento, she left a particularly painful void in the lives of her mother, Beverly Coleman, and her family. The 27-year-old soldier was Coleman's only child. And because Coleman's two sisters do not have children, Hines also was an only niece and an only grandchild and great-grandchild on her mother's side of the family. Hines was killed Jan.

Fiercely defending the intelligence community, CIA Director George J. Tenet on Thursday said his agency never warned President Bush that Saddam Hussein's government posed an "imminent threat," and the top spymaster backed away from several claims about weapons of mass destruction that the White House had used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

When Army Sgt. Ryan Kahlor returned from two combat tours in Iraq last year, he was a walking billboard for virtually every affliction suffered by today's veterans. He had a detached retina, a ruptured disc, vertigo, headaches, memory lapses and numbness in his arms. Fluid seeped from his ears. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. He was violent and suicidal. He carried a loaded handgun everywhere. He drank until he passed out. He cut himself.

Five years ago Wednesday, U.S. forces entered the heart of the Iraqi capital, and Saddam Hussein's regime fell. While much of the world watched the downfall of Hussein and the destruction of his huge statue in central Baghdad's Firdos Square on television, Iraqis lived it. They have memories of what they were feeling as Hussein was toppled from power. Here are some of them: -- Two weeks before the start of the war, I was called up for military service. I went AWOL.

Five years into a costly war in Iraq that has lost the support of the majority of Americans, President Bush insisted Wednesday that "this is a fight America can and must win." The president, speaking on the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, contended as he has before that the Iraq conflict remained central to a broader "global war on terror." Bush also said that the "surge" of U.S.

After an acrimonious investigation that spanned four years, the Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing to release a detailed critique of the Bush administration's claims in the buildup to war with Iraq, congressional officials said. The long-delayed document catalogs dozens of prewar assertions by President Bush and other administration officials that proved to be wildly inaccurate about Iraq's alleged stockpiles of banned weapons and pursuit of nuclear arms.

U.S. troops have discovered a vast bunker complex equipped with pressurized offices and bedrooms, gas masks and chemical protective gear, and enough sophisticated chemical and biological decontamination equipment to protect hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of senior Iraqi leaders and commanders. The complex, discovered Friday by troops of the 3rd Infantry Division, was inspected Saturday by a military chemical team from division headquarters.

U.S. and British troops swept into southern Iraq on Thursday in an invasion aimed at Baghdad, where a new wave of missiles and bombs struck a presidential compound housing several government departments at the heart of Saddam Hussein's power. The ground fighting marked an escalation in a war meant to drive Hussein out.