Military Bases

Before soldiers leave on missions in Iraq or Afghanistan, they often are ordered to do everything in their power to bring their buddies back. "Leave no man behind" is the motto. But does that military ethos apply to soldiers heading out for a rowdy weekend in the United States? That question is being raised at an unusual court-martial on this massive Army base, where a young paratrooper who struggled to bring a combative, drunk soldier back to the barracks has been accused of causing his death.

For more than 20 years the bunker has stood alone in this remote stretch of desert, a crumbling relic from another era with graffiti-scarred walls, hidden alcoves and a warren of dark hallways leading nowhere. Gaping holes puncture the concrete roof, creating 30-foot drops to the floor below. Thousands of bullet casings crunch underfoot. Shattered glass forms a jagged carpet inside and out.

Bush administration officials sought Thursday to defuse criticism over a proposed agreement with the Iraqi government, saying the U.S. would seek neither permanent bases in Iraq nor a commitment to a set number of American troops. In the agreement, being negotiated this year, the U.S. is seeking to maintain its current level of authority to conduct combat operations in Iraq, administration officials said. The United Nations mandate that governs U.S.

If there is a post-Cold War Berlin, it may well be this agricultural town straddling a river between Iran and Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic that has become an important ally in Washington's declared war on Islamic extremism.

After crossing Africa from west to east and back, the central issues that followed President Bush on his tour all came together Wednesday in the white stucco Osu Castle here on the Atlantic shoreline. With gusto, the president declared "that's baloney" to the notion that the United States was preparing to establish military bases in Africa. "Or, as we say in Texas, that's bull," Bush said at a news conference with Ghanaian President John Kufuor.

Poland and the United States struck a deal Thursday that will strengthen military ties and put an American missile interceptor base in Poland, a plan that has infuriated Moscow and sparked fears in Europe of a new arms race. Washington says the planned system, which is not yet operational, is needed to protect the U.S. and Europe from possible attacks by missile-armed "rogue states," such as Iran.

The Army's National Training Center at Ft. Irwin on Friday suspended its effort to move California desert tortoises off prospective combat training grounds and onto nearby public lands because the animals are being hit hard by coyotes. The first phase of the $8.7-million translocation effort began in March, when about 670 tortoises were airlifted by helicopter out of the southern portion of the desert base northeast of Barstow to new homes in drought-stricken western Mojave Desert areas.

One is a bankrupt convicted felon who spewed venomous hatred about the United States, hooked up an alleged terrorist cell with semiautomatic weapons and drove the surveillance car as they cased military bases. The other boasted of killing someone back home in Albania and vowed to kill others or blow himself up in a crowd of people now that he was in the United States. But Mahmoud Omar and Besnik Bakalli aren't members of the so-called "Ft.

The United States is battling a dangerous new front in its South American drug war -- just as a protege of anti-American leader Hugo Chavez comes to power in Ecuador vowing to shut down a U.S. base dedicated to narcotics surveillance. Officials have expressed growing concern that this Andean nation is being "Colombianized," illustrated by record cocaine seizures in the last two years, the destruction of a major cocaine-processing lab and a recent gangland-style killing. In recent months, U.S.

A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a U.S. military base in eastern Afghanistan, killing 10 people and wounding 14, an Afghan official said. The bomber approached a group of Afghan men who were waiting outside the base in the city of Khowst before blowing himself up, said Jamal Arsalah, the governor of Khowst province. It was not immediately clear whether any Americans were among the casualties.