Military Bases

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.

AFTER unveiling his plan for a troop increase in Iraq this month, President Bush spoke of the burden borne by America's military families -- of "the quiet sacrifices of lonely holidays and empty chairs at the dinner table." The spare, elegant phrase evoked a stoic longing worthy of an Edward Hopper painting. But real life tends to be messier than rhetoric.

Tens of thousands of people marched through this northeastern Italian city Saturday under heavy police guard to protest a planned U.S. military base expansion. Despite fears that violent demonstrators would be drawn to the protest, the march took place without incident, finishing outside the main train station where it started, as hundreds of police officers stood guard and helicopters hovered overhead. The route did not pass the airport where the expanded base is to be built.

IT was the final day of Marine Sgt. Travis Woody's second tour in Iraq when the sergeant major pulled him aside. "Do you know your wife has a drug problem?" Travis sat back, stunned, as the sergeant major showed him an e-mail sent from Twentynine Palms, his home base. Travis' wife, Nicole, was in jail, accused of helping a drug dealer rob, torture and imprison a man over several days in late August in her home on the base.

Nine employees of a party supplies rental company were arrested Thursday on immigration violations as part of a crackdown on illegal hiring at military bases and other high-security workplaces. The five women and four men were arrested at Classic Party Rentals Inc.'s offices here and were to be returned to their native Mexico, said Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Foreign-born "radical Islamists" charged Tuesday in a plot to attack Ft. Dix Army base in New Jersey were trying to buy AK-47 and M-16 rifles when they were arrested, and posed a serious terrorist threat, authorities said. The six men were taken into custody Monday night in and around Cherry Hill, N.J., after two of them allegedly tried to purchase weapons from an FBI informant. They were ordered held without bail pending a hearing Friday.

Friends and neighbors of the men charged with plotting a rampage at New Jersey's Ft. Dix Army base said Wednesday that they had started to notice subtle changes in them: a new beard, a recently built backyard woodshed and talk of leisurely target shooting practice. "We would always joke around," said 20-year-old Mario Tummilo, who used to work with suspect Serdar Tatar. They played basketball together and talked about Nikes, rap music and girls. "He was just like a normal American person."

They stood together in a soft spring rain: soldiers in uniform, restless boys in neckties, grieving widows, anguished parents, mothers cradling babies and young girls clutching roses. The chaplain broke the silence. "Nothing is more sacred," he said, "than a life laid down for others." Five more soldiers from Ft. Stewart had died in Iraq in the last two months, and five more Eastern redbud saplings were added Thursday to the long, straight rows of trees honoring the dead.

A Saudi Arabian detainee died Wednesday at Guantanamo Bay prison, and the U.S. military said he apparently committed suicide. Guards at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba found the detainee in his cell unresponsive and not breathing, the military's Southern Command said in a statement. "They tried to save his life but he was pronounced dead," said Mario Alvarez, a Miami-based spokesman for the Southern Command.