Military Bases

Even as military planners look to withdraw significant numbers of American troops from Iraq in the coming year, the Bush administration continues to request hundreds of millions of dollars for large bases there, raising concerns over whether they are intended as permanent sites for U.S. forces.

At least 40 Iraqis were killed and 30 wounded Monday in a suicide bombing at an Iraqi army recruiting office near the gate of a U.S.-Iraq military base about 20 miles east of Tall Afar in northern Iraq, Iraqi officials said. The bomber, wearing an explosives vest, struck shortly after noon not far from the Syrian border, the Defense Ministry said. The center is in front of a joint U.S.-Iraqi military base between the ancient city of Tall Afar and Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city.

Senate appropriators Tuesday joined their House counterparts in warning the Bush administration against using taxpayer money to build permanent military bases in Iraq, stripping $177 million from the president's request for emergency defense construction projects in the country to underscore their point.

No more than 200 yards from the main gate of the sprawling U.S. base here, stolen computer drives containing classified military assessments of enemy targets, names of corrupt Afghan officials and descriptions of American defenses are on sale in the local bazaar.

Shopkeepers outside the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan said Friday that American investigators had paid thousands of dollars to buy back stolen computer drives, but dozens were still for sale, some of them containing sensitive data. Shopkeepers allowed a reporter to review about 40 of the flash memory drives on a laptop computer Friday.

Washington and Tokyo have struck a bargain over a plan to realign U.S. forces in Japan, with Tokyo agreeing to pay $6.1 billion of the estimated $10-billion cost. Japanese Defense Minister Fukushiro Nukaga told reporters after his three-hour meeting with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld at the Pentagon that Japan wanted to have an appropriate sharing of costs in transferring 8,000 Marines from Okinawa to the Pacific island of Guam.

The Army's chief of staff said Wednesday that he was frustrated by security lapses at Bagram air base in Afghanistan that led to the loss of potentially sensitive data, and that the military must learn how to be more careful with new technology. Weeks after revelations that flash drives carrying sensitive and classified information have turned up for sale in a bazaar outside Bagram, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker said the Army was trying to improve how soldiers used and secured flash drives.

Thousands of riot police armed with truncheons stormed an abandoned school in South Korea to break up a protest against the expansion of a nearby U.S. military base. They battled about 200 protesters wielding wooden sticks at Pyeongtaek, about 40 miles south of Seoul. At least a dozen protesters were detained. Some of the protesters were seen bleeding from the head and at least one was taken away by ambulance, but it was not immediately clear how many were injured.

After a day of fighting that left more than 200 people injured, South Korean forces Thursday evening secured the site of a future U.S. military base with water cannons, helicopters and bulldozers. But the surprisingly violent clashes could set the stage for strained relations between American forces and the community where the U.S. military plans to build its new headquarters.

Thousands rallied on a downtown Seoul boulevard to protest a plan to relocate American military bases, the largest anti-U.S. demonstration in the South Korean capital this year. According to police estimates, about 6,000 people came out to protest moving the Seoul-based American military headquarters and some other bases to Pyeongtaek, about 40 miles south of the capital. The relocation has been a main target of anti-U.S. activists here.