Military Confrontations

The General Assembly on Friday denounced the U.S. invasion of Panama by a vote of 75 to 20, with 40 abstentions, in what was seen nonetheless as a surprisingly strong measure of support for Washington. The resolution, sponsored by Cuba and Nicaragua, also called for immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Panama.

Graffiti on a wall in the center of Nalut has a message for Moammar Kadafi: "Let us be free. " But the streets of this largely Berber mountain city of western Libya are nearly empty, except for a few passing pickups mounted with guns and loaded with steely eyed fighters. Children, mothers and grandparents have fled to Tunisia to escape the batteries of missiles launched from the valley below by military forces loyal to the longtime Libyan strongman. An ambitious operation last weekend to fight back ended in failure, with 15 rebel fighters dead, dozens injured and not an inch of territory gained.

It is known simply as The Plan, and it is one of the most closely guarded secrets in the world today. No more than 15 top U.S. officials are privy to the exact scheme under which U.S. forces will confront the Iraqi military if the current crisis in the Middle East erupts into a war. "I'm not going to tell you the sequence or what the timing of that sequence would be," says Gen. Colin L.

After advancing swiftly westward over the weekend, rebel fighters were halted abruptly Monday by stiff resistance from government forces east of the government garrison city of Surt. Fighters returning from the newly established front lines said forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi attacked rebels with rockets several miles east of "Gate 80," a well-defended military position about 50 miles east of Surt. Kadafi's soldiers, though stripped of their air cover and much of their armor by allied airstrikes over the last nine days, were putting up a strong fight, rebels said.

In an open letter to President Bush, Ron Kovic--the highly decorated Vietnam War veteran turned disabled anti-war hero--called Wednesday for an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops sent overseas to counter Iraqi aggressors. Kovic, whose autobiography was the basis for the movie "Born on the Fourth of July," was met by several counterdemonstrators who burned an Iraqi flag, picketed the rally and called the former Marine sergeant a traitor to his country.

The phone call came to the royal palace in Kuwait city just before 4:30 a.m. It was Princess Mariam Saad al Sabah's brother-in-law. "You have to leave the palace. Go to the summer house," he said when she reached over to her bedside table and picked up the telephone. "He had no time to say why," she recalls. "All I knew was, he is a calm person, and at that time his voice wasn't calm. We left."

The amount of U.S. money spent on the Iraq war will surpass the cost of Vietnam by the end of the year, making it the second most expensive military conflict in American history, behind World War II, according to Pentagon figures provided Friday. If Congress approves the supplemental funding request submitted this week by the Obama administration, the cost of the war will rise by $87 billion for 2009, including a previous supplement approved during the Bush administration.

Air Force Capt. Bob Swain had just fired two Maverick missiles at Iraqi tanks in central Kuwait when he saw something moving far below, several miles away. "I noticed two black dots running across the desert that looked really different than anything I had seen before," said Swain, an A-10 Thunderbolt II pilot. "They weren't putting up any dust and they were moving fast and quickly over the desert." Swain radioed his accompanying observation plane: "Hey, I think I've got a helicopter."

At H-hour, 1 a.m. Wednesday, a team of 20 Navy SEAL commandos stole onto Paitilla airfield intent on disabling the airplanes that Panamanian dictator Manuel A. Noriega was expected to use to flee the massive American onslaught. According to intelligence reports, the airfield was lightly defended. But instead of the expected cakewalk, the SEALs encountered three armored personnel carriers full of heavily armed and well-trained troops. A "hellacious fire-fight" ensued.

Gen. Michael J. Dugan had no doubts about the wisdom of his decision when he invited three reporters to accompany him on a four-day tour of U.S. air forces in Saudi Arabia last week. Dugan, a tall, gregarious, self-assured fighter pilot, believed that the Air Force has a critical--indeed central--role in any military operations against Iraq, and he wanted to tell his service's story.

At least 25 people were killed Thursday in a gun battle between army troops and purported drug traffickers in the violent border state of Tamaulipas, just south of Texas, Mexican authorities said. Troops pursued the gunmen near Ciudad Mier after they were detected by aerial patrols, the army said in a statement Thursday night. All of the dead were gunmen, the army said, and three kidnapping victims were rescued. The army also confiscated drugs and weapons, the statement said.

Given the family history of Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, it is with some irony that she has been forced in the final days of her government to call on the army to rescue her earthquake-ravaged nation. As a young woman, Bachelet was jailed and tortured by the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Her father, an air force general who opposed the 1973 military coup, died in jail. But now, faced with large-scale looting and food shortages, Bachelet, who heads the fourth consecutive center-left government since Pinochet's 1990 ouster, has sent in the troops.

Nearly three months of fighting between Saudi Arabian troops and Shiite Muslim rebels along the Yemen border has ended, the Saudi government announced Wednesday, declaring victory two days after the rebels offered a cease-fire. Saudi ground forces and warplanes have pounded Houthi militants since the rebels killed a Saudi border guard and infiltrated a string of villages in early November. The fighting, which led to fear of wider regional chaos, drew the kingdom into a sporadic 5-year-old conflict between the insurgents and the Yemeni government.

One by one, recruits from Pakistan's Punjab heartland would make the seven-hour drive to Waziristan, where they would pull up to an office that made no secret of its mission. The signboard above the office door read "Tehrik-e-Taliban." In a largely ungoverned city like Miram Shah, there was no reason to hide its identity. The trainees from Sargodha would arrive, grab some sleep at the Taliban office and afterward head into Waziristan's rugged mountains for instruction in skills including karate and handling explosives and automatic rifles.

A North Korean naval ship suffered heavy damage Tuesday during an exchange of gunfire between the two Koreas along a disputed sea border off their western coasts, officials said. There were no reports of casualties, but the North Korean vessel reportedly turned and headed for port after the clash. The North Korean vessel crossed a demarcation line into southern waters about 10:30 a.m., prompting a South Korean warship to fire several warning shots, according to a news release from the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In one of the most lethal gun battles for American troops in the Afghan war, insurgents attacked a pair of relatively lightly manned bases near the Pakistan border over the weekend, triggering a daylong battle that left eight Americans and as many as half a dozen Afghan troops dead. The toll was the highest in a single incident for American forces in Afghanistan since nine U.S. soldiers died in a strikingly similar insurgent assault 15 months ago on an outpost in the same northeastern province, Nuristan.

The Democratic-controlled Congress, closing ranks behind President Bush at a crucial moment in American history, voted Saturday to authorize U.S. troops to attack Iraq as early as Wednesday. Bush's victory was decisive and bipartisan, even though the authorization was strongly opposed by the Democratic leadership and most aspirants for the Democratic presidential nomination. Many Democrats abandoned their party leaders, and Republicans were nearly unanimous in support of the President.

In one of the most lethal gun battles for American troops in the Afghan war, insurgents attacked a pair of relatively lightly manned bases near the Pakistan border over the weekend, triggering a daylong battle that left eight Americans and as many as half a dozen Afghan troops dead. The toll was the highest in a single incident for American forces in Afghanistan since nine U.S. soldiers died in a strikingly similar insurgent assault 15 months ago on an outpost in the same northeastern province, Nuristan.

A United Nations inquiry concluded Tuesday that Israeli and Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes during their conflict in the Gaza Strip, and it called on both sides to prosecute wrongdoers or face possible intervention by an international court. The probe led by former South African Judge Richard Goldstone detailed what investigators called Israeli actions "amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity," during a 22-day winter offensive against Hamas-led rocket squads in which nearly 1,400 Palestinians, many of them civilians, were killed.

Thousands of refugees from Myanmar have poured across the border into China in recent weeks amid troubling signs that a 20-year cease-fire between ethnic minorities and Myanmar's military rulers might be unraveling. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said as many as 30,000 people had fled fighting in Myanmar; sources on the Chinese side of the border put the figure at 5,000 to 10,000. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu in a statement Friday urged the Myanmar government to "safeguard the regional stability of its bordering area with China."