Military Misconduct

Philippine prisons are better known for rats and vicious gangs than diplomatic niceties, which is why people here are angry that an American Marine convicted of rape is doing his jail time in the dignified U.S. Embassy. Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith was convicted in December 2006 of raping a 22-year-old Filipina a year earlier after they had been drinking in a bar in Subic Bay, a former U.S. naval base north of Manila.

She was the strongest among them, the natural leader. So when the shelling stopped and the Israeli soldiers announced through loudspeakers that all residents should come out of their homes and head for the center of town, neighbors turned to Rawhiya Najar for guidance. Emptying the cupboards of sheets and tablecloths -- anything white -- she led a procession of 20 women and children into the streets holding a white flag in each hand, residents say.

One night in April 2007, as Mike Partain hugged his wife before going to bed, she felt a small lump above his right nipple. A mammogram -- a "man-o-gram," he called it -- led to a diagnosis of male breast cancer. Six days later, the 41-year-old insurance adjuster had a mastectomy. Partain had no idea men could get breast cancer. But he thinks he knows what caused his: contaminated drinking water at Camp Lejeune, N.C., where he was born. Over the last two years, Partain has compiled a list of 19 others diagnosed with male breast cancer who once lived on the base.

A onetime Army paratrooper was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison for killing a fellow soldier and wounding nearly 20 others in a sniper attack at this North Carolina base more than a decade ago. The sentence had been expected since Sgt. William J. Kreutzer, 39, of Clinton, Md., pleaded guilty earlier this month to one charge of premeditated murder and 18 other charges to avoid a possible death sentence.

A military appeals court Tuesday upheld the dismissal of war crimes charges against Marine Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, the highest-ranking Marine charged in the 2005 killing of 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq.

A Marine staff sergeant was ordered Monday to stand trial on charges stemming from the 2005 killing of 24 Iraqis in the town of Haditha. Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich is being charged directly with the deaths of several of the Iraqis and indirectly with the other deaths for failing to supervise his Marines as their squad leader. Under a decision by Lt. Gen.

A former Marine counter-intelligence sergeant testified Tuesday that special operations Marines fired into oncoming civilian traffic in Afghanistan last March even though he saw no evidence that their convoy was fired upon. Appearing before a rare military court of inquiry, Nathaniel Travers, a former staff sergeant, said Marines in his convoy were rushing back to their base after a car bombing when Marine Humvee gunners fired into civilian vehicles on a highway in eastern Afghanistan.

Three Marines and an Afghan translator testified Wednesday that their convoy came under fire in Afghanistan after a car bomb attack in March, prompting return fire as the Marines tried to escape what they called the "kill zone." As many as 19 Afghans were reported killed. The testimony came on the second day of a court of inquiry examining the incident.

A Marine who fired at least 200 machine-gun rounds during a March incident that left as many as 19 Afghans dead will not testify before a special court of inquiry unless he is granted immunity, his civilian lawyer said Thursday. Fellow Marines have testified that, after a car bomb attack on their convoy in eastern Afghanistan, Sgt. Joshua Henderson fired his M240 in response to what U.S. forces believed was enemy small-arms fire. Henderson "has nothing to hide," attorney Charles W.

An investigator expressed frustration Thursday at what he said were incomplete and sometimes inconsistent accounts by Marines involved in a March shooting in Afghanistan that left up to 19 Afghans dead. "We were trying to put pieces together and some of them just don't fit," David Kurre, a Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent, said on the eighth day of testimony in a court of inquiry reviewing the incident.