War

METAIRIE, La. - In the summer of 1992, an aspiring filmmaker named Craig Borten drove from Los Angeles to Dallas to see a man named Ron Woodroof. Borten was just a few years out of Syracuse University and didn't know what kind of movies he wanted to make, or if he wanted to make them at all. But he'd read about Woodroof, a fast-living - and, as it happened, deeply homophobic - straight electrician and rodeo habitue who had been diagnosed with AIDS in 1986. First out of self-preservation and then as a grudging crusade, Woodroof began smuggling unapproved drugs from Mexico and other countries, prolonging his life and the lives of thousands of others.

WASHINGTON - Amid a surge of Islamic militancy in North Africa, a team of fewer than 50 U.S. special operations troops with a single helicopter arrived at a remote base in western Tunisia last month. Their mission: train Tunisian troops in counter-terrorism tactics. The operation was one of dozens of U.S. military deployments in Africa over the last year, often to tiny and temporary outposts. The goal is to leverage American military expertise against an arc of growing instability in North Africa and many sub-Saharan countries, from Mali in the west to Somalia in the east.

A U.S. military convoy sliced through the flat Iraqi desert before first light, carrying the last troops safely into Kuwait and ending America's costly and divisive war in a troubled land. When relieved soldiers got out on the other side Sunday, shouts of "Going home!" and "It's over!" mingled with bear hugs and high-fives. One soldier hollered, "I'm going to Disneyland!" Another, "A sweet, sweet Christmas. " The final vehicle passed a fortified Kuwaiti border police post eight years, eight months and 28 days after U.S. forces poured across the same frontier, 150,000 strong, sweating inside bulky chemical and biological protective suits, but convinced of a swift and certain victory.

Here's a chilly thought: We are seeing the dawn of a second Cold War between Russia and the West. But this one should be easier to manage than the first was. The headlines over the last week have echoed the bad old days of the 20th century: Russian troops marching into someone else's territory. Poland calling on NATO to help secure its borders. Americans and Russians trading angry charges at the United Nations. But just as in the last Cold War, remaining calm is the starting point for strategy.

'Declaration of War' MPAA rating: Not rated Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes; French with English subtitles Playing: At Nuart Theater, West Los Angeles

Re "Waiting for the last plane out," Opinion, Dec. 23 I had tears in my eyes reading David Freed's Op-Ed article about not seeing his son, who is probably stationed in Afghanistan, this Christmas. I share his feelings of longing to be with a son at familiar family outings. My son flies air cover on six-hour missions over Afghanistan from the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower. From 20,000 feet he looks down on a land that seems so desolate and bleak. He is grateful not to be stationed on the ground, but he's perfectly willing to fly close to the ground to protect his comrades in arms.

'Women, War & Peace' Where: KOCE When: 10 p.m. Tuesday Rating: TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14)

'Frontline: The Vaccine War' Where: KCET When: 9 p.m. Tuesday Rating: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children)

The War on Moms On Life in a Family-Unfriendly Nation Sharon Lerner Wiley: 216 pp., $25.95

President Obama declared an end to the U.S. combat role in Iraq this week, but his speech didn't include the word victory. One reason is that the U.S. combat role isn't entirely over; 50,000 American troops are still in Iraq, and some of them probably will be drawn into battle again. Another is that Iraq isn't at peace and doesn't have a stable government yet. As a political matter, the president would rather have been talking about the economy — the crisis on the minds of most Americans — instead of an almost-forgotten war that has taken too many lives, too much money and too much time.

"Does it stay on all the time or does it come off?" Ahmed asked from his hospital bed, frowning at the thought of a prosthetic leg. "I want one that doesn't come off. " These are the words of a 12-year-old boy, an innocent victim of a brutal regime and an international system that has in too many ways failed the people of Syria. My own 13-year-old, reading these words in the newspaper, asks whether there is something that can be done to help. I begin my usual "It's complicated" - there are legal constraints, there is the lack of political will - but seeing the look in my son's eyes, I say instead, "Yes there is. " The U.N. Security Council, and its permanent members in particular, could take bolder action, working in good faith toward delivering on the promise of the U.N. Charter: "To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, [and]

KIEV, Ukraine - As thousands of Russian and Ukrainian troops stare each other down in Ukraine's strategic Crimean peninsula, the worlds-apart views from Moscow and Washington over the dangerous faceoff suggested Tuesday that a resolution was far from imminent. At the same time, signs emerged from the Kremlin and Kiev that both sides were wary of escalating the crisis, in which one nervous reaction could spark a shooting war. U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, during a visit Tuesday to the Ukrainian capital, accused Russia of gun-barrel diplomacy and brutish behavior more befitting the war-racked 19th century.

TEMPE, Ariz. - The summer in Helmand province, an arid region of southern Afghanistan known to be a Taliban stronghold, was the worst. Hunkering down for eight months in a mud-hut compound with no running water was challenging enough for 1st Lt. Nick Francona and his U.S. Marine Corps rifle platoon. The 120-degree heat of July and August was unbearable. "You take your body armor off, and steam comes out," Francona, now 28, said. "We'd pour water bottles over our heads to rinse off, but I think I took one hot shower the whole time I was there.

BADIRAGUATO, Mexico - Now that the Mexican government has nabbed the country's most-wanted drug lord, Fernando Antonio Robles is worried about the future. Robles is a 16-year-old bricklayer's apprentice in the wild drug-producing municipality where Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman grew up. In this hardscrabble patch of mountainous Sinaloa state, more than 74% of the people live in poverty. And yet the tiny county seat is full of fine new, freshly painted houses. Robles knows that many of them were built by El Chapo's men. "A lot of people are going to be unemployed," Robles said while loitering with a friend on the handsome town square, "because a lot of people worked for him. " The arrest of Guzman on Saturday in the resort city of Mazatlan, a few hours' drive and a world away from Badiraguato, was greeted with delight by the Mexican government.

Dear Liz: We are settling my dad's estate. My dad found a rock, and it sat in my parents' frontyard for years. He worked in a gravel pit for decades, and that was the only rock he found interesting enough to bring home. When my mom died, we held an auction of their household goods. My dad told me to take the rock home. I said that to be fair, the rock should be sold at auction. A family member then stole the rock and has been hiding it for more than two years. This person says it's going to be placed on my dad's grave site.

For extraordinary acts of courage during the D-day invasion of World War II, Walter Ehlers received the nation's highest military award - the Medal of Honor. And it changed his life. "I didn't have a life before the medal," Ehlers said in a 2004 Washington Post interview. A self-described "farmer boy" who not only took out enemy gun nests single handedly during the D-day operation, but also drew fire to himself so other soldiers could withdraw, Ehlers was invited to every presidential inauguration from Eisenhower on. He spoke all over the world to student, military and other groups.

'American Experience: War of the Worlds' When: 9 p.m. Tuesday Channel: KOCE

The United States has the right - and a duty - to try to tamp down political violence in Ukraine, which continued early Thursday despite the announcement of a truce between the government and opposition leaders. It was appropriate for Vice President Joe Biden to telephone President Viktor Yanukovich earlier this week to counsel restraint, and for the State Department to announce that some Ukrainian leaders involved in repressing protesters won't be allowed to travel to the United States.

WASHINGTON - President Obama will seek to right a historical wrong next month when he awards two dozen veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam - including 17 Latinos - the Medal of Honor after a lengthy Pentagon review into racial and ethnic discrimination in the awarding of the nation's commendation for combat valor. Obama will present the medals to three Vietnam War veterans, and to family members of the 21 veterans who are receiving it posthumously, the White House said late Friday.