In one of several new measures, tens of thousands of Baghdad residents were ordered to leave homes they are occupying illegally in an effort to reverse the tide of sectarian cleansing.
The push for a U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, already under fire in South Korea, is being viewed skeptically by U.S. manufacturers, especially carmakers, according to industry and congressional officials.
Emboldened with ideas aired at two private retreats, Senate Republicans are planning as soon as Thursday to release their 2007–2008 legislative agenda, which they hope will help the 21 GOP senators up for re-election next year keep their seats.
The nuclear deal unveiled today in Beijing to freeze North Korea's plutonium-yielding reactor and readmit inspectors is, as a smiling Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, "the result of patient, creative, and tough diplomacy." True as that is, her statement masks the range of difficulties that had to be overcome in reaching this point. They include not only the obvious North Korean obstinacy but also the nagging policy disputes within a Bush administration that, at times, has seemed ambivalent about doing diplomatic business with a troublemaking communist regime.
AP - Anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr fled Iraq for Iran ahead of a security crackdown in Baghdad and the arrival of 21,500 U.S. troops sent by President Bush to quell sectarian violence, a senior U.S. official said Tuesday.
AP - Democrats relentlessly assailed President Bush's policy in Iraq as a catastrophic failure Tuesday as the House plunged into momentous debate on a war that has lost public support and cost more than 3,100 U.S. troops their lives. "No more blank checks," declared Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
AP - The Army and Marine Corps are letting in more recruits with criminal records, including some with felony convictions, reflecting the increased pressure of five years of war and its mounting casualties.
A Utah police officer hailed for helping stop a rampaging shooter who killed five people in a Salt Lake City mall said he simply did what his fellow officers would have done. "I was in a situation that I was carrying my gun, and I felt that I had to do something," Officer Ken Hammond said.
At least 18 people were killed when a car bomb exploded near an Iranian military bus Wednesday morning in the southeastern Iranian border town of Zahedan, state-run Iranian news agency IRNA reported.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace appeared Tuesday to question Bush administration assertions that the Iranian government is supplying arms to Shiite militants in Iraq. Pace said Iranians were involved in Iraq, but he was not sure if they had links back to Tehran. The U.S. military has said a section of Iran's Revolutionary Guard which answers directly to Iran's Supreme Leader is sending armor piercing weapons into Iraq.
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