Day: August 4, 2006

TIKRIT, Iraq – U.S. soldiers stepped outside the law when they murdered three Iraqi detainees "in cold blood," a prosecutor told a U.S. military hearing on Friday.

"U.S. soldiers must follow the laws of war. That’s what makes us better than the terrorists, what sets us apart from the thugs and the hitmen," said Captain Joseph Mackey, closing arguments for the prosecution of the four U.S. servicemen.

"These soldiers did just the opposite. They cut them loose and murdered them in cold blood," he said.

By ROBERT H. REID

American generals have laid bare the facts: Baghdad is on the brink of chaos, and the specter of all-out civil war looms.

Instead of standing down, as had been hoped this year, the U.S. military is preparing for a major operation to try to take back Baghdad’s streets from Shiite and Sunni extremists. The goal is to stem sectarian violence that Iraqi security forces could not control.

By ANN McFEATTERS

By DALE McFEATTERS

President Bush concluded his visit to the White House press corps’ farewell to the old briefing room with a heartfelt, "For those of you going to Crawford, saddle up!"

And late that afternoon he was indeed at his beloved Texas ranch. The man does love his vacations there.

By PETE YOST

The Bush administration is often accused of an obsession with secrecy, and critics say the case of the Justice Department versus Connecticut librarians proves their point.

Documents once kept secret in a now closed terrorism inquiry reveal that government lawyers kept secret a newspaper article and several references to Supreme Court opinions that undercut government arguments for secrecy.

New York Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday called on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign, after accusing him of "presiding over a failed policy in Iraq."

Clinton’s spokesman confirmed the senator said President George W. Bush should accept Rumsfeld’s resignation.

By MARY DALRYMPLE

A Republican election-year effort to fuse a cut in inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates with the first minimum wage increase in nearly a decade was rejected by the Senate late Thursday.

By Kristin Roberts

The head of the U.S. Marine Corps briefed Rep. John Murtha on the Haditha case after the vocal war critic publicly said Marines had killed innocent civilians in that Iraqi city, the Corps said on Thursday.

A group of Marines, while suspected in the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians, has not been charged, and official results from the military’s investigation remain outstanding. A U.S. defense official said on Wednesday, however that evidence indicates Marines deliberately shot to death unarmed civilians.

By JIM ABRAMS

Congress passed major pension legislation designed to assure American workers, including millions of baby boomers nearing the end of their working careers, that the pensions they have been promised will be there when they retire.

By Erwin Seba

The Texas Republican Party said on Thursday it will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take Tom DeLay, the indicted former House of Representatives Republican leader, off the November congressional ballot.

The announcement came within hours of a U.S. Appeals Court decision that the state Republican Party could not replace DeLay, who said he would not seek re-election and resigned from Congress in May after polls showed he might lose his suburban Houston district to a Democrat.