4th Infantry Division

Less than a week before his death, Atlee Wampler had been trying to put up yet another lasting tribute in the county to veterans of WorldWar II.Wampler, 76, died March 11 in North Carolina while on a golf trip. One of the founding members of Carroll County General Hospital and a longtime business owner in Westminster, Wampler also was known for his activities as a veteran of World War II.Wampler was in his familiar seat March 5, moderating the quarterly meeting of the Carroll County Health Services Corp.

ANKARA, Turkey - The Turkish parliament voted yesterday to open the country's airspace to U.S. warplanes, setting the stage for a second front in northern Iraq, which allies hope will speed the war and save lives. The government-sponsored proposal allows U.S.-led coalition planes and missiles to fly over Turkey, but it doesn't address a U.S. request to use military bases or move ground troops across Muslim Turkey, a NATO member. No date has been set for a vote on that larger request. Yesterday's decision, which passed 332-202, gives warplanes based in Europe and the United States a path into Iraq other than over Israel and Jordan.

Mark Goodwin "Goody" Clarke, a human relations executive in Baltimore for 16 years who earned a mayor's citation for his work as a volunteer tutor, died of heart failure Tuesday at Good Samaritan Nursing Center in Baltimore. He was 82. Mr. Clarke, who was born and raised in Chambersburg, Pa., came to Baltimore in 1965 to take a job as vice president for American Bank Stationery. He also served in senior positions at E.F. Goetz Co., Becton Dickinson and Provident Hospital before retiring in 1981.

MOSUL, Iraq - A car bomb ripped through a police station in this northern Iraqi city yesterday, killing at least nine people and wounding 48, and an attack on a U.S. convoy near Kirkuk killed three American soldiers. The car bomb threw severed body parts across four lanes of traffic. Wounded Iraqi officers stumbled down the block after the attack on the police station, leaving a trail of bloody footprints to a small pediatric hospital that was rapidly overwhelmed by the wounded. The blast appeared timed for the moment when the busy police station was sure to be fullest: payday on the eve of the four-day Eid al-Adha feast.

IN THE DEMILITARIZED ZONE, Kuwait -- The name of this place, this "demilitarized zone," has become obsolete, as miles of its desert roads have become filled bumper-to-military-bumper with soldiers and weapons and tons of supplies, an indication of what is to come north of here. The Pentagon has said that troops and supplies have been steadily moving into Iraq as planned, but during the past several days reinforcements have rushed in and the movement of everything from water to ammunition to tanks has visibly accelerated.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two American pilots and the U.S. soldier for whom they were searching were missing yesterday after an Army helicopter crashed into the Tigris River in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. At least two Iraqi police officers and an Iraqi translator were believed to have been killed in the deadly sequence of events yesterday in Mosul, 240 miles northwest of Baghdad. The incident began about 5:15 p.m., when a boat on patrol capsized in the river. Aboard were four American soldiers, two Iraqi police officers and a translator, the Army said.

Attacks against American soldiers in Iraq have been on the rise in the past three weeks, going from a daily average of 20 up to 25. One day, 35 attacks were reported. "The enemy has evolved, a little bit more lethal, a little bit more complex, a little bit more sophisticated," Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, said last week. "As long as we are here, the coalition needs to be prepared to take casualties." Since March, 345 U.S. troops have died in Iraq, 223 of them from hostile fire.

SINCE THE Civil War days of George B. McClellan, American generals have always wanted more troops before going into battle. They haven't always been wrong. Today, the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division is in the desert southwest of Baghdad - having paused so that American and British forces can establish firm control in the rear before it moves toward the capital. The lightning invasion of Iraq succeeded in bringing the division across 185 miles in less than a week, but it didn't kick down the house of Saddam Hussein.

RAMADI, Iraq - Insurgents set off two deadly car bombs, one targeting leaders of one of Iraq's largest tribes and the other exploding outside the offices of a Kurdish political party, amid a U.S. campaign aimed at curbing resistance in Iraq. The blasts, one late Wednesday and the other yesterday morning, killed eight people, including an apparent suicide bomber who died in the bombing yesterday outside the Kirkuk offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. No one claimed responsibility for either attack.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A team of U.N. election experts arrived in Iraq yesterday to gauge the country's ability to hold fair elections. The visit is intended to resolve a deadlock between the U.S.-backed occupation authority and the country's most powerful Shiite cleric. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has demanded direct elections for Iraq's new legislature, though U.S. officials believe the lack of security and general disarray make a fair vote impossible before the handover of power scheduled for no later than July 1. The team is expected to travel widely and talk to Iraqis across the political spectrum in the United Nations' first major Iraq project since Secretary General Kofi Annan ordered out hundreds of staff after the August bombing of the U.N.'s Baghdad compound, which killed 23 people.