American Soldiers

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Attacks against the American occupying force in Iraq escalated yesterday as two soldiers were killed and four were wounded in two separate ambushes on military convoys in one of the most violent days since the end of the war. Attackers fired rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns and small arms at an eight-vehicle supply convoy in what military officials described as an ambush at 6:15 a.m. near Hadithah, 120 miles northwest of...

Vice President Biden, Mr. Chief Justice, Members of the United States Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens:    Each time we gather to inaugurate a president, we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution.  We affirm the promise of our democracy.  We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names.  What makes us exceptional -...

WASHINGTON -- For years, the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga., which is meant to teach combat skills to Latin American soldiers, has come under political attack.Rep. Cynthia A. McKinney, a Georgia Democrat, has gone so far as to call it the "School of Assassins" because of human rights abuses she says were committed by some of its graduates.But the school's federal funding has never been in jeopardy -- until now.Late Thursday, the House cut funding that would have paid for training the soldiers from South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

Gens. John Allen and David Petraeus have been stupid in their misuse of technology, for a flirtation in the case of the former and an affair in the case of the latter ("Pieces of a puzzle," Nov. 14). As philanderers, these two men are abject failures, and if discretion is the better part of valor, they have shown none in their flings with two married women. Those who argue that dalliances should be perfectly fine among consenting adults and American puritanism is a rude intrusion in the private lives of public figures are wrong in their approach to this widening scandal.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The last day of the worst month of car bombings in Iraq targeted the most vulnerable and proved the most horrifying. Children gathering for candy from American soldiers at the opening of a sewage treatment plant bore the brunt yesterday of a series of guerrilla bombings that killed at least 35 youngsters and 14 adults. About 200 people - many of them children - were wounded in the attacks. It was the worst single death toll of children since the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The American soldiers had come yesterday morning to search for explosives in a neighborhood packed with children. Instead, a suicide bomber found them. In the deadliest insurgent attack in Iraq in more than two months, and the most lethal involving children since September, an explosives-filled SUV killed at least 27 Iraqis and a U.S. soldier. About two dozen of the dead were youngsters who had been playing near U.S. soldiers at an impromptu checkpoint in Jadida, a lower-class residential district of low-lying buildings and rotting water mains populated by Shiites, Sunnis and Christians.

A standing joke around the well-appointed office suite of U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John C. Doesburg is that he was 4 inches taller when he enlisted 35 years ago. Considering the general's 350 parachute jumps - and the cumulative shock to his body meeting Earth - it is easy to see that the humor contains a large measure of admiration. Doesburg, commander of the Army Research, Development and Engineering Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, will retire today from the military. At 57, he takes with him the satisfaction of forming and directing a unit that dreamed up and built a new generation of war gadgetry - and of working to better shield American troops in Humvees in Iraq.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - On the street corner 50 yards from a group of U.S. soldiers, a giggling 10-year-old boy clutched an AK-47 assault rifle, which was fully loaded and ready to fire. The rifle, once the property of the U.S. military, would not be fired in the direction of the soldiers on this night, but soon would be. Muhammad al-Jurany got the weapon from a member of the new Iraqi security apparatus, the Facilities Protection Service, a force of 14,500 armed guards who are to protect hotels, government buildings and oil pipelines, among other fixtures.

Regarding your recent report that more than 250 members of the Maryland National Guard are being deployed to Afghanistan ("More Md. Guard units headed to Afghanistan," Aug. 15): Over the past 10 years hundreds of American soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, including 34 this year alone. Yet neither presidential candidate says a word about this lunacy. The presidential dialogue does include charges that Mitt Romney is "deranged" and President Barack Obama is a "liar. " That's hardly the talk of serious statesmen.

SO NOW that American soldiers are dragged through the streets of Mogadishu and at least a dozen American soldiers are killed in only one sunny weekend on the tropical coast of your friendly Indian Ocean, is there any lesson to be gained by the Great Humanitarian Somalia Campaign of 1993?Yes, there is. It is that the United States should abandon all the fuzzy, imprecise, well-meaning policies of humanitarian intervention, multilateralism and multinational peacekeeping and return to traditional policies of self-interest backed up by overwhelming and unmistakable American and American-led force.

Regarding your recent report that more than 250 members of the Maryland National Guard are being deployed to Afghanistan ("More Md. Guard units headed to Afghanistan," Aug. 15): Over the past 10 years hundreds of American soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, including 34 this year alone. Yet neither presidential candidate says a word about this lunacy. The presidential dialogue does include charges that Mitt Romney is "deranged" and President Barack Obama is a "liar. " That's hardly the talk of serious statesmen.

Boys' Latin is gearing up for round-the-clock lacrosse starting Thursday morning to raise money for wounded American soldiers through the Wounded Warrior Project. Shootout for Soldiers is a 24-hour lacrosse game set to take place from 9 a.m. Thursday through 9 a.m. Friday. The 24-hour game, for males 10 years old and up, will be divided into 24 one-hour sections. A number of professional and college players have signed up to play and support the benefit. Through lacrosse, the goal is to raise significant funds for wounded American soldiers as well as establish a stronger connection with local veterans.

It is being speculated that the American soldier who shot so many children and Afghan civilians recently probably suffered from battle fatigue and post traumatic stress disorder ("The killings in Kandahar," March 13). The Taliban has responded to these killings, as expected, in an opportunistic fashion, getting political mileage out of the tragic episode for itself and stirring up hatred against the Americans and nationalistic fervor across Afghanistan. Interestingly, the Taliban hit the right chord when it commented that an American trial declaring the perpetrator of the killings as a mad man, who acted under the duress of a mental breakdown, would only show the world that the U.S. is sending lunatics to Afghanistan.

Is America safe? Militant Islamic leader Osama bin Laden was shot and killed by American soldiers. Responsible for the September 11th terrorist attacks, bin Laden's death ended a 10-year worldwide man hunt. President Barack Obama announced," justice has been done. " Has justice really been done? Or is this occurrence just room for more retaliation from the Middle East? Who is to say that America won't be attacked again? The "martyrs" who followed Osama bin Laden could very well be upset about their leader's death.

One hundred forty-seven years ago Monday, Abraham Lincoln made his only appearance in Baltimore as president, when he stepped off a special B&O train at Camden Station to address the Sanitary Fair Commission, whose purpose was raising funds for wounded Union soldiers. Shortly after 6 p.m. on April 18, 1864, as the presidential special braked to a stop at Camden Station, Lincoln prepared to get off and be welcomed to the city by a large crowd that had gathered outside the station and on the platform and cheered him for 20 minutes.

One harsh winter long ago, as he led an encampment of soldiers near a European forest, it never occurred to Alfred H.M. Shehab, then a brash young Army lieutenant, that he and his 30-man unit were a part of military history. "A platoon leader is so busy thinking about what might happen and how to make things go right" that it's hard to grasp much of a broader perspective, says Shehab, a 91-year-old retired lieutenant colonel who lives near Fort Meade. As it was, the 3rd Platoon of B Troop in the 38th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron (Mechanized)

Boys' Latin is gearing up for round-the-clock lacrosse starting Thursday morning to raise money for wounded American soldiers through the Wounded Warrior Project. Shootout for Soldiers is a 24-hour lacrosse game set to take place from 9 a.m. Thursday through 9 a.m. Friday. The 24-hour game, for males 10 years old and up, will be divided into 24 one-hour sections. A number of professional and college players have signed up to play and support the benefit. Through lacrosse, the goal is to raise significant funds for wounded American soldiers as well as establish a stronger connection with local veterans.

Henry A. Mucci,88, an Army colonel who led the raid that rescued survivors of the Bataan Death March during World War II, died Sunday in Melbourne, Fla.He headed the January 1945 mission that freed 511 men. Most of them were American soldiers who had endured brutal confinement in the Japanese prison camp at Cabanatuan in the Philippines for nearly three years.Pub Date: 4/25/97

'Art of the American Soldier' What: The U.S. Army has collected more than 15,000 paintings and sketches created by over 1,300 American soldiers in the line of duty. With no national museum to display this impressive collection, the works have remained in curatorial storage in Washington for decades, seldom made available for public viewing. Through nearly 300 never-before-seen paintings and sketches created by men and women in the line of duty, the exhibition offers intimate, firsthand insight into the life of an American soldier.

Paul P. Blitz, a decorated World War II veteran who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, died from complications of pneumonia Oct. 19 at Franklin Square Hospital Center. The longtime Essex resident was 95. Born in Monessen, Pa., the son of Finnish immigrants, he was six months old when his family moved to Weirton, W.Va., when his father went to work for Weirton Steel Co. In 1920, they moved to the St. Helena neighborhood of Dundalk, when the elder Mr. Blitz took a job with Bethlehem Steel Corp.