Military

Baghdad -- A U.S. airstrike left at least 11 dead in a village in northern Iraq yesterday, heightening an Iraqi backlash over the civilian toll of American military actions. The military said in a statement that a helicopter fired on a group of men believed to be a cell that places roadside bombs. The men then took refuge in a nearby house and continued to engage U.S. troops, the military said. The statement said 11 Iraqis were killed, including a militant known to be a member of a bomb cell.

WASHINGTON -- Under pressure from the Pentagon and Republicans in Congress to reduce military commitments overseas, the Clinton administration plans to withdraw the last U.S. troops stationed in Haiti, even though peace there remains tenuous at best, Defense Department and administration officials said yesterday.The U.S. troops -- 480 people, including engineers, doctors and nurses and a security force from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division -- are the remnants of the force of 20,000 that occupied Haiti beginning in September 1994 to restore the elected government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

WASHINGTON -- In this equal-opportunity war, both sides have achieved their objectives. And even bystanders, such as Russia, China, various U.S. corporations, Alaskan reindeer ranchers and others are benefiting.Slobodan Milosevic has irrevocably altered Kosovo's ethnic balance. Hillary Rodham Clinton greeted 453 ethnically cleansed Kosovars at Fort Dix in New Jersey. It will be a long trek home.NATO also has achieved its sovereign objective of largely avoiding NATO casualties. Of course, the three returned prisoners of war perhaps should count as casualties, considering they have been awarded Purple Hearts.

Imagine the scene: Four advanced Soviet fighter planes streak across communist Poland for a confrontation with NATO. Suddenly, the lead jet erupts in a fireball, followed quickly by the next three.As the surviving pilots drift toward the ground in parachutes, they finally get a glimpse of their attacker -- a single U.S. F-22 Raptor fighter jet, all but invisible to radar, roaring by at supersonic speed.Unfortunately for the Air Force and Lockheed Martin Corp., that scene no longer relates to the real world, where the fall of communism and the collapse of the once mighty Soviet military have eliminated the adversary for which the F-22 was designed.

Fort George G. Meade was once a bustling combat support center, home to thousands of troops trained to storm the beaches of Normandy and to fight in the Rhineland.Today, those training grounds are part of a federal wildlife refuge, and Fort Meade's employees are more likely to wear suits than fatigues.Civilians outnumber military personnel nearly three to one, and federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Library of Congress are carving out space for more employees on the 5,415-acre base.

WASHINGTON -- Ruling that the military has a broad right to control the message it sends the troops about morals, a federal appeals court has upheld a law that bans the sale or rental of sexually explicit magazines, films and tapes at military bases.In a 2-1 decision that appears headed for the Supreme Court, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in New York City revived a year-old law that a federal judge had struck down early this year.By throwing out a constitutional challenge to the law, the appeals court ruled Friday that the armed forces could begin enforcing restrictions on sales or rentals of sexually explicit material.

With more than 30 percent of the nation's elementary and secondary school teachers reaching retirement age over the next eight years, some colleges and universities are turning to what may be considered an unlikely source of new teachers - the military.Throughout the nation, educators and school administrators are beginning to recognize that men and women leaving the military through retirement or downsizing represent a significant pool of potential teaching talent.They bring many qualifications:* They usually have at least a baccalaureate degree, often a master's.

"Ground Zero: The Gender Wars in the Military," by Linda Bird Francke. Simon & Schuster. 288 pages. $25.An idealistic young woman joins the Army only to discover it's herself, not her country, she has to defend. At a Maryland base, the men make her life miserable: a trainer fondles her on an obstacle course, and the platoon leader forces her to have sex with him.By now, it's a depressingly familiar tale. But this isn't one of the recruits at the center of the recent scandal at Aberdeen Proving Ground.

COULSDON, England -- If Iraqi President Saddam Hussein wanted to know more about what was devastating Baghdad during the gulf war, he didn't need to call in his spies.All he had to do was check his Jane's publications, which would have told him about everything from stealth bombers to cruise missiles.Here at the main headquarters of Jane's Information Group, some of the world's top weapons watchers and aviation aficionados produce yearbooks and magazines that no military planner, spy chief or airline executive can do without.

KANSAS CITY -- At a recent Senate hearing, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis Reimer asked that the widening controversy over sexual harassment be separated from the larger issue of gender-mixing in the military. It was a reasonable request: Those guilty of harassment, or worse, should be punished. But at the same time, Congress should take a fresh look at the overall policy of gender integration.The appropriate way to frame this issue is to start with a quote from one of the policy's long-time advocates, former Colorado Rep. Patricia Schroeder.

U.S. forces crossed five miles into Syria by helicopter and launched a commando raid yesterday near the Iraqi border that left at least eight people dead, Syrian news outlets and sources reported. Details of yesterday's attack were sketchy. A military officer in Iraq confirmed that U.S. forces had conducted a raid into Syria but declined to provide further information. In Washington, military representatives did not deny that a raid had taken place. Though they would not confirm the attack, they used language typically employed after raids conducted by Special Operations Forces.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. military official said a mechanical problem appeared to be the reason for a helicopter crash yesterday that killed seven American soldiers in Iraq's southern desert, the deadliest such incident in Iraq in more than a year. The CH-47 Chinook was flying with three other choppers from Kuwait when it went down shortly after midnight about 60 miles west of Basra, the military said. Also yesterday, the military said an American soldier fatally shot two U.S. sergeants Sunday morning at a base southeast of Baghdad.

WASHINGTON - With President Bush warning Russia that its push into Georgia could jeopardize relations with the U.S. and Europe, the United States signaled yesterday that any retribution will be aimed at the Russian economy and prestige. Russia's pummeling of Georgian troops has left Washington with few palatable military options, said administration officials who requested anonymity when discussing internal policy decisions. But while acknowledging that military aid to Georgia was off the table and sanctions against Russia were impractical, they insisted that the United States could take longer-term economic and diplomatic measures that would hit the Kremlin hard.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The new army chief of Pakistan has ordered the withdrawal of military officers from the government's civil departments, officials said yesterday, an action that reverses an important policy of his predecessor, President Pervez Musharraf. The order by the chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, was his boldest step to disentangle the military from the civilian sphere of the government since he assumed the post after Musharraf stepped down as military chief in November. An army spokesman said Kayani made the decision last week.

BAGHDAD -- Officials in the southern city of Samawah said a U.S. Army convoy opened fire yesterday in an unprovoked attack on motorists who were trying to get out of its way, injuring four and destroying a truckload of sheep. North of Baghdad in Baquba, three U.S. soldiers were killed yesterday in a suicide bombing. The military released no further details, but witnesses in the city, where American troops had lengthy summer battles with insurgents, said there appeared to be military casualties when a roadside bomb exploded near a group of children clustered around soldiers on foot patrol.

BAGHDAD -- U.S. and Iraqi army units supported a citizen policing group in a daylong battle that repelled an al-Qaida in Iraq assault on a town south of the capital, the U.S. military said yesterday. Between 30 and 45 attackers on foot and in vehicles mounted with machine guns stormed two checkpoints manned by a citizens' group that had recently formed to protect Adwaniya, about 12 miles south of Baghdad. The untested residents, fighting with their personal weapons and minimal combat gear, held their positions until help arrived first from the Iraqi army and then U.S. ground and aerial forces.

Dressed in her U.S. Army fatigues, Trina Smith yesterday visited every booth at a job fair targeting current military members and soon-to-be civilians and offered up a sales pitch two decades in the making. Smith, 49, told recruiter after recruiter that she wasn't a "sit-down type of person" and her 20 years as an Army human resources manager gave her the ideal background for many of the jobs being offered by the 30 companies at the fair. "I've been a soldier for so long, nearly all my life.

Baghdad -- A U.S. airstrike left at least 11 dead in a village in northern Iraq yesterday, heightening an Iraqi backlash over the civilian toll of American military actions. The military said in a statement that a helicopter fired on a group of men believed to be a cell that places roadside bombs. The men then took refuge in a nearby house and continued to engage U.S. troops, the military said. The statement said 11 Iraqis were killed, including a militant known to be a member of a bomb cell.

CASTOR, La. -- On the fourth Sunday in July, John Lee Cockerham was here in his hometown for the baptism of his twin sons. People in this northwest corner of Louisiana think of him as an unlikely success story, a man who started with nothing to become a major in the Army. He and his 17 siblings grew up without electricity and running water. Yet even after he made it out of Castor, his ties there remained strong. The congregation at New Friendship Baptist Church celebrated his last promotion with a parade.

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran showed off its armaments yesterday at annual army celebrations meant to highlight the oil-rich nation's military self-sufficiency and prowess in the face of international sanctions and U.S. hostility. Iranian-made Saegheh fighter jets, which some military experts say are based on U.S. F-18s, screeched across the sky over Iranian-made armored personnel carriers and Ghadr missiles, which have a range of more than 1,000 miles. "All these arms and equipment have been manufactured in Iran by Iranian experts," an announcer said on state-controlled TV. Military commanders and political officials who assembled for the military parade near the tomb of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini said they were undeterred by the possibility of U.S. or Israeli military attacks or increased economic pressure on Iran.