Afghanistan News Blog @newzblogz.com

WASHINGTON - Senators face votes regarding taxes on tobacco products and large estates as a $2.9 trillion Democratic budget outline nears a final vote.

Democratic supporters of cutting the estate tax were to vote Friday on a move by Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., to permanently lower taxes on large estates. Kyl's amendment mirrors a plan popular with Democrats.

Another vote was likely Friday on a bid by Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., to put lawmakers on record in favor of increasing taxes on tobacco to pay for a big boost in a popular program providing health insurance for children from poor families.

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CAIRO, EGYPT (AP) -- In a new video posted Thursday on the Internet, an al-Qaida militant who escaped from a U.S. prison in Afghanistan urged Sunni militants in Iraq to join the terror group and claimed the U.S. military's security plan for Baghdad has failed. Abu Yahia al-Libi, who broke out of the U.S. prison at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul in 2005, said it was the sacred duty of all mujahedeen, or holy warriors, to "stand steadfast together." He called on militant groups known as Ansar ...

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CAIRO, EGYPT An al-Qaida militant who escaped from a U-S prison in Afghanistan is urging Sunni militants in Iraq to join the terror group.In a new video posted on the Internet, Abu Yahia al-Libi (ah-BOO' Yah-HEE'-ah ahl LIH'-bee) also claims the Baghdad security plan has failed.Al-Libi broke out of the prison at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul in 2005. He says it's the sacred duty of all mujahedeen, or holy warriors, to "stand steadfast together."The 28-minute video was posted on a Web site commo...

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WASHINGTON ? House Democrats are increasingly confident they have the votes to pass legislation designed to force an end to the war in Iraq next year.

Several party members dropped their opposition to the bill following days of wrangling within a deeply divided caucus. The House planned to vote Friday on a $124 billion bill that would finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but require combat troops return home before September 2008.

Still, Democratic supporters say passage would mark a major step toward ending the war. The bill would be Congress' first binding challenge to the war since it started four years ago and cost the lives of more than 3,200 U.S. troops.

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The author of a new book "They Flew Above the Best" is seeking pilots from the Gulf Coast area who flew in combat during World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The book, being researched by local writer Sunny David, will relate the experiences of combat pilots as they tell stories of their service in their own words. Numerous photos and action shots will be included. The book is expected to be released in early fall.

"The title 'They Flew Above the Best' is descriptive of how our troops on the ground are the best and how these combat pilots flew above them in the air," David said.

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CAIRO, EGYPT ? In a new video posted Thursday on the Internet, an al-Qaida militant who escaped from a U.S. prison in Afghanistan urged Sunni militants in Iraq to join the terror group and claimed the U.S. military's security plan for Baghdad has failed.

Abu Yahia al-Libi, who broke out of the U.S. prison at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul in 2005, said it was the sacred duty of all mujahedeen, or holy warriors, to "stand steadfast together."

He called on militant groups known as Ansar al-Sunnah, the Islamic Army in Iraq and the Army of the Mujahedeen to "hurry up and respond to the call of the Quran to become one and ... join the Islamic State in Iraq," an al-Qaida affiliate in the country.

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SANTA ANA, Calif. - No matter how dark, cold or rainy it was, Kelly George was ready for field training at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota.

Lying in her bunk, her hair twisted in a French braid, she slept in her physical-training uniform. Her steel-toed combat boots, shined and ready, stood at her bedside.

When the bell rang at 5 a.m. she was up. Officers yelled, and George stepped to it. She marched everywhere. Each day she went out for a 10-mile run. She beat out other officer candidates - even guys - maxing out the scores on push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups.

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SACRAMENTO (AP) - Anti-war protesters who have occupied the district office of Rep. Doris Matsui since early January ended their sit-in Thursday but didn't go quietly.

The activists spent much of the day inside the office shouting the names of U.S. military members who have died in the Iraq war. They refused to leave at 5 p.m. because they hadn't finished reading the list, which contains more than 3,000 names.

"Maybe it's a little disruption they should be able to stand because of all the destruction this war is causing," protester Cres Vellucci said.

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Today is Friday, March 23, the 82nd day of 2007. There are 283 days left in the year.

Todays Highlight in History:

On March 23rd, 1775, Patrick Henry made his famous call for American independence from Britain, telling the Virginia Provincial Convention, Give me liberty, or give me death!

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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan Officials say the Afghan army and police have killed at least 28 Taliban militants in fighting in the country's south.Reports from Helmand province put the death toll higher. The fighting was reported to have taken place at a remote location, and none of the numbers could be independently confirmed.Defense Ministry officials say the operations used only Afghan forces with no NATO or U-S troops involved. Again, the account from the scene differs, with district officials sayi...

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WASHINGTON - As the House opened debate Thursday on a proposal that would force the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by September 2008, Democratic leaders scrambled to round up the votes they need in their biggest showdown to date with the White House over the war.

The fate of the legislation, which is expected to come to a vote Friday, is unclear. Several Democrats chafe at the idea of supporting a measure - a $124 billion spending bill for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars - that gives more money to an increasingly unpopular cause and many Republicans deride the plan as a mandate for failure.

But the Democratic leadership appeared to gain momentum late Thursday when Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., announced that the Out of Iraq Caucus, a group of legislators who support cutting off funding of the war and want the troops home sooner, has released members to vote in favor of the legislation.

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The Airman 1st Class with 908 Expedition Air Refuel Services Division bought an American flag before he was deployed to Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, Calif. During his deployment, it never left his side.

I wanted to fly it the whole time I was gone, Sloan said. It was with me on the flight over there, I flew them in Iraq and Afghanistan and then I brought it on the flight home.

The certificate of authenticity states the flag flew during combat aerial missions from Dec. 22 - Feb. 21. The flag now has a new home the Sebring Fire Departments Central Station.

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WASHINGTON - The House of Representatives moves to the brink Friday of voting whether to continue funding the war in Iraq while demanding an end to most American military involvement there by the end of August 2008.

The vote is expected to be very close because anti-war Democrats are divided: Some say the measure wouldn't end the war fast enough or put enough pressure on President Bush, while others said it would be the first step and the toughest bill possible that has a chance to pass.

Yet after weeks of internal debate, the Democrats' Progressive Caucus agreed Thursday morning to let their members vote their consciences rather than insist that they all oppose the bill. Ten members agreed to support the bill, despite their strong reservations, in order to pass it.

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WASHINGTON ? The Veterans Affairs' vast network of 1,400 health clinics and hospitals is beset by maintenance problems such as mold, leaking roofs and even a colony of bats, an internal review says. The investigation, ordered two weeks ago by VA Secretary Jim Nicholson, is the first major review of the facilities conducted since the disclosure of squalid conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. A copy of the report was provided to The Associated Press.

Democrats newly in charge of Congress called the report the latest evidence of an outdated system unable to handle a coming influx of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. Investigators earlier this month found that the VA's system for handling disability claims was strained to its limit.

"Who's been minding the store?" said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. "They keep putting Band-Aids on problems, when what the agency needs is major triage."

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WASHINGTON (AP) - The Veterans Affairs' vast network of 1,400 health clinics and hospitals is beset by maintenance problems such as mold, leaking roofs and even a colony of bats, an internal review says.

The investigation, ordered two weeks ago by VA Secretary Jim Nicholson, is the first major review of the facilities conducted since the disclosure of squalid conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

A copy of the report was provided to The Associated Press.

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Re: Larry Smilgius? ?Don?t be soft-hearted? letter.

It is appropriate that the Riviera Golf Estate association?s ?ruling authority? should enforce the rules established for the ?health, safety and benefit of the majority.?

But, how does Paul Smith?s hobby of making dominoes infringe on anyone?s health, safety or benefit?

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BAGHDAD - The violent Shiite militia known as the Mahdi Army is breaking into splinter groups, with up to 3,000 gunmen now financed directly by Iran and no longer loyal to the firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, adding a potentially more deadly element to Iraq's violent mix.

Two senior militia commanders said hundreds of these fighters have crossed into Iran for training by the elite Quds force, a branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guard thought to have trained Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon and Muslim fighters in Bosnia and Afghanistan.

The breakup is an ominous development at a time when U.S. and Iraqi forces are working to defeat religious-based militias and secure Iraq under government control. Although al-Sadr's forces have battled the coalition repeatedly, including pitched battles in 2004, they have mostly stayed in the background during the latest offensive.

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WASHINGTON - The U.S. government must learn from its multi-million-dollar mistakes of poor contract oversight and bad planning in its Iraq reconstruction effort or risk repeating them there and elsewhere, investigators say.

The audit released Thursday by Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, is the first to list in one place the series of mistakes, delays and missed opportunities in a four-year-old Iraq war and reconstruction effort that has cost taxpayers nearly $400 billion.

Characterizing the U.S. effort as chaotic and poorly managed, Bowen found the Bush administration's rebuilding effort riddled with problems - from a lack of strategy and unclear lines of authority to confusion and disarray between the Defense and State Departments.

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Iraq and Afghanistan are far away. But the countries seem eerily nearby when Texas legislators pay tribute to fallen troops, as they have more than two dozen times this year.

On March 6, the 31-member Senate remembered eight service members with roots in the Rio Grande Valley. Patsy Spaw, the Senate secretary, read a resolution for each one ? a solemn grind.

The hush accompanying such resolutions seems in keeping with the Senate's staid demeanor. It's more of a shock when such resolutions come up in the 150-member House, where Speaker Tom Craddick precedes each presentation by directing the milling, yakking members to sit down and shush.

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Washington ?- The Veterans Affairs' vast network of 1,400 health clinics and hospitals is beset by maintenance problems such as mold, leaking roofs and even a colony of bats, an internal review says.

The investigation, ordered two weeks ago by VA Secretary Jim Nicholson, is the first major review of the facilities conducted since the disclosure of squalid conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

A copy of the report was provided to The Associated Press.

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WASHINGTON - The Veterans Affairs' vast network of 1,400 health clinics and hospitals is beset by maintenance problems such as mold, leaking roofs and even a colony of bats, an internal review says.

The investigation, ordered two weeks ago by VA Secretary Jim Nicholson, is the first major review of the facilities since the disclosure of squalid conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

A copy of the report was provided to the Associated Press.

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The Veterans Affairs' vast network of 1,400 health clinics and hospitals is beset by maintenance problems such as mold, leaking roofs and even a colony of bats, an internal review says. The investigation, ordered two weeks ago by VA Secretary Jim Nicholson, is the first major review of the facilities conducted since the disclosure of squalid conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. A copy of the report was provided to The Associated Press.

Democrats newly in charge of Congress called the report the latest evidence of an outdated system unable to handle a coming influx of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. Investigators earlier this month found that the VA's system for handling disability claims was strained to its limit.

"Who's been minding the store?" said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. "They keep putting Band-Aids on problems, when what the agency needs is major triage."

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WASHINGTON - An emergency spending bill that calls for pulling troops out of Iraq by August 2008 could reach the House floor Thursday, congressional Democrats say, setting up what could be one of the closest and - for some lawmakers - most agonizing votes so far this year.

Leaders of both parties, including some liberal Democrats who oppose the bill because they want tougher provisions on an Iraq pullout, have spent the week lobbying lawmakers for their votes.

Lehigh Valley area lawmakers are split along party lines. Democrats Patrick Murphy, 8th District, and Allyson Schwartz, 13th District, plan to support the measure, and Republicans Jim Gerlach, 6th District, and Charlie Dent, 15th District, oppose it.

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Senate Democrats on Wednesday revived legislation urging President Bush to bring combat troops home from Iraq in a year, attaching the plan to a $122 billion measure needed to fund the war.

The move puts Democrats on track for another confrontation with Bush over the increasingly unpopular war and with Republicans, who are expected to try to block the measure.

House Democratic leaders are pushing a similar measure that would require that troops leave by the fall of 2008. Party officials predicted the House would pass it on Friday, albeit by a razor-thin margin.

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WASHINGTON ? Senate Democrats on Wednesday revived legislation urging President Bush to bring combat troops home from Iraq in a year, attaching the plan to a $122 billion measure needed to fund the war.

The move puts Democrats on track for another confrontation with Bush over the increasingly unpopular war and with Republicans, who are expected to try to block the measure.

House Democratic leaders are pushing a similar measure that would require that troops leave by the fall of 2008. Party officials predicted the House would pass it on Friday, albeit by a razor-thin margin.

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The provision is similar to a resolution that was rejected by the Senate last week. The more-than $121 billion-dollar bill would require the president to start removing troops within four months of the bill's passage and would set a non-binding goal of pulling out combat troops by the end of March next year.

The House is expected to vote tomorrow on a similar $124 billion-dollar spending bill that would finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The House bill, which Bush also threatened to veto, would demand that combat troops be out of Iraq before September 2008, possibly sooner.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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UNITED NATIONS The U-N's top envoy to Afghanistan is calling on the international community to do more to counter a resurgence of the Taliban.Tom Koenigs told the Security Council it needs to help develop Afghanistan, improve security there, and eradicate the poppy trade. Experts warn that Afghanistan's poppy crop will top last year's record-setting levels, and the profits will be used to fuel terrorism and increase the Taliban threat.Koenigs said progress had been made in northern Afghanistan, ...

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Land Mines From Iran-Iraq War Sold on Black Market

Iraqi Outpost Tests War Strategy

Iraq's Toll Felt Across U.S.

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HONOLULU (AP) -- A former NFL player who left the sport to join the Marines and was motivated by college roommate Pat Tillman, who died in Iraq, was heading for the war himself Tuesday night. Lance Cpl. Jeremy Staat, a former defensive lineman for the Pittsburgh Steelers and the St. Louis Rams who had been playing Arena football, was one of 300 Marines in the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment being deployed from Kaneohe Bay. The unit is expected to be in Iraq for seven months. "The way I lo...

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— Democrats are using the same tricks as President Bush in their rival plan to balance the federal budget by 2012: ignoring long-term costs of the war in Iraq and the need to fix a tax law that threatens unsuspecting middle-class families.

Bush used phantom savings to claim he can balance the budget while extending his tax cuts into the future. Democrats would use that money to increase spending on education, health research and other domestic programs while claiming to be budget balancers.

"They say they balance, but they do it by leaving out things," Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad said on PBS' "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" when Bush's budget came out Feb. 5. "They leave out fixing the alternative minimum tax. They leave out realistic war cost."

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JEFFREY Lucey was 18 when he signed up for the Marine Reserves in December 1999. His parents, Kevin and Joyce Lucey of Belchertown, Mass., were not happy. They had hoped their son would go to college.

Jeffrey himself was ambivalent.

"The recruiter was a very smooth talker and very, very persistent," Joyce Lucey told me in a call from Orlando, Fla., where she was on vacation with her husband and their two grown daughters last week. The conversation was difficult. Joyce Lucey would talk for a while, and then her husband would get on the phone.

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FORT LEWIS, Wash. (AP) - Another Fort Lewis soldier has been remembered in a memorial service for what he hoped to become after he left the Army.

21-year-old Corporal Brian Chevalier was killed last Wednesday when a roadside bomb exploded near his Stryker vehicle in northeast Iraq.

Today at Fort Lewis, Major Robert Bennett said Chevalier enlisted in the Army in August 2005 to provide for his daughter, 5-year-old Taylor, and to pay for college so he could become a physical therapist or a doctor after his military career.

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The right of public access to public records is one of the most indispensable elements of a democratic society. In Florida, this right is enshrined in the state Constitution, but it's a different story at the national level, where an executive obsession with secrecy has undermined open government at every turn. Now, Congress is poised to adopt a series of bills that strengthen the public's right to know what their government is up to. These measures are badly needed. They merit our strongest endorsement.

The bills passed by the House of Representatives last week face a veto threat from President Bush, setting up one of the most significant confrontations over secrecy in recent memory. We hope Bush thinks twice. The bills were passed with a bipartisan majority, and even Republicans such as Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, one of the most solid conservatives in the chamber, urged the president to support the measures. "I feel on this issue there should be openness," said Rep. Burton.

Freedom of Information Act:

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UNITED NATIONS — Suicide bombers are crossing the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan with increasing frequency, launching attacks directed against foreign military convoys with funding from abroad, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a report to the Security Council on Tuesday.

Despite high losses during the past year, the Taliban insurgency appears to be "emboldened by their strategic successes, rather than disheartened by tactical failures" in Afghanistan, Ban said in the report.

The September 2006 peace agreement between Pakistan and pro-Taliban fighters in that country's North Waziristan region did not prevent the border area from being used as a staging ground for attacks on Afghanistan, Ban said. Instead, the agreement led to a 50 percent increase in security incidents involving insurgents in Afghanistan's Khost province and a 70 percent increase in Paktika province — both on the border — between September and November, he said.

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SALEM, Ore. (AP) ? After two hours of emotional debate, which included one lawmaker reading the names of Oregonians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Oregon House backed a resolution Tuesday urging President Bush and Congress to withdraw troops from Iraq as soon as possible.

Approval of the nonbinding resolution came after sponsors said it was important for state lawmakers to send a message, on behalf of their constituents, that Oregonians no longer support the four-year-old Iraq war and want U.S. troops withdrawn.

"Our troops have done their job. It's long past time to bring them home," said Rep. Chip Shields, D-Portland, chief sponsor of the measure.

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Former Vice President Walter Mondale and author-photographer Ann Jones will be at Pacific Lutheran University this week for a discussion of international issues ranging from peace to health to sustainability.

The two-day event, ?World Conversations: Voices from around the Globe,? is free and open to the public. It will conclude Friday night with a dinner.

Mondale will speak at 12:30 p.m. Friday in Chris Knutzen Hall about ?The Changing World Conversation.? Jones, author of ?Kabul in Winter,? will talk at 7 p.m. Thursday at Lagerquist Hall about women in post-Taliban Afghanistan.

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An aide to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray said the lawmaker will press the Army?s top doctor at a congressional hearing today to look into reports of problems for wounded and injured soldiers at Fort Lewis and Madigan Army Medical Center.

A spokeswoman for the Washington Democrat said she received several calls in the past few days from soldiers in the medical hold units at the post, who complained of long waits for care and frustration with the Army?s medical and disability bureaucracies.

Murray will press Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley when he appears before the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee today. The hearing is one of many this week as lawmakers begin to investigate reports of shocking treatment of outpatient soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

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CAPITOL HILL The House is to vote this week on a war-funding bill that includes a call to bring U-S troops home from Iraq next year.It's expected to be close. Up to a dozen Democrats are reported to be wavering on a withdrawal deadline. So House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is rallying prominent party members to help widen the margin.Former Congressman Lee Hamilton, who co-chaired the Iraq Study Group, is expected to extend his support for the measure. Former Florida Senator Bob Graham and President Car...

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The soldiers who play the enemy at the Army?s two big combat training centers have a reputation for inflicting heavy losses on their home turf.

At Fort Irwin, Calif., and Fort Polk, La., they stand in as Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaida and Taliban fighters, and they dish out lumps to units coming through for exercises.

The opposing force ? ?opfor,? in Army-speak ? is pretty tough on the road, too. Soldiers at Fort Lewis learned that this month while preparing for an early deployment to Iraq on a shortened training schedule.

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Author William T. Vollmann goes to the edge in a book on poverty that is quite different from his previous works. William T. Vollmann has long been concerned with the fringes of society, where necessity reduces moral questions to their most elemental fiber and survival is the greatest good.

He spent much of the 1980s and 1990s in San Francisco, tracing the urban demimonde in works of fiction like ?The Rainbow Stories,? ?Whores for Gloria? and ?The Royal Family.? He has also reported from Afghanistan and Sarajevo, where in 1994 he was nearly killed in an attack and two of his companions died.

Throughout it all, he has become known for producing densely layered narratives filled with allusions: His 2005 novel ?Europe Central,? which seeks to personalize the history of 20th-century Russia and Germany and won a National Book Award, is more than 700 pages, with 50 more pages of notes.

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CAPITOL HILL The House is to vote this week on a war-funding bill that includes a call to bring U-S troops home from Iraq next year.It's expected to be close. Up to a dozen Democrats are reported to be wavering on a withdrawal deadline. So House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is rallying prominent party members to help widen the margin.Former Congressman Lee Hamilton, who co-chaired the Iraq Study Group, is expected to extend his support for the measure. Former Florida Senator Bob Graham and President Car...

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WASHINGTON - Two top officers on the State Department's Cuba desk are moving to Iraq, adding to a government reshuffle involving a total of six key Cuba posts.

Stephen McFarland, who heads the Cuba desk, and his number two, Timothy Zuniga-Brown, will join the Iraqi provincial reconstruction teams, which operate outside Baghdad's Green Zone and are considered dangerous for U.S. personnel.

The changes come as Cuban leader Fidel Castro remains largely out of public view after having temporarily handed power to his younger brother Raul due to health troubles.

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WASHINGTON - President Bush, marking the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war, pleaded for patience, saying "there will be good days and bad days ahead."

As the war entered its fifth year, House Democrats were preparing to bring to the floor a $124 billion war spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan that would require the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the fall of 2008.

In a televised statement from the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Bush, who has threatened to veto the legislation, urged lawmakers to avoid trying to force an end to the war.

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A Wisconsin Rapids man says he's guilty of robbing the QuickCash Loan Store.

Authorities say 28-year-old Jamie Kappellusch is the man seen in surveillance video in August holding up the store with a gun.

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MILWAUKEE (AP) -- A man who spent almost half of his life in prison for a rape he didn't commit is the first person ever exonerated through DNA evidence and then convicted of murder.

That's according to Eric Ferrero, spokesman of national Innocence Project, which works with three dozen similar organizations, including Wisconsin's Innocence Project.

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About 60 Wisconsin troops deployed to Afghanistan are glad to be back home.

The members of the 961st Engineer Battalion at the U.S. Reserve Center had a happy homecoming in Milwaukee Sunday.

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PARIS -- Europe ranks fairly low among Washington's current preoccupations, and France even lower. Iraq and Iran are on top of the list, but no one in Europe wants to help George Bush punt the Iraq war into 2009, when a new administration will take power and assume the blame for how it all ends. The NATO Europeans are reinforcing an unwise U.S. policy in Afghanistan, but Afghanistan has not yet claimed a major place in Washington's attention, although that will soon come. France was the first to...

France has always been America's major continental European ally, whether Washington liked it or not (and usually it did not). Despite Germany's economic power, France has always been the leading political power on the continent (which is not the same as being Europe's political leader, which it is not). It is Europe's second-ranking economic power and its first-ranking military power - Europe's only operationally autonomous military actor. In an admirable new analysis in Survival, the journal o...

There are limits on how far this can go. The easy assumption in both the U.S. and France is that the Franco-American hostility of 2003 and after ("freedom fries" and all that) is ended, France having been proven tragically right. A new American government in 2009 is expected to be alliance-friendly and multilateralist.

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A Merrill man has been charged in Lincoln County with severely beating his girlfriend and their 18-day-old son.

The Merrill Police Department says Bradley T. Turonie, who's turning 32 today, was arrested Friday.

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MARINETTE, Wis. (AP) -- A white man has pleaded not guilty to fatally shooting and stabbing a Hmong hunter in woods near Peshtigo in a slaying that has rekindled racial tension in northern Wisconsin.

28-year-old James Nicholas entered his plea today in Marinette Circuit Court.

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MINONG, Wis. (AP) -- A Marine from northern Wisconsin is being remembered by his school counselors as someone with a big heart who wanted to help others.

The Pentagon says 20-year-old Lance Corporal Harry Timberman of Minong died Saturday from wounds suffered in combat operations in Al Anbar province.

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