U.S. officials say killings of civilians by U.S. troops at checkpoints and on convoy duties have dropped sharply to about one a week now from one a day last year due to new efforts.

Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, [...] ``We have people who were on the fence or supported us who in the last two years or three years have in fact decided to strike out against us. And you have to ask: Why is that? And I would argue in many instances we are our own worst enemy,'' Chiarelli said.
U.S. officials previously have said they don't keep track of civilian causalities, and Iraqi officials stopped releasing numbers of U.S.-caused casualties after Knight Ridder reported in September 2004 that the Iraqi Ministry of Health had attributed more than twice as many civilian deaths to the actions of U.S. forces than to ``terrorist'' attacks during the period from June to September 2004.
Chiarelli declined to release the numbers, but he said U.S. soldiers are killing and injuring fewer Iraqi civilians this year in so-called ``escalation of force'' incidents at checkpoints and near convoys than they did in July of last year, when officials first started tracking the statistic.

According to a senior Army official, the alleged incident was first revealed by a soldier during a routine counseling-type session. The official, who requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said that soldier did not witness the incident but heard about it. A second soldier, who also was not involved, said he overhead soldiers conspiring to commit the crimes, and then later saw bloodstains on their clothes, the official said. He also said the four people killed included three adults and a child, and one of the adults was the woman who allegedly was raped.

U.S. isn't winning its war on terror, experts tell poll
More than eight in 10 American terrorism and national security experts don't agree with President Bush's claims that the U.S. is winning the fight against terrorism, and the Iraq war is the biggest reason why, according to a poll released Wednesday.

Corruption and coalition failures spur Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan -- The United States and its allies have been forced to launch their biggest military operation of the war here because in the 55 months since ousting the Taliban movement from power, they neglected to establish minimal security or governance in the country's south, analysts say. [...] "If we had made efforts on this scale five years ago, we would be in a much stronger position than we are now," said James Dobbins, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan

Nato: Taliban's resurgence due to world focus on Iraq
British General David Richards said he was "optimistic" of defeating the movement, whose recent resurgence has led to the worst violence in Afghanistan since the Taliban were toppled by United States-led forces in late 2001.
"There's no doubt there is a resurgent Taliban problem," he told the BBC's Pashtu-language service late on Thursday.
"Why? Largely it's because people took their eye off this ball and a vacuum was allowed to develop and that vacuum was filled by the Taliban.

When you put look at any population of many tens of thousands of young men, whether in war or in Detroit, statistically some bad ones will do very nasty things.

When you put look at any population of many tens of thousands of young men, whether in war or in Detroit, statistically some bad ones will do very nasty things.(rogan1313)

Sailor [...] I don't think it excuses any crime, but illuminates the fallacy of generalizing the behavior of the few into a label on the many, do you disagree?

Under the reign of Saddam Hussein, dissidents called Iraq "the republic of fear" and hoped it would end when Hussein was toppled. But the war, it turns out, has spread the fear democratically. Now the terror is not merely from the regime, or from U.S. troops, but from everybody, everywhere.
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Today, the Americans are just one more militia lost in the anarchy. They, too, are killing Iraqis.
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The world wonders if Iraq is on the brink of civil war, while Iraqis fear calling it one, knowing the fate such a description would portend. In truth, the civil war started long before Samarra and long before the first uprisings. It started when U.S. troops arrived in Baghdad. It began when Sunnis discovered what they had lost, and Shiites learned what they had gained. And the worst is yet to come.

BEIJI, Iraq (AP) - Investigators believe a group of U.S. soldiers suspected of raping an Iraqi woman, then killing her and three members of her family plotted the attack for nearly a week, a U.S. military official said Saturday.
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The soldiers had studied their victims for about a week and the attack was "totally premeditated," the official said on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.

Fifteen-year-old Abeer Qasim Hamza was afraid, her mother confided in a neighbor. As pretty as she was young, the girl had attracted the unwelcome attention of U.S. soldiers manning a checkpoint that the girl had to pass through almost daily in their village in the south-central city of Mahmudiyah, her mother told the neighbor. Abeer told her mother again and again in her last days that the soldiers had made advances toward her, a neighbor, Omar Janabi, said this weekend, recounting a conversation he said he had with the girl's mother, Fakhriyah, on March 10.