Iraq War

On a recent Friday morning, a classroom of teenagers at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School broke up into small groups and spent an hour not answering questions about Albert Camus's "The Plague. " It wasn't that the students were shy, or bored, or that they hadn't done the reading. They were following instructions: Ask as many questions as they could, and answer none of them. The kids wrote in rapid fire on sheets of butcher paper. "Why is everyone acting normal when people are dropping dead?"

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - President Obama sent 1,000 Air Force Academy cadets into active duty Wednesday by laying out his vision for a postwar America in which the United States leads beyond the battlefield and by defiantly challenging his critics' notion of waning American influence. In a commencement address to the cadets, he hailed a milestone moment as the country winds down its military involvement in the two wars that have defined the generation that has come of age since Sept.

THE WAR in Iraq was a strategic miscalculation and the single greatest blow to American power and prestige since Vietnam. I supported the initial invasion in 2003 while serving as US ambassador to NATO, but have long since been convinced that any good from it was far outweighed by the sacrifices of our soldiers and the significant damage to our international credibility. We must never forget the human cost of the war. We lost 4,500 young American men and women. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed, wounded, and made homeless.

Wednesday, May 16, is the 137th day of 2012. There are 229 days left in the year. Today's birthdays: Actor George Gaynes is 95. Actor Harry Carey Jr. is 91. Jazz musician Billy Cobham is 68. Actor Bill Smitrovich is 65. Actor Pierce Brosnan is 59. Actress Debra Winger is 57. Olympic gold medal gymnast Olga Korbut is 57. Actress Mare Winningham is 53. Rock musician Boyd Tinsley (Dave Matthews Band) is 48. Rock musician Krist Novoselic is 47. Singer Janet Jackson is 46. Country singer Scott Reeves is 46. Actor Brian F. O'Byrne is 45. R&B singer Ralph Tresvant (New Edition)

At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA , By George Tenet with Bill Harlow, HarperCollins, 549 pp., $30 Former director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, as his book's title suggests, was at the center of the "storm" in the run-up to Iraq. But Tenet, echoing what several books about the Iraq war have suggested, says "there was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat. " Instead, he says, the Bush administration "seized on the emotional impact of 9/11 and created a psychological connection between the failure to act...

ST. LOUIS - A St. Louis parade welcoming home Iraq War and other post-Sept. 11 veterans was such a hit that at least 10 other cities around the nation are considering similar celebrations. Organizers of the parade that drew an estimated 100,000 observers and 20,000 participants in St. Louis last week said yesterday that they have been approached by people from Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Seattle, Tucson, Ariz., Nashville, Tenn., Greensboro, N.C., and Clinton, Iowa.

WASHINGTON -- Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, likened the war in Iraq to Vietnam yesterday and said, "The idea that the United States is going to win the war in Iraq is just plain wrong," comments that drew immediate fire from Republicans. In an interview with WOAI-AM in San Antonio, Dean criticized what he called President Bush's "permanent commitment to a failed strategy" while saying, "We need to be out of there and take the targets off our troops' back.

ST. LOUIS - Since the Iraq war ended there has been little fanfare for the veterans returning home. No ticker-tape parades. No massive, flag-waving public celebrations. So, two friends from St. Louis decided to change that. They sought donations, launched a Facebook page, met with the mayor, and mapped a route. And today, hundreds of veterans are expected to march in downtown St. Louis in the nation's first big welcome home parade since the last troops left Iraq in December. "It struck me that there was this debate going on as to whether there should or shouldn't be a parade,"...

BAGHDAD - Almost nine years after the first US tanks began massing on the Iraq border, the Pentagon declared an official end to its mission here, closing a troubled conflict that helped reshape US politics and left a bitter legacy of anti-US sentiment across the Muslim world. As Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta marked the occasion with a speech in a fortified concrete courtyard at the Baghdad airport, helicopters hovered above, underscoring the challenges facing a country where insurgents continue to attack US soldiers and where militants with Al Qaeda still regularly...

Did Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney flip-flop on the war in Iraq? After Romney gave an interview to MSNBC's Chuck Todd yesterday, Byron York of the Washington Examiner accused Romney of changing his position on the Iraq war. York's colleague at the Examiner Conn Carroll retorted that Romney has been consistent. So what did Romney actually say? At a presidential debate during his last presidential run, in January 2008, Romney was asked whether the Iraq war was a good idea, given the high...

STAFF SERGEANT Robert "Bobby" Bales's decade-long Army record is a Rorschach Test of issues facing the military. It's not a clear picture, but there are a lot of shapes and squiggles into which much could be read: strain from multiple deployments; financial problems; traumatic injuries; emotional pain from witnessing death and dismemberment; hostility toward the enemy that bleeds into racism ("Giving money to Hagji [sic] instead of bullets doesn't seem right," he reportedly wrote on Facebook, invoking a slang term for Arabs)

LAST NIGHT, the White House hosted a formal dinner in honor of Iraq veterans, inviting 200 soldiers and their spouses from all 50 states. It was an opportunity to give thanks. But it wasn't enough. The complicated ending to the Iraq war has generated an impassioned debate about how we ought to celebrate the soldiers returning home. Localities throughout the nation have organized parades, but the Pentagon has balked at the notion of a national celebration and a Times Square event.

ST. LOUIS - A St. Louis parade welcoming home Iraq War and other post-Sept. 11 veterans was such a hit that at least 10 other cities around the nation are considering similar celebrations. Organizers of the parade that drew an estimated 100,000 observers and 20,000 participants in St. Louis last week said yesterday that they have been approached by people from Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Seattle, Tucson, Ariz., Nashville, Tenn., Greensboro, N.C., and Clinton, Iowa.

Fresh from the last days of the Iraq War, Col. Timothy Counihan is still regaining his bearings in civilian life. But as a surgeon, he's finding plenty of connections between what he learned at the war zone operating table and the needs of trauma patients rolling into the Pittsfield emergency room. Among the last U.S. troops to leave Iraq on Dec. 17, 2011, Counihan went from commanding the 917th Forward Surgical Team back to chairing the department of surgery at Berkshire Medical Center.

ST. LOUIS - Since the Iraq war ended there has been little fanfare for the veterans returning home. No ticker-tape parades. No massive, flag-waving public celebrations. So, two friends from St. Louis decided to change that. They sought donations, launched a Facebook page, met with the mayor, and mapped a route. And today, hundreds of veterans are expected to march in downtown St. Louis in the nation's first big welcome home parade since the last troops left Iraq in December. "It struck me that there was this debate going on as to whether there should or...

WINSLOW, Maine - When the last American troops left Iraq in December, the war began anew for Nancy Chamberlain. Her son, Marine helicopter pilot Jay Aubin, had crashed and died in a sandstorm on the first night of the 2003 invasion. Eleven siblings rushed to comfort her. Tom Brokaw called to interview her. Later, the attention that came with being one of the first American mothers to lose a child in the war helped distract her. But her cocoon of self-protection shattered last month when the news media, usually more focused on Afghanistan, redirected its...

A second Iraq War veteran was hospitalized Friday after officials said he was hurt during protests in Oakland a day earlier. Kayvan Sabeghi, 32, was being treated at Oakland's Highland Hospital and was in fair condition, hospital spokesman Curt Olsen said, without releasing further details of Sabeghi's injuries, or of his treatment. A week earlier, Marine veteran Scott Olsen, 24, suffered a skull fracture during clashes between police and Occupy Oakland participants in California on Oct. 25. Olsen, who also served in Iraq, worked his day job as a security software engineer and...

Lurching into town like the ghost of midnight movies past, "Military Intelligence and You!" is nothing if not cheeky. Writer-director Dale Kutzera has lovingly crafted an entire fake World War II training film with the intent of skewering attitudes surrounding the Iraq war, and the result is (or wants to be) a remixed "Reefer Madness" for our age of mass denial. It's a great idea for 20 minutes. Unfortunately, the movie's 78 minutes long. On the level of sheer technique, at least, "Military Intelligence and You!"

Boston officials are reaching out to returning servicemen and women to help them learn about available federal, state, and local services and benefits. "While we hope your return home is prosperous and one that leads into a prosperous and stable career, we have to let you all know help is available, should you find yourself in hard times," Francisco Urena, the city's commissioner of Veterans' Services, said yesterday as he welcomed about 10 veterans and their families to a special breakfast at Beacon Hill's historic Parkman House.

WASHINGTON - As Iraq erupted in recent days, Vice President Joe Biden was in constant phone contact with the leaders of the country's dueling sects. He called the Shi'ite prime minister and the Sunni speaker of Parliament on Tuesday and the Kurdish leader on Thursday, urging them to try to resolve the deepening political crisis. And for the United States, that is where the US intervention in Iraq officially stops. Sectarian violence and political turmoil in Iraq escalated within days of the US military's withdrawal, but US officials said in interviews...