Iraq

To avoid roadside bombings, U.S. shipping more materiel by air

WASHINGTON - U.S. commanders in Iraq have begun transporting more supplies to the country by aircraft in an effort to evade the roadside bomb attacks that have been killing or wounding about 100 American troops each month, the Air Force's top officer said Tuesday.

Scrambling for other ways to avoid the attacks, the military is also looking into the possibility of bottling and purifying water in Iraq rather than transporting it by truck from Kuwait. Water accounts for 30 percent of all U.S. cargo ferried across Iraq's perilous roadways, officials said.

U.S. forces have been sending about 3,000 vehicles in about 215 convoys in Iraq each day. The vulnerability of trucks, Humvees and other U.S. equipment to roadside bombs has become a major issue amid complaints by troops that the military has been slow to reinforce the vehicles with protective armor.

In the last month, the Air Force has offered extra air freight capacity to take 180 American troops off the road each day, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper said. Air freighters are now carrying 450 tons of cargo previously carried in convoys, a 30 percent increase, with a goal of replacing up to 1,600 tons, Air Force officials said.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - U.S. Marines forced Iraqi juveniles to kneel while troops discharged a weapon in a mock execution, used electric shock on one prisoner and set fire to a puddle of solvent that burned a prisoner, according to U.S. Navy documents released Tuesday.

The documents portray a series of abuse cases stretching beyond the Abu Ghraib prison where photos surfaced this year of U.S. troops forcing prisoners - often naked - to pose in humiliating positions. The files document a crush of abuse allegations, most from the early months of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, that have swamped investigators.

All names have been blacked out in the documents, which were released after a federal court ordered the government to comply with a Freedom of Information Act petition filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights and other organizations.

HEARINGS PLANNED: The Senate Armed Services Committee will hold hearings on the Iraq war when the new Congress convenes next month, including an examination of criticism that the Defense Department failed to prepare for the insurgency and went into action with a shortage of armor for trucks and Humvees, the panel's ranking Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said Tuesday.

CLEMENCY SOUGHT: Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, has asked the Army to grant clemency to two officers who were convicted of theft and destroying government property in Kuwait and Iraq after they commandeered several Army trucks they believed to have been abandoned to make up for what they said was a shortage in their own units.

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