Tucson Marines Kyle Heppler and Shelby Shields are engaged to be married, which will happen when he returns from his deployment.

Shelby Shields and Kyle Heppler are engaged to be married, but their engagement is a bit different than most.

Rather than picking out dinnerware patterns or cake designs, Shields, 19, is stationed in Japan while Heppler, 20, is being deployed for the third time in his military career. The first two deployments took him to Iraq. This time he’s going to Afghanistan.

Most newly engaged couples don’t have to wonder if the groom will be alive to see the wedding.

“I think the scariest moment in my whole career was when I got orders for another deployment, just a week after asking Shelby to marry me,” Marine Lance Cpl. Heppler wrote in an e-mail from North Carolina, where he was sent from Japan to await his deployment.

“I remember the exact moment Kyle told me he was being deployed again. We were walking to the PX and he stopped me on the side of the road and said, ‘I have some really bad news,’” Marine Lance Cpl. Shields wrote in an e-mail from Okinawa.

“I felt my heart drop into my stomach and all I could do was hug him and hold on for dear life because my legs felt like Jell-o and I thought if I let go I might fall.”

The couple figured since Heppler had already been to Iraq twice in his three years with the Marines, they could make plans without worrying about another deployment.

“But that’s the Marine Corps,” Shields wrote, not with malice but with simple truthfulness.

Besides, based on the way that they met, the two are pretty used to drama.

They met in 2001, when Heppler was Shields’ friend’s boyfriend.

“I know, bad,” Shields wrote. “But she introduced me to him and we didn’t talk again until the messy breakup.”

Shields even played “middle man” on the phone when the actual breakup was going down. She kept Heppler’s number. He kept hers.

“Very soon after we were talking on the phone every night and the rest is history,” she said.

Their mutual love for service got them both into the military. Sort of.

“I joined the Marines in order to give back to my country what it’s given me, become a master at the Marine Corps martial arts program and to see the world,” Heppler said.

Shields signed up, in part, because Heppler was already enlisted. And she couldn’t stand the thought of four years of college after high school.

“If you would have asked me three or four years ago if I ever saw myself in the military I would probably laugh at you,” Shields said. Her original career goal, decided at age 3, was to be dolphin trainer. She later became interested in design.

Neither regrets their decision to become a Marine, regardless of how many times Heppler may get sent to Iraq.

“Every time I go home I’m reminded of what a good decision the Marine Corps was for me,” Shields said. “I love my friends dearly but a bunch have dropped out of college or are close to it, or still have no idea what they want to do with their life and wasted all that money.”

Both miss Tucson, their family, their dogs. Both also look forward to the care packages sent from home.

Shields especially appreciates the packages from Tucson Area Marine Moms, of which her mother is a part.

Heppler has gotten a laugh from a do-it-yourself Brazilian waxing kit and a half-empty tube of toothpaste a Maryland fifth grader stole from his parents.

“His mother apparently told him that we can’t shave or brush our teeth very often,” Heppler said.

Even the dangerous deserts of Iraq have humorous moments.

“The funniest thing I’ve ever seen was in Iraq during a sandstorm,” Heppler wrote. “A Marine I knew was in a Port-O-Potty while it was happening. Wind gusts of near 100 mph blew the stall over while he was in it. It took us 30 minutes to get him out because we were laughing so hard.”

Please note: this story was written last week and never published due to circumstance beyond our control.

U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Shelby Shields in uniform.

U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Kyle Heppler

VIENNA – Roxana Saberi, the American journalist freed after about four months in an Iranian prison on spying charges left the country, flying to the Austrian capital with her parents and a friend early Friday.

After landing at the airport, Saberi said she planned to spend a few days in Vienna to recover from her ordeal.

“I came to Vienna because I heard it was a calm and relaxing place,” Saberi said. “I know you have many questions but I need some more time to think about what happened to me over the past couple of days.”

Her father, Reza Saberi, said they were staying with a friend in Austria.

Saberi, poised and smiling, thanked all those who supported her during her ordeal — including Austria’s ambassador to Iran and his family.

“Both journalists and non-journalists around the world, I’ve been hearing, supported me very much and it was very moving for me to hear this,” Saberi said.

Saberi, referring to several statements made about her case over the past few days, stressed she was the only one who knew what really happened.

“Nobody knows about it as well as I do and I will talk about it more in the future, I hope, but I am not prepared at this time,” she said.

The 32-year-old journalist, who grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, and moved to Iran six years ago, was arrested in late January and was convicted of spying for the United States in a brief, closed-door trial that her Iranian-born father said lasted only 15 minutes.

She was freed on Monday and reunited with her parents, who had come to Iran to seek her release, after an appeals court reduced her sentence to a two-year suspended sentence.

The United States had said the charges against Saberi were baseless and repeatedly demanded her release. The case against her had become an obstacle to President Barack Obama’s attempts at dialogue with the top U.S. adversary in the Middle East.

At one point, Saberi held a hunger strike to protest her imprisonment, but she ended it after two weeks when her parents, visiting her in prison, asked her to stop because her health was weakening.

Saberi had worked as a freelance journalist for several organizations, including National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Corp.

After her arrest, Iranian authorities initially accused her of working without press credentials, but later leveled the far more serious charge of spying. Iran released few details about the allegations that she passed intelligence to the U.S.

KABUL – Insurgents attacked a prison in eastern Afghanistan before dawn Friday, sparking a gunbattle with guards during which one prisoner was killed and another escaped, police said.

Meanwhile, NATO forces said one of its service members was killed Thursday by a bomb strike in southern Afghanistan. The international force did not provide further details or the nationality of the victim, under its policy of waiting for national authorities to announce deaths.

Prisons, along with police stations and other government buildings, have been repeated sites of Taliban attacks as the extremist religious group has stepped up its battle against the Afghan authorities in the past three years.

The militants did not manage to break into the prison in eastern Laghman province on Friday, but a group of more than a dozen prisoners charged an interior gate, breaking through to the outer wall, said provincial Police Chief Gen. Abdul Karim.

One prisoner managed to get away by jumping over the wall, while police shot another one dead as he attempted to flee, Karim said. Both of the men had been imprisoned for criminal offenses and were not known to have Taliban connections, he said.

Police captured one of the attackers and wounded some others, he said. No police or guards were injured.

Last summer, Taliban fighters attacked the prison in southern Kandahar province in a multi-pronged assault that included a suicide truck bomb, a suicide bomber on foot and gunmen freeing the prisoners. About 870 prisoners escaped, including roughly 400 jailed insurgents. The government has since worked to improve security at prisons across the country.

This week, President Barack Obama put his stamp on the bloody eight-year conflict by replacing the general in charge of the effort and installing a new ambassador. The Obama administration hopes the leadership shake-up — along with an additional 21,000 troops deploying this summer — will help reverse the militants’ momentum.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – A top U.N. official headed to Sri Lanka on Friday on an urgent mission to safeguard civilians trapped by fighting as thousands of desperate war refugees escaped across the front lines into government territory.

Government officials say they have cornered the Tamil Tiger rebels in a tiny coastal strip and stand poised to end this island nation’s quarter-century civil war.

However, international concern has grown for tens of thousands of civilians under threat from the heavy artillery bombardments shaking the war zone, and the Red Cross warned of “an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe” for the hundreds of wounded trapped without treatment.

Nearly 4,000 civilians waded across a lagoon overnight and broke out of the war zone, while another thousand waited to flee, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said Friday. The rebels fired on those leaving, killing four and wounding 14 others, he said.

About 200,000 civilians have escaped the war zone in recent months and are being held in overwhelmed displacement camps.

The rebels have denied accusations they were holding the civilians as human shields and shooting at those trying to flee. Reports of the fighting are difficult to verify because the government has barred journalists and most aid workers from the conflict zone.

Hoping to end the bloodshed, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sent his chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, to Sri Lanka for a second time to try to bring the conflict to a peaceful conclusion.

Nambiar is expected to meet with top government officials after he arrives Saturday and push for ways “to secure the safety of the 50,000 to 100,000 civilians remaining inside the combat zone,” U.N. spokesman Gordon Weiss said.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that in light of the ongoing war, the United States had raised questions about Sri Lanka’s application for a $1.9 billion IMF loan that the government desperately needs.

“We think that it is not an appropriate time to consider that until there is a resolution,” she said in Washington.

The U.N. says 7,000 civilians were killed and 16,700 wounded in the fighting from Jan. 20 until May 7, according to a U.N. document given to The Associated Press by a senior diplomat. Since then, doctors in the war zone say more than 1,000 civilians were killed in a week of heavy shelling that rights groups and foreign governments have blamed on Sri Lankan forces. Sri Lanka denies firing heavy weapons into the war zone.

On Thursday, doctors and health aides abandoned the only hospital in the war zone because of the intense shelling, according to a health official in the war zone who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

About 400 badly wounded patients remained inside in desperate need of treatment, along with more than 100 bodies waiting to be buried, the official said. The medical staff huddled in a nearby bunker and tried to ignore the cries of patients begging for help, he said.

A Red Cross ferry attempting to deliver desperately needed food aid and evacuate the wounded had to turn back for the third day Thursday because of the violence.

“Our staff are witnessing an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe,” Pierre Krahenbuhl, the International Committee of the Red Cross’ director of operations, said of the patients in the hospital.

The Red Cross said the trapped civilians inside the war zone were taking cover in bunkers they had dug in the ground and were finding it even more difficult to get scarce drinking water and food.

“We need security and unimpeded access now in order to save hundreds of lives,” he said in a statement from Geneva.

PHOENIX – The oldest soldier to be killed in Iraq fought in Vietnam and decided to re-enlist at the age of 59 after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the death of his wife, according to his brother.

Army Maj. Steven Hutchison, 60, was killed in Iraq on Sunday after a homemade bomb went off near his vehicle in Al Farr, according to the Department of Defense.

Richard Hutchison of Scottsdale told The Associated Press on Thursday that his older brother Steven wanted to re-enlist immediately after the 9/11 attacks, but that his wife, Candy, didn’t want him to.

But when Candy died of breast cancer, “a part of him died,” so he signed up again in July 2007, according to his brother and the Army.

“He was very devoted to the service and to his country,” Richard Hutchison said. “For somebody to go back into the military at 60 years old, obviously I didn’t want him to do it, but he had a mind of his own and that’s what he wanted to do. He’s been a soldier his whole life.”

He said his brother never explained why he wanted to re-enlist, but that “I’m guessing it had something to do with them coming into our country and killing our people.”

“He wanted to go back in,” he added. “He wanted to do his share.”

He said Steven Hutchison served in Afghanistan for a year after he re-enlisted and went to Iraq in October as a team leader of about a dozen soldiers who would train Iraqi soldiers how to fight. But, he said his brother’s mission changed and that he was working to secure Iraq’s southern border instead.

Army spokesman Lt. Col. Nathan Banks said Thursday that Hutchison was the oldest Army soldier killed in Iraq.

An Associated Press database of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan shows that Hutchison is the oldest member of any service branch killed since the wars broke out.

Richard Hutchison said Steven was a great big brother and a best friend who was always looking out for him. “He took care of me,” he said.

“I was worried about him. I didn’t want him to go (to Iraq),” he said through tears, adding that he loved his brother “so much.”

He said Steven Hutchison worked as a college professor of psychology at a couple of California universities and then worked at a private health care corporation in Arizona before he retired a few years ago.

Records at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles show that Hutchison taught in the psychology department there on and off between 1988 and 1996. Hutchison’s résumé, provided by the school, shows he was a lecturer at California State University in Long Beach and taught at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif.

Hutchison was born in Cincinnati and raised in Long Beach, Calif. Steven and Richard have a half brother and half sister living in Michigan. Steven Hutchison married four times, and was married to Candy for 10 years before she died. He had no children.

Richard Hutchison said his brother will be buried next to Candy in Scottsdale, and that a funeral is tentatively planned for Tuesday.

Hutchison was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 34th Armor Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division at Ft. Riley, Kan.

Dem denies ’02 knowledge of waterboarding

WASHINGTON – Congressional Republicans are rushing to defend the CIA after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the spy agency of misleading her and other lawmakers about its use of waterboarding during the Bush administration.

The issue of what did the speaker know about the interrogation method — and when did she know it — has deepened the fault lines between the two political parties. Pelosi was unequivocal about a CIA briefing she received in the fall of 2002.

“We were told that waterboarding was not being used,” the speaker said Thursday. “That’s the only mention, that they were not using it. And we now know that earlier they were.” She suggested the CIA release the briefing material.

Pelosi vehemently disputed Republican charges that she was complicit in the use of waterboarding, and she suggested the GOP was trying to shift the focus of public attention away from the Bush administration’s use of techniques that she and President Barack Obama have described as torture.

On Friday, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee contradicted Pelosi’s claims and questioned her criticism of the nation’s spy operations.

“I think it’s a tragedy that we are seeing this massive attack on our intelligence community,” Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri said in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show.

Bond said he reviewed the CIA’s material and it was clear that Pelosi had been informed about the enhanced interrogation method, although Bond said he was not with Pelosi when the spy agency briefed her.

The CIA was widely criticized for its intelligence gathering prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and faced questions about its information on suspected weapons of mass destruction in Iraq prior to the start of the war in March 2003. The weapons were never found.

CIA spokesman George Little said it is not the policy of the agency to mislead Congress, although he refused to answer directly questions about Pelosi’s accusation.

Pelosi has been the target of a campaign orchestrated in recent days by the House Republican leadership, which is eager to assign Democrats partial responsibility for the use of waterboarding — a kind of simulated drowning — in the Bush administration.

GOP officials secured the release of an unclassified chart by the CIA that describes a total of 40 briefings for lawmakers over a period of several years. Pelosi’s name appears once, as having attended a session on Sept. 4, 2002, when she was the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Former Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., who at the time was the chairman of the committee and later became CIA director, also was present.

The notation says the briefing was on “enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah … and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed.”

Little, responding to Pelosi for the CIA, said the chart “is true to the language in the agency’s records.” But he did not say whether the information was accurate.

Instead, he pointed to a recent letter from CIA Director Leon Panetta to lawmakers saying it would be up to Congress to determine whether notes made by agency personnel at the time they briefed lawmakers were accurate.

Coincidentally, Pelosi spoke as the CIA rejected former Vice President Dick Cheney’s request to release secret memos judging whether waterboarding and other harsh techniques had succeeded in securing valuable intelligence information.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said the request was turned down because the documents are the subject of pending litigation, which makes them not subject to declassification.

An internally displaced Sri Lankan ethnic Tamil woman tends to an injured boy at a makeshift hospital in Mullivaikal, Sri Lanka, Wednesday.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Artillery shells tore through a hospital packed with wounded civilians in Sri Lanka’s war zone for a second day Wednesday, killing at least 50 people, setting an ambulance ablaze and forcing the medical staff to huddle in bunkers for safety, doctors said.

Health workers at the makeshift medical facility said they were so overwhelmed by the crush of the wounded and the unrelenting shelling of the area they could do little but give gauze and bandages to the roughly 1,000 patients waiting for treatment.

The strike on the hospital came as the government marched on with its offensive to destroy the reeling Tamil Tiger rebels and end their quarter-century quest for a separate homeland.

There has been a wave of artillery bombardments across the war zone that began over the weekend and has barely let up in five days, health workers said. The weekend attacks alone may have killed as many as 1,000 people, doctors said.

The government says its troops are not responsible for the shelling and that the military has not fired heavy weapons in the area in weeks.

But Human Rights Watch says satellite images and witness testimony contradict that claim and has accused both sides of using the estimated 50,000 civilians packed into the tiny coastal strip controlled by the rebels as “cannon fodder.”

The shelling was so intense Wednesday that a Red Cross ferry waiting off the coast to deliver food aid and evacuate the wounded had to turn back for a second day, the agency said.

Two artillery shells hit the medical facility about 1 p.m., slamming into an administrative office and a ward filled with patients already wounded by previous shell attacks, Dr. V. Shanmugarajah told The Associated Press by telephone.

Dr. Thurairaja Varatharajah, the top health official in the war zone, said the attack killed at least 50 people, including patients, relatives and a health aide, and wounded about 60 others.

Heavy shelling of the war zone continued throughout the day, he said.

“We are unable to treat the people properly because a lot of aides have fled the hospital. We go into bunkers when there is shelling and try to treat them as much as we can when there is a lull,” he said by telephone.

One shell that struck the compound set an ambulance on fire, according to video footage of the aftermath of the attack. Scores of people crowded beneath tarps outside the hospital building waited for care as someone wailed in the background.

More than 1,000 civilians — many with amputations or chest wounds — had been waiting for treatment at the hospital when it was struck, and every 10 minutes or so another one or two died from lack of care, said a third hospital official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because the government had not authorized him to speak to the media.

Overwhelmed doctors have been reduced to handing out bandages to the seriously wounded, the official said. More than 100 dead bodies have been left inside the compound because no one will risk burying them amid the constant shelling, he said. The strike was the third to hit the hospital this month.

A Red Cross worker and his mother were also killed in shelling, the third Red Cross staff member killed by shrapnel in the war zone in the past two months, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

“This latest tragic incident shows how dangerous it is for everyone in the area,” said Paul Castella, the head of the Red Cross delegation in Colombo.

Rebel spokesman Seevaratnam Puleedevan said shells also hit a home for mentally handicapped women, killing 38 and wounding more than 40.

Reports of the fighting are difficult to verify because the government has barred journalists and aid workers from the war zone.

The government has come under heavy international criticism for the large civilian toll of its offensive against the rebels, who are cornered in a two square-mile (five square-kilometer) strip of land.

The military said it pressed ahead with its offensive into that strip Wednesday, capturing one of the rebels’ heavy guns and fending off a suicide attack by four rebel boats laden with explosives.

The U.N. Security Council demanded Wednesday that the Tamil Tigers stop fighting and allow tens of thousands of civilians being used as human shields to leave the war zone. It also called on the government to stop firing heavy weapons, help trapped civilians evacuate and allow for the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid.

The council press statement — which is not legally binding — expressed grave concern at the worsening humanitarian crisis.

Burst of gunfire from U.S. soldier touches varied lives

ABOVE: A family photo shows Pfc. Michael Edward Yates Jr. and his son Kamren. BELOW: Licensed clinical social worker Cmdr. Charles Keith Springle

Keith Springle, who grew up swimming and fishing off the North Carolina coast and seemed destined as a boy to join the Navy, was in Iraq because it was his duty as a military psychologist. Dr. Matthew Houseal, a 54-year-old Army reservist and psychiatrist, was there because he felt he needed to be.

Regardless of how they came to be there, both made it their mission to help their fellow service members cope with the stress of life in the combat zone. Soldiers like the Maryland rebel who liked tinkering with guns and despised “pencil pushers”; or the Peru native who, whether he was walking the streets of New Jersey or the dirt roads of Iraq, was a magnet for candy-seeking kids; or the shy video gamer from Missouri whose refusal to back down probably cost him his life.

Stress brought the five together earlier this week at a Baghdad clinic, the emotionally wounded and the healers. And stress is what killed them.

Authorities say Sgt. John M. Russell, who was nearing the end of his third tour in Iraq, was deeply angry at the military when he walked into the combat stress clinic at Camp Liberty on Monday and opened fire.

Killed were Springle, 52, a Navy commander from Beaufort, N.C.; Houseal of Amarillo, Texas; Army Sgt. Christian E. Bueno-Galdos, 25, of Paterson, N.J.; Spc. Jacob D. Barton, 20, of Lenox, Mo.; and Pfc. Michael E. Yates Jr., 19, of Federalsburg, Md., who had met Russell shortly before the shootings.

The paths that brought these six men together traced a grid across the globe, from South America to rural Missouri, from the islands of Alaska to deepest Antarctica, before intersecting so tragically in an Army clinic.

Family and teachers said Jacob Barton was a quiet student who loved graphic novels and science fiction. Growing up with his grandmother in the house, he sometimes had trouble relating to kids his own age.

“His grandmother was foremost on his mind at all times,” said Rod Waldrip, Barton’s high school English teacher at Rolla High School, where Barton graduated last year. “He sometimes wouldn’t do after-school activities because he had to see if she was OK. She was his main concern.”

Rose Coleman said her grandson was adjusting to life in the Army and that he “seemed to like it.”

Although he was reserved, he wasn’t afraid. Waldrip remembers seeing Barton come to the rescue of somebody who was getting bullied.

“He wouldn’t say much unless there was some injustice being done, and then he would speak up.”

Coleman said the Army told the family that Barton died trying to shield another man from the shooting.

“And he tried to talk the guy with the gun to put his gun down,” she said.

Springle knew mental health issues in the past weren’t being addressed and wanted to be proactive in treating the issues faced by soldiers and their families, said Staff Sgt. Robert Mullis of the Boone-based 1451st Transportation Company of the N.C. National Guard, who was part of a civilian outreach program with Springle.

“He saw it as preventive maintenance,” Mullis said of Springle. “They’ve just been through some tough experiences. He was reaching out trying to try and stop a big beast before it got started.”

Springle grew up in the little fishing village of Lewiston, N.C., just east of Beaufort. Cousin Alton Dudley said the pair were a kind of saltwater Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.

“It was a carefree life,” said Dudley, a fishing boat captain who was nine years older than Springle. “I am sure that he joined the Navy so that he could be at sea or close to it.”

All who knew him talked about Springle’s sense of humor and upbeat attitude. But Springle, whose son and son-in-law have each done a tour in Iraq, took the issue of combat stress very seriously. While deploying to Iraq was his duty, his work on the homefront with the Citizen-Soldier Support Program was a labor of love.

“This was volunteer work,” said Bob Goodale, director of behavioral mental health for the Chapel Hill-based program. “He was doing this because it was the right thing to do: training civilian providers so they were better equipped to serve the families and the service members.”

At 54, Houseal, a major in the Army Reserves, was under no obligation to go to Iraq. But he was already something of an adventurer.

For 11 months in 1991, the University of Michigan graduate served as the physician for about 20 people working at the Amundsen-Scott Station near the South Pole in a climate research project funded by the National Science Foundation, said Mike O’Neill who was the group’s electronics technician.

“He came in at the last minute not knowing anybody,” said O’Neill, who works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Colorado. “That’s one of the reasons I really respected him.”

The Amarillo man had worked for a dozen years at the Texas Panhandle Mental Health and Mental Retardation clinic, said executive director Bud Schertler. He left Texas for Iraq in late January and was assigned to the 55th Medical Company in Indianapolis, which ran the clinic where the shootings occurred.

Bueno-Galdos couldn’t wait to serve his adopted country and did so exceptionally, earning three Army Commendation Medals.

He was 7 when his family emigrated from Mollendo, Peru, for better economic opportunities. The youngest of four children, Chinito – a term of endearment that literally means “little Chinaman” – became a U.S. citizen in high school and joined the Army as soon as he graduated.

Back home in Paterson, he never made a trip to the corner bodega without a group of neighborhood children tailing behind, knowing he would buy them candy or a soda, his family recalled. It was the same in Iraq, where he was on his second tour.

Yates displayed zeal for serving in the Army, but perhaps not the locale where he was serving, as evidenced by his MySpace page.

His profile lists his location as “(expletive), Iraq.”

Yates’ mother, Shawna Machlinski, said her son joined the Army, not out of a sense of duty, but because he didn’t see many other options. Besides, his stepfather and two stepbrothers were all military men.

Yates liked the military, especially going out on what he called “stealth missions.” His problems started when he went back after spending nearly the entire month of April at home. His son, Kamren Mister, celebrated his first birthday on April 7.

But the visit left him anxious. He wasn’t home long enough, but he’d still been away from “my military family” too long. Once back in Iraq, his mother said, he began to think about things he wished he’d done while visiting Maryland.

When the strong emotions began surfacing, she said, he was transferred to headquarters company “so he could stay out of combat.”

“He didn’t like headquarters at all,” said Machlinski. “He said they’re stupid pencil pushers.”

Despite the stigma, Yates volunteered to go to the stress clinic.

“I need help dealing with this,” he told his mom.

Yates had been at the clinic nearly a week when he called home Sunday for Mother’s Day.

Sometime during that time, he bumped into Russell.

Yates told his mother that Russell seemed like a nice enough guy, but after three tours, he clearly hated the Army.

“Man, this guy’s got issues,” she remembers him telling her.

Russell, 44, who was a little more than a month shy of finishing his third tour, told his family that the clinic was hurting him more than helping.

Now, he faces charges of murder and aggravated assault.

WASHINGTON – Under strong attack from Republicans, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA and Bush administration of misleading her about waterboarding detainees in the war on terror and sharply rebutted claims she was complicit in its use.

“To the contrary . . . we were told explicitly that waterboarding was not being used,” she told reporters, referring to a formal CIA briefing she received in the fall of 2002.

Pelosi said she subsequently learned that other lawmakers were told several months later by the CIA about the use of waterboarding.

“I wasn’t briefed, I was informed that somebody else had been briefed about it,” she said.

The House’s top Democrat made her comments at a news conference where she was peppered with questions about her knowledge of a technique she and others have called torture. Republicans have insisted in recent weeks that she and other Democrats knew waterboarding was in use, but made no attempt to protest.

Pelosi renewed her call for a so-called truth commission to investigate the events in the Bush administration that led to the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques. While President Barack Obama has banned waterboarding, calling it torture, he has been notably cool toward an independent inquiry that might distract attention from his domestic agenda.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., also has expressed opposition, as have congressional Republicans.

Pelosi was particularly harsh in describing the CIA.

“They mislead us all the time,” she said. And when a reporter asked whether the agency lied, she did not disagree.

She also suggested that the current Republican criticism marked an attempt to divert attention from the Bush administration’s actions.

“They misrepresented every step of the way, and they don’t want that focus on them, so they try to turn the focus on us,” she said.

Pelosi contended that Democrats did what they could to stop the use of waterboarding. The senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, who received the 2003 briefing on the practice, sent the CIA a formal letter of protest, she said.

But Pelosi defended her own lack of action on the issue, saying her focus at the time was on wresting congressional control from Republicans so her party could change course.

“No letter could change the policy. It was clear we had to change the leadership in Congress and in the White House. That was my job – the Congress part,” Pelosi said.

He reverses position because of damage photos might do

WASHINGTON – President Obama will try to block the court-ordered release of photos showing the abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, reversing his position and ceding to military concerns the images could stoke anti-American passions overseas.

The White House had said last month it would not oppose an appeals court ruling that set a May 28 deadline for releasing dozens of photos from military investigations of alleged misconduct.

But American commanders in the war zones have expressed concern about damage the photos might do.

When photos emerged in 2004 from the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, showing grinning American soldiers posing with detainees – some of the prisoners naked, some being held on leashes – the pictures caused a huge anti-American backlash around the globe, particularly in the Muslim world.

Obama, explaining his change of heart, said the photos had already served their purpose in investigations of “a small number of individuals.” Those cases were all concluded by 2004, and the president said “the individuals who were involved have been identified, and appropriate actions have been taken.”

“This is not a situation in which the Pentagon has concealed or sought to justify inappropriate action,” Obama said of the photos.

The effort to keep the photos from becoming public represented a sharp reversal from Obama’s repeated pledges for open government.

Obama’s reversal puts him in step with some Republicans. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., sent kudos via Twitter. “Strongly agree,” he said.

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LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

• A suicide car bomber killed seven people and wounded 21 others Wednesday outside a U.S. military base in the same part of eastern Afghanistan where militants stormed government buildings a day earlier, police said.

• Ninety-five Afghan children are among the 140 people said to have died in a recent U.S.-Taliban battle in western Afghanistan, a lawmaker involved in the investigation into the deaths said Wednesday. The U.S. military disputed the claim.

• Tempers boiled over Wednesday at a refugee camp in Pakistan when a scuffle broke out as police escorted a truck carrying mattresses and water, but the incident did not last long and there were no reports of injuries.

The Associated Press

KABUL – A suicide bomb attack killed six civilians Wednesday outside a U.S. military base in the same part of eastern Afghanistan where militants tried to storm government buildings the day before, police said.

A vehicle drove up to a gate outside Camp Salerno, on the edge of Khost city, in the early morning and exploded, Khost province police spokesman Wazir Pacha said. Six civilians were killed and 16 others wounded, he said.

U.S. forces confirmed the attack, saying four Afghan security guards were killed in the blast and 12 wounded.

“We don’t know how many local nationals were wounded or killed,” said Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker, a U.S. military spokeswoman. There were no casualties among international troops, she said.

The attack comes a day after 11 Taliban suicide bombers struck government buildings in Khost city, sparking running gunbattles with U.S. and Afghan forces that killed 20 people and wounded three Americans.

Pat Tillman

WASHINGTON — The parents of slain Army Ranger and NFL star Pat Tillman voiced concerns Tuesday that the general who played a role in mischaracterizing his death could be put in charge of military operations in Afghanistan.

In a brief interview with The Associated Press, Pat Tillman Sr. accused Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal of covering up the circumstances of the 2004 slaying.

“I do believe that guy participated in a falsified homicide investigation,” Pat Tillman Sr. said.

Separately, Mary Tillman called it “imperative” that McChrystal’s record be carefully considered before he is confirmed.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Defense Secretary Robert Gates has complete confidence in McChrystal, whom he hopes can be confirmed by the Senate before month’s end.

“We feel terrible for what the Tillman family went through, but this matter has been investigated thoroughly by the Pentagon, by the Congress, by outside experts, and all of them have come to the same conclusion: that there was no wrongdoing by Gen. McChrystal,” Morrell said.

Aides to the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which will consider the nomination, said they were unaware of any opposition to McChrystal.

McChrystal, a former “black ops” special forces chief credited with nabbing one of the most-wanted fugitives in Iraq, was tapped Monday to lead U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. If confirmed by the Senate, he would replace Gen. David McKiernan, who was fired in an unusual wartime shake-up.

In April 2004, McChrystal approved paperwork awarding Tillman a Silver Star after he was killed by enemy fire — even though he suspected the Ranger had died by fratricide, according to Pentagon testimony later obtained by the AP.

The testimony showed that McChrystal sent a memo to top generals imploring “our nation’s leaders,” specifically the president, to avoid cribbing the “devastating enemy fire” explanation from the award citation for their speeches. In 2007, the Army overruled a Pentagon recommendation that McChrystal be held accountable for his “misleading” actions.

In a book published last year, Mary Tillman accused McChrystal of helping create the false story line that she said “diminished Pat’s true actions.”

Her one-sentence e-mail to the AP on Tuesday said: “It is imperative that Lt. General McChrystal be scrutinized carefully during the Senate hearings.”

Last year, however, the Senate unanimously approved promoting McChrystal from a two-star general to a three-star general as director of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff.

Similarly, this time around, Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., “does not foresee any problems with Gen. McChrystal’s confirmation” with the committee, a Levin aide said Tuesday.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the committee’s top Republican, backs the decision to change leadership in Afghanistan and will support McChrystal’s nomination, said Brooke Buchanan, a McCain spokeswoman.

McCain was highly critical of the Army’s handling of the Tillman investigation, and in April 2007 he called the service’s actions “inexcusable and unconscionable.”

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Shells hit the only hospital in Sri Lanka’s northern war zone Wednesday, killing at least 50 people in the second such attack in two days, a doctor said. Medics at the makeshift facility said they were using brief lulls between explosions to tend to patients but had little to offer beyond gauze and bandages.

It was the third attack this month on the hospital and comes on the heels of shelling this past weekend that killed as many as 1,000 civilians. On Tuesday, shells struck the admissions ward, killing 49. But trapped in the tiny coastal strip as the government presses ahead with its offensive against the rebels, the wounded had little alternative but to converge by the hundreds to seek treatment.

Scores of people crowded beneath tarps outside the hospital building waiting for care as a person wailed in grief in the background, according to a video footage.

The military has denied firing any heavy weapons in recent weeks, but Human Rights Watch says both sides are using the estimated 50,000 civilians packed into the last rebel-held territory as “cannon fodder.” The Red Cross said one of its workers was killed in shelling Wednesday.

The Tamil Tigers are cornered in a two square-mile (five square-kilometer) pocket of land. The military said it pressed ahead with its offensive into that strip Wednesday, capturing one of the rebels’ heavy guns and fending off a suicide attack launched by the group’s naval wing.

On Wednesday afternoon, the area around the hospital came under heavy shell attack, Dr. V. Shanmugarajah told The Associated Press by telephone — the third time it has come under fire this month and just one day after the last attack. One shell landed in an administrative office of the hospital, while another hit a ward filled with patients already wounded by previous shelling, he said.

Dr. Thurairaja Varatharajah, the top health official in the war zone, said the attack killed at least 50 people, including patients, relatives and a health aide, and wounded about 60 others.

He said heavy shelling continued throughout the day.

“We are unable to treat the people properly because a lot of aides have fled the hospital. We go into bunkers when there is shelling and try to treat them as much as we can when there is a lull,” he said by telephone.

More than 1,000 civilians — many with amputations or chest wounds — were waiting for treatment at the hospital when it was struck, and every 10 minutes or so another one or two died, according to a third hospital official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized by the government to speak to the media.

Overwhelmed doctors have been reduced to handing out gauze and bandages to the seriously wounded, the official said. More than 100 dead bodies have been left inside the compound because no one will risk burying them amid the constant shelling, he said.

Rebel spokesman Seevaratnam Puleedevan said shells also hit a home for mentally handicapped women, killing 38 and wounding more than 40. The health officials said they were not able to confirm that attack.

Shelling also killed Red Cross worker Mayuran Sivagurunathan and his mother and prevented a Red Cross ferry off the coast from delivering food aid and evacuating the wounded, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The aid group said it was not sure if its employee was killed in the hospital attack.

“There are many shells falling. I don’t know if it was the same attack,” Red Cross spokesman Marcel Izard said.

Reports of the fighting are difficult to verify because the government has barred journalists and aid workers from the war zone.

The government has come under heavy international criticism for the large civilian toll of its offensive against the Tamil Tiger rebels. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband called the conflict zone “as close to hell as you can get,” and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton joined him in expressing alarm at the civilian casualties.

Human Rights Watch said witness testimony and satellite images of the area taken Sunday and analyzed by experts “contradict Sri Lankan government claims that its armed forces are no longer using heavy weapons” in the war zone.

The group also accused the rebels of using the civilians as human shields and shooting those who try to escape.

“Neither the Sri Lankan army nor the Tamil Tigers appear to have any reluctance in using civilians as cannon fodder,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science analyzed satellite photos of the area taken Sunday morning — after a night of heavy shelling was reported in the area — and compared it to an image taken four days before. The report was done at the request of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

“By comparing before-and-after satellite images, we were able to see a significant movement of the region’s human population, suggesting widespread displacement. We also saw destroyed structures and circular, crater-like features consistent with widespread shelling,” said Lars Bromley, director of the association’s Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights project.

One area, which had been densely packed with tents and other structures in the earlier photo was nearly empty Sunday morning. Another photo provided by Amnesty showed two white circles near a cluster of trees that were identified as impact craters.

While Bromley said the images did not show who was behind the destruction, Human Rights Watch said a health official in the area had told them the artillery was being fired from an area under government control.

Military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara denied troops were responsible for any shelling, saying the war zone had grown too small for the use of such weapons. He said exploding booby traps set by the rebels could account for the craters and the reports of shelling.

MARDAN, Pakistan – Hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis have fled fighting between the army and Taliban militants in a northwestern valley, raising the risk that public support could turn against an offensive Washington sees as a must-win battle.

The U.S. announced $4.9 million worth of aid for the refugees, many of whom arrived Monday in parched camps where children held empty food bowls and men lined up in the baking sun, questioning how they would survive.

“It’s hell for us,” said Zaida Bibi, 20, as she glanced around her new accommodations, a mostly bare tent in the Mardan area, its floor covered by a thin tarpaulin that proved little cushion against the rugged earth.

At least 360,000 Pakistanis displaced by recent fighting have registered in camps and other centers since early May, the U.N. said. That’s on top of some 500,000 people displaced by offensives that date to August 2008 — though it’s unclear how many of those remain refugees.

Most of the newly displaced are expected to stay with relatives or friends. But some 30,000 are settling into U.N. camps, spokeswoman Ariane Rummery said. The agency announced Monday it will airlift 120 tons of relief supplies to help refugees in the region.

The U.N. is working in at least five camps with the new refugees, though the government has established several sites elsewhere. The figures could rise if fighting proceeds.

The military operation is focused in the Swat Valley, a major Taliban stronghold, and surrounding districts. Pakistani warplanes bombed suspected insurgent positions in the area Monday, while the government claimed it had killed up to 700 Taliban in four days of fighting.

Islamabad’s tough military response has earned praise from the U.S., which wants al-Qaida and Taliban militants routed from havens where they can plan attacks on American and NATO forces in nearby Afghanistan.

It has also earned broad support from Pakistanis, including many in the region who fled after enduring Taliban brutality for the past two years.

Still, the newly displaced are desperate for a quick finish to the offensive, and they worry about what will be left of their homes.

Swat, with 1.5 million residents, was once a tourist haven dubbed the “Switzerland of Pakistan” for its Alpine scenery. It lies less than 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the capital, Islamabad, and not far from the Afghan border.

It’s also near the lawless Pakistani tribal areas, where al-Qaida and the Taliban have strongholds and where the U.S. says al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden may be hiding.

A suspected U.S. missile strike killed at least eight people in the South Waziristan tribal region early Tuesday, Pakistani officials said. The identity of the victims was not immediately clear, said the officials, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly to the media.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said the government, which had urged residents to leave the region to avoid casualties, was devoting millions of dollars to help the refugees.

“These people have left their areas to save the country — we appreciate their sacrifices,” Gilani said. “The nation is ready to provide them all required facilities.”

But Pakistani political analyst Mehdi Hasan said the government must act quickly.

“If the disappointment of the people and the resentment of displaced persons increases, then it will be difficult for the government to continue this military action,” he said.

At a Mardan camp where some 12,000 people had already settled, Naheed Amir, a health worker with the aid group Ummah Welfare Trust, said she was seeing more than 300 patients a day with a range of illnesses from diarrhea to eye infections.

Some of the displaced families said they’d had nothing to eat but lentils over the past few days, and that they needed electricity, more water and better relief from the heat.

Many of those who fled went well beyond the northwest, traveling as far as the southern city of Karachi.

The military launched the most recent offensive after the insurgents in Swat used a peace deal to impose their reign in other neighboring areas, including a stretch just 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the capital.

The army says 12,000 to 15,000 troops in Swat face 4,000 to 5,000 militants, including small numbers of foreigners and hardened fighters from the South Waziristan tribal region.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – A mortar shell struck the only functioning medical facility in Sri Lanka’s northern war zone Tuesday, killing 47 patients and bystanders and wounding more than 50 others, the rebels and a health worker in the area said.

The attack came after a weekend of heavy shelling that killed hundreds of civilians in the area. The military has denied accusations that it was still shelling the tiny coastal strip still under rebel control, which is packed with an estimated 50,000 civilians.

Rebel spokesman Seevaratnam Puleedevan told The Associated Press that a shell hit the hospital Tuesday morning. “They are still counting the dead bodies,” he said.

A health worker at the makeshift hospital confirmed the attack, saying one mortar shell landed in the admissions ward that had been set up in a temporary shelter about 7:30 a.m., killing 47 patients and bystanders and sending patients fleeing for their lives.

A hospital administrator was among those killed and another 56 people were wounded, the staffer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Shelling was still going on hours after the attack, but the hospital was not again hit, the worker said.

Puleedevan said civilians were fleeing in all directions inside the tiny war zone seeking safety.

“There’s no place to seek shelter or protect themselves,” he said.

He called on the international community to force the government to stop its offensive against the rebel group.