Iraq

3 Marines killed west of Baghdad

BAGHDAD - Three U.S. Marines were killed in action Wednesday west of the Iraqi capital, the U.S. military said.

A statement from the command said the deaths occurred in Anbar province "while conducting security and stability operations." No further details were released due to security, the statement added.

Anbar province extends from the western suburbs of Baghdad and extends to the borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. It includes such restive insurgency centers as Fallujah, Ramadi and Qaim.

WASHINGTON - The questioning of hundreds of Iraqi prisoners last fall in the newly established interrogation center at Abu Ghraib prison yielded very little valuable intelligence, the New York Times reports, quoting unnamed civilian and military officials.

The newspaper reported that civilian and military intelligence officials, as well as top commanders with access to intelligence reports, say they learned little about the insurgency from questioning inmates at the prison. Most of the prisoners held in the special cellblock where the worst abuses took place apparently were not linked to the insurgency, they said.

The officials said few if any prisoners at Abu Ghraib had been able to shed light on questions to which Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East, and his deputies had assigned top priority, including the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein and the insurgency's leadership.

U.S. TO LEAVE PRISON: The U.S. military plans to vacate Abu Ghraib prison by August, handing over its operation to Iraqi security forces and transferring the remaining detainees to Umm Qasr, 300 miles to the southeast, prison authorities said Wednesday. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, deputy commander of U.S. military detainee operations in Iraq, said the military had already relinquished the cell blocks where American soldiers were photographed abusing Iraqi prisoners late last year.

INQUIRY REPORT INCOMPLETE: The Pentagon said Wednesday that it inadvertently failed to give the Senate Armed Services Committee a full copy of the 6,000-page Army investigation into the prison abuse scandal. Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said that no critical information was withheld and that the Defense Department would submit the missing documents to the panel.

WASHINGTON - President Bush and Congress have so far provided $191-billion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and defensive military operations at home, and about two-thirds of the money has been spent or is owed, White House figures show.

The numbers show that since the Sept. 11 attacks, lawmakers have provided $61-billion for U.S. military and reconstruction activity in Afghanistan, $119-billion for operations in Iraq, $10-billion for domestic military steps and $1-billion for other expenses such as rebuilding the damaged Pentagon.

The figures exclude the $25-billion Bush requested this month for next year's operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Administration officials have acknowledged that ultimately, his total request for 2005 will probably top $50-billion.

SPYING PANEL MEETS: In its first official meeting Wednesday, the president's commission investigating flawed intelligence on weapons of mass destruction heard in a closed session from David Kay, the former Iraq weapons inspector whose criticism helped drive the panel's creation.

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