The attacks come as the U.S. military presence in Iraq has fallen to below the symbolic number of 50,000 troopers and seem to serve as a confirmation of the widely held belief that the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq has been but a fin...

RAMADI, Iraq (Nov. 25, 2005) -- He moves as if divining water -- three steps this way, two steps that -- through a crowd of anxious soldiers, feeling his way through their expressions, body language and voices. Searching. A few paces ahead, a wide-eyed and baby-faced private, 19 years old if that, stands staring blankly in the direction where, moments earlier, a mortar fell amid a rapid barrage of explosions.

Gaylan Springer reaches out to place a hand on the young warrior's shoulder, holding...

This soldier's face says it all.

Former President George W. Bush was at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on Wednesday to welcome home about 150 military members returning home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We didn't tell them at all what was going on," the leader of the Welcome Home a Hero group, Patrick McAfee, told CNN. "It was shock and awe when they walked in the double doors."

Of course, you don't have to be a former pre...

Morris told The Salt Lake Tribune that he is hoping to help prosecutors convict Khadr of war crimes - thus insuring that the alleged killer of an American soldier stays in prison for a long time to come. Morris, who lost an eye in the same attack, said he is not motivated by revenge, but by a desire to help protect his country against a potentially dangerous terrorist.

But a...

But when the day came for the young man to arrive back home in Farmington, he didn't.

"A day later, Kort showed up," Heiner recalled. He had been coming home in a blizzard and passed a family with some little kids whose car was broken down. He towed their vehicle 300 miles out of his way - and even gave them the Christmas ham that his boss had given him."

And that's just the sort of thing that Jensen made a habit of doing, family members and friends said this week.

"He had the biggest heart you could ever imagine anyone having," Heiner said...

They called him "Sunshine."

It wasn't a particularly tough nickname, certainly not for an Army Ranger, but it fit nonetheless.

The Special Forces soldier loved to laugh, and he especially liked to make others laugh. Even in combat, he found reasons to be joyful: Music and games and stories about the people he loved.

And it was infectious.

In Monday's edition of The Salt Lake Tribune, we tell the story of how a Wildwood, Ill. soldier named...

At 93 years old, Daniel Schorr had pretty much seen it all.

But although Schorr was one of the most well-respected newsmen in America, he was still awed by the accomplishments and adventures of his fellow journalists.

In an appearance alongside once-imprisoned journalist Roxana Saberi during a visit to Rowland Hall St. Mark's School in Salt Lake City in October, Schorr marveled at how, somehow, "we still find people who, despite the circumstances, fight to tell people what they n...

Cooper, who has been at Hill since 2008, spent a considerable amount of his command time trying to staunch the rising tide of suicides at Hill. Six members of "Team Hill" are suspected to have killed themselves so far this year. Last year, at least eight workers at the base took their own lives, a rate of self-inflicted death that is significantly higher than the rate in Utah as a whole -- which...

When Maj. Gen. Andrew Busch took over the beleaguered, scandal-tarnished Air Force base, he seemed to believe that Utah's largest military facility was already well on the road to recovery.

After years of mistakes - including the accidental shipment of nuclear weapons components to Taiwan - Hill had "recommitted itself to the basic fundamentals of our profession, especially as it applies to oversight and control of sensitive components," Busch said.

But right around the same time Busch came aboard, military auditors were finding that Hill was one of the worst of a number of Air Force bases that had

Gen. David Petraeus said Tuesday that he would review restrictions on the use of airpower and artillery in Afghanistan in response to complaints from American military members who believe that the limits are putting U.S. troops at risk.

In reporting Petraeus’ remarks, the New York Times suggested that a rule change “could be his first departure from the policies of the former top American commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.”

Barrack Obama marched into the Whitehouse with a promise to open a dialogue with his nation's enemies - to seek common ground even when geography, economics, politics and religion divide us.

So what does it mean when even those we have considered our friends have been trying to use our common ground against us?

Already under siege for his all-too-temperate reaction to terror plots, oil spills and economic woes, Obama now finds himself in the worst possible situation: To assuage the anger of average Americans over news that our post Cold War allies have been engaged in a s...

Is the rate of suicide at Hill Air Force Base higher than the general rate of self-inflicted death in Utah?

It’s a contention that we’ve made in our reporting a number of times. And some have asked where we have come up with that figure. That’s a valid question, and one I’m happy to answer.

Even as the Obama administration has reiterated a pledge to begin a drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in July of 2011...

... and at a time in which

The others were taken at one of Saddam Hussein's ammunition dumps, outside of Najaf, Iraq.

One holds the remains of thousands upon thousands of conventional weapons and is being cleaned up and protected by the U.S. military at cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.

At the other, which holds the remains of thousands upon thousands of chemical weapons, the U.S. military has no long-term plan to clean-up the site, which is protected by little more than a cattle fence.

Can you tell which is which?

A)

There are 100 other things I'd rather be remembered for.

But, alas, when people want to talk about sex among soldiers on the front lines of the nation's ongoing wars, I'm the guy they call.

That's owing to a story I penned, back in 2005, about what soldiers do wh...