US President George Bush traded ideas on Iraq with a bipartisan commission and promised to work with the incoming Democratic majority toward “common objectives”.

TWO US marines were severely traumatised after following orders to photograph corpses of unarmed Iraqi civilians allegedly killed by members of their unit, their families said yesterday.

Two US Marines were severely traumatised after following orders to photograph corpses of unarmed Iraqi civilians allegedly killed by members of their unit, their families said today.

AMERICA’S top-ranking military commander said yesterday “it would be premature for me to judge” the outcome of a Pentagon investigation into the killing of as many as a dozen Iraqi civilians by marines.

The deaths of as many as two dozen Iraqi civilians and an ensuing cover-up threaten to do more harm to US efforts in Iraq than even the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, a prominent congressman and war critic says.

President George Bush offered encouragement to war-weary Iraqis today but acknowledged they have paid a heavy price – 30,000 dead – as a result of the US-led invasion and its bloody aftermath.

The Republican-controlled Senate has voted to impose restrictions on how terrorism suspects can be treated, in a rare wartime rebuke to President George Bush.

A proposal to destroy the notorious prison where Iraqi detainees were abused moved forward as politicians voted to include it in a defence spending bill.

Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry pressured Congress and the Pentagon to fund a missile system on behalf of a San Diego contractor who, years later, pleaded guilty to making illegal contributions to the senator and other politicians, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Just before United Flight 93 crashed, some of the passengers learned of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and may have tried to overpower their hijackers to keep the jetliner from hitting another landmark.