Wars, Marines | featured news

The U.S. military said on Monday it was disciplining U.S. troops over two incidents that provoked outrage in Afghanistan early this year, one involving a video depicting Marines urinating on corpses and another over burned copies of the Koran.

A gunman wearing an Afghan uniform has shot to death three American troops in the southern Helmand province, according to the U.S.-led international military coalition in the country, known as ISAF. U.S. officials told CBS News correspondent David Martin that the three slain troops were members of a Marine special operations force. Afghan sources in Helmand told CBS News Kabul bureau chief Fazul Rahim that they were part of a team overseeing the training and recruitment of Afghan local police. The sources said it was one of the police officers who opened fire on his mentors during dinner on Thursday evening. ISAF has not yet confirmed these details.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has condemned a video that apparently shows U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of Afghan men, promising to punish those involved. Earlier, an Afghan Taliban spokesman said the video will not affect efforts to broker peace talks.

Looking for more firepower in the tough fight against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, Marines are scheduled to receive 14 tanks next month, which would be the first time the US military has used tanks in the nine-year war in ...

Karl Marlantes’s first novel, “Matterhorn,” is about a company of Marines who build, abandon and retake an outpost on a remote hilltop in Vietnam. According to the publisher, Marlantes ­— a highly decorated Vietnam vet — spent 30 years writing this book.

Marines and Afghan troops cleared the last major pocket of resistance in the former Taliban-ruled town of Marjah on Saturday ...

U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers advanced through poppy fields of Marjah on Saturday under withering gunfire from Taliban fighters shooting from mudbrick homes and compounds where families huddled in terror.

A nine-hour journey covering one mile reveals the danger and complexity of U.S. Marines' effort to wrest control of Marjah from the Taliban in Afghanistan.

U.S. Marines and Taliban insurgents exchanged gunfire Thursday on the outskirts of Marjah, a southern militant stronghold where American and Afghan forces are expected to launch a major attack in the coming days.