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RENO, Nevada (AP) -- Security contractors were heckled, humiliated and physically abused by U.S. Marines in Iraq while jailed for 72 hours with insurgents, one of the detainees said Friday. "It was disbelief the whole time. I couldn't believe what was happening," said Matt Raiche, 34, an ex-Marine who was one of 16 American and three Iraqi contractors detained at Camp Falluja last month. "I just found it crazy that we were being held with terrorists, that we were put in the same facility with them," he told The Associated Press in an interview at his lawyer's office. "They were...

For mom Marcia Cobb and her teenage son Axel, the white letters USMC on their caller ID soon spelled, "Don't answer the phone!" Marine recruiters began a relentless barrage of calls to Axel as soon as the mellow, compliant Sedro-Woolley High School grad had cut his 17th birthday cake. And soon it was nearly impossible to get the seekers of a few good men off the line. With early and late calls ringing in their ears, Marcia tried using call blocking. And that's when she learned her first hard lesson. You can't block calls from the government, her server said....

Four years ago, Alan Greenspan urged Congress to cut taxes, asserting that the federal government was in imminent danger of paying off too much debt. On Wednesday the Fed chairman warned Congress of the opposite fiscal danger: he asserted that there would be large budget deficits for the foreseeable future, leading to an unsustainable rise in federal debt. But he counseled against reversing the tax cuts, calling instead for cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Advertisement Does anyone still take Mr. Greenspan's pose as a nonpartisan font of wisdom seriously?

One of Minnesota's 10 presidential electors broke from the pack and cast a vote Monday for John Edwards, the Democratic vice presidential running mate for John Kerry. The other nine Minnesota members of the Electoral College voted for Kerry, who won the state's popular vote in November. After the state's Electoral College ceremony concluded, no one stepped foward as the Edwards voter. Most electors chalked the vote up as a mistake rather than a purposeful political statement.

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041015/NEWS01/410150366/1002 (No article due to copyright issues. I've written a summary) A 17-member Army Reserve platoon was arrested for refusing a "suicide mission" to deliver fuel. The 17 were members of the 343rd Quartermaster Company from Rock Hill, S.C. They refused to go to Taji in the north of Iraq because they did not consider their vehicles safe. In the event of an ambush, which they figured likely, they would have been helpless.

David Wu admits to 'inexcusable behavior' PORTLAND, Ore. - A Democratic congressman in a tight re-election race admitted Tuesday that while he was a college student 28 years ago, he was disciplined by school officials for "inexcusable behavior" toward an ex-girlfriend. The admission by Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., came immediately after a report published in The Oregonian newspaper saying a former girlfriend from college once claimed Wu tried to force her into having sex. The report said the woman, whom the newspaper did not identify, declined to comment, citing privacy concerns. In his statement, Wu said he had a "two-year...