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The military has charged a U.S. Marine Corps officer with assaulting three Iraqi civilians in April, accusing him of beating and choking them and placing a pistol in one victim's mouth, the Marines said on Wednesday.  The officer, 2nd Lt. Nathan Phan, was charged with three counts of assault and one count of making a false official statement relating to the incident on April 10, near Hamdania, a town west of Baghdad.

The US military establishment has quietly undertaken a wholesale reassessment of its war strategy with a goal of identifying the mistakes made in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and remedying them before the next conflict. This summer, high-level Pentagon officials ordered a pair of secret studies to pinpoint the military's failures in the two conflicts, and, according to one of the authors, ``the results won't be pretty" when the findings are produced this fall.

President Bush on Monday defended his handling of the war between Isreal and Hezbollah, declaring that Hezbollah had been the loser in the monthlong fight and warning Syria and Iran against resupplying the Lebanese militia.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said Sudan has taken inspiration from Hizbullah and would battle a proposed international peacekeeping force in the strife-ridden Darfur region, the state news agency reported Tuesday. The statements by Bashir appeared to strengthen Sudan's resolve to resist a possible UN-backed force to end the bloodshed and ongoing refugee crisis. More than 200,000 people have been killed in the western region since 2003, when ethnic African tribes revolted against the Khartoum government.