The Guard Goes to War

Struggles Don't End With Guardsmen's Return

With the Iraq war, thousands of California families became combat families nearly overnight, as the California National Guard, and Guard units all over the country, began their first large-scale federal mobilization since the Korean War. More...

In Dying, Colonel Broke a Promise to His Troops

At a prayer breakfast in Baghdad last week, Col. William Wood tearfully promised soldiers in the California National Guard battalion that the killing and wounding of soldiers in his battered unit would come to an end. More...

U.S. MILITARY DEATHS IN IRAQ

U.S. Death Toll in Iraq Hits 2,000

BAGHDAD — The Pentagon announced Tuesday that three more Americans serving in Iraq had been killed, lifting the U.S. military death toll to 2,000 and triggering a new round of protest and debate in the United States over the 2 1/2 -year conflict. More...

More Tumult Besets Guard Unit in Iraq

Three California Army National Guard sergeants have been imprisoned and four other soldiers sentenced to hard labor for their role in abusing Iraqi nationals who were taken into custody near Baghdad and apparently mistaken for insurgents. More...

Company A Comes Home

This article is part of an ongoing project by the Los Angeles Times and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism under the supervision of Times California correspondent Rone Tempest. Durrell Dawson, Felicia Mello, Jeff Nachtigal, Melissa Nix, Rebecca Ruiz, Sandhya Somashekhar and Shlomi Simhi were the writers; Jakob Schiller and Tristan Spinski the photographers. Also contributing was Christine Prince, a student in the Goldman School of Public Policy. More...

CALIFORNIA

Returning Guardsmen Plan to Stay Put

PETALUMA, Calif. — Sgt. Nate Gorin served tours with the Army in Afghanistan and then with the California National Guard in Iraq. More...

COVER STORY

Who's Dying in Our War?

Some months after the Americans took over the sprawling Balad Air Base, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, someone posted an enigmatic sign on the main gate asking: "Is Today the Day?" Soldiers at the base, which the U.S. military renamed Logistics Support Area Anaconda, or Camp Anaconda, take turns speculating about what the sign means. In the tense months leading up to today's planned national elections in Iraq, the population at the base has swollen to more than 22,000 soldiers and civilian contractors. Some Camp Anaconda residents—installed in relative comfort inside the 15-square-mile compound that now features four dining halls, two swimming pools, a first-run movie theater and a Burger King franchise—have concluded that the sign is a military safety message: "Stay Alert!" More...

THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ

Rumsfeld Encounters Friendly Fire

WASHINGTON — Anxious troops awaiting deployment to Iraq peppered Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld with questions Wednesday during his brief visit to their camp in the Kuwaiti desert, demanding to know why U.S. forces were still being sent with insufficient protection against deadly insurgents. More...

Guardsmen Say They're Facing Iraq Ill-Trained

DOÑA ANA RANGE, N.M. — Members of a California Army National Guard battalion preparing for deployment to Iraq said this week that they were under strict lockdown and being treated like prisoners rather than soldiers by Army commanders at the remote desert camp where they are training. More...

War's Toll Respects Neither Youth Nor Experience

SAN FRANCISCO — The coffins arrived on the same commercial airplane, US Airways Flight 29 from Philadelphia. More...

MILITARY DEATHS

Guard Sgt. Quoc Binh Tran, 26, Mission Viejo; Killed in Iraq

When he left for Iraq, Sgt. Quoc Binh "Bo" Tran's family knew they were not supposed to worry. For him, it was his duty and the kind of adventure that fueled his daring spirit. More...