by Frank James
A quick guided tour to some of the morning's most important or interesting (or both) Washington-related stories.
The U.S.'s current efforts to arm Sunnis to fight al Qaeda is undermining the Iraqi government and years of U.S. policy and is an admission that the country is in a civil war, according to some military officials and foreign-policy experts.
The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan killed seven children and some insurgents during an air strike against a suspected al Qaeda enclave. The air strike was apparently in response to a massive bomb blast in Kabul that claimed the largest civilian death toll since the U.S. invasion in 2001.
Military service members suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder are far and away the largest category of casualties of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But relatively speaking, the nation doesn't devote nearly the resources to their care that it devotes to those with physical injuries, particularly amputees, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in part because of a shortage of trained clinicians and bureaucracy.
Guam's residents are bracing for and anxious about an influx of U.S. service members to levels not seen since World War II, as many as 20,000, as the U.S. increases its presence there in the even it needs to respond quickly to North Korea.
Sen. Hillary Clinton regained a double-digit lead over Sen. Barack Obama in the latest USA Today-Gallup Poll, after the race appeared tied two weeks ago. Meanwhile, Fred Thompson scrambled the Republican race, with the actor and former senator drawing support from Rudy Giuliani and easing into second place without even officially declaring himself a candidate.
House Republicans have effectively used House procedures to keep the House Majority Democrats from exerting anywhere near the iron control that House Republicans did when they controlled the House. Democrats insist their agenda is on track and say they intend to run a House more open to minority rights than the GOP did.
Emissions from cars older than the 1996 model year aren't checked in seven of the 32 states that check for such emissions and more states are considering dropping the inspections for the older, more polluting vehicles since it costs taxpayers more to inspect them.
Immigration raids by federal authorities at Swift meatpacking plants in Nebraska and Iowa last year created an emergency for public school officials who were faced with what to do with children whose parents were arrested. The experience has led to school administrators to plan for a new kind of emergency.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas swore in a new government and outlawed his Fatah group's rival, Hamas, in the Gaza strip.
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