Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) asks Ambassador Ryan Crocker about the future of U.S. operations in Iraq. Clinton also asks General David Petraeus what the conditions need to be to recommend to President Bush that the current strategy in Iraq is not working.

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus gives his opening statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, delivers his opening statement at the start of the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the war in Iraq before testifying on U.S. involvement alongside Gen. David Petraeus.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) makes her opening statements at the Senate Armed Services Committee, where General David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker tesifty on the progress in Iraq.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) delivered an opening statement at the start of hearings on the war in Iraq. Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are testifying before the Senate.

Carl Levin (D-M), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, delivered an opening statement at the start of hearings on the war in Iraq. Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are testifying before the Senate.

Training police forces is a job many consider critical to establishing security in Iraq and Afghanistan. The process often begins in the woods of Fredericksburg, Va., where a Falls Church-based contractor trains hundreds of police officers a year, turning them into teachers for thousands of Iraqi and Afghan counterparts.

Brett and Kurtis Walters will soon head to Iraq together, soldiers in the same nine-member Indiana National Guard squad that will mobilize in early December to support the White House strategy to keep at least 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq through next year.

Michelle and Troy Turner live in rural West Virginia, 80 miles from the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital where Troy receives his care. Troy finished his tour in Iraq in 2003, but Michelle must deal with the fallout. Troy's one-year war has become his wife's endless one.

Washington Post photographer Andrea Bruce recounts an encounter with a roadside bomb while embedded in Baqubah, Iraq. The June 2004 attack seriously injured two soldiers who were traveling in an unarmored Humvee.

Protesters and counter-protesters of the war in Iraq demonstrated their differences in downtown Washington Saturday. Anti-war participants marched from near the White House to the Capitol where, according to police, dozens were arrested after breaking a barricade at the building's base.

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on U.S. progress in Iraq.

At least 250 people were killed Aug. 14, 2007, in what has become the deadliest attack in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion began in 2003.

A handful of U.S. senators sustained a marathon all-night debate on Iraq, alternating speechmaking with snatches of sleep in makeshift dorm rooms or at homes and apartments a few blocks away from the Capitol.

Two car bombs killed at least 80 people and wounded another 180 in a busy commercial area in the northern city of Kirkuk, Iraq, on Monday, July 16, 2007.

At Arlington Cemetery, mourners connect to troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The tumultuous trial of Saddam Hussein resumed with the first witness describing the roundup of residents of a small Iraqi village after an assassination attempt against the Iraqi leader in 1982.

Soldiers, hospital patients, expatriates and other special groups vote ahead of the December 15 parliamentary elections, which will select a National Assembly that will serve for four years.

At least seven bombs exploded in the Iraqi capital on Sunday, interrupting several days of relative calm and killing at least 26 people.

Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's western Anbar province, has sunk into virtual anarchy under the stranglehold of a skilled, well-financed and ruthless insurgency. Now, for the first time, U.S. and Iraqi forces are engaged in a block-by-block campaign to retake the area.

A series of attacks throughout the Iraqi capital killed nearly 100 people over a 24-hour period. Scores of unidentified bullet-riddled corpses bearing signs of torture have been discovered in Baghdad since Tuesday night, according to an Iraqi official.

The former Iraqi president and two co-defendents are found guilty for crimes against humanity as thousands take to street in Tikrit and other cities despite an all-day curfew imposed over security fears.

Armed men in Iraqi police uniforms kidnapped as many as 150 people from the Ministry of Higher Education in Baghdad on Tuesday. The Nov. 14 incident was the largest mass abduction since the U.S.-led invasion and a blow to efforts to keep members of Iraq's trained middle class from fleeing the country.

Saddam Hussein -- the Iraqi despot who launched a war against Iran, used chemical weapons in attacks on his country's Kurdish minority, ordered the 1990 invasion of Kuwait and held on to power despite a decade of tight international sanctions in the 1990s -- was found guilty of crimes against humanity on Nov. 5, 2006, and sentenced to death by hanging.

Iraqis and people around the world react the death of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, who was hanged in the predawn hours of Saturday, December 30 for crimes against humanity in the mass murder of Shiite men and boys in the 1980s.

Two nearly simultaneous car bomb blasts in central Baghdad killed scores of people Monday, amid heightened U.S. and Iraqi efforts to secure the capital city.

In a series of paintings and drawings, artist Fernando Botero reflects on the 2004 prisoner abuse scandal at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

In a prime-time address, President Bush announced some U.S. troops can start coming home from Iraq, but appealed for more time for his 'surge' to work; Democrats denounced it as a dead-end strategy.

Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island gave the Democratic Response to President Bush's speech on Iraq Thursday evening, saying the president's Iraq's policies have worsened America's security.

Gen. David Petraeus comments on the death of Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, during a conversation with The Washington Post on Sept. 13, 2007.

Only On The Web: A preview of Katie Couric's interview with Gen. David Petraeus about his recommendations to Congress for the war in Iraq.

Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, testified before members of the Senate about the results of the troop surge.

Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are on Capitol Hill for a second straight day, answering questions from senators on progress in Iraq. Crocker says high levels of violence make effective government difficult.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said "the American presence in Iraq needs to be significantly reduced."

Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, opened the second day of testimony on Capitol Hill by saying the surge "is at the service of a fundamentally flawed strategy."

Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) told General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker that due to deeply seated sectarian divisions, the U.S. is facing "extraordinarily narrow margins for achieving our goals."

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) told Petraeus and Crocker "you have been made the de facto spokesmen for what many of us believe to be a failed policy."

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)cautioned that the choices made now will "affect the security of all our countrymen for decades to come."

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said that despite modest gains from the surge, "this continues to be a disastrous foreign policy mistake."

Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) asks Gen. David Petraeus about the strain that extended tours and accelerated deployments have placed on the armed forces.

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank sketches General Petraeus' testimony on the progress of the war in Iraq in Congress on Monday.

Gen. David H. Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker appeared before a joint hearing of the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees Monday to give testimony on the results of the Bush administration's "troop surge" in Iraq.

Excerpts from Gen. David Petraeus's testimony before Congress about the success of the troop surge and military and political progress in Iraq.

Excerpts from U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker's testimony before Congress. Crocker called for continued U.S. involement in Iraq, saying "the course is hard--the alternatives are far worse."

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) said Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker had been sent to "restore credibility to a discredited policy."

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) condemned the attacks on Gen. Petraus and Ambassador Crocker's credibility and praised their service to the country during his opening remarks.

Congressman Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) tells General Petraeus that the surge has not improved the security situation in Iraq and says troops should be withdrawn.

Gen. David Petraeus responds to a question from Congressman Steve Chabot (R-OH) about troop morale in Iraq.

Explosions destroyed minarets of the revered Askariya shrine in Samarra, Iraq on June 13, 2007, where an attack last year plunged Iraq into sectarian violence. Though no one was injured in the blasts, officials fear the event will spark a bloody wave of retaliatory attacks.

When U.S. troops seized the Iraqi capital April 10, 2003, lawlessness prevailed as hospitals and embassies were looted and ambulances and buses hijacked. Four years later, U.S.-led forces are trying to quell secretarian violence that has claimed the lives of thousands of troops and civilians.

Iraqis in growing numbers are fleeing the war at home, creating the largest refugee crisis in the Middle East in almost 60 years.

As the U.S.-funded portion of Iraq reconstruction nears its end, American officials and contractors fear that thousands of successful projects could lead to failure. There is no guarantee that most Iraqis will be able to benefit from the effort.

A series of bomb blasts outside a Baghdad university killed dozens and wounded many others soon after the U.N. released a report finding that more than 34,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed during the past year.

When they finally return this summer, the Minnesota National Guard will have been gone nearly two years, one of the longest stints of any guard unit since 9/11.

Since 1868 Americans around the world have honored those who have sacrificed their lives for this country. This Memorial Day, President Bush recognized the grief suffered by families and friends of troops killed in war, most recently in Afghanistan and Iraq.

After a 14-month tour in Iraq, Andrew Snow returned home to Florida to a welcoming party. Two slideshows -- one narrated by Andrew, one by his father -- offer two perspectives on coming, and going, home.

Reservists in the Marine 4th Civil Affairs Group return home from their third tour in Iraq, to the delight of their family and friends.

Troops in Fort Riley, Kansas from the 2-16 -- the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division -- prepare for deployment.

The Walter Reed Medical Center hosts a special naturalization ceremony for wounded U.S. troops.

Five and a half years of sustained combat have transformed the venerable 113-acre Walter Reed Army Medical Center into a holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged outpatients.

For the families of soldiers killed in Iraq, the military's death benefit can help survivors move on. But strict rules on who can claim the benefits prevent some family members from collecting, even when the soldier's intentions were made clear. One such person is Susan Jaenke, an Iowa woman raising her grandchild after her daughter's death last year in Anbar province.

The Iraq Study Group, the most extensive independent assessment of the nearly four-year-old conflict, releases its recommendations to the president and U.S. Congress and follows with a news conference on Capitol Hill.

Robert M. Gates, President Bush's nominee to be the next secretary of defense, appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee starting Tuesday, Dec. 5, for his confirmation hearing. Much of the questioning involves how to improve the situation in Iraq. Gates served as CIA director under President George H.W. Bush.

For many veterans of the war in Iraq, a new battle awaits them on the homefront--one of recovery.