War_Conflict

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Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said the Distinguished Warfare Medal is for service members who “are physically removed” from the fight and whose contributions “do not involve acts of valor of physical risk that combat entails.” (Associated Press)

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** FILE ** In this Dec. 24, 1998, photo, Muslim militant and al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden speaks to a selected group of reporters in mountains of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Rahimullah Yousafzai)

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** FILE ** In this Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2012, file photo, is a general view of a destroyed pottery shop inside the Old City of Aleppo, Syria, a listed UNESCO World Heritage Site that was gutted in October and which is now controlled by the Free Syrian Army. Syria’s top antiquities official is calling for U.N. intervention and cooperation from neighboring countries to halt the illicit trafficking of its artifacts as the 23-month civil war rages on.(AP Photo/Monica Prieto, File)

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Syrian rebels are pictured at the Jarrah airfield in Syria's northern Aleppo province on Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2013, in this image taken from video and authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting. (AP Photo/Ugarit News via AP video)

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**FILE** People arrive at Basra airport in Iraq on June 4, 2005, on the first commercial Iraqi Airways flight from Baghdad since Basra's airport came under British control following the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. (Associated Press)

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** FILE** A Palestinian watches a sunset in Gaza City, Sunday, Feb. 10, 2013. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

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** FILE ** Egyptian security police fire tear gas at protesters during clashes next to the presidential palace in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, Feb. 8, 2013. Egypt has witnessed a fresh cycle of violence over the past two weeks since the second anniversary of the 2011 uprising that deposed longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak, with clashes across the country having left scores dead and hundreds injured. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)