The United States portrayed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime as "dead men walking" on Wednesday, and urged Russia, China and India to put politics aside to stand with the West on action against the regime.

"Our view is that this regime is the equivalent of dead men walking," State Department special coordinator on Middle East affairs Frederic Hof told U.S. lawmakers in a hearing on U.S. policy toward Damascus.

President Barack Obama on Monday acknowledged a U.S. drone was in Iranian hands for the first time and said the United States has asked Tehran to return the sophisticated spycraft.

"We've asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond," Obama said at a news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Monday that "history will judge" the decision by his predecessor president George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2003.

As an Illinois state senator, Obama had slammed the planned invasion as "a dumb war."

Iran will reverse-engineer the U.S. drone it has in its possession, and is in the "final stages" of unlocking the aircraft's software secrets, the head of Iran's parliamentary national security committee said on Monday.

"Our next action will be to reverse-engineer the aircraft," Parviz Sorouri said, according to the website of Iranian state television.

President Barack Obama meets Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki Monday, marking America's exit from a war launched in an aerial "shock and awe" assault that went on to deeply wound both nations.

Obama will hold talks with Maliki at the White House, have a press conference and join his visitor at nearby Arlington National Cemetery where many of the nearly 4,500 U.S. war dead lie buried following the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Leading Republican White House contender Newt Gingrich has stood by remarks that Palestinians are an "invented" people, which have sparked outrage as he seemed to call into question long-held U.S. policy on statehood.

"Is what I said factually correct? Yes. Is it historically true? Yes," Gingrich said during a thorny moment in the latest debate among the Republicans vying to challenge President Barack Obama in the November 2012 election.

The United States on Sunday vacated a Pakistani airbase following a deadline given by Islamabad in the wake of anger over NATO air strikes last month that killed 24 soldiers, officials said.

Pakistan's military said in a statement that the last flight carrying U.S. personnel and equipment had left Shamsi airbase, in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, completing a process that began last week.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki headed to Washington on Sunday, for the first time as the leader of a country virtually empty of foreign troops as the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq nears its final days.

Maliki is to hold wide-ranging talks with U.S. President Barack Obama during his two-day visit, which comes less than a month before the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and more than eight years after the launch of the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

The Palestinian premier on Saturday slammed U.S. presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich for belittling the Palestinians as an "invented" people and demanded an apology.

Gingrich, leading in some national polls for the Republican Party nomination, made the comments in a Friday interview to be aired with the Jewish Channel satellite television.

A gunman killed a police officer in a Virginia Tech parking lot and was found dead nearby Thursday in an attack that sent fear through the campus nearly five years after it was the scene of the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.

The school locked down for hours and warned students and faculty members via email and text message to stay indoors. The shootings came as university officials were in Washington appealing a fine that U.S. officials gave them over the school's response to the 2007 rampage.