Karzai vows war on crooks

KABUL - President Hamid Karzai was inaugurated Thursday for a second term, pledging that Afghanistan will prosecute corrupt officials and control its own security within five years.

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he favors handing responsibility for security in Afghanistan to that nation’s forces only when they are ready to handle it and possibly in phases, as is being done in Iraq.

As Karzai vowed to make his country safe from an increasingly violent Taliban insurgency, two U.S. servicemen died in a bomb attack, and a suicide bomber killed 10 civilians in the south.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Karzai’s comments about battling corruption provide a“very strong base on which to measure ...