Posted on 12/06/2005 3:25:45 PM PST by saquin
BAGHDAD, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Ten U.S. Marines killed near the Iraqi city of Falluja last week had been at a promotion ceremony and were not on foot patrol as initially reported, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.
The Marines were in a disused flour mill on the outskirts of the city to celebrate the promotion of three soldiers, a military statement said.
As the ceremony ended, the Marines dispersed and one of them is thought to have stepped on a buried pressure plate linked to explosives that caused the devastating blast.
The death toll was the largest suffered by U.S. soldiers in Iraq in a single incident since August.
Eleven Marines were wounded in the explosion, which the military initially blamed on "an improvised explosive device (IED) fashioned from several large artillery shells".
The attack was particularly ill-timed for the Americans, coming just a day after President George W. Bush had given a speech outlining his strategy for Iraq and saying he would settle for "nothing less than complete victory".
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Sorry, I meant to clip that last typical al-Reuters sentence out when I excerpted.
Sad bump; prayers to their families, and for God's protection of our military men and women.
And the day after Nancy Pelosi demanded a complete withdrawal...
But perfectly timed for the msm to rack up more numbers and shovel some blame onto Bush.
Prayers to the families.
So sad. Their was a soldier in our area who was murdered in Iraq, they ruled his death a homicide yesterday, and arrested someone today. Prayers for all of the dead.
http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/5470346/detail.html
Sad news bump...prayers for the affected families.
Just wow.
And how did that device end up there ?
How did they know that it was going to be used ahead of time ?
I get the impression one of the "friendly" iraqis working with the Marines didn't turn up for work the next day.
How sad.
An effin booby trap but the media made it sound like the terrorists were on offense.
I was thinking about that. The Marines had probably used it before and were seen. Since it wasn't inside the perimeter and guarded the bad guys figured they would eventually be back. All they had to do was booby trap it. They got real lucky. You definitely don't want to act in a predictable manner and something the marines did in relation to this building told people they would be back.
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