Posted on 05/13/2007 5:18:54 AM PDT by jern
Edited on 05/13/2007 9:40:51 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Thousands of U.S. soldiers searched Sunday for three Americans who were missing after their patrol came under attack in an explosion that killed four of their comrades and an Iraqi army translator. Two bombings — one in northern Iraq and another at a market in Baghdad — killed at least 67 Iraqis.
The Islamic State in Iraq, an al-Qaida front group, said it had captured several soldiers in the attack, but offered no proof to back up its claim, posted on an Islamic Web site.
The search for the missing Americans began after insurgents attacked a patrol of seven U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter before dawn Saturday near Mahmoudiya.
The U.S. military said Saturday that five people were dead and three were missing.
On Sunday, U.S. spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell confirmed that the Iraqi interpreter was among the dead — and that all the missing were Americans. He said about 4,000 U.S. troops were involved in the search.
Caldwell said the bodies of the three slain soldiers and the Iraqi interpreter had been identified, but the military was still working to identify the fifth.
"Everybody is fully engaged, the commanders are intimately focused on this, every asset we have from national assets to tactical assets ... are being used ... to locate these three missing soldiers," Caldwell said.
Mahmoudiya is about 20 miles south of Baghdad in an al-Qaida-dominated area known as the "triangle of death." Two U.S. soldiers were massacred there last year after they disappeared at a checkpoint.
President Bush has been getting regular updates on the missing soldiers, Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the White House's National Security Council, said in Washington.
Meanwhile, a suicide truck bomber crashed into the offices of a Kurdish political party, killing at least 50 people, including the police chief, and wounding scores, officials said. It was the second suicide attack in Kurdish areas of the north in four days.
The suicide truck bombing in Makhmur, 30 miles south of Irbil, badly damaged the office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani, leader of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. Makhmur is just south of the autonomous Kurdish-controlled areas, but it has a substantial Kurdish population.
The blast also killed the police chief and damaged the mayor's office, officials said.
Ziryan Othman, the health minister of the Kurdish regional government, said at least 50 people were killed and 115 were wounded, including the city's mayor.
Cars were charred and crushed by the blast, with some flipped over. The tires of one appeared to have been incinerated. Most of the small KDP building appeared to have been destroyed, reduced to a pile of bricks. Other buildings had walls blown out.
A group of people hurriedly pulled a body from a demolished car.
Outside the hospital in Irbil, security guards closed the hospital to visitors and read a list containing the names of the wounded who had been admitted.
Hearing the names of his son and daughter, Qassim Amin, 61, a Kurd, thanked God that they had not been killed. Both are employees at the KDP party office, he said.
"Makhmur is an open, peaceful area, and al-Qaida is trying to destabilize it by causing fighting between Arabs and Kurds," Amin said.
In Baghdad, a parked car exploded near the popular Sadriyah market, killing at least 17 people and wounding 46, police said. The area has been hit by several blasts usually blamed on suspected Sunni insurgents, including a car bombing on April 18 that killed 127 people.
AP Television News footage showed a crater in the ground filled with debris, splintered wood, metal and a tire. A white truck appeared to be crumpled by the blast.
With violence on the rise, Caldwell also announced that an additional 3,000 forces have been sent to Diyala province, scene of heavy fighting.
Last week, the top U.S. commander in the north, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, said the U.S. didn't have enough troops to restore order in Diyala but more had been promised.
"There is a recognition clearly that up in Diyala there has been an uptick in the violence," Caldwell said at a news conference in Baghdad.
On Sunday, Iraqi gunmen drove into the Diyala capital of Baqouba, pulled two handcuffed men out of the trunk and shot them to death — one in view of a bustling market and the other near a movie theater, police and witnesses said.
"This is the destiny of traitors," the gunmen yelled as they shot their victims.
Three other civilians also were killed execution-style in a market in the city center, police said.
It's a war, if you fight, some of yours will be injured, die, or be captured. The only way to prevent causalities and having your troops captured is to "cut and run".
Or there is one other way. Kill the enemy and win the war, but that can take some time in a urban guerrilla scenario.
Video: Specifics Of Attack
MAJ. GEN. William B Caldwell describes todays attack in which 5 soldiers were killed in action and 3 are still missing..
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b9f_1178982354
Wherever they are. Start with the Pakistani-Afghan border region. There may not be a sufficient concentration anywhere in Iraq to provide an appropriate target for a nuke, but we have other weapons for the job.
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If, as was posted above, LTC Morchauser is the commander then this unit is 2-15FA and part of 2BCT of the 10th Mtn. He assumed command @ six months ago.
SeeBS, PMSNBC, Clinton News Network, Al Jazzeria and others. Post it on their own websites. They'll get the message. They'll ignore it, but they'll get it.
TANKS,,,I follow those and the “family site”(password)for whatever they put out,,,ain’t much,,,we should know something one way or the other in a few days,,,
Moozzi is playin’ “mind games” on Mother’s Day,,,IMHO,,,
PayBack Time...
Update: Actually, the statement didn’t give a specific number of troops.
http://hotair.com/archives/2007/05/13/al-qaeda-weve-got-the-three-us-troops-missing-in-iraq/
Since we never put the MOAB into production, that's going to prove a mite difficult.
Wouldn’t take long before there wouldn’t be a spider hole in the desert for al Qaeda to hide in.
Many of the Iraq tribes out in that dessert have already turned against the foreign Al Qaeda forces.
Right. That’s why willfuly extinguishing our posterity is the greatest of all travesties.
Deliver the demand to all major Islamic leaders....Sunni, Shia, Our Lady of Beheadment...whatever, and say that either it stops or Mecca, Medina, et al....are toast. Same with nuclear detonation on US soil.....it happens, the city/shrines are gone. No questions asked.
It’ll be lots of “fog” out there...
I signed the townhall.com petition. God bless our soldiers and Marines.
thx
I am sitting here eating my breakfast,late night on the computer, and reading this makes me sick and hurts my heart. When will we begin to take this war serious? Those in service to our country are fighting with their hands tied and Iran is right in the mix of it. I am sick to death of it all. Let them fight or let them come home. We have a friend of the family over there who is in the Army,second tour,and this time he is having a hard time adjusting,for many different reasons.These people worship death and the democrats do not want us to help them with that desire.The demonrats must be defeated!
There's a neighborhood off of South Ft. Hood street in Killeen, Texas. The street leading into the neighborhood is Omar Dr., the other streets in the neighborhood are: Medina, Abdullah, Osman, Hamza, Mustafa, Ali, Anees, and Abu Baker. (Abu Baker was was a Muslim ruler of the Tughlaq Dynasty (1389) of the Delhi Sultanate, although it could be an alternate spelling of Abu Bakr, the first Caliph.)
When Al Qaeda starts killing over here, I hope to God retribution is visited on the Democrats, and not at the polls.
And what happens if the before mentioned agree
Their mosque is right there on the corner of Omar Dr. and Hwy 195. Looks like they have their own little enclave starting up.
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