This gives a better idea of what the roads look like...
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.
This is what you get when your strategy is to not hurt anybody and then put your soldiers out in the field as practice targets for the enemy.
bingo. That's why I cringe when I see these assinine comments about nuking terrorists. You have to use the right tool for the job. And it ain't nukes. It's intelligence, special forces and a whole lot of time.
Exactly, which is why the targets for the bombing should be in Syria and Iran, with only a few in Iraq itself. It would be a modified strategic bombing campaign, very much like the bombing campaign that preceded the 100 hour war in Desert Storm. There wouldn't be a bridge still standing in either country. Anti aircraft sites would be rubble, and Iran's nuke/chem/bio facilities would, at minimum, be sealed into their underground bunkers, with no way out. (Might have to play "whack a mole" for awhile to ensure that).
We should have conquered Saudi Arabia on September 12, 2001, executed the Whahabbis, and turned their country into a giant oil spigot. Anybody who complains about it (Iran, Syria, Iraq, etc.) gets 24x7 fuel-air bombardment.
I’ve heard we have 15 in the inventory. Could be wrong. We have plenty of other ordnance in the inventory, so my point remains. We should be surging with bombs, lots and lots of bombs, not with infantry on foot patrol.
Ultimately what happens in Iraq is up to the Iraqis—whether they side with or against the terrorists, or whether they think settling ancient scores and stealing everything they can get their hands on is more important than establishing a workable government. All up to the Iraqis, and so far I’m not impressed. Sunnis fight Shias, millions in oil revenue has gone missing, and the Iraqi government wants to take a two month holiday this summer in the middle of a war for the control of their civilization.
We can want democracy and peace for Iraq all day long, but the Iraqis have to want it or we’re just spinning our wheels. So far it appears that many do, but not enough. In the meantime we lack the will to act decisively, so it’s the death of a thousand cuts for us. And that is squarely on the politicians, who are worried about their legacies and the next election, and the commanders at the top, who are worried about their legacies and their next promotion. Shame on all of them.
You don't know how long it took to get the UAV on scene, find the burning vehicles and for orders to the QRF to be issued.
I do recall reading that no communications from the patrol were received, so it's not like they called for the QRF.
Keep telling yourself that Ron.
I just watched the video of the command statement. In the part not quoted in the article, it indicated that the UAV did not find the burning vehicles until 15 minutes after the explosion. Now it’s only 41 minutes from then until the QRF was on the site. How long from the time the UAV operators saw the vehicles until the word got to the QRF to go? I have no basis for estimation.
War crime? Illegal treatment of captured US soldiers?
The Left NEVER speaks of their beloved “insurgents” in this manner. They just tell us that 3,700 have died in “iraq” (actually kuwait, germany, and elsewhere of non-combat injuries to arrive at that figure).
Then it is just a matter of locating where the patrol is and then the QRF comes to the rescue?
We had UAVs over the scene within 10/15 minutes is also being reported. A QRF taking an hour to reach an incident only makes sense in Stan....Not Iraq. If the hour time frame turns out to be true....this QRF was a goatfk.
TANKS a Bunch,,,Tuff Times for All...
I will post whatever I can find here,,,still lookin’ at/for maps/sat-pics of that area,,,they can’t be too far
from the spot I marked on the map up-thread(JMO),,,
4,000 “Mother’s Sons” are on a “Search And Destroy” to
find their “Brothers”...
Not sure but I dont think your post should have been addressed to me.
“Patton was right...”
And so was MacArthur.... and Schwartzkopf
And there are a couple other generals whose names I can’t remember who were fired for voicing their belief in WINNING rather than all this political pussy-footing.
The top ten origins of the foreign terrorists are:
Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Sudan, Tunisia and Yemen.
Anyone know what our State Dept is doing to force these countries to curtail these lunatics?
“If we fought WWII with the Nazi’s knowing that they could attack and retreat to their homes under the cover of women and children, we would have lost that war.”
Enough already with the “tough love” approach.
We need to stop thinking of Muslms as the “religion of peace” and start thinking of them as an evil ideology every bit as evil as Nazism or Leninist-marxism.
This gives a better idea of what the roads look like...
“Enough already with the “tough love” approach.
We need to stop thinking of Muslms as the “religion of peace” and start thinking of them as an evil ideology every bit as evil as Nazism or Leninist-marxism.”
Where’re we gonna get our oil from?
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