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.
Reconnaissance missions are generally small unit actions. When I ran patrols, with between 5 and 12 men, depending on the mission, we always knew that we were on our own for a minimum of twenty minutes. Snipers, claymores, mines, IEDs or ambushes, sh*t happens.
How would you run recons of hot places? How would you prevent what happened to these guys?
Armchair generals, indeed.
Like many others, I’m afraid. Yesterday’s thread on this filled up with such posts immediately.
You need to come out of your shell, quit beating around the bush, and tell us how you really feel.
Thank goodness I spared myself, and got completely away from all things media.
Lets wait on this one -
Last year in a somewhat similar incident, those two soldiers we lost (and thought to be taken alive) were KIA at the scene....
Our guys are doing all they can to recover these three warriors....They will.
Only having 8 men within this patrol (ambush?) doesn't bother me.....That some reports coming out suggesting the QRF took an hour to reach the scene does! (if accurate....big if at this point)....
hahaha....we havnt done that since the beginning so what makes you think we will do it now?
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How would you run recons of hot places? How would you prevent what happened to these guys?
Armchair generals, indeed.
Exactly right.
The 8-man patrol (+1 terp) doesn't surprise me / nor bother me at this point - That the QRF took close to an hour to reach the scene (supposedly, by most reports) does raise a big red flag.
But lets wait and see how this plays out.
The likelihood of 3 U.S. soldiers being taken alive is very remote.....AQ might have simply taken their bodies....God bless them all....
Those responsible will pay....in the days ahead..
I think it’s more likely Sunni insurgents were invloved in the attack and took dead or dying soldiers with them so as to mutilate and booby trap the bodies. But, if Al-Quaeda is involved and they do post videos of these men being brutalized, then it’s time to end the surge and start “winning dirty”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/05/plan_b_for_iraq_winning_dirty.html
Were it so easy. I feel the frustration as well. My first impulse is “Who can we kill over this?”
But, how do you defeat an enemy who glories in death and destruction?
You give them the death they claim to be unafraid of. Dead men do not fight.
Those responsible will pay....in the days ahead..’
I agree, especially with the last sentence.
Michael Frazier
4th Battalion, 31st IR, 2nd BCT of the 10thID are responsible for this FOB. They had two others KIA ten days ago in seperate incidents.
prayers
Prayers for these missing Heroes.
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. The only way to clean them out is the WWII way such as in Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo and if that fails such as Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but I don’t believe it will fail if we have the stomach to win and not play chess.
Anything is possible, I suppose - there are so many players there that it’s hard to lay odds.
I hope we find these men soon, one way or another, but if worse comes to worst and a video comes out, I seriously hope anyone we consider even remotely involved in this will pay dearly. That’s the only thing that will stop them.
“Bush wants to establish Iraq as a model representative democracy for the Middle East, but that’s proved impossible so far - partly because of the Sunni insurgencies, partly because of Shiites’ reluctance to compromise with their former oppressors and partly because al-Qaida succeeded in triggering a civil war.”
To that I would also add...partly because the very idea of “giving” democracy to a people who have never expressed a desire for it, in fact whose very religion is totally opposed to it, defies logic.
If we are not of a mind to just pound these people into total submission, then it is long past time to start dipping small arms ammo in pig blood and issuing pork products to the troops to use as they see fit.
If you happen to mess up a few AQ on the way...all the better!
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