Three More U.S. Soldiers Killed In Iraq

Fox News ^ | September 21, 2003 | Unknown

[GreatOne]

Reporting that 2 officers killed in a mortar attack, and another in a separate bomb blast.

[GreatOne]

May God receive them into His arms, and bless and comfort their families.

[leadpenny]

U.S. Troops Killed in Iraq Mortar Attack
16 minutes ago

By TAREK AL-ISSAWI, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A mortar attack on a Baghdad-area prison killed two U.S. military police and injured 13, the military said Sunday. The attack came just hours after an assassination attempt on a member of Iraq's Governing Council.

The mortar attack occurred at about 10 p.m. Saturday at the Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad, the military said. It said no inmates were injured, but gave no further details.


The deaths brought to 302 the number of U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq.


On Saturday, Aquila al-Hashimi, a Governing Council member and strong candidate to become Iraq's representative at the United Nations, was seriously wounded by six gunmen in a pickup truck who chased her in her car on Saturday.


She underwent a second operation and was in stable condition at a military hospital on the grounds of one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces where the Coalition Provisional Authority has its headquarters, an official with the U.S.-led civilian administration said on Sunday.


Al-Hashimi had been preparing to leave for a key U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York on Tuesday. Major U.S. allies are pressing for Washington to give the United Nations a greater role in bringing stability to this fractured country.


The Governing Council president blamed Saddam loyalists for the shooting.


U.S.-led forces have been struggling to put down a guerrilla-style insurgency that has targeted Americans and their Iraqi allies. The police chief of the central town of Khaldiyah, who was working with U.S. forces, was assassinated by gunmen last week, and other attacks have killed police recruits trained by the Americans.


Last month, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, a top Shiite cleric who leads a movement with a seat on the Governing Council, was killed in a car bombing that left at least 85 people dead. Al-Hakim's brother, Abdel-Aziz, is a council member.


Saturday's attack came at 9 a.m., when gunmen fired a rocket-propelled grenade on al-Hashimi's car soon after she left her house in western Baghdad, members of her security detail said. The grenade missed, and the attackers opened fire with assault rifles.


Firas Shams al-Din, 30, a security guard at a school near where the shooting occurred, said a pickup truck carrying six bearded men armed with Kalashnikovs, and two cars chased al-Hashimi's vehicle.


When Shams al-Din opened fire on the pickup, the three vehicles of attackers turned around and fled. Al-Hashimi's car crashed through a house's gate at the end of the street and into a parked car. Shams al-Din said he found her conscious, moaning in pain and bleeding.


Ahmad Chalabi, the president of the Governing Council for September, said al-Hashimi's attackers "were remnants of the Baathist regime and Saddam's assassins," referring to Saddam's former ruling Baath party.


"The members of the Governing Council and ministers will not be intimidated by the terrorists," Chalabi said in a statement. He said al-Hashimi had received threats recently.


Baghdad police commander Brig. Gen. Ahmed Ibrahim told The Associated Press that no one had been arrested in the attack and he refused to say who might be behind it.


The 25-member Governing Council was established by the U.S.-led coalition in mid-July to put an Iraqi face on the process of rebuilding the country.


The White House denounced the assassination attempt. Spokeswoman Suzy DeFrancis called it a "tragic situation" that is a part of a "continuing pattern" in which insurgent forces attack signs of success in the process of Iraq's transition to democracy.





U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's office issued a statement saying, "Violence such as the murderous attack on Dr. al-Hashimi only retards that process and that goal."

Al-Hashimi has emerged as a leading foreign policy figure on the council, participating in a delegation that addressed the United Nations in July. At Tuesday's General Assembly session, the council delegation will try to assume Iraq's U.N. seat — and if it succeeds, many U.N. diplomats expected al-Hashimi to be named Iraq's representative.

Chalabi said in his statement that the council delegation would attend the U.N. session, but did not say whether al-Hashimi would be replaced.

The continuing instability has raised questions about America's stewardship of Iraq since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations on May 1. Since then, 82 American soldiers and 11 Britons have been killed in hostile encounters.

[bluebunny]

I don't agree with the strategy being used in "post-war" Iraq. We should be building up a guerilla-fighting force. This is not the job for conventional forces.

[AmericanInTokyo]

We can start by calling it by the official name. The "Guerilla War in Iraq". Conventional fighting is OVER. As you say. Hostilities have NOT ceased. It is a little Tet Offensive every day over there. We should be realists and give them the tools to finish the job. A Phoenix Program would be a good start in Tikrit, Fallujah, Saddam City and other areas still strongly favorable to the Ba'athists, who have gone underground like the Vietcong.

Cmon folks, we did this drill before in the Nam. Let's learn some lessons and take our experience and win it for a change.

[Bombard]

And what maked you think this force doesn't already exist??

[Archangelsk]

Cmon folks, we did this drill before in the Nam.

Before you go all revisionist on us, what was the result of that particular drill?

[PatrioticCowboy]

Our military needs to set up some real good quick-reaction task forces in Iraq, similar to the military-trained police commandos that the Sri Lankan government has used to devastate LTTE

[Knurd Rebos]

High time we went Godzilla on the Rags!

[Austin Willard Wright]

You like the Russkies have done with such dismal results in Chechnya? Bring 'em home.

[RobbyS]

I agree. This is a job for special forces, the equivalent of plain-clothes cops. They don't even have to have the language so long as they keep their mouths shut they can blend in. Remember "Four Feathers?"

[section9]

"Bringing the home" would rightly be interpreted as a loss of nerve by the Jihadists. They would redouble their efforts to attack us, having seen with their own eyes how we withdrew after so few casualties.

Naturally, they would find thousands of willing recruits, having "faced down" the might of the United States.

Casualties like this are going to happen in low level insurgency. You have to look at how these deaths are occuring. They are almost always occuring as a result of either mortars, remote control bombs set off by celphone, or RPG attacks on those ridiculously underarmored Humvees.

What you are not acknowledging is the fact that the U.S. has been singularly successful in applying infantry fighting techniques to this situation. You will notice that the jihadists never set infantry on infantry ambushes against us. Some of our more significant victories as of late have occured in that Sunni triangle area. The gomers have learned the hard way that trying to tangle directly with American infantry leads to the death or capture of most of the guerillas.

In any guerilla war, always bet on the trained up infantry unit. Always.

Remember that in June and July we were losing a man or two a day to direct sniping and fire from Ba'athists, ex-Army and Republican Guard, and Fedayeen Saddam? That isn't happening anymore. Deaths do occur, but not with the same frequency. What you are seeing is the reluctance of the g's to close with the Americans.

General Giap understood that for the guerrilla to beat the American, you had to close with the American and hold him by the belt, infantry on infantry.

Arabs are not Vietnamese, and for that we can be thankful.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[beansox]

where are all the human shields? why arnt they protesting these acts of terror in the same manner the protested America? why arnt they laying down and blocking supply lines to these terrorist cells. why arnt they in the streets blocking traffic waving signs that read NO JIHAD IN OUR NAME, NO BLOOD FOR JIHAD, and JIHAD IS MURDER?? where are all the human shields??? Why arnt they vandalising these terrorist camps and calling out obscenties to their wives? where is the NOW orginization and why havnt they issued a statement denouncing the attack on the Female Iraqi Leader? What happened to all the protesters who placed so much value on human life back in March that they wanted to shield people from attack? do not our soliders deserve to be shielded?
WHY DONT LIBERALS PROTEST TERROSISM IN TEH SAME MANNER THEY PROTEST AMERICA????

[pfflier]

The deaths brought to 302 the number of U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq.

Six months ago if anyone would have said that we could conquer a country with 302 Casualties (about half combat related), they would have been branded a lunatic. Now President Bush is branded as a liar by Kennedy, of all people because, 302 troops have died.

Time for a reality check.

[pfflier]

The deaths brought to 302 the number of U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq.

Six months ago if anyone would have said that we could conquer a country with 302 Casualties (about half combat related), they would have been branded a lunatic. Now President Bush is branded as a liar by Kennedy, of all people because, 302 troops have died.

Time for a reality check.

[PISANO]

The squeamish are out in force and their reality is hide, appease and run away. Thank GOD for the TROOPS giving it their ALL for the FREEDOM of a country far away. They are the finest of THIS nation that consists mostly of whiners, fearmongers and stressed out lightweights whose biggest decision of the day is where to get their lattes.

[Coop]

We should be building up a guerilla-fighting force.

Those forces are already in place.

[Coop]

And probably a third of that number did not die from combat-related wounds.

[Coop]

Requesting honors.

[AntiGuv]

[berserker]

Jamie Miller, center, grieves over the casket holding the body of her late husband Staff Sgt. Frederick Miller during the internment service at Brigadier General William C. Doyle Veteran's Memorial Cemetery in North Hanover, N.J. Monday, September 29, 2003. Miller was killed Sept. 20 while on a security patrol in Iraq. (AP Photo/Brian Branch-Price)