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Iraq

5 US soldiers killed in Baghdad

2008-03-10

BAGHDAD - Five American soldiers on a foot patrol were killed Monday in an apparent suicide bomb attack in central Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

Four of the soldiers died at the scene and the fifth died later from wounds, the military said in a statement. The blast also wounded three U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter, the military said.

The statement said the soldiers were killed "when their dismounted patrol was struck by an explosion" and "initial reports indicated the explosive device was a suicide vest." The name of the soldiers were being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

It was the deadliest attack since Jan. 28, when five U.S. soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb in the northern city of Mosul. Monday's deaths brought the number to 3,979 members of the U.S. military who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Posted by:Atomic Conspiracy

#13 huport, you tarnish the name of bourbon

Posted by: Jan 2008-03-10 23:55

#12 No price to high so you can have cheap lettuce on your soy burgers.

Posted by: ed 2008-03-10 22:38

#11 So true Ed. 4000 dead is peanuts.

Posted by: Huport Bourbon3420 2008-03-10 22:25

#10 And yet after 6 years of war, fewer Americans have been killed than are murdered each and every year by illegal aliens. Talk about the REAL quagmire, but you won't will you Huport.

Posted by: ed 2008-03-10 21:58

#9 Huport Bourbon3420, you people don't deserve the time of day.

Posted by: RD 2008-03-10 21:35

#8 I look at this as like the Moro War in the Philippines, but several times larger and a much larger population base.

Posted by: ed 2008-03-10 16:57

#7 This incident is exactly the kind of thing Rumsfeld was afraid of when he initiated the force protection-first philosophy after the invasion. The fact is that Iraqis thought that once Saddam was gone, any native (of their own sect) would be better than foreign occupation and were prepared to fight. It took sectarian domination (al Qaeda, Sadr) for them to realize that Uncle Sam was the only honest broker in Iraq. Initiating local patrols back then would have been premature and sure to lead to massive US casualties. The normal rule of war is that the natives have to cowed before they're prepared to submit to foreign rule. In the case of Iraq, al Qaeda and Sadr served the role of beating Iraqis into submission so that they longed for non-sectarian (i.e. US) rule. Doing the surge from the git-go would have been like the US starting World War II with the invasions of Tokyo and Berlin. It would have been a bridge too far.

Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-03-10 16:54

#6 "4000, 40000, who cares, there's more where that came from."

You people value life as much as the islamofascists.

Posted by: Huport Bourbon3420 2008-03-10 16:53

#5 I think Iwo Jima is better comparison with 6,800 KIA and 27,900 WIA out of 30,000 Marines. More than 100% casualty rate in 7 or so weeks. God bless them all and Semper Fi.

Posted by: Bangkok Billy 2008-03-10 13:50

#4 OP: That's about a third of the number we lost in combat in the Gilberts taking the island of Tarawa in 1943.

Is that right? The Wikipedia number for GI's killed during that battle was 990.

Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-03-10 13:21

#3 OP, I think US KIA for Tarawa was 990.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tarawa

Posted by: Penguin 2008-03-10 13:18

#2 We've almost reached the "grim milestone" of 4000 US troops who have died (not necessarily killed in combat) in Iraq since March 2003 (five years). That's about a third of the number we lost in combat in the Gilberts taking the island of Tarawa in 1943.

Posted by: Old Patriot 2008-03-10 12:59

#1 The article has been significantly lengthened since I posted this. Note that a female suicide bomber killed a Sunni leader and 2 others in Baqouba around the same time. I wonder if the Baghdad bomb-donkey was also a female? It could explain the patrol being off guard enough for nine of them to be caught in a single explosion.

In any case, it is obvious from recent reports that AQ has switched tactics, and is now relying almost entirely on suicide bomb attacks to make its case to the global media.
This is probably because suicide bombs can be prepared entirely in secret, out of sight of neighbors, whereas IEDs and ambushes will come to the attention of vigilant Iraqi civilians who are far more likely now to report such activity.

Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2008-03-10 11:51

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