NEWS: Bush:"bring'em on" - Another U.S. soldier dies in Iraq... and the Bush record continues with a new record of dead Americans.
BUSH LIED & AMERICANS DIED... and dying still... Impeach that lying criminal POS NOW!
msnbc.com
Aug. 11 — A U.S. soldier was killed and two others wounded in a new bomb attack in northern Iraq, the American military said Monday. To the south, British troops restored badly needed electricity to parts of Basra and supervised distribution of gasoline after two days of demonstrations over fuel and power shortages.
THE U.S. SOLDIERS from the 4th Infantry Division came under attack with a homemade bomb in front of the police station they were guarding in Baqouba, 45 miles north of Baghdad, late Sunday, Maj. Mark Solomons said.
The death brought to 57 the number of U.S. troops killed in action since May 1, when President Bush declared major combat over.
Despite the almost-daily attacks on Americans in Iraq, however, President Bush offered an upbeat assessment of conditions in the country in his weekly radio address on Saturday.
Marking 100 days since he donned a flight suit, landed on an aircraft carrier off the California coast and announced major combat operations over in Iraq, Bush vowed a “long-term undertaking” to bring democracy and economic prosperity to Iraq and across the Middle East.
“One hundred days is not enough time to undo the terrible legacy of Saddam Hussein,” Bush said. “There is difficult and dangerous work ahead that requires time and patience.”
U.K. TROOPS PATROL TENSE BASRA
In Basra, a British patrol returned fire after it came under attack late Sunday, wounding two assailants, British military spokesman Capt. Hisham Halawi told The Associated Press. Two others escaped and were being pursued, he said. There were no British casualties.
Basra had been one of the quietest cities in the country. But on the second day of protests Sunday, an Iraqi protester and a Nepalese security guard were shot dead.
The protester was killed after an angry crowd tried to block four four-wheel drive vehicles crossing the main bridge leading to the airport and the British military headquarters. It was not clear who shot the demonstrator.
The dead guard worked for Global Security, a private company hired to provide security and other services for coalition bases throughout the country. The guard was bringing mail from Kuwait to United Nations staff in Basra. He was shot by an unknown assailant as a two-car convoy neared an intersection in the center of the city, coalition spokesman Iain Pickard said.
British troops patrolling the area gave away their own fuel to calm the demonstrators, coalition spokesman Charles Heatly said from Baghdad.
Over the weekend, about 1,000 protesters blocked roads with rows of burning tires and threw rocks at vehicles and British troops, who suffered only minor injuries, Halawi said.
“The town is calm this morning. People have had power since last night, and petrol is getting at petrol stations,” he said.
In Baghdad, Heatly said coalition forces were taking steps to alleviate the power and fuel crisis in Basra. The coalition also brought in two new gas turbine generators to try to patch up the antiquated electricity system, and British soldiers were supervising distribution at gas stations to make sure people were not charged exorbitant black-market prices.
BOMBS EXPLODE IN BAGHDAD
Late Sunday, two bombs exploded about 60-70 yards from the British office in central Baghdad, witnesses said. There was no visible damage to the office, but a Syrian national who was part of a convoy of trucks taking supplies to the office was injured, according to the witnesses.
There was no indication whether the British office was the target. U.S. troops removed the truck in which the Syrian was injured within the hour of the explosion.
“The attack was in the vicinity of the British embassy but it did not target in any way the embassy,” an American military spokesman said.
A team of FBI investigators, meanwhile, searched the bombed Jordanian Embassy, where a car bomb on Aug. 7 killed 19 people.
The attack rattled Baghdad residents who feared it signaled a rise of terror tactics in the already violent Iraqi capital. L. Paul Bremer, the top civilian administrator in Iraq, said the al-Qaida-linked Ansar al-Islam group was at the top of his list of suspected terrorist organizations operating in the country.
Bremer told The New York Times in an interview published Sunday that hundreds of fighters from Ansar al-Islam had escaped to Iran and then slipped back into Iraq after the cessation of major combat.
“My initial instinct was to believe that this had to be done from somebody from outside,” the Times quoted him as saying. “But I have been told we captured and spoke to some ex-regime people and that there was part of the Mukhabarat (Iraqi intelligence) that specialized in sophisticated bombing and it is possible that this kind of technique did exist,” he told the Times.
“Intelligence suggests that Ansar al-Islam is planning large-scale terrorist attacks here,” the newspaper quoted Bremer as saying. “So as long as we have ... substantial numbers of Ansar terrorists around here, I think we have to be pretty alert to the fact that we may see more of this.”
U.S. forces knocked out Ansar-al-Islam’s main headquarters in northeastern Iraq early in the war.
U.S. military officials have blamed almost daily attacks on Saddam loyalists and Iraqis angered by a foreign occupation. There is growing concern that foreign fighters in Iraq may join the conflict, conducting terrorist attacks like the one on the Jordanian Embassy.
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
The U.S. military reported Sunday that four American soldiers were wounded in guerrilla attacks, including two at the Baghdad University complex and two others in Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit.
One U.S. soldier died of heat stroke and another was found dead in his living quarters on Sunday, the military said.
The military announced that Saddam’s former interior minister — No. 29 on the list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis — is in U.S. custody.
Mahmud Dhiyab Al-Ahmad surrendered to coalition forces Friday, U.S. Central Command said in a statement.
The military had announced his capture in July, but on Saturday said that was an error. “It was bad information, that’s all,” said Lt. Cmdr. Nick Balice, a Central Command spokesman. “We thought it was correct, but it wasn’t. But he surrendered yesterday and is in coalition custody now. He was never in coalition custody before.” |
