US soldier deaths in Iraq, 7 month high

[Spytheweb]

While the hot hot topic in sheepdom is Rev Wright, while soldiers are being blown apart a world away. People rather hear about happened on American idol than the war.


BAGHDAD - The killings of three U.S. soldiers in separate attacks in Baghdad pushed the American death toll for April up to 47, making it the deadliest month since September, the military said Wednesday.

One soldier died when his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb. The other died of wounds sustained when he was attacked by small-arms fire, the military said. Both incidents occurred Tuesday in northwestern Baghdad

A third soldier died in a roadside bombing Tuesday night in the east of the capital, the military said.

The statement did not give a more specific location. But the eastern half of Baghdad includes embattled Sadr City and other neighborhoods that have been the focus of intense combat between Shiite militants and U.S.-Iraqi troops for more than a month.

In all, at least 4,059 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

"We have said all along that this will be a tough fight and there will be periods where we see these extremists, these criminal groups and al-Qaida terrorists seek to reassert themselves," U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner told reporters in Baghdad.

"So, the sacrifice of our troopers, the sacrifice of Iraqi forces and Iraqi citizens reflects this challenge," Bergner said in response to a question about what's behind the increase in American troop deaths.

The U.S. military said at least 10 gunmen had been killed in three separate clashes in eastern Baghdad late Tuesday and Wednesday.

The latest fighting erupted at the end of March after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched a crackdown against Shiite militias in the southern port city of Basra. But it quickly spread to Baghdad's Sadr City, a sprawling slum with about 2.5 million people that is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The militiamen have used the district as a base to fire barrages of missiles and mortar rounds at the U.S.-protected Green Zone which houses much of the Iraqi government and Western diplomatic missions, including the U.S. and British embassies.

 

[Spytheweb]

We are the redcoats.



By RICHARD M. KETCHUM


If it is true that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, America?s last three Presidents might have profited by examining the ghostly footsteps of America?s last king before pursuing their adventure in Vietnam. As the United States concludes a decade of war in Southeast Asia, it is worth recalling the time, two centuries ago, when Britain faced the same agonizing problems in America that we have met in Vietnam. History seldom repeats itself exactly, and it would be a mistake to try to equate the ideologies or the motivating factors involved; but enough disturbing parallels may be drawn between those two distant events to make one wonder if the Messrs. Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon had their ears closed while the class was studying the American Revolution.

Britain, on the eve of that war, was the greatest empire since Rome. Never before had she known such wealth and power; never had the future seemed so bright, the prospects so glowing. All, that is, except the spreading sore of discontent in the American colonies that, after festering for a decade and more, finally erupted in violence at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. When news of the subsequent battle for Bunker Hill reached England that summer, George III and his ministers concluded that there was no alternative to using force to put down the insurrection. In the King?s mind, at least, there was no longer any hope of reconciliation?nor did the idea appeal to him. He was determined to teach the rebellious colonials a lesson, and no doubts troubled him as to the righteousness of (he course he had chosen. ?I am not sorry that the line of conduct seems now chalked out,? he had said even before fighting began; later he told his prime minister, Lord North, ?I know I am doing my Duty and I can never wish to retract.? And then, making acceptance of the war a matter of personal loyalty, ?I wish nothing but good,? he said, ?therefore anyone who does not agree with me is a traitor and a scoundrel.? Filled with high moral purpose and confidence, he was certain that ?when once these rebels have felt a smart blow, they will submit??

In British political and military circles there was general agreement that the war would be quickly and easily won. ?Shall we be told,? asked one of the King?s men in Commons, ?that [the Americans] can resist the powerful efforts of this nation?? Major John Pitcairn, writing home from Boston in March, 1775, said, ?I am satisfied that one active campaign, a smart action, and burning two or three of their towns, will set everything to rights.? The man who would direct the British navy during seven years of war, the unprincipled, inefficient Earl of Sandwich, rose in the House of Lords to express his opinion of the provincial fighting man. ?Suppose the Colonies do abound in men,? the First Lord of the Admiralty asked, ?what does that signify? They are raw, undisciplined, cowardly men. I wish instead of forty or fifty thousand of these brave fellows they would produce in the field at least two hundred thousand; the more the better, the easier would be the conquest; if they did not run away, they would starve themselves into compliance with our measures.?? And General?James Murray, who had succeeded the great Wolfe in 1749 as commander in North America, called the native American ?a very effeminate thing, very unfit for and very impatient of war.? Between these estimates of the colonial militiaman and a belief that the might of Great Britain was invincible, there was a kind of arrogant optimism in official quarters when the conflict began. ?As there is not common sense in protracting a war of this sort,? wrote Lord George Germain, the secretary for the American colonies, in September, 1775, ?I should be for exerting the utmost force of this Kingdom to finish the rebellion in one campaign.?

 

[gardenweasel]

US troops kill 28 Mahdi fighters during Sadr City ambush
By Bill RoggioApril 29, 2008 11:14 AM
Heavy fighting broke out between Coalition and Mahdi Army forces in Sadr City as US troops killed 28 Mahdi Army fighters after being ambushed during a patrol. Seven more Mahdi Army fighters were killed during strikes yesterday.

The 28 Mahdi Army fighters were killed during a four-hour battle in southern Sadr City after a US soldier was wounded by gunfire and US forces began to evacuate the soldier, Lieutenant Colonel Steven Stover, the chief Public Affairs Officer for Multinational Division Baghdad said. ?The fire came from the portion of Sadr City we are not in ? the northern neighborhoods ? and militants fired at our patrol in the southern neighborhoods,? Stover said in an email to The Long War Journal.

During the evacuation, Mahdi Army fighters triggered three roadside bombs and fired rocket propelled grenades and machineguns at the US patrol. Five more soldiers were wounded in the attacks and two vehicles were damaged. None of the soldiers' injuries are reported as life-threatening. "

been awhile,spy...i`m surprised you took more than a 10 minute break...given you have the attention span and mental range of a fencepost,i`d have thought it would be to expensive to retrain you...

/the bell rings for round 271....

 

[Spytheweb]

Since the goal of the United States in the Vietnam War was not to conquer North Vietnam but rather to ensure the survival of the South Vietnamese government, measuring progress was difficult. All the contested territory was theoretically "held" already. Instead, the U.S. army used body counts to show that the U.S. was winning the war. The Army's theory was that eventually, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army would lose due to attrition.

Ho Chi Minh said, in reference to the French, "You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win." Most analysis of war casualties indicates that the allied army inflicted roughly a three-to-two ratio of communist combat deaths against allied deaths. Ho Chi Minh was proved correct in that the US eventually faced an outright defeat.