Our tax dollars at work.
If it's dead, it's
Another election, followed by violence, followed by more violence. So, what the spin's gonna be? Iraq's Whiskey Rebellion?
American air strikes killed about 70 suspected insurgents in a series of operations near the volatile western Iraqi city of Ramadi on Sunday, the day after a referendum on a new constitution, the military said today.
The strikes targeted Sunni-led insurgents, who tried to intimidate voters in the run-up to Saturday's balloting by killing scores of Iraqis with suicide attacks and roadside bombs in recent weeks. But within hours of today's announcement by the United States military, news agencies reported that dozens of the dead were civilians...
The military said in its statement today that 20 men were killed east of Ramadi, when a fighter jet fired a precision-guided bomb on a group of people suspected of placing a roadside bomb at the site of a bomb attack that killed five American and two Iraqi soldiers on referendum day.
An estimated 50 others died in raids by helicopters and fighter jets dispatched to observe a suspected safe house in the Abu Faraj region north of Ramadi, where a group of men was loading vehicles with weapons, the statement said.
American troops then killed as many as three insurgents with assault weapons, when they attacked soldiers at Ramadi's government center. One marine captain in the city said the military was bringing some Iraqi rebels back to an American base in body bags.
"All the attacks were timed and executed in a manner to reduce the possibility of collateral damage," the military statement read, saying that there were no reports of civilian casualties.
But according to witness accounts reported by The Associated Press, at least 39 of those killed by the raids were civilians.
Ramadi is the capital of the Anbar province, the violence-plagued desert area west of Baghdad, and is widely considered to be one of the most dangerous cities for coalition soldiers in Iraq today. Since mid-September, 17 American troops have been killed in Ramadi, a stronghold of the Sunni Arab minority which has led the opposition to the constitution. The eastern part of the city has been an especially troubled area; here the American military agreed to hand responsibility for security arrangements around polling stations to local tribal leaders last Saturday, in contrast to the vast majority of polling stations that were protected by American and Iraqi soldiers.
Contrary to some predictions, voting on Saturday was not disrupted by mass violence. There were only nine attacks in Baghdad - much fewer than the average daily score - killing one Iraqi civilian while casting his vote. A handful of Iraqi soldiers were killed elsewhere in the country.
But American and Iraqi officials have warned that the insurgency is likely to continue, even if the constitution passes.
You've gotta love the way expectations in the paper of record reflect those of the administration...lowered to the level of a reinforced-concrete bunker capable of surviving a direct hit from a nukulur bomb. "Only nine attacks on election day! Doubleplusgood!" As for the "handful of Iraqi soldiers," well, if nothing else, Team Bush teaches by example: in their (pathetic little pinhead) minds, that's what soldiers do--die. If they're US soldiers, time to crank out an official "letter of regret;" if they're Iraqi...at least they were mentioned.
Boy, that oughta win over millions of Iraqi hearts and minds.
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