Today in Iraq

War News for Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed, two wounded, in roadside bombing near Iskandariyah.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier by small-arms fire in Mosul. One Iraqi Army soldier killed and another three wounded when gunmen ambushed them in the downtown al-Wasiti district of Kirkuk. Bodies of six poultry factory workers who were members of the Mehdi army found in a river bed at Balad. Relatives said the men had disappeared 14 days ago.

Bring ‘em on: Deputy governor of Anbar province shot dead by gunmen in Ramadi. His bodyguard was also killed in the attack.

Bring ‘em on: Baghdad municipal director and his driver shot and killed in the capital’s Dora neighborhood. (Note: Another news report identifies the official as the mayor of Baghdad) Iraqi lieutenant colonel assassinated by gunmen, presumably in Baghdad though this is not specified. Landmark Baghdad monument honoring the city’s founder damaged in bomb blast.

Bring ‘em on: Three Iraqi election officials assassinated by gunmen in Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib district. Four policemen killed and 11 wounded in an insurgent attack on a police checkpoint in western Baghdad. Fighting continued for several hours. One bystander killed and four persons wounded in a car bomb attack aimed at a Kurdish tribal leader in Kirkuk, who escaped unharmed. Two men shot to death by insurgents at a gas station in Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: Two Iraqi police commandos killed and three wounded in fighting in Baghdad's Gazaliya district. Two Iraqi soldiers killed and two wounded by a roadside bomb in Fallujah.

Bring ‘em on: One British soldier killed in a roadside bombing in Basra.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed by small arms fire in Mosul. Fifteen suspected insurgents captured in a series of Iraqi and US operations around Baghdad. Two passersby injured in a suicide bomb attack aimed at an Iraqi security forces convoy in Fallujah.

Bring ‘em on: Six Shiite factory workers lined up and shot to death in front of their fellow workers by insurgents who then fled in stolen company vehicles.

Bring ‘em on: Baghdad correspondent of the Guardian newspaper kidnapped by armed men in Sadr City.

Some statistics: As anticipated, insurgent attacks continued at a high level in Iraq in the two weeks before Saturday's referendum vote. U.S. and allied Iraqi troop fatalities were, fortunately, relatively low.

But the number of U.S. troops wounded in action continued at a grimly high level, and the percentage of U.S. troop fatalities inflicted by improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, was higher than ever for September and October so far -- an ominous indicator that the technical expertise of the insurgents is steadily advancing.

The number of U.S. troops wounded in action from the beginning of hostilities on March 19, 2003, through Sunday, Oct. 16, was 15,063, the IIP said. That was an increase of 422 in 14 days or an average rate of just over 30 injured, probably about one half of them with incapacitating injuries, a day.

This was a very high rate of injuries suffered, and reflected the continuing widespread and formidable nature of the insurgency. The figure was far worse than the average of 16.3 U.S. soldiers injured per day from Sept. 21 through Sept. 28 and even worse than the 28.5 per day from Sept. 29 to Oct. 2. It was also far worse than the comparable figures for most of August and early September.

It was open season once again on the poorly trained and even more poorly protected new Iraqi security forces. No less than 109 of them were killed in the 14 days from Oct. 2 to Oct. 16, the IIP said.

That was a rate of just under eight per day, far worse than the six per day kill rate the insurgents achieved in the first 13 days of September and even worse than the 7.5 per day kill rate they achieved during the four days from Sept. 29 to Oct. 2.

At that time, it appeared possible that that kill rate might have been a statistical aberration, with the insurgents getting "lucky" or mounting an intensive offensive that they could not sustain for more than a few days. But they have now sustained it for two-and-a-half weeks with no relief in sight. As long as the insurgents can continue to inflict such a sustained heavy level of casualties on the allied Iraqi police and troops, their effectiveness must be judged to almost negligible. They remain far more the hunted rather than the hunters.

These figures clearly document an insurgency that so far has been able to sustain its latest quantum leap in area, intensity and tactical sophistication in terms of the power of the IEDs and the number of car bombs per week it can set off.

Like naming Karl Rove head of the Plame leak inquiry: The U.S. military will look into whether American warplanes and helicopter gunships killed civilians during a raid on suspected militants near the western Iraqi city of Ramadi, the White House said on Tuesday.

Asked for President George W. Bush's reaction to the deaths on Sunday of about 20 civilians, including children, spokesman Scott McClellan disputed the reports. "The military has said otherwise at this point," he said. "The military has review mechanisms in place, and when there are questions raised they look into those matters and so that's something that, obviously, they will look into." U.S. forces killed about 70 people near Ramadi on Sunday. Local police said about 20 of those who died in the strikes were civilians, including some children who had gathered around the wreckage of an American military vehicle. The U.S. military said on Monday it believed all those hit were "terrorists."

Mother of mercy – 570 a day?: Analysts do not see an end to Iraq's nonstop jockeying among competing ethnic and religious groups or to an insurgency that is averaging 570 attacks a day, despite voters' apparent approval of a new constitution on Saturday.

The constitution, opposed by many of the country's Sunni Muslim minority, leaves up in the air such vital questions as control of oil resources, regional autonomy, the role of Islam and women's rights.

The new government, to be established by the parliament elected Dec. 15, faces a huge challenge to solve those problems while fighting a counterinsurgency, rebuilding a shattered economy and dealing with a Bush administration eager to cut U.S. troop numbers in Iraq.

"It's 50-50 this thing holds together through the spring of 2006. But that is purely a guess,'' Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Monday.

Saddam

Some Iraqis miss him: Dozens of supporters of Saddam Hussein took to the streets of his hometown Tikrit on Wednesday, vowing loyalty to the former dictator as he went on trial in Baghdad charged with crimes against humanity. Iraqi police and soldiers, backed by U.S. troops, maintained tight security in the largely Sunni Muslim town, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, which was home to Saddam's family and profited from his patronage during his decades in power. Around 100 young men chanted "Long Live Saddam Hussein" and carried banners with slogans such as "Down with the occupation and the puppet government". A few protesters fired in the air. Iraqi police kept close watch as demonstrators waved flags and banners. "We sacrifice our blood and soul for you, Saddam", one banner said, while others said "No to the trial".

He’s still dangerous: The main reason the trial of Saddam Hussein and seven others facing charges of crimes against humanity has been adjourned was because many witnesses were too afraid to turn up, the judge trying the case said on Wednesday.

Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin told Reuters around 30 or 40 witnesses had not come to Baghdad for the trial, which took place in a heavily defended building inside Baghdad's fortress- like Green Zone compound.

"The main reason is the witnesses did not show up," Amin said. "They were too scared to be public witnesses. We're going to work on this issue for the next sessions."

No question the sumbitch deserves whatever he gets: For angry families in this small Iraqi village, the start of Saddam Hussein's trial on Wednesday marks the beginnings of justice for husbands, sons and brothers murdered three decades ago.

"This is the end of every tyrant," said Laith Abd Mahdi, a middle-aged man outside his small house in Dujail. "He hurt us, hurt my relatives and hurt my closest friends. Death is not enough for him."

The first charges Saddam faces stem from events in Dujail, a Shi'ite farming village about 60 km north of Baghdad, after local young men tried but failed to assassinate the Iraqi ruler in 1982 as his motorcade passed through town.

Prosecutors say Saddam sought brutal revenge, ordering his henchmen to hunt down, torture and kill more than 140 men from the town following the attack.

Women and children were also alleged to have been forcibly removed from Dujail, imprisoned and later sent to a desert internment camp where many ultimately "disappeared". The village's farmlands, rich date palm and fruit groves on the banks of the Tigris, were salted and laid waste.

But he wasn’t worth this war: The documents were released by the independent Washington-based National Security Archive yesterday as the dictator went on trial for the 1982 massacre of 143 Shi'ites in the town of Dujail north of Baghdad after an attempt to assassinate him there. The papers for the most part presented detailed assessments of Iraq's political, military and economic strengths and weaknesses over nearly three decades.

They also showed US intelligence had an early understanding that overthrowing the Iraqi dictator would lead to instability that could pull the country apart.

Saddam's removal "could usher in an extended period of instability in Baghdad. His successors probably could not maintain Saddam's system of tight control and any post-Saddam regime is almost certain to fall into factional fighting", said a 1985 CIA report on Iraq.

The report said such infighting raised the chances of an Iran-backed fundamentalist Islamic regime coming to power – a widely anticipated possibility since the US invasion that toppled Saddam in April 2003.

Very Reassuring

Who says we don’t have a plan?: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday outlined a strategy of helping Iraqis clear out insurgents and build durable, national institutions as she sought to reassure jittery members of Congress about the path to peace in Iraq. Rice said the United States will follow a model that was successful in Afghanistan.

Under the heading of Ummm, yeah – how’s that working out?, please pop by our sister site, Today in Afghanistan and see for yourselves. Resurgent Taliban, world’s biggest heroin exporter and concurrent narcoterrorism, warlords dominating politics, we just hit 200 dead American soldiers, fragmented society, destroyed infrastructure…yessir, that’s one successful model, ok. I’d tell you to say hi to Zorg while you’re there but damn if I can figure out where his comments are. (Oh, yeah – what do you think of his blogging format? Is it better than these big bloated posts I do? State your opinion in our comments, if you even remember by the time you get to the bottom of this big bloated post. Haha! You’re not even halfway there yet.)

Following the successful model: Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the world's main terrorist training ground, spreading upheaval across the Middle East to Europe and further radicalizing Muslims everywhere.

''Iraq is a live-fire training ground in urban terrorism, and that's exactly what we fear," said Francois Heisbourg, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris.

''Islamic terrorism is a much bigger problem in Europe than in the US because you don't have the relatively large Muslim community that we do," said Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform in London. ''What the war in Iraq has done is radicalize these people and make some of them prepared to support terrorism. Iraq is a great recruiting sergeant."

Donald Rumsfeld, National Embarrassment

The wise teacher: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told students and faculty at a Communist Party school here today that openness, democracy and freedom are the keys to China's future. "Every society has to be vigilant against another type of great wall that can be a burden on man's talents and is borne from fear of them -- a wall that limits speech, information or choices," Mr. Rumsfeld told a group of about 30 students at the Central Party School. "Yet history teaches us that it is impossible, in practical terms, to isolate any people for long. Eventually, information seeps through."

Irony’s corpse is starting to reek: Republican members of Congress say there are signs that the Defense Department may be carrying out new intelligence activities through programs intended to escape oversight from Congress and the new director of national intelligence. The warnings are an unusually public signal of some Republican lawmakers' concern about overreaching by...

This is all of the article TimesSelect ripoff will give us. If any alert reader is actually paying money for this ‘service’ and wants to sort of copy the article to comments…hmm?

From 2004 and do you think it’s different today?: The official in charge of information security at the Pentagon told lawmakers yesterday that at least half of the information the U.S. government classifies every year should not be kept secret.

"How about if I say 50-50?" Carol Haave told the House Government Reform national security, emerging threats and international relations subcommittee, when asked to quantify the problem of overclassification.

Speaking Of National Embarrassments

Bush: President Bush's unprecedented inclusion in his weekend radio address of a direct reference to a letter he said was written by al-Qaida's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, highlights the fascinating insights it appears to offer into the inner workings of the group.

But there are nagging questions about the document -- which U.S. intelligence officials say is a private communication between Zawahiri and the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- in the minds of many experts. Indeed, despite the high confidence that those officials say they have in its authenticity, some scholars believe it may be a fake.

And even the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., has cautioned against "reading too much into a single source of intelligence."

Loaded cigar: A letter purportedly written by a senior al Qaeda leader -- and said to be authentic by U.S. intelligence officials who released it last week -- may be a forgery, according to Washington analysts who cite numerous anomalies in the text.

Some analysts have gone so far as to label the letter a likely U.S. government "influence operation," which, if exposed, threatens American credibility in the Middle East.

"If this is a forgery, then either it was designed to blow up in the face of the American government; or someone in the 'coalition of the willing' has been caught with their pants down," said one analyst, who spoke with Cybercast News Service on the condition of anonymity.

Ha ha! This is from the GOPUSA website. How pathetic is this letter if even those bozos don’t buy it?

Foreign Affairs

Turkey: Turkey said on Tuesday it would take steps to end the presence of Turkish Kurd rebels in the mountains of northern Iraq, but stopped short of directly threatening military action.

Turkish officials have repeatedly demanded U.S., Iraqi Kurd and Iraqi government forces crack down on Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) forces in north Iraq from where rebel leaders direct their fight for Kurdish self-rule in nearby Turkey. "The principal point which we have stressed at these meetings is that the terrorist presence in northern Iraq must be combatted," Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told a meeting of his parliamentary party. "So far, Turkey has maintained a patient stance." But, he said: "Our nation expects us to take effective measures to clean up the terrorist presence in the region. We will take clear and effective steps to bring this about. I remind you we will do what is necessary when the time is right."

Spain: A judge has issued an international arrest warrant for three U.S. soldiers whose tank fired on a Baghdad hotel during the Iraq war, killing a Spanish journalist and one other, a court official said Wednesday.

Judge Santiago Pedraz issued the warrant for Sgt. Shawn Gibson, Capt. Philip Wolford and Lt. Col. Philip de Camp, all from the U.S. 3rd Infantry.

Jose Couso, who worked for the Spanish television network Telecinco, died April 8, 2003, after a U.S. army tank crew fired a shell on Hotel Palestine in Baghdad where several journalists were staying to cover the war.

Reuters cameraman Taras Portsyuk, a Ukrainian, also was killed.

The Spanish judge said he issued the arrest order because of a lack of judicial cooperation from the United States regarding the case.

Britain: One of Britain’s most senior judges last night accused ministers of producing “half-baked” criminal justice reforms and then blaming judges for the failings of the system.

Lord Steyn, a law lord, also launched a scathing attack on ministers over the Iraq war, accusing them of “scraping the bottom of the legal barrel” to justify their case.

He said it was a “fairytale” to suggest that the Iraq war did not make London a “more dangerous place”.

Lord Steyn echoed the views of Lord Alexander of Weedon, QC, his predecessor at Justice, with a robust attack on the legality of the Iraq war.

Lord Alexander’s view that the war was illegal “reflected the overwhelming view of international lawyers and was undoubtedly correct”.

US Military News

Another cost of war: A Pentagon assessment of troops returning home from Iraq shows more than one in four require medical or psychiatric treatment, USA Today reported Wednesday.

The newspaper obtained the report from the Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, which said nearly 1,700 troops returning from the war this year said they harbored thoughts of hurting themselves or that they would be better off dead. Nearly 20,000 reported nightmares or unwanted war recollections; more than 3,700 said they had concerns that they might "hurt or lose control" with someone else.

About 28 percent, or 50,000 troops this year, reported problems ranging from lingering battle wounds to suicidal thoughts or strained marriages, the report said.

Screw the troops: The Pentagon has reneged on its offer to pay a $15,000 bonus to members of the National Guard and Army Reserve who agree to extend their enlistments by six years, according to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Seattle).

The bonuses were offered in January to Active Guard and Reserve and military technician soldiers who were serving overseas. In April, the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs ordered the bonuses stopped, Murray said.

“This is outrageous,” the senator said in a telephone interview. “It makes me angry that this administration has broken another promise to our troops.”

A Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, confirmed the bonuses had been canceled, saying they violated Pentagon policies because they duplicated other programs. She said Guard and Reserve members would be eligible for other bonuses.

The “Dirt Navy”, heaven preserve us: With the squeeze of an index finger, the machine gun jerked to life – a metallic, menacing growl that chattered in the bone marrow: rat-a-tat … rat-a-tat-tat … rat-a-tat-tat-tat …

An acrid halo of steely smoke rose from the 84-pound gun. Spent shell casings bubbled from an opening in its side. Three football fields away, thumb-size bullets – as many as 550 per minute – sparked off a battered tank parked on the hillside of a gun range.

These are the sights, sounds and smells of the “Dirt Navy,” the buzz words for a new initiative that, if put into play, could thrust sailors into a domain long reserved for foot soldiers.

The Navy has been pondering the idea since at least July, when the service outlined plans aimed at making it more effective in the small-skirmish, close-quarter arenas of a drawn-out war on terrorism.

Among the proposals: creating an expeditionary combat force. The move would produce, according to one Navy official who spoke at the summer briefing: “A sailor with a bayonet in his teeth, ready to go ashore and mix it up.”

They can fight for free speech, they just can’t listen to it: A liberal talk show host scheduled to begin broadcasting on Armed Forces Radio on Monday is blaming political payback for a last-minute decision to shelve the show.

Ed Schultz, whose daily radio show is broadcast in about 100 markets in the United States, said he believes his on-air comments last week criticizing Pentagon officials prompted them to scuttle plans to send the show overseas, despite months of planning.

“They knew exactly what kind of program they were getting,” he said. “This looks like a get-back to me. They don’t want any other voices on the air.”

But Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Schultz’s views and recent comments played no factor in the decision.

“What we have here is a staff member who got ahead of the decision-making process,” he said. “We’re in the process of looking at additional programming, but there have been no decisions yet.”

US Politics

Everything they touch they screw up: When Porter J. Goss took over a failure-stained CIA last year, he promised to reshape the agency beginning with the area he knew best: its famed spy division.

Goss, himself a former covert operative who had chaired the House intelligence committee, focused on the officers in the field. He pledged status and resources for case officers, sending hundreds more to far-off assignments, undercover and on the front line of the battle against al Qaeda.

A year later, Goss is at loggerheads with the clandestine service he sought to embrace. At least a dozen senior officials -- several of whom were promoted under Goss -- have resigned, retired early or requested reassignment. The directorate's second-in-command walked out of Langley last month and then told senators in a closed-door hearing that he had lost confidence in Goss's leadership.

Commentary

High risk constitution: Early reports from elections officials over the weekend indicated the referendum passed, clearing the way for Dec. 15 elections and a new government by Dec. 31. Constitutional approval and subsequent elections are key concerns for U.S. officials, because the sooner Iraq can set up and run its own government, the quicker U.S. troops can start withdrawing. But now that approval has been thrown into limbo by the electoral commission's audit of all 18 provinces, some of which had what the commission deemed an unusually high percentage of "yes" votes - in some cases running as high as 99 percent. In provinces dominated by pro-constitution Shiites and Kurds, high percentages would not be unexpected, but whether they would run into the high 90s raises serious questions. Even if voting irregularities would not affect the outcome, the one thing pro-constitutional Iraqis don't want is a tainted mandate. Three years ago, Saddam Hussein won re-election as president with 100 percent of the nation's 11.5 million eligible voters backing him. U.S. officials snickered at the outcome. Nothing would be more embarrassing to U.S. and Iraqi officials than for the snickers to turn in their direction. They need to get this election right.

Not a normal democracy: It won’t be until later in the week that we have even an unofficial tally of how the vote went in the Iraqi referendum on a constitution, though Condoleezza Rice has already jumped the gun by opining in London yesterday that it had “probably passed”.

By that, she meant the rejectionist front of Sunnis had not won more than two-thirds of the votes in more than three provinces. The only figure available is that more than 60% of voters turned out overall.

But if the supporters of the referendum have to hold their breath for a province-by-province breakdown of the voting, they can draw comfort already from the unexpectedly peaceable nature of the referendum. Of course, the level of violence would be unacceptable in a normal democracy.

Rockets were fired yesterday into Baghdad’s green zone, five soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Ramadi, in western Iraq, and at least one civilian was killed and others injured while voting in Baghdad.

But Iraq is not a normal democracy, and the level of violence at the weekend was nothing compared to the bloodshed during January’s elections to a constituent assembly. Then, hard-line Sunni opponents of the vote tried to terrorise their fellow Sunnis from taking part in a process they deemed tainted by association with the American-led occupation.

The fact that Sunni terror groups largely abstained from such heavy-handed tactics at the weekend suggests they realised many Sunnis were going to vote, so that bombing polling stations would result in killing “their own”.

Bombing bridges: In his speech, casting the conclusions of both missions aside, President Bush observed that Muslim countries from "Spain" - he must have meant Morocco here, as Spain stopped being Muslim 800 years ago - to "Indonesia" are infested, not with freedom, democracy and human rights activists, but with Bin Ladens and Zarqawis. The United States and the "civilized countries" therefore shoulder the responsibility of fighting this "terrorist Islamic danger" and this "dictatorial empire".

President Bush did not shy away from using phrases like "Islamic fascism", "violent Jihad" and "Islamic terrorism", thus condemning everything associated with Islam. It is, however, inappropriate to associate Americans indiscriminately with Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib or Fallujah. It is neither acceptable to associate Christianity with extremism, or Israeli publicly proclaimed systematic assassinations, house demolishing and aggression raids with Judaism. President Bush also overlooked the fact that Arabs and Muslims have also been victims to the same terrorism in Iraq. Alongside Daniel Pearl, Nicholas Berg and Margaret Hasan, Bush had no names for the Iraqi scientists, scholars and secular thinkers who have been targeted since the beginning of occupation, nor for more than 100,000 killed in Iraq since the beginning of the war on Iraq. Neither did he speak of the eminent threat of civil war, ethnic dissection and the sectarian strife on the rampage in Iraq and the region ever since. As usual, President Bush referred back to the "different and varied sources here and abroad" that informed his speech. They must have been the same sources that have substantiated his war on Iraq and his policies toward the Middle East. The speech might have been different had President Bush read the Hughes or Djerjian reports, or had he considered some resources that are less hateful toward Muslims and Arabs, or less oblivious of Arab and Muslim suffering. Then his speech could have reached solutions rather than concluded with threats. Had President Bush ratified the Senates' decision to stop treating war prisoners with "cruelty, in an inhumane way and with humiliation" - a euphemism for torture - he might have been able to see humanity in light of equal rights to freedom and dignity. He might have refrained from dividing the world into "civilized" and "uncivilized", "liberal" and "illiberal". He might have not bypassed "peace" for the "democracy" that brought chaos and terror to Iraq. He could have called for building instead of "bombing" bridges.

Meanwhile, back at home: Habeas corpus is the greatest protection Americans have against a police state. Habeas corpus ensures that Americans can only be detained by law. They must be charged with offenses, given access to attorneys, and brought to trial. Habeas corpus prevents the despotic practice of picking up a person and holding him indefinitely.

President Bush claims the power to set aside habeas corpus and to dispense with warrants for arrest and with procedures that guarantee court appearance and trial without undue delay. Today in the US, the executive branch claims the power to arrest a citizen on its own initiative and hold the citizen indefinitely. Thus, Americans are no longer protected from arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention.

These new "seize and hold" powers strip the accused of the protective aspects of law and give rein to selectivity and arbitrariness. No warrant is required for arrest, no charges have to be presented before a judge, and no case has to be put before a jury. As the police are unaccountable, whoever is selected for arrest is at the mercy of arbitrariness.

The judiciary has to some extent defended habeas corpus against Bush's attack, but the protection that the principle offers against arbitrary seizure and detention has been breeched. Whether courts can fully restore habeas corpus or whether it continues in weakened form or passes by the wayside remains to be determined.

Americans may be unaware of what it means to be stripped of the protection of habeas corpus, or they may think police authorities would never make a mistake or ever use their unbridled power against the innocent. Americans might think that the police state will only use its powers against terrorists or "enemy combatants".

But "terrorist" is an elastic and legally undefined category. When the President of the United States declares: "You are with us or against us," the police may perceive a terrorist in a dissenter from the government's policies. Political opponents may be regarded as "against us" and thereby fall in the suspect category. Or a police officer may simply have his eye on another man's attractive wife or wish to settle some old score. An enemy combatant might simply be an American who happens to be in a foreign country when the US invades. In times before our own when people were properly educated, they understood the injustices that caused the English Parliament to pass the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 prohibiting the arbitrary powers that are now being claimed for the executive branch in the US.

Casualty Reports

Local story: El Paso, TX, soldier killed in vehicle accident in Iraq.

Local story: Carbondale, PA, soldier killed in bomb attack in Ramadi.

Local story: Grottoes, VA, Marine killed in combat near the Jordanian border in Iraq.

Local story: Tonganoxie, KS, soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Morrisville, NC, Marine killed in roadside bombing in Saqlawiyah.

Local story: Springer, NM, Marine killed in al Rutba.