5 Americans Killed; Baghdad Hit By Bomb
3 Marines, Sailor, Soldier Die In Fighting; At Least 21 People Die In Shiite Market Blast
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Play CBS Video Video Iraqis Celebrate Soccer Win CBS News RAW: Scenes of celebration in Baghdad after Iraq's soccer victory over South Korea in the Asian Cup. Iraq will advance to the finals. Celebratory gunfire caused some injuries.
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Video Security In Iraq President Bush says terrorism is linked directly to Iraq. Ret. Army Col. and Up to the Minute Military Analyst Mitch Mitchell discusses the war and the President's comments.
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Video Bush Defends Iraq Strategies CBS News RAW: At a press conference, President Bush restated his positions on the insurgency in Iraq, as he argued that al Qaeda is still a prominent threat in that country.
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A young boy gazes up at an Iraqi soldier, right, during a joint operation with the U.S. Army and the 1920 Revolution Brigade in north Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, July 25, 2007. (AP Photo)
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An Iraqi who was injured in a suicide car bombing rests in a hospital in Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City in Baghdad on July 26, 2007. Two suicide bombings killed at least 50 cheering, dancing, flag-waving Iraqis celebrating their national triumph in the Asian Cup semifinals on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
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Iraqi soccer fans celebrate a victory over South Korea in the streets of Sadr City in Baghdad on July 25, 2007. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
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Iraqis celebrate in Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, on July 25, 2007, after the country's national soccer team beat South Korea in the Asian Cup to reach the tournament's final. (AP)
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Iraq's Vice President and a member of the Iraqi Accordance Front Party Tareq Al-Hashemi, right, and Khalif Alyan, left, appear at a news conference in Baghdad on July 25, 2007. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Raouf Mahmoud/Pool)
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Interactive Battle For Iraq The government, the insurgency, key players, background and photos.
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Photo Essay Iraq In Pictures A daily diary with scenes of the latest attacks and snapshots from the effort to rebuild a nation.
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Timeline The U.S. And Iran Key events in once friendly, now contentious relationship between Washington and Tehran.
Smoke billowed into the sky after the thunderous explosion, which also left nine cars burned and set a three-story building on fire in the busy Karradah shopping district, according to police and hospital officials who gave the casualty toll.
It was the deadliest in a series of attacks that left more than 40 people dead nationwide.
The three U.S. Marines and a sailor died Tuesday while conducting combat operations in Diyala province — the site of a major military operation against a Sunni insurgent stronghold, the military said Thursday. It announced earlier that a U.S. soldier had been killed Wednesday during a gun battle in southern Baghdad.
Identities of the dead were withheld pending notification of relatives.
Earlier Thursday, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the top day-to-day U.S. commander in Iraq, expressed cautious optimism over a decline in the number of American troops killed this month.
At least 64 U.S. troops have died so far in July, after the death toll topped 100 for the previous three months, according to an Associated Press tally based on military statements.
Odierno said it appeared that casualties had increased as fresh U.S. forces expanded operations into militant strongholds as part of the five-month-old security operation aimed at clamping off violence in the capital, but were going down as the Americans gained control of the areas.
"We've started to see a slow but gradual reduction in casualties, and it continues in July," he said at a joint news conference with Iraqi military commander Maj. Gen. Abboud Qanbar. "It's an initial positive sign, but I would argue we need a bit more time to make an assessment whether it's a true trend."
Odierno said networks continue to smuggle powerful roadside bombs and mortars across the border from Iran despite Tehran's assertions that it supports stability in Iraq.
His remarks came two days after the U.S. and Iranian ambassadors to Iraq met in Baghdad and agreed to establish a security committee to jointly address the violence amid Washington's allegations that Tehran is fueling the violence by support Shiite militias. Odierno said the military also believes training of extremists is being conducted in Iran.
"One of the reasons why we're sitting down with the Iranian government ... is trying to solve some of these problems," Odierno said at a news conference in the Green Zone, which is home to the U.S. Embassy and the Iraqi government headquarters.
"We have seen in the last three months a significant improvement in the capability of mortarmen and rocketeers to provide accurate fires into the Green Zone and other places, and we think this is directly related to training that is conducted in Iran," Odierno said. "So we continue to go after these networks with the Iraqi security forces."
Iran has denied the U.S. allegations about its activities in Iraq.
Attacks against the sprawling complex along the Tigris River in the center of Baghdad have increased in recent months, adding to the concern over the safety of key Iraqi and international officials and thousands of U.S. soldiers and contractors who live and work there.
On July 10, a barrage of more than a dozen mortars or rockets struck the area, killing at least three people, including an American, and wounding 18. In a report last month, the United Nations office in Baghdad said the "threat of indirect fire" — meaning rockets and mortars — into the Green Zone had increased, adding that the barrages had become "increasingly concentrated and accurate."
In other developments:
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
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See all 170 CommentsPosted by FeelFree1 at 09:45 PM : Jul 27, 2007
feely ol' girl
Spectrum already has Diarrhea of the mouth so that is a good question,
bush loving, flag waving, bible thumping, war making, evangelist creeps and republican snakes.
the south never does good for america.
always war, hate, arrogance, belligerent, ignorant pieces of anti-american snakes.
the south should secede again...
i'm sure no one would stop them .
ha,ha,ha.
america's getting a good look at you dixie snakes...
and they don't like what they see.
nothing good comes out of the south.
Re: "Anyone caught performing a religious act should be shot on sight as an example to the rest to start behaving. No funerals allowed either, dig your own graves in the dirt floor of your own houses."
"All demonstrators would be considered rioters, also subject to being shot on sight and en masse."
"More killing definitely needs to be done starting with the leaders until they conform to secular overlords since their gods can't seem to help them out either. Bow to the guns, raggies."
Hmmm.....grave digging, shooting demonstrators, killing, bowing,......you are a true visionary, but are you sure that they will have the time to do all of this, on top of their dancing and flower-throwing duties?
Have you ever been screened for syphilis?
Very thoughtful.
your suggestions sound fine except:
Saudi Arabia will never allow Maliki and his Shiites to get control of Iraq, being Sunni, they believe that Iran, being Shiite, is backing Maliki.
Iran will not allow the Sunni's to gain any control because of their favor during Saddam and also because of their closeness to Saudi Arabia.
Peacekeepers would probably be kidnapped by one or the other.
Partitioning might have more success. Biden seems to think so and, ultimately, that may be the only solution left ~ however, the longer we continue to dessimate the country, the harder it will become for any solution.
1. Does anyone know about any diplomatic efforts to understand or resolve the fighting in Iraq?
2. What would you think about peacekeepers going in to take the place of our soldiers?
3. Why not think about partitioning the country?
We heard again today that it is Saudi Arabia who is sending militants and funding the Sunni militants. Saudi has repeatedly told the administration that it would be a mistake to invade Iraq. They warned them of the consequences of invading Iraq. They continue to warn them of the inadvisability of staying there. And being Saudi's, they have made sure it is proven to be so. We really do not have an ally in the Middle East anymore. It will take a long time for that part of the world to view America as anything but an aggressor. The longer we continue on our present course with our present leaders, the longer it will take for any of these countries to trust us in any kind of world leadership position.
Re: "Submit your evidence to the NY Times or to various European news organizations about the CIA suicide bombers you claim are at work in Iraq. They'd be glad to publicize such a scandal."
Sure thing. I'll forward it to Judith Miller. I'm sure that she will get to the bottom of it.
Keep on gobbling up propaganda. There is plenty more where that came from.
Submit your evidence to the NY Times or to various European news organizations about the CIA suicide bombers you claim are at work in Iraq. They'd be glad to publicize such a scandal. Send your evidence to any one of a thousand anti-establishment lawyers in the US/UK/Israel, they'd be overjoyed to take it to court. Take your evidence yourself to the European Parliament and its anti-CIA members and let them present it to the Int'l. Court of Justice. The problem with all these alternatives is that there either is no evidence to begin with for your claim, which is a fantasy of the Islamist press, or it has been looked at and rejected by anybody with any standing in the press or the courts. Not even the Iranians will hold a public inquiry about such claims or press such claims at the UN or the Hague.
Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that Baghdad residents could count on only "an hour or two a day" of electricity. That's down from an average of five to six hours a day earlier this year.
But that piece of data has not been sent to lawmakers for months because the State Department, which prepares a weekly "status report" for Congress on conditions in Iraq, stopped estimating in May how many hours of electricity Baghdad residents typically receive each day."
The exit amendment of Reid, Pelosi and their ilk is nothing of the kind. It is an open-ended monstrosity that could keep our fighting men in Iraq forever and ever, as noted by this short article by Tina Richards:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18078.htm
Obama has already said that we will need to "take out" an estimated 20 thousand "activist extremists" in Iraq. This number, like all the other numbers, could change with the wind.
The rest of the Democratic war hawks--like Connecticutt's prized Liebermann--are solidly behind the war. The presidential candidates, save for Gravel and Kucinich who have little support, unfortunately, are speaking out of both sides of their mouths...
With some, like Obama and Clinton, this is obvious...Obama has as much as said he will stay in Iraq...Clinton is the "Our Crowd" candidate in New York and has the financial support of another War Pig, Rupert Murdoch, who, with the disgraced felon and fellow media mogul, 'Lord' Conrad Black employed numerous Neo-Con war pigs. George Soros, one of the chief financiers of this faux-opposition party--the Democrats--is all things to all men--as long as their goods end up in his pocket and those of his friends... like those of Kosovo.
That militarists can claim superior military competence is a fiction. Those who see warfare as a glorious stage upon which to display acts of individual heroism and fortitude may win battles but never wars. Their view is clouded by overheated imaginings that conflict with the reality of war as a sequence of brutal crimes, never to be embraced willingly nor entered into lightly. Final victory goes to those who fight only of necessity and whose cool judgment marshals every resource to abridge the conflict.
Sadly, Dumus entrusted the military affairs of the Hegemon to Direptor Temerarius who embraced aggression as the salvation of the faltering empire. His consummate skill in bureaucratic intrigue, not his experience of battle, raised him to the top of the military hierarchy. He conceived it most glorious to fashion an army slight in numbers, agile and armed with artful weapons with which to vanquish, with dash and style, vastly more numerous adversaries. Over a lengthy period he set in train a series of military reforms that resulted in a sleek new army in time for the conquest of Mesopotamia.
While the collapse of Nur ud Din was nearly simultaneous with the initial shock of the Hegemon%u2019s attack, the people of Mesopotamia, inured to privation and violence, could not be awed into submission. Meager in number, the abused troops of the Hegemon were deprived of serviceable equipment and abandoned to drown in a sea of implacable foes.
Posted by FARTKNOCKER2 at 10:45 AM : Jul 27, 2007
Folks remember these lines. This how the right views our troops, their sacrifices, their families' pain and loss. Next time one of these rightwing fanatics mention the military, ask them why THEy are so unpatriotic, why they have no respect for the troops, why they hate america. I spent 2 years having my patriotism questioned when I said we had no reason to invade Iraq. Now we see the true side of the rightwing viewpoints. What they really think about the deaths of our sons, daughters, husbands and wives.
"get over it. Move on. He was killed, that's it... nothing more."
Remember what they really think of our troops.
Further evidence that the "surge" is working!
SIGH....we aid and aabet the Taliban when the Soviets invade Afghanistan and later the Taliban turns on us...then we invade Iraq and someone helps the locals against us. guess we reap what we sow.
"Oh what tangled webs we weave...when first we practice to deceive" and "all birds come home to roost"
http://www.rr.com/flash/index.cfm?rev=10248
Pat Tillman was shot in the forehead, point blank, three times by an M-16, and Bu$h said he was a hero...
That lying sack of shiite...
Bu$h turned fratracide into Pentagon propaganda...
The Bu$h administration and the Pentagoons actually turned Tillman's death into profit and advantage, in an in-your-face kind of way! The same way they lied about 'rescuing' Private Jessica Lynch... In-your-face, don't let truth get in the way of opportunity spin...
Just the way the same cabal planned and executed the 9/11 atrocity to galvanize Americans into blind hatred for Muslums, so the defense industry could pillage the US Treasury for years. History will prove me right. I didn't vote for this bunch, in fact, I knew they were not the crew to trust with America's future. Half of them had been involved with Iran-Contra - drugs for guns. The other half were NeoCon traitors. None were truthful. None had a soul.
I hope true Republicans will wake up to the fact they have been had, shake off the embarassment and save what's left of their country. True patriots can admit they were wrong. Just my opinion. End this futile, disturbing oil war soon.
Posted by Iceman_1960 at 11:37 PM : Jul 26, 2007
The wonder was that she could stand up straight. Talk about a strong back! LOL!
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