Insurgent Posting Taunts U.S. Forces

In the statement, the council taunted U.S. forces for failing to find the two American soldiers, who went missing Friday during an attack on their checkpoint in a Sunni district, south of Baghdad, that killed one of their comrades.

"The events reconfirm the weakness of the alleged American intelligence and its going astray in Iraq," the statement said.

"The American military has launched a campaign of raids using armor and equipment, in the region around the incident, but the army of 'the strongest nation in the world' retreated in defeat and disgrace," the statement said.

The posting could not be authenticated, but it appeared on a Web site known for publishing messages from insurgent groups in Iraq.

Both statements were signed by the information committee of the Mujahedeen Shura Council, a body that groups five Iraqi insurgent organizations including al Qaeda in Iraq.

The U.S. Defense Department has identified the missing men as Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, Texas, and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Oregon.

"I was 95 percent sure he was one of them," Menchaca's brother, Julio Cesar Vasquez, of Houston, told The Associated Press late Sunday. "I already had an idea because he was at a checkpoint."

Menchaca's wife, 18-year-old Christina Menchaca, of Big Spring, Texas, said military representatives told her Saturday they were taking "every means possible to find him," she said.

"We're basically just watching the news because no one else knows anything about it, no one has heard anything about it," she said. "We're just going by what the news has to say."

The U.S. military said Spc. David J. Babineau, 25, Springfield, Mass., was also killed in the attack in which the two soldiers were allegedly captured. The three were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky.

The statement dealing with the Russians gave the Moscow government 48 hours to withdraw from Chechnya and to release all "our sisters and brothers in the Russian prisons."

"Otherwise this (Russian) government will be responsible for the consequences," the statement said. It did not say what the consequences would be.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said earlier Monday that seven American troops have been wounded, three insurgents have been killed and 34 detained during an intensive search for two missing American soldiers.

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, said fighter jets, unmanned aerial vehicles and dive teams had been deployed to find the two men missing since Friday during an attack on their checkpoint in the volatile Sunni area south of Baghdad that left one of their comrades dead.

"We have surged intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms and employed planes, boats, helicopters and UAVs to ensure the most thorough search possible on the ground, in the air and in the water," Caldwell said in a statement issued Monday.

He did not comment on reports that the two men had been seized by insurgents, saying only that they were listed as "duty status and whereabouts unknown." He said seven other U.S. service members had been wounded in action during the search efforts that began Friday night.

Caldwell said more than 8,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops were participating in the search.

"While searching for our Soldiers, we have engaged in a number of significant actions against the anti-Iraqi forces," he said, adding that three insurgents had been killed and 34 taken into custody.

He also said the military had received 63 tips and had launched 12 cordon and search operations, eight air assaults and 280 flight hours were logged.

"Approximately 12 villages have been cleared in the area, and we continue to engage local citizens for help and information leading to the whereabouts of our soldiers," he said, without elaborating.

CBS News correspondent Lee Cowan reports that the search has been hampered in part by uncooperative and often violent residents in the area, known as an insurgent strong-hold.

Witnesses reported seeing the men led away by masked gunman, Cowan reports, but so far, no insurgent group has claimed responsibility. Over the weekend, an Iraqi farmer said he saw seven heavily armed gunmen capture the two American soldiers during an attack on a road checkpoint south of Baghdad.

The White House, meanwhile, has promised to do everything it could to find the soldiers and said it had a message for anybody who may have taken the two men: "Give them back."

What puzzles military officials about the soldier's disappearance is why the team seemed so isolated at the time of the attack, reports Cowan. U.S. commanders say it would only be under extraordinary circumstances that a US patrol would split up.

But CBS News has been told that the Humvee from where the men disappeared was at a canal crossing at the time of the attack. They were separated by a couple hundred yards from their nearest U.S. colleagues — who were at a checkpoint to the northeast. Military officials don't know why they may have been that far away from a checkpoint alone — but they're casting doubt on witnesses who say that the doomed soldiers were left there after the other U.S. soldiers sped off in pursuit of the attackers.