Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Update: Missing American soldiers bodies were booby-trapped

A U.S. Army Spc. Anthony Black, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who serves in the 101st Airborne Division, searches for a sniper who fired on an Iraqi home used as an outpost in Ramadi, 115 kilometers (70 miles) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, June 20, 2006. Elsewhere, the U.S. military recovered the bodies of two 101st Airborne Division soldiers missing and reportedly kidnapped, and Iraqi officials said the Americans were first tortured and then killed in a 'barbaric' way. (AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg)

This is off Yahoo News:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military recovered the booby-trapped bodies of two missing soldiers Tuesday, and Iraqi officials said the Americans were tortured and killed in a "barbaric" way. An insurgent group claimed the new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq executed the men personally.

The discovery of the bodies dealt a new setback to U.S. efforts to seize the momentum against al-Qaida in Iraq after killing its leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in a June 7 airstrike. Violence was unabated Tuesday, with at least 18 people killed in attacks nationwide, including a suicide bombing of a home for the elderly in the southern city of Basra.

Coalition forces spotted the American soldiers' bodies late Monday, three days after the men disappeared following an attack on their checkpoint south of the capital, the military said. But troops delayed retrieving the remains until an explosives team cleared the area after an Iraqi civilian warned them to be alert for explosive devices.

"Coalition forces had to carefully maneuver their way through numerous improvised explosive devices leading up to and around the site," the military said in a statement. "Insurgents attempting to inflict additional casualties had placed IEDs around the bodies."

This is a war we cannot win. We are fighting in a country ripped apart with religious and ethnic strife. We do not have enough troops to put down this insurgency, and the 130,000 troops that are currently serving in Iraq are simply cannon-fodder. The insurgents can pick the time and place as to where to strike against the U.S. military, and they are striking through either hit-and-run attacks or roadside bombs against U.S. patrols. Once the attack takes place, the insurgents then meld back into Iraqi society before the U.S. can bring in their overwhelmingly superior firepower. It is literally death by a million paper cuts.

We can not win this war.

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