Roadside Bomb Kills Two GIs in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A roadside bomb killed at least two U.S. soldiers Saturday in Mosul, and many parents kept children away from classes in the capital after leaflets attributed to Saddam Hussein's party warned of a "Day of Resistance" against the U.S. occupation.

Also Saturday, witnesses said an oil pipeline was on fire about 10 miles north of Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, an area of widespread opposition to the U.S.-led occupation. Witnesses said they suspected sabotage because the blaze was preceded by an explosion.

Sabotage to pipelines and the decayed state of Iraqi's infrastructure have slowed efforts to revive the country's giant oil industry, considered the key to rebuilding this nation's economy, which has suffered from more than a decade of wars and sanctions.

The U.S. military said two U.S. soldiers were killed and two wounded in the roadside bombing in Mosul, Iraq (news - web sites )'s third-largest city, which Iraqi police initially reported as a land mine. More details were not released and identities were withheld pending notification of relatives.

The two deaths would bring to 122 the number of American soldiers killed by hostile fire since President Bush declared an end to hostile combat on May 1 when added to the total given by the Department of Defense on Friday. A total of 114 U.S. soldiers were killed between the start of the war March 20 and the end of April.

Another U.S. soldier was injured in Mosul late Friday when his patrol was attacked by a grenade or homemade bomb, the military said.

The latest attacks came after rumors swept Baghdad that bombings or other resistance action would strike the capital Saturday. A leaflet attributed to Saddam's ousted Baathist party declared Saturday a "Day of Resistance," and called for a three-day general strike.

It was difficult to gauge public response to threat. Many shops in this city of 5 million people were open, but morning traffic appeared lighter than usual. Many parents kept their children home Saturday, the first day of the Iraqi work week.

At one boys' secondary school, Al-Jawad, only 80 of 500 students showed up for class, deputy principal Abdel Karim al-Azzawi said. "Parents are worried about their children," al-Azzawi said.

Classes were canceled at the Al-Huda girls' elementary school after only 23 of 700 pupils arrived, according to the principal, Sana Naji Abbas. More than half the teachers also stayed home, she said.

One teenage girl who did set out from home Saturday morning sounded a defiant note. "We heard that they want to bomb schools, but we weren't afraid," said Sabrin Talib, 17. "I came to school today."

Witnesses in Mosul and in the southern city of Basra said most shops were open and traffic appeared normal in those cities.

Here.

It takes more than leaflets to terrorize a population.

How to convince the Iraqi people to ignore most of the free press, the EU "poll," the world? Closed off from the outside world for two decades, they now have satellite dishes...and FoxNews playing the same pro-Saddam propaganda videos that were used by Saddam (backed by real violence) to terrorize them before.

Having a hard time forgiving FoxNews for this. This same video - played almost daily on FoxNews - drove me to go to war against the press last June.

It breaks my heart today, too.

How the Iraqis responded to a previous Saddam propaganda tape shown on Al Jazeera (picked up and replayed by 'allied' (?) press):

Dhia: For Iraqis, his departure was the best thing probably happened in their life for the last 34 years.

The tape itself, I watched Al Jazeera yesterday and they had a program about the tape. And there were eight Iraqis called, if I remember correctly. Seven of them, they said, "We really hate this tape; why you played it? It's really hurt our feeling to listen to it. We don't want to hear this guy again. We despise him. We hate him." Briefing on Post-War Developments in Iraq ^ | July 7, 2003

8 Iraqis Still Fear Hussein [DoD & my response to our 'objective' press] ~ DoD | 7/29/03

~~~

For all of Saddam's saber-rattling, promoted by our press - in a nation the size of California, with over 23 million Iraqis (5 million in Baghdad alone), and over 130,000 US troops on the ground - 11 brave US troops were killed and 38 were wounded last week, including 16 casualties in last Sunday's Al Rasheed attack, and 7 that may have been counted twice by CENTCOM on Oct. 27. For all the reports of potential IED's called in to our EOD guys around Baghdad alone (from Iraqis, too) - 4500 in the last three months - we lost 7 troops and 9 were wounded when their vehicles hit IEDs last week across all of Iraq - in Mosul today, Khaladiyah yesterday, north of Balad, on Oct. 28, and in Baghdad on Oct. 26.

It appears to me that our awesome military prevented far more attacks, riots, etc, than they suffered by our enemies last week.

I need historical perspective. Help.

Oct. 26: One 4th Infantry Division soldier * Pfc. Steven Acosta, 19, of Calexico, Calif.,* died of a non-hostile gunshot wound in Ba’qubah.
Oct. 26: One U. S. soldier * Lt. Col. Charles H. Buehring, 40, of Fayetteville, N.C.,* assigned to the Coalition Provisional Authority was killed and 15 other Coalition personnel were wounded in a rocket attack against the Al Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad at 6:08 a.m. Oct. 26.

Oct. 26: Two 1st Armored Division soldiers * Pvt. Joseph R. Guerrera, 20, of Dunn, N.C.,* and * Staff Sgt. Jamie L. Huggins, 26, of Hume, Mo., * were killed and two wounded in an improvised explosion device attack while on patrol in Baghdad at approximately 10 p.m. October 26.

Oct. 26: One 18th Military Police Brigade soldier was killed and two wounded in a mortar attack at Abu Ghuraib Prison.

Oct. 27: A 1st Armored Division soldier was killed * Pvt. Jonathan I. Falaniko, 20, of Pago Pago, American Samoa,* and six were wounded by an explosion from a vehicle packed with explosives at approximately 8:30 a.m., Oct. 27th in the vicinity of Al Bayra Police Station in Baghdad. The wounded soldiers were evacuated to the 28th Combat Support Hospital for treatment.

Oct. 27: BAGHDAD, Iraq – One 1st Armored Division soldier was killed and six were wounded in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Baghdad at approximately 10 a.m. Oct. 27. (unsure whether this was the attack earlier attributed to the car bomb. DoD has yet to clarify).
Oct. 28: An 82d Airborne Division soldier * Pvt. Algernon Adams, 36, of Aiken, S.C., * died of a non-hostile gunshot wound at a forward operating base near Fallujah at approximately 12:10 a.m. on October 28.

Oct. 28: BA’QUBAH: Two 4th Infantry Division soldiers * Sgt. Michael Paul Barrera, 26, of Von Ormy, Texas,* and * Spec. Isaac Campoy, 21, of Douglas, Ariz, * were killed and one was wounded when their tank hit an unidentified explosive device 40 kilometers northeast of Balad at approximately 7 p.m. Oct. 28.
Oct. 31: One 82d Airborne Division soldier was killed and four were wounded in an improvised explosive device attack in the Khaladiyah area, west of Baghdad, at about 8:45 a.m. on October 31.

Nov. 1: MOSUL, Iraq – (Nov. 1, 2003) Two 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) soldiers were killed and two were wounded in an improvised explosive device attack in Mosul at approximately 7:30 a.m. Nov.1.

Our enemies are emboldened. Press reporting the enemy's successes. My response at #8.

~~~

If you want on or off my Pro-Coalition ping list, please Freepmail me. Warning: it is a high volume ping list on good days. (Most days are good days).

An Iraqi teacher gives a lesson to a student in an empty class room at a school in Baghdad. Baghdad was semi-paralyzed amid fears of new bloodshed fueled by rumors that opponents of the US occupation of Iraq would mark a "day of resistance." The usually congested traffic was reduced to a trickle in the morning, and several schools were completely empty after parents, sometimes acting on the advice of school authorities, opted to keep their children at home. Several businesses shuttered their doors and numerous civil servants did not show up for work, while guards and Iraqi police were posted around schools and public buildings.(AFP/Sabah Arar)

A U.S. Army bomb squad's robot moves in to retrieve a suspected explosive device (at bottom) in the Baghdad suburb of Sha'ab, November 1, 2003. A bomb blast outside a police station in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul Saturday killed at least two U.S. soldiers, Iraqi police at the scene told Reuters. REUTERS/Jamal Saidi

U.S. soldiers guard the center of Baghdad, Saturday, Nov 1, 2003. Security stepped up after rumors swept Baghdad that bombings or other resistance action would strike the capital Saturday. A leaflet attributed to Saddam's ousted Baathist party declared Saturday a 'Day of Resistance,' and called for a three-day general strike. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

US soldiers, right, stand next to blast damaged vehicles in Mosul, northern Iraq, Saturday Nov. 1, 2003, in this image taken from TV. A roadside bomb killed at least two U.S. soldiers in Mosul on Saturday. It is not known if any person in the vehicles seen here were killed or injured. (AP Photo/APTN)

A TV grab taken from exlusive footage aired by the Qatar-based al-Jazeera TV show members of a previously unknown group called the 'Organization of Jihad Brigades in Iraq.' Hundreds of militant Muslim men from Europe and the Middle East are heading to Iraq to fight the US-led occupation, a leading US daily newspaper reported, citing counterterrorism officials in six countries.(AFP/File)

It appears to me that our awesome military prevented far more attacks, riots, etc, than they suffered by our enemies last week.

I need historical perspective. Help.

Compare the incidents you've compiled of incidents involving attacks on US troops with the counter-campaigns of bombings by the OAS and FALN [and probably a few other factions as well] in Algeria during the time of the anti-DeGaullist activities there. Even those on opposite sides were united in their contempt for Le Grande Charles.

Before it was over, the plastique bombings would visit Paris itself, and French army tanks were deployed around the Chamber of Deputies and other governmental buildings, lest General Massu's paratroopers assault the city and sieze the government.

I don't think the relatively few bombs so far successfully detonated in Iraq have had anywhere near that sort of effect yet.

Read this interesting essay and view the film The Battle of Algiers, read this one, and then consider Jean Larteguy and Roger Trinquier's respective fictional and historical books of the period, with Fredrick Forsyth's Day of the Jackal for dessert. It's nowhere near like that for us in Iraq. Yet.

In comparison, what we're undergoing is just a soft Autumn breeze. But just in case things do get a little windier, the background they'd provide you would let you ride out the gale-force winds that could indeed come, but have yet to blow. -archy-/-

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