Free Republic

Mon Jan 3,10:55 AM ET A suspected insurgent asks residents for mercy after they caught him planting explosives under civilian vehicles, at a busy area in Baghdad,January 3, 2005. Insurgents killed 17 Iraqi police and National Guards on Monday in another bloody spree of ambushes, bombings and suicide attacks aimed at wrecking Iraq (news - web sites)'s January 30 national election. REUTERS/Str Mon Jan 3,10:54 AM ET Iraqi men and police officers guide a suspected insurgent after catching him planting explosives under civilian vehicles, at a busy area in Baghdad, January 3, 2005. Insurgents killed 17 Iraqi police and...

CBS/AP) Monday is the anniversary of the capture of Saddam Hussein but for troops in Iraq, there is no time for quiet reflection. The day brought another suicide bombing and news of the deaths of seven more U.S. Marines and an Iraqi translator. The car bomb exploded at a checkpoint near the Green Zone, which houses government offices and foreign embassies in Baghdad. At least 13 people were killed and another 15 were injured. The blast occurred when a vehicle that had been waiting in line to enter the zone at its western Harthiyah gate exploded as it drove up to...

In its latest editorial, the Chronicle's editorial board complains about unarmored vehicles in Iraq: Military supply officers say the problem isn't money, but bottlenecks in the supply of vehicle armor and other equipment. Factories can only produce so much, but the Army's inability to equip 150,000 troops in the field with all the best and latest equipment should be cause for worry. What? The constraints of time, space and the laws of physics are all Rumsfeld's fault? The editors also pass up an opportunity to salvage some semblance of ethics in journalism: Reports that the soldiers' questions were prompted by...

NEW YORK In a front-page note to readers this morning, Tom Griscom, editor and publisher of the Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press, quoted a local military spokesman and a top ethicist in defending his reporter Edward Lee Pitts, who prompted a U.S. soldier to put a challenging question to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld on Wednesday. He also quoted from an email from Pitts: “It is amazing these guys are defending freedom but don't want free speech in their own country." Griscom admitted that, in hindsight, “information on how the question was framed should have been included” in the reporter's story...

As of Monday, Nov. 29, 2004, at least 1,254 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 981 died as a result of hostile action, the Defense Department said. The figures include three military civilians...