2 Missing U.S. Soldiers Abducted

eff ... I was afraid of this. Dammit American forces are doing everything to find them, unfortunately, we all know why. What these terrorists don't realize is that nothing they do is going to break America's resolve so long as Bush is President.

Between this and a report at Iraq The Model you should read, it's time to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war. And the media was worried over some offensive song. BS!

Hassan Abdul Hadi was tending to his date palms and apple trees near the village of Karagol when he heard gunfire and explosions. When he walked to the road, he spotted an American Humvee, he said.

"I was shocked to see the Humvee — nothing seemed to be wrong with it," Mr. Hadi said. "Then I heard the men shouting 'God is great!' and I saw that they had taken the Americans with them. The gunmen took them and drove away."

At the time of the attack, the American soldiers were at a traffic control checkpoint on the edge of Karagol. According to the Iraqis, the checkpoint was guarded by about a dozen American soldiers who had arrived in three Humvees.

The checkpoint came under fire from insurgents operating from the fruit groves that line the road. The Americans in two of the Humvees took off in pursuit as the insurgents retreated into the groves, possibly to lure them in, the Iraqis said, leaving one Humvee and only three or four American soldiers at the checkpoint.

The checkpoint then came under attack from another direction by a group of seven or eight guerrillas, wearing kaffiyehs over their faces and black track suits, the Iraqis said. At least one of them carried a heavy machine gun, and two of them carried rocket-propelled grenades.

Minutes after the two Americans were taken away, a team of Americans arrived and began searching door to door in the area, the Iraqis said. By Saturday morning, the search had intensified, with soldiers scouring the area, helicopters surveying the landscape from above and divers going into canals, the American military said in a statement.

"The Americans are going house to house, detaining any men they find," said Yusef Abdul Nasir, who lives in Jurf Al Sakhar, a village next to Karagol. He said he had heard rumors that the soldiers were being held in Jurf Al Sakhar.

Comments

[carry nation]

DAMMIT TO HELL

[jill]

Prayers for them both.

[chrys]

We either have PC attitude OR our freedom and the lives of thousands - nah - millions all over the world. I say "let's roll" - loose any restrictive PC in this case. God Bless our guys.

[IMHERE]

Pray for them and their families today.

Time to stop pussyfooting too. We have a war that all the arm chair generals are critiqueing. Let em watch football instead. No war is comparable therefore what they have to saying is irrelevant. Our soldiers are being extra careful to be politically correct and now putting themselves at risk.
Yeah I agree let's roll

[bryan...aka point b]

I agree with all of you. It's time to level some of these towns and clean up.

[Gregdn]

"It's time to level some of these towns and clean up."
Yeah, that'll work like our 'search and destroy' missions did in Vietnam. Destroy a house and create 2 terrorists. You people don't understand guerrila warfare.

[@]

It's time to level some of these towns and clean up."
Yeah, that'll work like our 'search and destroy' missions did in Vietnam. Destroy a house and create 2 terrorists. You people don't understand guerrila warfare.

Posted by: Gregdn | Sunday, June 18, 2006 at 02:34 PM

I fully agree with you, every body is shouting bloody huray if a terrorist leader gets killed, nobody seems to realise this will only make these guys more determend.
@

[annie]

Well, I reckon that once Saddam is completely gone, that will mean that all those who are still rallying to his cry, even from the court, will fade away.

I am hoping that the US are not going to intervene by encouraging appeals and such like, and that in the end he will never pay for the torture and murder he had been carrying out for years.

Let the Iraqi people do to him what they will, and US, with all your political correctness, stay out of it!!!

May I also say that if there was any real justice, and if the Iraqi people had had their way, he would have been dead and gone long ago, and good riddance!!

[kate]

It's time to level some of these towns and clean up."
Yeah, that'll work like our 'search and destroy' missions did in Vietnam. Destroy a house and create 2 terrorists. You people don't understand guerrila warfare.

Posted by: Gregdn | Sunday, June 18, 2006 at 02:34 PM

I fully agree with you, every body is shouting bloody huray if a terrorist leader gets killed, nobody seems to realise this will only make these guys more determend.
@

Posted by: @ | Sunday, June 18, 2006 at 04:10 PM

----------------------

this is different. it's a battle against radical islam with people that already hate the west's guts. we did nothing to provoke the 9/11 attacks, yet they happened. it really doesn't matter what we do, they want us dead regardless. we can do nothing and hope it all goes away, or we can fight. i say we fight and mess up as many of their operational plans as possible.

[rwilymz]

"You people don't understand guerrila warfare."

Spoken like a guy who has a course of Poli-Sci under his belt and trying to lecture the military on how to run a war.

"Destroy a house and create 2 terrorists."

First problem with your pat little theory: The potential population of terrorists is finite.

Second problem: it is subject to basic human psychology. We destroyed millions of houses in Germany and didn't create a single terrorist or geurilla warrior. What was the difference?

Several striking differences: German borders were sealed and no one could come in from outside, bringing weapons and money and materiel with which to conduct an "insurgency"; the psychological effect of random carpet-bombing and other aspects of "total war" is quite a damper on a population's willingness to support warfare. Read Clauswitz.

... or wait, never mind. Making yourself knowledgeable on the way war **really** works would prevent you from issuing superficial whines and bitches about the way war works in an idiot perfesser's Political Science classroom.

[Rick]

"the psychological effect of random carpet-bombing and other aspects of "total war" is quite a damper on a population's willingness to support warfare. Read Clauswitz."

There are those among us who remember handed down stories of "total war" in our own country. Could not be fun on any level and certain to take the fight out of the populice. Unfortunately (or maybe not) rw, most people's idea of any sort of war comes from television. Americans no longer have what it takes to defeat an "insurgency" of this kind. Hell, these ostriches whine and cry pity becuase a dog barks at a prisoner.

[rwilymz]

"Americans no longer have what it takes to defeat an "insurgency" of this kind."

This is no lie.

War is a serious undertaking to do "right" -- meaning: "in a way calculated to **win**, not merely show off your military hardware".

Most people pushing for the war were apparently willing to show off our military hardware "whoa! aren't we cool! see what we can do to your piddle-ass country!" and now they want to get the hell out of dodge.

That ain't war. That's arrogance and egotism.

Our government has attempted [foolishly] to cater to these twerps and redefine war tactics and occupational tactics to be "kinder and gentler". If there's a military warehouse at 315 Achmed Avenue, let's use one 500lb smart bomb to come politely knocking on the front door and destroy the employees vending machines.

Wrong. You carpet bomb Achmed Avenue from the 0-block to the 700-block -- both sides of the street. Too much "collateral damage"? Aw pity. That's war. You wanna win it? or do you want to get write-ups in Janes this month and have to refight the war in 10-15 years because the only political effect you had was to piss off the locals?

You can't be "sensitive" in a war. The critics of the Iraq war were [and are] right about one thing: it's too momentous a decision to make flippantly and without a clear understanding of what it will take to win.

What it will take to win either Iraq, or A'stan, or the larger "war against terrorism" is trivially simple -- from a textbook perspective. Any first-year Cadet could put together the overview. But the realities of it would never fly in a faux-"sensitive" society ready at the drop of a hat to rationalize why another culture/society/mass-of-people who have a stated desire to kill America, Americans and "The West" are justified.

"We can't take it out on their 'innocent civilians' [who support pan-islamism] just because their leaders do 'X' ..."

Uh, ... yes we can. And if we want to win, we must. We didn't wet our panties over German civilians, or Austrian civilians, or Italian civilians, or Japanese civilians during WWII. This is what war is.