"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast" -Oscar Wilde |
"The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself." -- Proverbs 11:25 |
Insurgent attacks during the past 24 hours have killed eight U.S. soldiers in Iraq, the military said Tuesday.
Three soldiers died in a car bombing in central Baghdad on Tuesday and a fourth -- who was manning an observation post -- was killed by a drive-by gunman, Task Force Baghdad spokesman, Maj. Darryl Wright said.
Four other American soldiers were killed by a bomb on Monday, the military said. They were assigned to the 155th Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force.
The explosive "detonated near their vehicle" in fighting in Haswa, south of Baghdad.
The deaths bring the number of U.S. troops killed in the Iraq war to 1,643, according to U.S. military reports.
Also Tuesday, a car bomb exploded near an Iraqi police convoy in eastern Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding eight others in the Karrada neighborhood around a corner from a girls' school, police said.
In northeastern Mosul on Tuesday, a member of Iraqi civil defense died after a bomb he was trying to defuse detonated, a spokesman for the region's Joint Coordination Center said. Four others were wounded in the blast.
Iraqi officials said scores of people died Monday in a string of bombings throughout the nation -- some apparently targeting Shiite Muslims. (Full story)
In one of the Monday attacks, two car bombs targeting a home killed at least 15 civilians and wounded at least 20 in the northern city of Tal Afar, a government official said.
And if I may ask you, Mr. President, as you know, the casualties of Iraq is again high today -- 50 more people dying. Do you think that insurgence is getting harder now to defeat militarily? Thank you.
PRESIDENT BUSH: No, I don't think so. I think they're being defeated. And that's why they continue to fight. The worst thing for them is to see democracy. The President can speak to that firsthand. The worst problem that an ideologue that uses terror to try to get their way is to see a free society emerge. And I'm confident we're making great progress in Iraq.
And clearly, it's dangerous and we mourn the loss of life. On the other hand, the eight-and-a-half million Iraqis who went to the polls sent a very clear message to the world, that they want to be free.