"US Casualty Rate High Since Handover: Long Guerrilla War Feared"

[GreenPartyVoter]

WASHINGTON -- Nearly as many US soldiers lost their lives in Iraq in the first half of July as in all of June, even as Iraqi insurgents seem to have shifted focus from attacking US targets to aiming instead at Iraqi security forces and government officials.

The relatively high rate of US military casualties has dimmed hope that the handover of power to the Iraqi government would help stabilize the country and reduce pressure on US soldiers.

June was substantially less violent for US and coalition troops than the two preceding months, fueling hopes that US casualties were on the downswing. However, military officials and defense specialists are increasingly concerned that the guerrilla war could last for years and the number of dead could climb into the thousands.

Since the June 28 handover of power, the 160,000 coalition forces have averaged more than two deaths a day, among the highest rate of losses since the war began 15 months ago. By Saturday, 36 US soldiers had died this month, compared with 42 last month, according to a Globe analysis of official statistics.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0719-01.htm

[billybob537]

1. Bad news for Bushies* BA_BYE

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. Bad news for the kids over there, too. :^( We've got to get out of there

[opihimoimoi]

3. Sooner or later its Buh Bye...thats a given....

The Bushies are reduced to guessing....

They have not a fucking clue as what to do....

Its all their way, they wanted the TV Remote and they choose the darndest of channels.... Damn..Control hogs they are.

[HamdenRice]

4. Heartbreaking

This daily death toll is absolutely heartbreaking. And it is criminal that it is not the lead off story on every TV news broadcast and the lead story on page one of every newspaper.

Of all the criminal things the B-ull-sh-it administration had done, one of the worst is to "normalize" a daily deathtoll as "non-news" so that the American public is used to two or three young people dying horrible deaths each day and a half dozen or more being maimed.

A DU post over the weekend quoted a soldier in Iraq who said there were something like 150 attacks a day on US forces in Iraq.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

5. I don't think Bush had a very good plan for the post-war

just re-stating the obvious.