I See Dead People

Here we go again. Another November in Anbar province. Because it worked so well last year.

U.S. Launches Major Offensive in Iraq: "The offensive of about 2,500 Marines, soldiers and sailors in the town of Husaybah will remove insurgents from the western province of Anbar ahead of Iraq's parliamentary election on Dec. 15, the military said. An unspecified number of Iraqi forces were also taking part.

The offensive is part of a larger o0ngoing U.S. military operation designed to deny al-Qaida in Iraq the ability to operate in the Euphrates River valley, which stretches through Anbar province, and to establish a joint permanent security presence along the Syrian border."

Last November we lost 125 service people in combat and another 12 to "other" causes. If at first you don't succeed, try try again. I prefer the alternate version which is, quit. There is no use being bullheaded. Things are going so much better over there.

Two U.S. soldiers with Task Force Baghdad were killed _ one on Thursday when a roadside bomb exploded near his convoy and one on Friday by small-arms fire, the military said. Another soldier died Thursday near Talil, 170 miles southeast of Baghdad, apparently of non-hostile causes, the military said. The deaths brought to 2,043 the number of U.S. military service members who have died since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Elsewhere, insurgents fired a mortar round that missed an American base on the western outskirts of Baghdad but struck a home, killing a child and wounding the mother and another one of her children, police 1st Lt. Ahmed Ali said.

Gunmen shot and killed Tarik Hasan, a former colonel in the Iraqi air force, as he drove through Baghdad on Thursday, said police Capt. Talib Thamir. Rumor has spread through Baghdad that Shiite "hit squads" are hunting former air force officers, especially those who fought Shiite-led Iran during the 1980-1988 war.

Just swimmingly.

In blood.