flavio
Banned
Since Bush isn't going to go near Iraq he can say things like....
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with results like this.........
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“My answer is: Bring them on,” he said of the hit-and-run attackers.
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with results like this.........
A Day After Bush Assurances, 10 U.S. Soldiers Hurt in Iraq
By AMY WALDMAN
AGHDAD, Iraq, July 3 — A day after President Bush asserted that coalition forces in Iraq were prepared to deal with any security threat, American troops came under attack again this morning, with 10 soldiers wounded in three separate incidents.
In the Baghdad neighborhood of Kadhimiya, a soldier from the 1st Armored Division on foot patrol at 2:30 a.m. local time was wounded after a gunman opened fire. The soldiers returned fire, killing the gunman and wounding a 6-year-old boy who was with him, according to an American military spokesman.
In the city of Ramadi, about 65 miles west of Baghdad, six soldiers were injured when their two-vehicle convoy drove over an improvised explosive device at 6:30 a.m.. The city's Sunni Muslim residents were among the core of Saddam Hussein's base of support, serving as army officers and officials in his government.
Ramadi has become a center of resistance to the American-led occupation. It is only about 30 miles west of Falluja, where an explosion at a Sunni mosque killed at least six people on Monday night. A coalition investigation blamed the explosion on a bomb-making class being held in a building adjacent to the mosque, but many residents accused the Americans of firing a missile into the mosque and promised revenge against American troops.
In Baghdad, just before 10 a.m. local time, a man on foot fired a rocket-propelled grenade on a three-vehicle military convoy moving down Haifa Street, a busy thoroughfare in central Baghdad. One Humvee was struck, injuring three soldiers, witnesses and a military spokesman said.
Witnesses said that in response, soldiers in one of the other vehicles opened fire indiscriminately, seriously wounding, and possibly killing, at least one Iraqi driver nearby. Blood pooled next to the slain driver's blue Volkswagen Passat soon after the attack.
The attack suggested that the urban warfare that had so concerned military planners before the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime was materializing in unexpected forms. The attack against the three-vehicle convoy on Haifa Street was at least the second rocket-propelled grenade assault in broad daylight in Baghdad this week. In both cases, the assailants escaped. Whether out of fear or sympathy for their cause, bystanders and witnesses have done nothing to help coalition forces apprehend the attackers.
President Bush on Wednesday challenged Iraqis who were attacking American-led forces and said the assaults would not cause the United States to leave prematurely.
"There are some who feel like — that the conditions are such that they can attack us there," Mr. Bush said. "My answer is, bring them on. We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation." In Baghdad, according to news agency reports, a spokesman for L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator in charge of Iraq, said the United States was offering a $25 million reward for information that led to the capture of Saddam Hussein, or proof that he was dead.
Soldiers who arrived at the scene of the Baghdad rocket-propelled grenade attack this morning crouched by their vehicles or pointed their weapons fearfully at the high-rise apartment buildings lining that section of the street. In the distance, an AK-47 rifle sounded.
A crowd of people, meanwhile, gathered around the destroyed Humvee and looted it, taking whatever they could remove. Children and adults climbed on top, stomping on it and chanting "God bless Mohammad!" Then someone set the vehicle on fire, and the crowd backed away, watching it slowly burn. Children hurled rocks at the blaze.
More American reinforcements arrived to clear the crowd and guard the vehicle. An armored vehicle drove through and paused, training its gun first on the crowd and then on the apartments above. Helicopters circled low overhead.
Some bystanders expressed support for the attack. "All men should fight," one woman, Nidhal Latif Tawfiq, said. "If I wasn't a woman, I would go to that car," she said of the Humvee surrounded by looters. "I have no job."
The crowd's ire seemed to be fueled by the lack of jobs and the lack of power in Baghdad — most parts of the city still have no more than 8 to 10 hours of electricity a day.
"It's not because of Saddam people are doing these things," one man said. "It is because there's no government, there's no electricity, and just false promises."
A 12-year-old boy, Ghanim Hamid, carrying part of a military food ration taken from the Humvee, asked if it was true that the Americans were withholding water and power from the Iraqis because the troops were being shot at.
"Get out from our country," a nearby graffito said. It was written in English, so there was no mistaking its meaning.
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