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□イラクで3000名のテロリストーアメリカ兵ーが殺害される(英文記事)
http://www.iraq-war.ru/article/113891
3,000 Terrorist U.S. troops killed in Iraq
By: whywehatebush, Reuters, Jeremy Pelofsky, Ghazwan al-Jibouri on: 31.12.2006 [10:15 ] (1446 reads)
Texas soldier's death raises U.S. toll in Iraq to at least 3,000 dead
Back in the United States, President Bush declared January 2 a day of national mourning for former president Gerald Ford. Then, in a rebuke to Bush from the grave, Ford cried out in an embargoed interview (from July 2004) that the Iraq war was not justified. “I don’t think I would have gone to war,” he said a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion.
In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney (who used to be Ford’s chief of staff) and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford’s chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief. “Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction,” Ford said. “And now, I’ve never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do.”
That is probably no consolation to the family of the 3,000th dead American now being flown home in a body bag.
http://www.whywehatebush.com/news/06_12_3000Dead.html
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Texas soldier's death raises U.S. toll in Iraq to at least 3,000 dead
Associated Press
Last updated: Sunday, December 31st, 2006 12:32:53 PM
BAGHDAD, IRAQ ― The Pentagon has announced the death of a Texas soldier, marking a grim milestone for US forces in Iraq.
Specialist Dustin Donica was killed by small arms fire in Baghdad late last week. According to an Associated Press count, his death raises the number of U-S military deaths in Iraq to at least 3,000 since the war began.
December has been the deadliest month of the year for US forces, with at least 111 service members killed. The latest death comes as the Bush administration is preparing an overhaul of its strategy in an unpopular war. Among the ideas being discussed is a surge in the number of US troops in Iraq.
http://www.kxly.com/news/?sect_rank=5§ion_id=562&story_id=7368
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U.S. military deaths in Iraq reach 3,000
Reuters
Sunday, December 31, 2006; 2:46 PM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq has reached 3,000 since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, an authoritative Web site tracking war deaths said on Sunday.
The milestone comes as President George W. Bush weighs options, including more troops, for the deteriorating situation in Iraq, where daily violence plagues Baghdad and much of the country and has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis.
The Web site, www.icasualties.org, listed the death of Spec. Dustin R. Donica, 22, on December 28 as previously unreported, and said that 3,000 U.S. military personnel had now died.
A U.S. military spokesman in Iraq could not immediately confirm that Donica's death had not previously been reported. No soldiers were reported killed by small arms fire on December 28 but the death of an unidentified soldier in a bomb attack north of the capital was announced.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/31/AR2006123100349.html
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Bush mourns death of 3,000th U.S. soldier in Iraq
By Jeremy Pelofsky | December 31, 2006
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President George W. Bush mourned the death of the 3,000th U.S. soldier in Iraq, the White House said on Sunday, but cautioned war weary Americans that no quick end was in sight to the fight against terrorism.
Bush has been under pressure to change course in Iraq amid widespread public and political discontent. He is expected to unveil his new strategy, which could include more U.S. troops sent into battle, early next month.
"The president believes that every life is precious and grieves for each one that is lost," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel. "He will ensure their sacrifice was not made in vain."
In addition to reaching the new milestone, December is the deadliest month for U.S. forces in the past two years, with 111 dead, according to the Web site icasualties.org. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died in the almost 4-year-old war.
Bush, who is spending a weeklong holiday break at his Texas ranch, has been considering a range of options that includes a short-term increase in forces, but he has rejected the idea of a timetable for withdrawing the 134,000 troops now in Iraq.
Nonetheless, Bush has shown little desire to make dramatic changes to his policies despite voters giving control of Congress to Democrats next year, which was widely seen as a reflection of dissatisfaction with the Republican president's handling of the war.
Despite the execution of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, Bush warned that violence in Iraq would not end, and was quickly proven correct when suspected insurgents loyal to Saddam set off car bombs killing more than 70 on Saturday.
"Many difficult choices and further sacrifices lie ahead," Bush said in a statement after the hanging. "Yet the safety and security of the American people require that we not relent in ensuring that Iraq's young democracy continues to progress."
The Bush administration has argued that establishing a free Iraq that can govern and sustain itself is critical to winning a broader war on terrorism and preventing attacks from being conducted on American soil.
"We will be fighting violent jihadists for peace and security of the civilized world for years to come," Stanzel said.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/12/31/bush_mourns_death_of_3000th_us_soldier_in_iraq/
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Though lower than past wars', troop death rate in Iraq seen as high, polls show
Posted 12/31/2006 4:17 PM ET
The Associated Press
A four-figure number hovers 50 feet over a busy Philadelphia street, visible in an office window. It changes maybe once or twice a day like the cost of something.
A janitor once stopped, just to stare. "I see that number, and it makes me cry," he told Celeste Zappala, who keeps the running tally.
It is a number that strongly moves American opinion: the U.S. military's death toll in Iraq. Zappala's son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, is one of the dead.
Other makeshift memorials rise up across the country as reminders of the war's human cost: flags planted in honor of the dead on the National Mall in Washington, symbolic tombstones at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, signs with fallen soldiers' names plastered to telephone polls outside Boston.
Americans may question this war for many reasons, but their doubts often find voice in the count of U.S. war deaths. An overwhelming majority ― 84% ― worry that the war is causing too many casualties, according to a September poll by the non-partisan research group Public Agenda.
The country largely kept the faith during World War II, even as about 400,000 U.S. forces died ― 20,000 just in the month-long Battle of the Bulge. Before turning against the wars in Korea and Vietnam, Americans tolerated thousands more deaths than in Iraq.
Has something changed? Do Americans somehow place higher value on the lives of their soldiers now? Do they expect success at lower cost? Or do most simply dismiss this particular war as the wrong one ― hard to understand and harder to win ― and so not worth the losses?
The Associated Press recently posed these questions to scholars, veterans, activists, and other Americans. Their comments suggest that the public does express more pain over the deaths of this war.
A death toll of 3,000 simply sounds higher to Americans in this war than it did in other prolonged conflicts of the past century, for a number of reasons, the interviews suggest.
"As fewer Americans die in war, their loss is more keenly felt, not necessarily at a personal level, but at a collective and public level," says historian Michael Allen at North Carolina State University.
Jeffrey Greenwood, 17, of Plymouth, Mass., though unsure of the exact number of Iraq war deaths, says, "I know it's enough to make people angry."
John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University, calls this casualty sensitivity "the Iraq syndrome." He described it in an influential journal article last year: "Casualty for casualty, support has declined far more quickly than it did during either the Korean War or the Vietnam War."
In the weeks after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, public backing was powerful. But opinion began to shift quickly once the Iraqi army was beaten, its leader was forced into hiding, and chemical, biological or nuclear weapons were not found.
_ By late 2003, public support for the occupation began to seesaw around 50%, according to Richard Eichenberg, a political scientist at Tufts University.
_ In September 2005, 55% of Americans favored stronger efforts to withdraw because of the losses, a Gallup poll found.
_ Last October, 54% of registered voters believed the war wasn't worth the U.S. casualties or cost, a Hart-McInturff poll found. In November, voters reversed the congressional balance of power in an election viewed as a referendum on Iraq.
Polling analysts believe Americans are more sensitive to casualties than in the past because they neither see vital interests at stake nor feel the "halo effect" from a clear prospect of success.
"When is it going to stop? We're losing a lot of youngsters," says former tanker Ed Collins, 82, of Hicksville, N.Y., who survived the assault on Normandy's beaches in World War II. "I went in when I was 18; that was young, too. But we fought for something. Now we have no idea who we're fighting for and what we're fighting for."
That's partly because the mission's focus has shifted repeatedly, the experts argue: from finding weapons of mass destruction, to deposing Saddam Hussein, to fighting terrorists.
When the number of Americans lost in Iraq recently passed the 2,973 killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the parallel was noted by some. Some have also noted that Iraqi deaths far surpass those of the American military, with tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed in the violence.
Building a stable democracy in Iraq has been given as a justification for the war's sacrifices, and yet close to two-thirds of Americans think a stable, democratic government is unlikely to take hold in Iraq, according to a Dec. 8 poll by AP-Ipsos. Many believe Iraq has fallen into the chaos of civil war.
Americans instead tend to back wars to stop aggression, like the invasion of Kuwait before the first war with Iraq in 1991, polling indicates.
"If the public really believed that our war in Iraq now was about stopping aggression, stopping terrorism, then we would see a greater degree of tolerance for casualties," says Bruce Jentleson, a former policy planner in President Clinton's State Department who now teaches at Duke University.
Nancy Lessin, co-founder of the anti-war group Military Families Speak Out, says many people appear to believe that "one death is too many in a war that should never have happened."
At the same time, scholars suggest that America's instant technologies and its global power have conditioned its population to expect quick, painless results in almost any war.
"In a world of smart bombs and so on, you just expect the military to be able to insulate the military from getting killed ― and to a large extent they have," says Christopher Gelpi, a casualty researcher at Duke University.
Precision air power helped the U.S. military succeed in the former Yugoslavia and the first war with Iraq, and scholars say that lowered the expectation of casualties in future wars. Improvements in body armor may have contributed to the same expectation.
Speed-of-light consumer conveniences, like cellular phones and digital cameras, also reinforce expectations of fast results that spill over into war, some scholars say. In what's called "the CNN effect," the unblinking eye of video news and unending chatter of the Internet quicken and maybe intensify the public's reaction to the carnage of battle.
"The American people have never been known for their patience, and I suppose with these 24-7 news cycles and access to the Internet, everything seems to have accelerated," says Richard Melanson, who teaches a class on public opinion and foreign policy at the U.S. military's National War College, in Washington, D.C.
America's young no longer feel personally threatened, either. The military draft is history. These days, mostly working-class teenagers volunteer to do the fighting.
Charles Moskos, a sociologist at Northwestern University, believes America has lost zeal for warfare because the children of its elite rarely serve. The all-volunteer military is one of many legacies of Vietnam today.
Bobby Blair, a Vietnam veteran from Holliston, Mass., recently spoke about Iraq to a church youth group. "None of them personally know of anyone who's in Iraq," he said. "They didn't realize how serious it was. I said, 'Do you think we're watching a video game?' And some of them said it was almost that."
Greater wealth and smaller families make Americans even more protective of their children and more loath to send them into battle than they once were, some argue. They are "sort of hothouse kids," says Harvey Sapolsky, the retired head of security studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who notes, "My grandparents had seven kids, my parents had two."
Reassured by official optimism and quick success in the invasion phase, Americans never expected to lose so many of their young in this war. In the first weeks, 80% of the public thought the final U.S. toll would not surpass 1,000, a Gallup survey found.
The president addressed their disappointment when he declared at an October news conference: "The fact that the fighting is tough does not mean our efforts are not worth it."
But are Americans willing to hang in a tough fight anymore?
Some wonder if U.S. society, now populated by baby boomers who recall Vietnam and never knew the hardships of the Great Depression or World War II, has simply lost its stomach for great sacrifices. Or perhaps in a materialistic culture, priorities are simply elsewhere now. "Everybody's looking to get theirs," says Tony Bouza, a veteran and former Minneapolis police chief who wrote "The Decline and Fall of the American Empire."
Many analysts argue otherwise. Some say Americans would still abide far more troop deaths, as in the world wars, if the cause were clear and dear. Others say today such an attitude would only return in the event of an invasion of the United States.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-12-31-us-death-toll-polls_x.htm?csp=34
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As Saddam buried, 3000th U.S. soldier dies in Iraq
By Ghazwan al-Jibouri
AWJA, Iraq (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein was buried in the dead of night in his native village on Sunday, prompting an outpouring of sectarian anger as the 3,000th American soldier was reported to have died in Iraq.
Saddam's hanging on Saturday, shown in a video that swept the Internet, has polarised an Iraqi society already on the brink of civil war. His fellow Sunni Arabs flocked to Awja, near Tikrit, to see his grave and vent their fury at Shi'ite officials who taunted him on the gallows.
Men pray over the coffin of Iraq's former president Saddam Hussein during a funeral in Awja, near Tikrit in northern Iraq December 31, 2006. Saddam was buried in the dead of night in his native village on Sunday, prompting an outpouring of sectarian anger as the 3,000th American soldier was reported to have died in Iraq. (REUTERS/Nuhad Hussin)
The Web site, www.icasualties.org, on Sunday quoted the Pentagon as saying Specialist Dustin Donica was shot in Baghdad on Thursday, making his the 3,000th such death reported.
Facing mounting public anger over a war that toppled Saddam but has left 130,000 U.S. troops caught in a spiral of violence, President George W. Bush's spokesman Scott Stanzel said: "The president believes that every life is precious and grieves for each one that is lost ...
"He will ensure their sacrifice was not made in vain."
Bush is to unveil a new strategy in Iraq in the new year.
But the sectarian passions that have pushed Iraq toward civil war since his forces overthrew Saddam could be further inflamed by a new video posted on the Internet showing Shi'ite officials taunting him as he stood on the gallows.
"Go to hell!" one yelled at the former president.
Saddam's body, shown swinging on the rope, was flown overnight by U.S. military helicopter to his home city of Tikrit in northern Iraq and, as agreed with U.S. and Iraqi officials, buried in haste at nearby Awja at 3 a.m. (midnight GMT).
The jerky Web footage, apparently shot on a mobile phone, showed people in the execution chamber chanting the name of Shi'ite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr and Saddam smiling back, saying: "Is this what you call manhood?"
After he falls through the trap, abruptly cut off in his recitation of the Muslim profession of faith, someone in the room cries "The tyrant has fallen!" and the film shows the 69-year-old former strongman swinging on the rope, his eyes open and his neck twisted at a 90-degree angle to his right.
Seemingly accusing his captors of misrule, he replied to the taunt of "Go to hell" by asking: "The hell that is Iraq?"
On Sunday in Awja, where Saddam was born in fatherless poverty in 1937, hundreds of mourners flocked to his freshly dug tomb inside a marble-floored hall built by Saddam.
Many poured out their anger against the Americans and the Shi'ite majority now in the ascendancy in Iraq's government.
"The Persians have killed him. I can't believe it. By God, we will take revenge," said one man from Mosul, referring to Iraq's new leaders ties to Persian-speaking, Shi'ite Iran.
FUNERALS
In other Sunni towns and districts, including the insurgent bastion of Amriya in Baghdad and Baiji and Dhuluiya near Tikrit, local people held funeral observances, including symbolic coffins, to show their respect for a leader who ensured Sunnis enjoyed state favour during his three decades in power.
State television showed the head of Saddam's tribe, Ali al-Nida of the Albu Nasir, and Tikrit's regional governor signing a letter agreeing to bury the body immediately in Awja.
Governor Mohammed al-Qaisi told Reuters the funeral, after the body was bathed and dressed according to Muslim ritual, was attended by a few officials and relatives. It began at 3:05 a.m. and lasted 25 minutes. U.S. and Iraqi troops kept a close guard.
Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay, killed by U.S. troops six months before their father was captured near Tikrit in December 2003, also lie in Awja, in a family plot in the cemetery. Their father's grave is dug into the floor of an octagonal, domed building he had built in the 1980s for religious festivals.
Men came in groups of several dozen to pay their respects by the mound of fresh clay, with a gravestone at head and foot and a large photograph, propped on a chair, of a younger, smiling Saddam wearing his trademark black fedora hat.
"All we can do now is take it out against the Americans and the government," another mourner said. More than 70 people were killed in car bomb attacks on Shi'ites on Saturday. Hundreds of Iraqi civilians are dying in violence every week.
The government had said Saddam's body might lie in a secret grave for fear the site could become a shrine and focal point for Baathist rebels. A relative said the family planned to found a "presidential library" and religious school on the spot.
Iraqis and much of the world had already been transfixed by film shown on state television of Saddam standing in a noose on a gallows once used by his own secret police. The Web footage was more graphic, showing him drop as he begins the second verse of the profession of faith: "I bear witness that Mohammad ..."
Before that voices are heard chanting "Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada" for the cleric whose Mehdi Army militia is widely blamed by Sunnis for death squad killings ravaging society.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has seen his fragile authority among fellow Shi'ites like Sadr enhanced after he forced through Saddam's execution just four days after the appeal court upheld his conviction for crimes against humanity for killing Shi'ites.
Maliki urged Sunni insurgents to make peace. But many fear his death may simply prolong the cycle of violence.
(Additional reporting by Aseel Kami, Ibon Villelabeitia, Claudia Parsons and Alastair Macdonald in Baghdad)
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/1/1/worldupdates/2007-01-01T024706Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_-281871-9&sec=Worldupdates
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