Safer in Iraq??? :=8/
:=8D

Don't ferget u can always e-mail the MooCow with cowments at MooCowMoo@aol.com!!!

Baby Bush still insists that "its safer in Iraq now than it was last year"; is he high on crack, or what:


BAGHDAD, Iraq (Dec. 21) -- An explosion tore through a soft-sided mess tent during lunch hour at a military base near the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday, and officials said at least 20 people were killed - the deadliest attack on a U.S. base in Iraq since the start of the war.
A spokesman for U.S. military headquarters in Baghdad said 19 of the dead were American soldiers, which would make it the deadliest single strike against U.S. troops in this country. However, a military spokesman in Mosul said 14 U.S. troops died in the blast, which came just four days before Christmas.
A radical Sunni Muslim group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, claimed responsibility for the attack, which wounded about 60 people and left the tent floor littered with lunch trays and puddles of blood - the latest in a week of deadly strikes across Iraq that highlight the unwavering power of the insurgents in the run-up to the Jan. 30 national elections.
President Bush said the attack should not derail the elections and that he hoped relatives of those killed know that their loved ones died in ''a vital mission for peace.''
''I'm confident democracy will prevail in Iraq,'' he said.
Inside the tent, U.S. soldiers reacted quickly. With people screaming and thick smoke billowing, soldiers turned their lunch tables upside down, placed the wounded on them and gently carried them into the parking lot, said Jeremy Redmon, a reporter for the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch embedded with the troops in Mosul.
A U.S. military official said authorities believe the damage was caused by at least one large-caliber artillery round or rocket. Another official said it was possible the explosive had been planted.
Portland (Maine) Press Herald photographer Gregory Rec, who was sleeping about a quarter-mile from the mess hall when he was awakened by the loud explosion, said he rushed to the scene, where a soldier told him ''he heard a whoosh, he looked up and saw a fireball halfway between the ceiling and the floor.''
The blast at Forward Operating Base Marez came hours after British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a surprise visit to Baghdad and spoke of a ''battle between democracy and terror.''
White House spokesman Scott McClellan, responding to a question about how Iraqis will be able to safely get to some 9,000 polling places if U.S. troops can't secure their own bases, said there was ''security and peace'' in 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces.
Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, was relatively peaceful in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime last year. But insurgent attacks in the largely Sunni area have increased dramatically in the past year - particularly since the U.S.-led military offensive in November to retake Fallujah from militants.
Like most mess halls at U.S. bases in Iraq, the meal area at Base Marez is covered with a tent. Insurgents have fired mortars at the mess hall more than 30 times this year, Redmon said.
Mortar attacks on U.S. bases, particularly on the huge white tents that serve as dining halls, have been frequent in Iraq for more than a year. Just last month, for example, a mortar attack on a Mosul base killed two troops with Task Force Olympia, the reinforced brigade responsible for security in much of northern Iraq. Halliburton Co., a Houston-based company whose subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root supplies food service and other support activities for U.S. troops in Mosul, said seven of its employees and subcontractors were killed in the blast. Their nationalities were not disclosed. The Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on the Internet. It said the attack was a ''martyrdom operation'' targeting a mess hall.
Ansar al-Sunna is believed to be a fundamentalist group that wants to turn Iraq into an Islamic state like Afghanistan's former Taliban regime. The Sunni group claimed responsibility for beheading 12 Nepalese hostages and other recent attacks in Mosul.

"Security and peace"??? Sounds like McClellan needs to get his ass over in Iraq and have lunch under a tent sometime himself - and he's not the only one who needs a blast of reality. These insurgents are able to "shoot and scoot", which makes it virtually impossible to prevent rocket and/or mortar attacks like this. The US Army knew that the mess tent provides an easy, soft target for insurgents (which is why they are busy putting up a new steel and concrete mess hall nearby), but for some reason military officials did nothing to minimize possible casualties, such as staggering meal times, dispersing large, vulnerable groups of troops into smaller mess units, etc.

Folks, things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better, and the sooner the public accepts that, the sooner people are going to demand a better solution, and the sooner we can get the hell out of there.

:=8/


- posted by The MooCow @ 6:24 PM