Just Foreign Policy Iraqi Death Estimator    

Saturday, June 23, 2007

"They don't stay and fight."

Eight more US troops died in Iraq on Saturday, mostly in roadside bombings in Baghdad, as the American military battled suspected Al-Qaeda insurgents in other parts of the country.
On Saturday, the military reported deaths of eight troops, including four in a single roadside bomb attack near their vehicle northwest of Baghdad during combat and in which their Iraqi interpreter was wounded.
An airman and three other soldiers were also reported dead on Saturday, taking US losses this month alone to 68, with 3,545 servicemembers killed since the March 2003 invasion, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.
The latest deaths came just days after US commanders deployed a recently completed "surge" of troops to a ring of Al-Qaeda strongholds around the capital.
"We are beyond a surge of forces, and we are now into a surge of operations," Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, the number two US commander in Iraq, told reporters on Friday.
In the biggest operation, around 10,000 US and Iraqi forces backed by helicopters and other aircraft have poured into the town of Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, in one of the largest single assaults in nearly three years.
But as with previous attempts to quash the insurgency with major offensives, Odierno said most senior Al-Qaeda leaders fled ahead of the operation.
"I think that they knew an operation was coming in Baquba," said Odierno. "They watched the news. They understood we had a surge. They understood Baquba was designated as a problem area. So they knew we were going to come sooner or later."
He said he believed around 80 percent of the senior insurgent leaders based in the city left ahead of the incursion. "They always do this," Odierno said. "They don't stay and fight."

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