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| Iraq-Jordan | |
| Bomb Blast Kills 2 U.S. Soldiers in Iraq | |
| 2004-03-12 | |
| A bomb blast killed two American soldiers in Iraq, the military said Friday. The violence came amid growing concerns that Iraqi police - not just impostors in Iraqi uniforms - may have been behind the killings of two coalition staffers and their translator. The soldiers died Thursday when their Humvee struck a homemade bomb northeast of Habbiniyah in the Sunni Triangle. The shooting deaths Tuesday of the civilians, the first from the U.S. occupation authority to be killed in Iraq, prompted concern about safety. One of the CPA workers was 33-year-old Fern Holland, a human rights expert from Oklahoma who worked on women's issues in the Hillah region where she was killed. "If I die, know that I'm doing precisely what I want to be doing," Holland wrote in an e-mail to a friend in Tulsa on Jan. 21. She met often with Iraqi women around Hillah and communicated their needs to Iraq's Governing Council, even influencing the interim constitution completed this week, said one of her colleagues, Judy Van Rest. "She was extremely dedicated to what she was doing," Van Rest said. "She carried a lot of hope with her about the future of Iraq." The other American killed was Robert J. Zangas, 44, of suburban Pittsburgh. Zangas went to Iraq last year with his Marine Corps Reserve unit and returned as a regional press officer with the coalition, according to his wife, Brenda Zangas. The shooting Tuesday night raised two possibilities: that guerrillas had adopted a new tactic of posing as police to carry out attacks, or that some members of the security forces being trained by U.S. troops are turning to violence. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. commander in Iraq, said it was not yet known if the attackers were disguised as police or the real thing. "They were in police uniforms. We haven't established that it was the police," Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad.
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| Posted by:Steve White |
| #1 The shooting Tuesday night raised two possibilities: that guerrillas had adopted a new tactic of posing as police to carry out attacks, or that some members of the security forces being trained by U.S. troops are turning to violence. Either way, guilt needs to be determined swiftly, and if found guilty, the punishment should be equally swift. I would prefer putting them in front of a firing squad myself. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2004-3-12 11:03:01 AM |