Bomb Hits Gathering Sheiks

Two people died and at least six were wounded south of Baghdad on Wednesday when bombers targeted a gathering of Sheiks who oppose al Qaeda in Iraq. The suicide bomber struck the house with a car bomb sitting just outside where the gathering was being held. Meanwhile, an explosively formed penetrator detonated in central Baghdad Wednesday, killing a Multi-National Division Baghdad soldier and an Iraqi civilian. Five soldiers and two civilians were wounded by the EFP explosive; it is a powerful roadside bomb that the military has linked to Iranian agents helping Iraqi insurgents. This appears to be the same incident reported earlier outside the Green Zone, in which a roadside bomb detonated. That explosion killed at least two civilians and wounding two others, an Interior Ministry officer said. Also on Wednesday, U.S. military announced the death of four more American soldiers in Iraq. There have been 20 U.S. troop deaths so far in November and 3,864 military deaths in the Iraq war, including seven civilian employees of the Defense Department.

A U.S. spokesman noted significant progress in al Qaeda in Iraq in the Operation Iron Hammer military offensive in Niveveh, Salaheddin, Tameem and Diyala provinces in northern Iraq. He also cited the detention of more than 200 suspected terrorists, the arrest of three high-value al Qaeda operatives, and the seizure of weapons caches. It is a good thing the Americans are making such progress, they only have a limited time due the Bill passed bringing them home in a year. Hopefully the war will be won, whether or not they rebuild Iraq matters not to me, what matters to most of Americans, presumably, is that the terrorists are brought to justice, or removed from their destructive power for good.