You obviously don't support the american troops who are forced to go and
fight in this war.

You obviously don't support the american troops who are forced to go and
fight in this war.

Mike T wrote:

U.S. soldier killed in Iraq attack
House committee holds WMD hearing

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) --A U.S. soldier was killed and two were wounded when a
military ambulance was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade south of Baghdad, U.S.
Central Command said Thursday.

The extent of the injuries was not clear.

The soldiers from the 804th Medical Brigade were transporting a patient injured
in another incident to the 28th Combat Army Support Hospital, Central Command
said.

"The ambulance was clearly marked with a big red cross," Capt. John Morgan said.
"No regard for human life."

The attack took place in the town of Al Iskandariyah, north of Camp Dogwood near
the area where a U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded Wednesday in a
drive-by attack.

More than 50 U.S. troops have died in hostile fire and accidents since President
Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq on May 1. American forces have
launched a major effort to hunt down remaining pockets of resistance, a campaign
dubbed Operation Desert Scorpion.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday that attacks on U.S.
troops by Iraqi "dead-enders" will continue for some time but said he saw no
sign of a central or regional organization behind them.

Earlier Thursday, U.S. Central Command announced that one Iraqi was killed and
12 were wounded in a mortar attack on a coalition building north of Baghdad. No
U.S. troops were injured in the attack.

Soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division, stationed at the civil military
operations center in Samarra, reported hearing three explosions, according to a
Central Command statement Thursday. Samarra is about 75 miles (121 kilometers)
north of Baghdad.

"This is one of numerous incidents recently where Iraqi resistors have attacked
coalition forces or coalition provisional authority locations and injured or
killed Iraqi citizens," the Central Command statement said.

Lawmakers eye intelligence
Amid questions about the coalition's failure to find weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq, the U.S. House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday held the first
closed-door hearings on intelligence efforts before the U.S.-led war.

The hearing is the first in what could be several hearings in the House and
Senate in the months ahead to examine intelligence questions. (Full story)

Lawmakers are trying to determine how the authors of a key report -- the
classified National Intelligence Estimate in October -- came to the conclusion
that Iraq's weapons program was flourishing, congressional aides said.

"The NIE is a logical starting point to this investigation," the committee's
ranking Democrat, U.S. Rep. Jane Harman of California, said in a statement. "It
helped frame the decision to go to war."

A Democrat leaving the hearing said intelligence analysts defended their work
and blamed the inability so far to find the weapons on the fact that Iraq is a
big country and that the weapons are easily concealed or destroyed.

The Democrat said intelligence analysts should have made it clear before the war
that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction might be hard to find.

A Republican official defended the analysts' findings: "In intelligence, you
can't produce proof that is incontrovertible. You try to get smart people to
look at the information and come up with their best assessment."

Appearing before the House Armed Services Committee, Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz promised the United States "will get to the bottom of it."

Noting that Baghdad is the size of Los Angeles, Wolfowitz said a weapon such as
anthrax "could be hidden in a room a fraction the size of this one."

"You're not going to find it in a house-to-house search," he said. "You're going
to find it when people start to talk to you, and we're in the process of finding
the people who can talk."