When Will the Washington Morons Get the Point?

The Iraq misadventure was completely disasterous and it's time to end the futility now.

Attacks kill 5 U.S. service members in Iraq
Fifty workers snatched in bus hijacking

Thursday, June 22, 2006; Posted: 5:09 a.m. EDT (09:09 GMT)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The U.S. military Thursday reported the deaths of five U.S. service members in recent attacks near Baghdad and in the western Anbar province.

Four of those were Marines killed in two separate attacks on Tuesday in Iraq's Anbar Province.

Three Marines assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5 died when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb; the other Marine assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force died "after being attacked while conducting security operations," a military release stated.

The military also reported that a U.S. soldier assigned to Multi-National Division Baghdad died Wednesday morning when his vehicle struck a roadside bomb south of the Iraqi capital around 11:30 a.m. (3:30 a.m. ET).

The deaths brought to 2,503 the number of U.S. troops killed in the Iraq war. Seven American civilian contractors of the military also have died in the conflict.

Meanwhile, gunmen on Wednesday hijacked five buses carrying at least 50 workers at a factory north of Baghdad, an Iraqi police official said.

The workers had just loaded onto the buses at the end of their shift when the gunmen commandeered the vehicles near the Nasr al-Adhim general complex about 12 miles north of Baghdad at 3 p.m. local time, the official said.

The factory makes school benches and blackboards. During the regime of Saddam Hussein, it produced plastic containers, the official said.

Also Wednesday, a group linked to al Qaeda said in a statement posted on a Web site it had decided to kill four Russian diplomats after Moscow did not meet its demands within 48 hours.

It was unclear from the statement whether the Mujahedeen Shura Council had carried out the threat. The group claimed to be holding the hostages in a statement Monday.

The diplomats were kidnapped June 3 when a car belonging to the Russian Embassy in Baghdad came under fire. Embassy official Vitaly Titov was killed and diplomats Fyodor Zaitsev, Rinat Agliugin, Anatoly Smirnov and Oleg Fedoseyev were kidnapped.

The Russian Foreign Ministry urged the insurgents "not to take an irreparable step and preserve the lives of our men."

CNN could not independently verify the authenticity of Wednesday's Shura Council statement, but it was posted on a Web site that frequently carries messages from insurgent groups.

The posting said: "This government didn't care about the diplomats and didn't give their lives any value." Instead, it said, the Russian government merely asked for their release "while continuing their fight against Islam and its people."

The Shura Council decided to kill the hostages, the statement said, adding that blood was on the Russian government's hands "and there will be an example for others after them."

A Russian Foreign Ministry statement said the diplomats "are representatives of the Russian people, which has never and nowhere waged a war against Islam."

"Russia is a multireligious country, where representatives of its two greatest creeds, the Russian Orthodoxy and Islam, have been living in peace and harmony for centuries."

One of the abducted diplomats is a Muslim, the ministry said.

"Those who have undertaken this action must also listen to numerous calls of the world's leading Islamic figures demanding the speedy release of the Russian citizens," the ministry statement said.

The Mujahedeen Shura Council is the same group that claimed Monday it was holding two U.S. soldiers hostage. The bodies of the soldiers were found Monday night, military sources said Tuesday. (Full story)
Baghdad violence continues

A car bomb killed two people and wounded four Wednesday about 12:45 p.m. outside a Baghdad restaurant in the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, police said.

Also near Sadr City, police found the body of Khamees al-Ubaidi, a lead defense attorney for former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. He had been shot to death. (Watch how attorney was abducted-- 1:55)

An hour before the body was found, a group of men dressed as Iraqi police stormed al-Ubaidi's home and asked him to come to the Ministry of Interior of questioning, according to Najib al-Nouemi, a fellow defense counsel for Hussein. (Full story)

Al-Ubaidi was the third member of the defense team killed since the start of the trial late last year.

Elsewhere, police said 16 bullet-riddled bodies had been found in various Mosul neighborhoods over the past 24 hours. Ten of them were identified as soldiers, police, traders and a former army officer under Saddam Hussein.
Other developments

• Seven U.S. Marines and a Navy medical corpsman were charged Wednesday with murder, kidnapping, conspiracy and other offenses related to the killing of an Iraqi civilian April 26 near the town of Hamdaniya, Col. Stewart Navarre said at Camp Pendleton, California. (Full story)

• A fourth soldier from the 101st Airborne Division was charged Wednesday in connection with the shooting deaths of three detainees during an operation in Salaheddin province in May, the military said. (Full story)

• The speaker of Iraq's parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, demanded an investigation Wednesday into this week's bombing of a poultry farm in northern Iraq by U.S. warplanes, which he said killed "many innocent people." Iraqi police said 13 people, including children and elderly adults, died in the bombing northeast of Baquba. (Full story)

• As questions swirled around the circumstances that led to their deaths, the bodies of two American soldiers kidnapped from a checkpoint in Yusufiya and slain by insurgents were being returned to the United States, military officials said. Military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said the commander of the soldiers' unit has called for an investigation of the incident. (Full story)

CNN's Arwa Damon, Cal Perry, Barbara Starr, Nic Robertson and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report. Original article appears here.