As US, British death toll rises: Pentagon orders 14,000 National Guard troops to Iraq By Patrick Martin7 April 2007
US military authorities revealed that thousands more National Guard troops have been assigned to duty in Iraq in deployments scheduled for the next three years. The announcement coincided with reports that twelve more US and British troops were killed over a three-day period in the war-torn country. Both the spike in casualties and the announcement that National Guard units will be sent back for second tours of duty underscore the increasingly precarious state of the US military occupation of Iraq. Even the most slavish US ally, the British government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, is reducing rather than increasing its forces there.
Eight American and four British soldiers were killed in incidents Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Seven of the American soldiers were killed in and around Baghdad, with the other death taking place in Diyala province, an area of mixed Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish population north of the capital. The American death toll has hit 18 in only the first six days of April. The overall US death toll in Iraq is approaching 3,300, but individual units have been hit far harder than that number might suggest.
(Click here to read more)
