Ohio Marine squad "decimated" in 2 separate attacks this week

[Alpharetta]

Note: the casualties haved been reported in separate LBN stories. This MSNBC article ties the attacks to the same squad

Demise of a hard-fighting squad
Marines who survived ambush are killed, wounded in blast
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Updated: 4:38 a.m. ET May 12, 2005

HABAN, Iraq, May 11 - The explosion enveloped the armored vehicle in flames, sending orange balls of fire bubbling above the trees along the Euphrates River near the Syrian border.

Marines in surrounding vehicles threw open their hatches and took off running across the plowed fields, toward the already blackening metal of the destroyed vehicle. Shouting, they pulled to safety those they could, as the flames ignited the bullets, mortar rounds, flares and grenades inside, rocketing them into the sky and across pastures.

Gunnery Sgt. Chuck Hurley emerged from the smoke and turmoil around the vehicle, circling toward the spot where helicopters would later land to pick up casualties. As he passed one group of Marines, he uttered one sentence: "That was the same squad."

More at ...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7823375/

[Coexist]

1. that is heartbreaking - why are we there again?

of course we shouldn't be talking about dead soldiers or dead Iraqis. It's not terribly patriotic.

[lectrobyte]

3. We have always been at war with East Asia! Freedom is on the march!

[Kolesar]

2. That was a good article...eom

"Nothing but the dead arrives back in my little town"

[leftchick]

4. How many exactly were killed and wounded?

60% of how many? :shrug:

[DoNotRefill]

5. Decimated, my ass...

Decimated means ten percent casualties. The word came from the Roman Legions, where poor performance was punished in the most drastic cases by "decimation"...the killing of every tenth man in the formation.

If a ten man force is "decimated", it meant one person was killed. If a 100 man force was "decimated", it meant 10 men were killed. These poor guys were "decimated" many times over.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

9. It irked me when I saw that, too.

Deci means 1/10 of something. It's not hard to figure out the meaning of the word even if they didn't know it's origin.

[wakeme2008]

6. msnbc wrote THIS

"Lima Company drew Marine reservists from across Ohio into the conflict in Iraq. Some were still too young to be bothered much by shaving, or even stubble."

:cry:

[SpiralHawk]

7. But on the bright side...

The kommander in chief* had lots of time to take the day off and go bike riding in the forest yesterday.

No need to worry. Dick Cheney was in the White House command center -- as usual -- so neither the death of our soldiers, nor the phony "terra alert" troubled Bush at all.

[fishnfla]

8. Can you say "Black Hawk Down"?

Les Aspin should be fired over this travesty!

I hate to make politics over this , but this Lima Co. tragedy will be made into a gut-wrenching movie. Hope they include the part where the war was instituted on lies, the troops were sent in undermanned and undersupplied, and they had no fricking clue , none, how to manage the post-war (is it over?) occupation.

The WH is responsible for these deaths

[FloridaPat]

10. I read one editorial that what we did to Falluja we are doing now

and will do to the rest of the country. Not too often you get to see double murder by two people (bush and cheney) - the killing of our soldiers and the killing of the ones they are fighting. I hold these two creeps repsonsible for every single death and all harm done in that country. This is a joke that these are two far-sighted brilliant individuals. Where are the war crime court? How many more soldiers and Iraqis must die before these two get what they deserve? What is wrong with our country? You would think at least half the population would automatically know this is Vietnam all over again with even more government lies.

[AzDar]

11. The usage of the word "decimate" in relation to war really reminds me

of the Civil War-Era description of casualties....Sickening and scary.

[Jo March]

12. Horrible

This is simply horrible.