If this Reuters report proves correct — and it’s critical to remember with these kinds of reports that a report without confirmation is NOT a “solid” report — then the news from Iraq has just gotten a lot more grim:
Thousands of American troops searched on Sunday for three U.S. soldiers missing in Iraq after an ambush in which al Qaeda said it seized “crusader” forces, while a suicide bomber killed 50 people in the Kurdish north.
The self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, a group led by al Qaeda, said in an Internet posting it was holding soldiers who survived an attack south of Baghdad in which the U.S. military said four U.S. troops and an Iraqi army translator were killed.
That attack and the suicide truck bombing came as President George W. Bush deploys 30,000 more U.S. troops due in Iraq in June in what is seen as a final push to halt a slide into all-out civil war between majority Shi’ites and Sunni Arabs.
Last June, al Qaeda abducted two U.S. soldiers in the same area where the patrol of seven U.S. soldiers and one Iraqi army interpreter were ambushed on Saturday. Their badly mutilated bodies were found days later.
If it’s true, then videos will soon surface on the Internet or elsewhere with the soldiers and the outcome is unlikely to be an upbeat one. The timing of this purported capture could not come at a more delicate time for the U.S. Opinion polls show the American public’s patience with the war is at a low, GOPers are not exactly piling into the in the political lifeboats but some have their life jackets on and are getting ready to sprint to the dinghies come September, and it has just surfaced that the United States and Iran will hold talks in Baghdad aimed at stabilising Iraq.
But — as the media has learned time and time again from reports dealing with Iraq — anyone can put a statement on a website. Until there’s proof that the soldiers have been captured, this remains a “claim” and is not yet a fact.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.