Mystery shrouds whereabouts of bodies of 54 insurgents said killed by US

The US military said it believed 54 insurgents were killed in intense exchanges in the northern Iraqi town of Samarra the previous day but commanders admitted they had no bodies.

The only corpses at the city's hospital were those of ordinary civilians, including two elderly Iranian pilgrims and a child....

..General Mark Kimmit..said: "I would suspect that the enemy would have carried them away and brought them back to where their initial base was." ...If the US troops killed 46 and captured 11 of them, only three of the survivors would have been left to pick up the corpses. ..Residents in Samarra said they had not seen any of the militants' bodies, 46 or 54...The head of the local hospital, Abed Tawfiq, reported eight dead civilians but no insurgents. Ambulance driver Abdelmoneim Mohammed said.."If I had seen bodies, I would have picked them up. It's not like the Americans would have done it...the atmosphere in Samarra would be quite different." ....There were no wounded, no killed on the streets. Where could they have disappeared?"

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/afp/20031201/wl_mideast_afp/iraq_unrest_samarra_031201203113&e=3

He was great at the Vietnam "body counts". Arthur Anderson in training. "Need some more bodies? Just change the numbers on the ledger"

Say it isn't so!

came from debriefings of the soldiers.

Yeah, Sarg, I killed about 5 of them. Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too. Etc.

Turns out the attack may have been carried out by a handful of men. The US soldiers panicked and started killing anything that moved, most of which were civilians.

I do hope that US officials are not starting the body counts, figuring that as long as we are killing more of theirs will somehow easy the pain of our loses.

Cheers
Drifter