Qaeda-linked group says abducted US soldiers in Iraq

40 minutes ago

DUBAI (Reuters) - A group linked to Iraq's al Qaeda said on Monday it had abducted two American soldiers near Yusufiya, according to a statement posted on the Internet.

U.S. and Iraqi forces are searching for two U.S. soldiers who went missing on Friday after an attack on a checkpoint near Yusufiya south of Baghdad that killed another soldier.

"Your brothers in the military wing of the Mujahideen Shura Council kidnapped two American soldiers near Yusufiya," the group said. "We will provide you with more details about the incident in the next coming days."

The authenticity of the statement could not be verified.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&u=/nm/20060619/ts_nm/iraq_qaeda_usa_dc_2

turned the corner....steady progress....so things are just peachy now, right?

Considering we probably spent ten times as much on those two soldiers' training and equipment as Al Qaeda did on Zarqawi's.

US soldiers - not Iraqi civilians. This new leader is a bin Laden pick - and this whole scene may change very quickly.

Our soldiers may really be in for it.

Sadly, I don't think these guys have much of a chance. Hopefully our other soldiers can manage to find them and get them out, but short of that, I think they will be used for propaganda purposes.

it feeds into my theory that it wasn't the U.S. that killed Zarqawi at all, or that he was delivered into U.S. hands..someone higher up decided to "go in a different direction" from the looks of it.

If you look into the history of Zarqawi you will see that UBL never liked him - not at all actually. To UBL Zarqawi was an uncouth thug, a former prisoner who, to Bin Laden's horror, actually had a tatoo and used foul language (UBL punishes and suspends his followers for cursing). Zarqawi infuriated his boss with the Jordanian hotel bombings and the attacks against the Shi'ah population. Zawahiri (and of course UBL) told him to stop these activities, but Zarqawi ignored them. He was causing problems across the board. And when you think about the fact that someone "within his organization" gave him up, what conclusion can you come to? Who can give that order? Zarqawi's death removes the problems that were angering his superiors; it gives the organization a martyr figure; it takes away a bogeyman figure from the U.S. onto whom everything under the sun can be blamed; and it paves the way for someone hand-picked by al-Qaeda's leadership to be installed. Who benefits most from each and every one of these things? Bin Laden.

Maybe he could take his August vacation there.

gotta wonder about this translation, just like everything else...