US, UK vow to stay on track in Iraq
AP, Baghdad
The British foreign minister and American senators visiting Iraq on Wednesday played down concerns that the US-led occupation risks descending into a Vietnam-style quagmire, saying the remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime will be crushed."A quagmire? No," Jack Straw told reporters at the British mission in Baghdad. "These actions against the coalition forces won't succeed and will be dealt with." The comments coincided with a statement by President Bush on Wednesday vowing that anti-US attacks would not keep the United States from fulfilling its mission in Iraq. Insurgents have stepped up their attacks in recent days, hurling grenades, ambushing convoys and shooting troops patrolling the streets. A US marine injured along with three of his peers when their vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade south of Baghdad on Tuesday died from his wounds, the US military said Wednesday. That brought to 26 the number of US soldiers killed in hostile fire since Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1. Also Wednesday, a US Marine was killed and three others were injured while clearing mines near the south-central Iraqi city of Karbala, the US military said. The cause of their deaths was not immediately released. "We are taking the fight to the enemy," said Sen. Pat Roberts, a Republican of Kansas, one of nine US senators on a three-day tour of Iraq. He and the other senators traveled Wednesday to the northern city of Kirkuk, where they grilled US military officers about the recent spate of anti-American attacks and the hunt for Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction. To quell the burgeoning resistance, US-led forces have launched a series of lightning raids across Iraq. One such operation northeast of Baghdad, dubbed Operation Sidewinder, entered its fourth day Wednesday. Sidewinder has netted "20 high-value targeted individuals" consisting of former leaders of Saddam's Baath Party, former leaders of Saddam's Fedayeen militia and a former Iraqi military intelligence officer, a military statement said. The statement did not give the identities of those detained, and no one on the United States' top 55 list of most-wanted Iraqi fugitives was among them. US officials insist there is no nationally coordinated resistance to the occupation, and it remains unclear exactly which groups are staging attacks - though most suspicion falls on Saddam's former security forces.
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