Four U.S. soldiers and a Marine were killed Saturday during combat in Anbar, the Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, the military said. A roadside bomb also struck a security patrol northeast of Baghdad, killing one soldier.
Saturday's carnage also included 12 soldiers killed in a Blackhawk helicopter crash northeast of Baghdad, five killed in a militant attack in the holy Shiite city of Karbala and two others slain elsewhere in roadside bombings.
The helicopter losses would have made it a bad day. So would the the Karbala loss. Add in the other losses and we lost four more troops than we did in the entire previous 19 days in Iraq.
Indeed, only two other days in Iraq have been this bad.
The helicopter loss was an anomoly. We lost thousands in Vietnam yet in nearly four years in Iraq we've lost not more than a score, I should think. And these losses usually account for a number of troops.
But as awful as Saturday was for our troops, remember that this was one bad day. A very bad day, to be sure, but still one bad day.
There are bound to be many bad days on the road to achieving victory. Focus on the victory--not the bad days.
