It's time: Enough of the story can be inferred at this point to warrant a bullshit call on the "75-100 terrorists killed" statements.
Let me be clear. Our troops are out there fighting hard for a thou a month and a chance at a wheelchair or worse. Those guys are heros. It is my opinion, however, that somebody is exploiting what they do for PR/political purposes. It is on those hacks that I call BULLSHIT.
What apparently happened is that a bunch of Marines had gone through a village and were in the process of building a pontoon bridge across the Euphrates, in order to advance on an area or village which was their primary target. Suddenly they were attacked by mortar rounds eminating from the village they had just passed through. This was Sunday. So the Marines got busy, and probably called in air strikes, suggesting (and this is a hunch)over their radios that there were maybe 75 or 100 combatants inside the village. These numbers have never been confirmed, imho.
Below the jump: ANNOUNCING THE SCORE BEFORE THE GAME IS OVER.
The planes and choppers fired a bunch of ordnance into the village, and sometime early on Monday (?in the dark), the enemy either hightailed it (most likely) or "were buried in the rubble" (unlikely in mho.) Sometime during this period BUT STILL ON SUNDAY BEFORE THE FIGHT WAS OVER, the US forces issued a press release claiming first the 75 killed, and later the 100.
Whoever the people were who were fighting the US, they may well have been Al Qaida, because immediately Al Qaida disputed the US claim of 75, and the US had not mentioned that they were Al Qaida in the press releases. When the US entered the village, traces of blood, tracks, some stuff was found indicating that there were wounded. There were four or five houses that had been sandbagged, and some of the fighters had been on rooftops. A few bodies were found, probably 6 or 7 or so. Some were wearing flak jackets. At least one or two were non-combatants.
The US also claimed early on (before the completion of the village fight) that "54 terrorists within the circle of known terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were captured or killed." This appears to have been a separate action from the village fight. All but the 8 or so of these 54 were "captured", not killed.
These "prisoners" however, soon became known as suspects, who were "detained." The US by then had named this operation "Matador", and backed away from the Zarqawi claim: "Operation Matador does not specifically target al Qaeda terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who reportedly was seen in the area within the past three weeks."
Early reports did not mention US casualties, but on the second day the US acknowledged three or four killed. After the fights were over, the US began to claim approximately "a couple of dozen" enemy killed, but did not disclaim the 75 or 100 numbers. To date, thousands of news reports from around the world have been noted on Google, 99% of which carry the 75 or 100 numbers. They are bullshit numbers, based, I speculate, on requests for air strikes. imho
Only an embedded reporter for the Chicago Tribune noted that some twenty or more US soldiers were wounded.
In summary, as best I can tell, there have been less than a dozen persons KNOWN to have been killed by the US in two separate actions, and there is a high likelihood of that several of these are non-combatant deaths, and that some of these fighters may have been Al Qaida, from outside Iraq. Some aditional villagers may have been killed or injured. The US has taken casualties of some 4 killed and 20 wounded.