I don't get this stuff about 46, or 54 dead in Samarra. Can someone do the numbers on this for me?
There is no doubt the convoy spent a lot of time (two hours or so), blazing away. The area of the city they were in is shot to shit. We can all agree on the power if weaponry brought to bear.
There's not a lot of doubt that some 8 civilians were killed and a number wounded in this event. That it is so few, given the real estate damage, is frankly astounding.
Now we come to the bit I don't understand. The convoy says it killed between 46 and 54 attackers, yet recovered not a single body. Therefore, questions:
What would it take to withstand the US counterattack for that long and recover every single one of 54 dead comrades?
Not just recover them, but remove them completely from the battleground without being detected. Can't be 100 ambushers, that would mean they had to carry away more than one body each while still holding off the US troops long enough to disappear. Would 200 be enough? 250? lets say a 2:1 ration of wounded to dead. That's 160 non-combatant fighters at the end needing evacuation. Looks like nearer 400 assailants to me.
If, lets say 350 was a fair number, how do that many combatants, lugging 54 bodies and supporting 100 wounded, clean up and disappear so fast that not a single body, nor casualty, nor any vehicle carrying one was found?
While we are hosing down this very smelly fish, lets not forget that this convoy was carting cash to a couple of banks and the ambush was supposed to have been a hijack attempt.
What does it take to know far enough in advance what it is carrying, where it is going, how it is going to get there, organise 350 fighters, set up a barricade and deploy the fighters, conduct a 2 hour firefight and get clean away with ALL of your casualties?
Something very weird happened in Samarra; what the hell was it?