NPR and the Asso­ci­ated Press are report­ing that there’s been two huge bomb attacks west of Bagh­dad near Fal­lu­jah, killing three U.S. sol­diers.

The U.S. mil­i­tary con­firmed a “large explo­sion” and said there were pos­si­bly U.S. and Iraqi civil­ian casu­al­ties. The attack occurred in Khaldiyah, 50 miles west of Bagh­dad. The town is near Fal­lu­jah, a hotspot of guer­rilla activ­ity where sev­eral attacks have taken place against U.S.-led coali­tion forces.
“One of our units was ambushed near Fal­lu­jah … involv­ing two coali­tion vehi­cles. There might be coali­tion and civil­ian casu­al­ties,” said a mil­i­tary spokesman, speak­ing on cus­tom­ary con­di­tion of anonymity.
Another spokes­woman ear­lier described the attack as a “large explo­sion.“
Nameer Mohammed, who said he was stand­ing about 500 yards away when the attack occurred, described see­ing a U.S. mil­i­tary vehi­cle on fire after the first blast.
As more Amer­i­can forces came to the scene, another bomb went off, set­ting fire to a sec­ond vehi­cle, he said.
In the con­fu­sion, the Amer­i­cans fired ran­domly, he said, and claimed that many Iraqis were killed. This could not be imme­di­ately confirmed.

The twin bomb attacks are a clas­sic tac­tic — the first bomb kills and the sec­ond bomb kills the respond­ing team.
[UPDATE Three more GIs were killed in another attack south of Bagh­dad near Iskan­dariya, about 30 miles south of Bagh­dad. That brings the total GIs dead today to six. Two CNN employ­ees were also killed in a drive-by attack. Two Iraqi civil­ians died in the attack west of Bagh­dad.]
This fol­lows on the the deadly attacks of this week­end, in which at least six sol­diers died.

• A sol­dier died Sun­day from wounds inflicted by a rocket-propelled grenade attack near Beiji, north of Baghdad;
• A U.S. heli­copter went down in Mosul with its two crew­men while search­ing for a miss­ing GI after a patrol boat cap­sized in the Tigris. The cause of the crash is unknown.
• On Sat­ur­day, three U.S. troops were killed near Khaldiyah by a car bomb, and three more were killed near Fal­lu­jah when insur­gents drove a car bomb into a mil­i­tary checkpoint.

It almost doesn’t mat­ter if the attacks are Ba’athist, al Qaeda or some other group. More than 515 Amer­i­can sol­diers and 97 sol­diers from other coun­tries have died in Iraq since March 19, 2003. Untold thou­sands of Iraqis have died in this war.
There’s no way some­one can look at this and con­clude that the U.S. has Iraq under con­trol. In addi­tion to the deadly vio­lence, there was an inef­fec­tual rocket attack on the CPA HQ on Sun­day. And the elec­tion plan is in dis­ar­ray, with the U.S. say­ing it’s open to “refine­ments” to the plan, but that its June 30 dead­line is firm. While there won’t be any sig­nif­i­cant draw­down on troops after June 30, the White House des­per­ately needs a sov­er­eign gov­ern­ment in Iraq by the sum­mer or Bush’s re-election plans will be affected. Of course, if the Kurds and Shi’ites con­tinue push­ing the coun­try toward civil war with their polit­i­cal demands, the U.S. will wish it hadn’t turned over sov­er­eignty.
But now the U.S. is start­ing to rotate in fresh troops in the largest troop rota­tion since World War II. For a few weeks, because of over­lap, there will be about 200,000 troops in Iraq. Look for insur­gents to step up attacks in the hope to kill new guys before they’re fully accli­ma­tized. And don’t be sur­prised if the U.S. mil­i­tary hits back in a spring offen­sive using the new troops.
Dona­tions Update
With some other dona­tions and the addi­tion of my sav­ings, B2I is up more than $6,000 now, eas­ily within strik­ing dis­tance of the $10,000 I’d like to have on hand before I leave in early May. (Actu­ally, I think it will be more like $12,000 that I need, with $1,000 for a vest and $1,000 for a plane ticket to Amman.) But that’s great! Again, you can read about the plan here and con­sider donat­ing to sup­port an inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist to cover the sov­er­eignty trans­fer and its aftermath.

A doc­u­ment found with Sad­dam Hus­sein in his “spi­der hole” warned his fol­low­ers against ally­ing them­selves with for­eign fight­ers and jihadists, cau­tion­ing that their agenda didn’t mesh well with the Ba’athists’.

The doc­u­ment appears to be a direc­tive, writ­ten after he lost power, from Mr. Hus­sein to lead­ers of the Iraqi resis­tance, coun­sel­ing cau­tion against get­ting too close to Islamic jihadists and other for­eign Arabs com­ing into occu­pied Iraq, accord­ing to Amer­i­can offi­cials.
…
Offi­cials said Mr. Hus­sein appar­ently believed that the for­eign Arabs, eager for a holy war against the West, had a dif­fer­ent agenda from the Baathists, who were eager for their own return to power in Bagh­dad. As a result, he wanted his sup­port­ers to be care­ful about becom­ing close allies with the jihadists, offi­cials famil­iar with the doc­u­ment said.
A new, clas­si­fied intel­li­gence report cir­cu­lat­ing within the United States gov­ern­ment describes the doc­u­ment and its con­tents, accord­ing to admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials who asked not to be iden­ti­fied. The offi­cials said they had no evi­dence that the doc­u­ment found with Mr. Hus­sein was a fabrication.

This is the sec­ond blow to the White House’s charge that Iraq and al Qaeda had found com­mon cause against the United States, either before the war or after it. The CIA ear­lier had said that inter­ro­ga­tion of top al Qaeda fig­ures in cus­tody revealed that Osama bin Laden had rejected plans to ally with Iraq.
But what’s really inter­est­ing is that this leak sounds like it came from the CIA, which is still furi­ous over _L’Affair Plame,_ the out­ing of Valerie Plame, Ambas­sador Joseph Wilson’s wife and an under­cover oper­a­tive work­ing on WMD, by the White House. To wit:

As Pres­i­dent Bush sought to build a case for war with Iraq, one of the most hotly debated issues was whether Mr. Hus­sein was in league with Mr. bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Senior offi­cials at the Pen­ta­gon who were cer­tain that the evi­dence of con­nec­tions between Iraq and Al Qaeda were strong and com­pelling found them­selves at war with ana­lysts at the C.I.A. who believed that the evi­dence showed some con­tacts between Bagh­dad and the ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, but not an oper­a­tional alliance.
At the Pen­ta­gon, sev­eral offi­cials believed that Iraq and Al Qaeda had found com­mon ground in their hatred of the United States, while at the C.I.A., many ana­lysts believed that Mr. bin Laden saw Mr. Hus­sein as one of the cor­rupt sec­u­lar Arab lead­ers who should be toppled.

So now we have for­mer Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill’s charges that Iraq was tar­get No. 1 from the ear­li­est days of this admin­is­tra­tion, the War College’s report blast­ing Oper­a­tion Iraqi Free­dom as a dis­trac­tion at best and now a leak — likely from the CIA — that Sad­dam specif­i­cally avoided alliances with Islamists.
All of these keep adding up to one, or pos­si­bly two con­clu­sions: That Pres­i­dent George W. Bush either a) will­fully lied (I refuse to use the ano­dyne term, “mis­reprep­re­sented”) about Iraq and the threat it posed, or b) the intel­li­gence the White House received was about as bad as it could be. In the lat­ter case, the incom­pe­tence is crim­i­nal. In the case of the for­mer, the pres­i­dent is.
I believe there are still a few patri­ots in the CIA hop­ing to reign in Bush so the harm his min­ions at the Depart­ment of Defense have done won’t be repeated in another term and another war. Some will say what these leak­ers are doing is trea­so­nous. I say to stay silent is trea­son. To stand by and do noth­ing while intel­li­gence is manip­u­lated and plans are drawn up against who knows what other coun­tries — Syria is look­ing ner­vously over its shoul­der at the “Syria Account­abil­ity and Lebanese Sov­er­eignty Restora­tion Act of 2003″:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000468.php#000468 — would be to betray their oaths to the Con­sti­tu­tion and to the agency they serve.
There will be more rev­e­la­tions, pos­si­bly more dam­ag­ing. In April, for­mer National Secu­rity Coun­cil mem­ber Richard Clarke’s book, Against All Ene­mies: Inside the White House’s War on Ter­ror — What Really Hap­pened hits the shelves.
*House­keep­ing*
At the moment, it appears the pre­mium list­serv for donors is inop­er­a­tive. I’m work­ing on fix­ing this. Thanks for your patience.