TIKRIT, Iraq - An Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed Friday — downed by a rocket-propelled grenade, officers said — killing six U.S. soldiers in what has become the deadliest week for Americans in Iraq since major combat was declared over in May.

Two Americans also were killed in separate attacks Thursday and Friday in the northern city of Mosul, raising concerns that the insurgency was spreading north. A total 32 U.S. soldiers have died in the first week of November.

"Six soldiers were on board and all of them were killed," said Maj. Josslyn Aberle, a spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division based in Tikrit. The dead included the four-person crew — members of the 101st Airborne Division — and two soldiers from Department of the Army headquarters in the Pentagon, said Army spokesman Maj. Steve Stover in Washington.

The Black Hawk is the third helicopter downed by hostile fire in two weeks. Insurgents with a heat-seeking shoulder-fired rocket shot down a Chinook transport helicopter Sunday, killing 16 people in the deadliest strike against U.S. forces since the war began March 20. An rocket-propelled grenade forced down a Black Hawk north of Baghdad on Oct. 25, wounding one soldier.

All Black Hawks flying in Iraq are required to carry self-protection systems, including a mechanism that dispenses metallic chaff and flares to decoy an approaching heat-seeking missile, said an Army spokesman, Maj. Gary Tallman.
Such a defensive system may be of little use, however, against an RPG fired from close range, Tallman said, though he underlined that he did not know the circumstances of Friday's crash.

White smoke could be seen rising from the crash site on the east bank of the Tigris River as three other helicopters circled overhead. More helicopters could be seen hours later flying over a hilltop village on the west bank of the river.
Separately, guerrillas attacked a convoy with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire Friday morning in the eastern part of Mosul, 250 miles north of Baghdad. The military said one U.S. soldier died and six others were wounded in the clash.

Three others were injured later in the day when a roadside bomb exploded near the Mosul Hotel, which is now used as a military barracks, the military said. A military statement released Friday said a soldier died the day before near Mosul when a homemade bomb exploded. The two dead soldiers in the Mosul area were from the 101st Airborne Division, the military said.

The advance of human freedom, the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time, Now depends on us. Our nation, this generation, will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage. We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail. George W. Bush

another keyboard hero. A bootlicking subject of our current moron king.

"and we will not fail."

Well, if ya call this success then we could use a little failure.....

The Iraq operation has been enormously successful, some people were projecting that we would have taken 6-9months to get into Baghdad, with Saddam unleashing WMDs along the way.

The level of cooperation from the Iraqi people is also remarkable, given the hardship that war always brings to civilians.

Iraq is going to be a free democratic Middle Eastern country, a lasting legacy of the greatness of George W Bush. It will be his Mt. Rushmore.

There you go, cretins. The inscription on the tank's main gun is symbolic of Bush's predicament in Iraq.