Bodies of kidnapped GIs found

The two men were apparently killed in a 'barbaric' fashion.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The U.S. military recovered the bodies Tuesday of two missing soldiers from an area it said was rigged with explosives. An Iraqi official said the Americans were tortured and killed in a "barbaric" way.
An insurgent group claimed the new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq executed the men personally, but it offered no evidence. The U.S. military did not confirm whether the soldiers died from wounds suffered in an attack Friday or were kidnapped and later killed.
The discovery of the bodies dealt a new setback to U.S. efforts to seize the momentum against al-Qaida in Iraq after killing its leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in a June 7 airstrike. Violence was unabated Tuesday, with at least 18 people killed in attacks nationwide, including a suicide bombing of a home for the elderly in the southern city of Basra.
Coalition forces spotted the American soldiers' bodies late Monday, three days after the men disappeared following an attack on their checkpoint south of the capital, the military said. But troops delayed retrieving the remains until an explosives team cleared the area after an Iraqi civilian warned them to be alert for explosive devices.
"Coalition forces had to carefully maneuver their way through numerous improvised explosive devices leading up to and around the site," the military said in a statement. "Insurgents attempting to inflict additional casualties had placed IEDs around the bodies."
Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said the bodies were found together in the vicinity of an electrical plant, which would be just a few miles from where the initial attack took place near the town of Youssifiyah in the volatile Sunni Triangle south of Baghdad.
The soldiers
Caldwell said the remains were believed to be those of Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore. The bodies will be flown from Kuwait to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for positive identification through autopsies and DNA testing.
Menchaca's cousin Sylvia Grice said the soldier visited relatives in Texas last month but didn't talk much about the war.
"He wanted to go out and visit his friends," she said. "He wanted to eat a hamburger. He didn't want to sit down and talk about what was going on. But he was very proud of serving his country and he believed in what he was doing."
The director of the Iraqi Defense Ministry's operation room, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Mohammed, said the bodies showed signs of having been tortured. "With great regret, they were killed in a barbaric way," he said.
The two soldiers disappeared after an insurgent attack at a checkpoint by a Euphrates River canal, 12 miles south of Baghdad. Spc. David J. Babineau, 25, of Springfield, Mass., was killed in the attack. The three men were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Ky.
Caldwell said only a single vehicle carrying the three U.S. soldiers was attacked. A witness has said two other humvees were in the area and went after the assailants, while seven masked gunmen ambushed the third humvee.
Tuesday's violence across Iraq included at least three bombs striking Baghdad despite a security crackdown launched nearly a week ago.
In the bombing of the home for the elderly, an 18-year-old Sunni wearing an explosives belt blew himself up as senior citizens were lined up to collect monthly pensions. Two elderly women were killed and three people were wounded.
Police said the motive was unclear, but sectarian tensions have been worsening in the predominantly Shiite city of Basra.
Election
Meanwhile, in Washington, Two potential 2008 presidential candidates appealed Tuesday for the Senate to support their call to withdraw U.S. combat troops from Iraq "by a hard and fast deadline," a position putting them at odds with most of their fellow Democrats.
"Our country desperately needs a new vision for strengthening our national security, and it starts by redeploying U.S. forces out of Iraq," Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin wrote in an e-mail sent to 3 million people nationwide.
On a related note, two California soldiers shot to death in Iraq were murdered by Iraqi civil-defense officers patrolling with them, military investigators have found.
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