Blood and dust

No timetables. "Benchmarks" that will continue to go unmet. George Bush's war goes on.

Seconds later, the word came down that the unit up ahead did not have a medic. Captain Bright’s unit did, so the group ran several miles to the house only to find that a helicopter had already picked up the wounded soldier. His friends sat on the floor, on stairs, their faces showing they had been crying. A flak jacket with some blood on it rested next to a soldier leaning against a set of white kitchen cabinets. The body armor belonged to the soldier who was shot.

Captain Bright, 29, the battery commander, said the group would have to keep moving. “We have some more objectives we have to hit,” he said.

The search operation continued in the midday heat. Captain Abercrombie’s unit walked through farms, searched houses and struggled through a wide swath of mud that nearly claimed a few pairs of boots.

In a house close to where helicopters would later deliver bottles of water in black body bags, they rested once again. Sgt. Stephen Byers, 31, of Detroit said that Friday night was the first time he had a chance to call his wife and kids since the search started.

He said that he was too tired to say very much, but that his wife was clearly worried. He had begun to wonder himself if the search was becoming more dangerous. “The more we chase them around,” he said, “the more they know where we’re at.”

But, he said, in a war without front lines and goals that are hard to achieve, the search offered the comfort of certainty, of a clear and noble goal. “If we find them, we accomplish something specific,” Sergeant Byers said. “It’s not like trying to bring peace to the area then finding out later that you didn’t.”

Saturday’s searching turned up nothing significant. The three soldiers — Pfc. Joseph J. Anzack Jr., 20, of Torrance, Calif.; Specialist Alex R. Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Mass.; and Pvt. Byron W. Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Mich. — were not found.

Today, Iraqi police found a body wearing a U.S. uniform floating in the Euphrates.

But no "surrender date," as Mitch McConnell likes to put it.