Last Throe Update

As a tribute to the prognostication skills of the very bestest vice president since Spiro Agnew, Hammer Of The Blogs is proud to present a new feature, Last Throe Update. We will keep you apprised of the daily death rattle of the dying Iraqi insurgency.

Friday was surely a day we will look back on as the last gasp, or at least the penultimate hitch of breath, before the long walk into the light.

A suicide car bomber and gunmen ambushed a convoy carrying female U.S. Marines in Fallujah, killing two Marines and leaving another four American troops presumed dead, the military said Friday. At least one woman was killed and 11 of 13 injured were female.

The terror group al-Qaida in Iraq claimed it carried out the bombing, one of the single deadliest attacks against the Marines - and against women - in this country. The high number of female casualties spoke to the lack of any real front lines in Iraq, where U.S. troops are battling a raging insurgency and American women soldiers have taken part in more close-quarters combat than in any previous military conflict.

So Jenna and Barbara Bush are indeed eligible to take a proactive role in Daddy's War. But we'll certainly understand if they decline.

``It's hard to stop suicide bombers, and it's hard to stop these people that in many cases are being smuggled into Iraq from outside Iraq,'' President Bush said at a joint White House news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

Thanks, Harvard. As always, don't know how we'd dope out the facts without you to put it into "Dick and Jane" terms for us. Don't forget to remind us that you think about it every single day. Even when you look like you're clearin' brush, you're really thinkin' about all that hard work done by good people. Quite the multitasker, aintcha?

In other violence Friday:

- An Iraqi reporter working for an American news organization was shot and killed in Baghdad by U.S. troops after he apparently did not respond to a shouted signal from a military convoy, witnesses said. The military had no comment.

- Gunmen killed police Lt. Col. Majid Faisl Aziz when he was driving his car near western Baghdad's Amiriyah neighborhood, police Capt. Talib Thamer said. Aziz was a member of the Interior Ministry's major crimes division.

- A Kurdish contractor working for the American military was killed by gunmen in northern Kirkuk.

- In Baghdad, three police officers were killed in separate incidents, two in the Amiriyah district and another in southern Dora, police and hospital officials said.

Like Uncle Dick said, nothin' to see here, folks. Just the storm before the calm. Go back to sleep.