According to the Defense Department, more U.S. troops died in Iraq in November than any month to date since the war began:

With November nearly over, the official death count yesterday stood at 79, surpassing March (65) and April (73), when the invasion was underway and fighting was most intense and widespread.

Here are the totals:

In all, 437 troops have died in Iraq since the war began, 2,094 have been listed as wounded in action and 2,464 have suffered noncombat-related injuries, ranging from accidental gunshots to broken bones and injuries in vehicle accidents. Since May 1, when President Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq, 298 troops have died.

Counterterrorism experts are criticizing Bush and the war in Iraq, saying that it is diverting resources from the fight against Al Qaeda and terrorism:

Experts who have served in top positions in both Republican and Democratic administrations are increasingly suggesting that the Iraq war has diverted momentum, troops and intelligence resources from the worldwide campaign to destroy the remnants of al-Qaeda.

They note that the presence of U.S. troops in an Arab homeland is serving as a major recruiting tool for signing up and motivating new jihadis, or Islamic holy warriors.

"Fighting Iraq had little to do with fighting the war on terrorism, until we made it [so]," said Richard Clarke, who was a senior White House counterterrorism official under Bush and President Bill Clinton.

Now the U.S. is taking hostages....

U.S. soldiers have arrested the wife and daughter of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former Iraqi general who is believed to have been helping Hussein loyalists regroup and coordinating attacks against the coalition, Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno said Wednesday.

In the arrests, the two women, along with the son of al-Douri's doctor, were found by soldiers from the Army's 4th Infantry Division in a raid on a house near Samarra late Tuesday. They were being held for interrogation.

"We believe that they might have some information on where [al-Douri] is traveling, how he is moving," Odierno said.

Billmon explains how this is in violation of the Geneva Convention.

A former Iraqi general who was captured by the U.S. near the Syrian border on Oct. 5 has died while being interrogated by by the U.S.

Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, an air defense general captured Oct. 5 in a raid near the Syrian border, was being questioned Wednesday while in American custody in Qaim near the Syrian border when lost consciousness after complaining he didn't feel well, the military said in a statement.

He was pronounced dead by a U.S. military physician. The cause of death is under investigation, the military said. The statement did not give his age.

President Bush snuck off the ranch to fly to Iraq for his first visit to have a two hour Turkey dinner with the troops. Meanwhile, Hillary flew to Afganistan to have dinner there with the troops. She will then go on to Iraq.

Bush's visit was top secret. In fact, his office put out word he'd be doing the family thing in Crawford:

Otherwise, Bush is celebrating Thanksgiving much like he always does - alongside family members, enjoying a traditional feast of turkey and fixings, only this time with a pecan pie made from nuts from trees on his ranch. Bush arrived here Monday night after spending the day at Fort Carson, an Army base near Colorado Springs, Colo.

He was clearly relishing the prospect of the time away from Washington as he appeared before GOP donors Tuesday in Las Vegas and described his morning on the ranch with his wife, Laura.

In the news today, several thousand more marines are headed to Iraq.

Update: Fox News accompanied the President, CNN did not.

Skippy reports on the latest war toll of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. These were particularly gruesome deaths, in that an Iraqi mob beat the soldiers' bloodied dead bodies. Skippy aptly asks, "so, how much safer is the world now that we've ousted saddam?

A total of three U.S. soldiers died today. Here's another gruesome article.

In Mosul, two shopkeepers in this main northern city said two soldiers had their throats slit after they were ambushed in traffic.

And another.

Update: In Afganistan today, five U.S. soldiers were killed and seven wounded in a helicopter crash.

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Georg-Andreas Pogany is the special forces soldier who was sent home from Iraq and charged with cowardice after asking to speak a counselor when images of a body blown apart kept resurfacing in his mind to the point where he thought he was having a nervous breakdown. The charge has been reduced to derelection of duty and Pogany will stand trial. He faces a six month sentence and a dishonorable discharge if convicted.

Today's Denver Post has a long feature on Pogany, including his version of what happened. Pogany was interviewed in his lawyer's office.

Georg-Andreas Pogany's eyes honed in on the white body bag near the door. Inside was the mangled corpse of an Iraqi man, a hole where his chest should have been. Pogany, a 32-year-old staff sergeant attached to the elite Special Forces, said he stuffed the image to the back of his mind, unfazed.

A few hours later, the image came back with a vengeance. Pogany said he couldn't breathe. His body shook. He vomited again and again. As morning dawned on Sept. 29, Pogany said he thought he was headed for a nervous breakdown. He asked his commander for help.

"Get your head out of your (expletive)," Pogany recalled the commander saying.

Post columnist Jim Spencer provides his views on Pogany:

This editorial in the Toronto Star, written in the wake of yesterday's bombings in Turkey, gets it right:

After 9/11 the main thing was to put Al Qaeda out of business. That didn't happen. Instead, Bush invested vast resources into hammering Saddam Hussein's regime, which, while criminally brutal, was not a terrorist threat. Terror had not taken root in Iraq, before the invasion. It has now.

Meanwhile, bin Laden remains free to preach murder, and to bankroll it as his adherents stage a deadly comeback. Yet Bush is poorly placed to counter the threat to America and its allies, so bogged down is he in Iraq.

This is tragic. Bush has no priority more important than running bin Laden to ground and putting his crew out of business. It's past time to refocus the war on terror.

Bush, it appears, still does not get it:

A senior U.S. general said on Friday that al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden had "taken himself out of the picture" and that his capture was not essential to winning the "war on terror."

An anonymous U.S. army official today said that the Army is planning to have 100,000 GI's in Iraq until 2006. The article also reports that

Teams of Army Special Forces are now training Iraqis in an accelerated program to fill out the ranks of a civil defense corps, the equivalent of a militia.

In the "Doctor, My Eyes" department.....Laura Bush didn't see what everyone else saw yesterday. Check out her description of the London protesters.

President and Mrs. Bush left England today from the small rural town of Sedgewick, which is Tony Blair's home town. A few hundred of the town's five thousand residents turned out at the village green to protest. We wonder if Mrs. Bush missed them too.

Knights-Ridder reports:

The president's three-day state visit to Great Britain and the war in Iraq sent more than 100,000 protesters to the London streets Thursday. His visit Friday to Sedgefield, 250 miles north of London, spurred about 300 demonstrators to line the route between Blair's house and the Dun Cow Inn, a pub where Bush and Blair lunched along with their wives.

Some demonstrators near the pub chanted "Bush go home." Others along the route to the pub held signs that read "Bush is Not Very Nice" and "Mad Cowboy Disease." The road also was lined with supporters waving American flags and signs welcoming Bush.

The pub's main room was packed, with about 50 people seated at a half-dozen tables, when the Bushes and the Blairs arrived to nosh on leek and potato soup, fish and chips, mushy peas, and lemon creme brulee. "Hey there," Bush repeatedly said as he encountered pub patrons, "thank you for having us. We're thrilled to be here."

Breaking with the official White House position, Pentagon official Richard Perle yesterday acknowledged that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was illegal.

In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."

....Mr Perle, a key member of the defence policy board, which advises the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable.

....Mr Perle's view is not the official one put forward by the White House. Its main argument has been that the invasion was justified under the UN charter, which guarantees the right of each state to self-defence, including pre-emptive self-defence. On the night bombing began, in March, Mr Bush reiterated America's "sovereign authority to use force" to defeat the threat from Baghdad.

Amnesty International protesters demonstrate Thursday in London against conditions for prisoners at the U.S. military detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

As expected, about 100,000 marched against Bush in London today. The pictures are here. [link via Counterspin, who also links to video of the toppling of the Bush Statue]

Protesters pull down an effigy of President Bush in London's Trafalgar Square on Thursday.