I’m sure the White House will spin this as being progress:

Fourteen US soldiers have been killed in two days of fighting, the military announced on Thursday, as US-led troops continued to press simultaneous offensives in and around Baghdad.

The news came hours after a suicide bomber exploded an oil tanker south of Iraq’s oil-rich city of Kirkuk, killing 15 people and wounding 66, including policemen and local politicians.

The bomber blew up the tanker outside police headquarters and a cluster of government buildings in Suleiman Beg, about 90 kilometres (55 miles) from the northern city of Kirkuk, police and hospital officials said.

“Several of the wounded are city council members and police officers, including the chief of police in Suleiman Beg, Hassan Ali Al-Bayati,” a local hospital official said.

The latest attack — two days after a Baghdad bomb killed 87 people — was carried out as the US military pressed an air and ground assault on suspected Al-Qaeda strongholds north of Baghdad.

That brings the total killed in June to 68, and overall – 3545

(On a side note – we are back up. There was a database error that took us down some time over night).