Jihadi Du Jour: Iraq asks troops to stay as U.S. death toll spikes

The title sounds like a bad Halloween joke (thank Reuters for the creepy spin) but...

Speaking shortly after a bomb killed 28 people in a Baghdad Shi'ite slum on a day that saw at least 70 Iraqis killed across the country, Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters: "The presence of the Multi-National Force is indispensable for the security and stability of Iraq and of the region at the moment."

And he is right. Even if he sounds republican.

A marine killed on Sunday in western Anbar province, where troops are fighting Sunni insurgents, and an unidentified member of the military police shot dead by a sniper in east Baghdad took the U.S. military death toll to 101 so far in October.

It was 71 last month, and last passed 100 in January 2005. In all, 2,814 Americans have died in the Iraq conflict.

Commanders say October's increase is partly due to attacks in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Since militants released a video during last week's festival for the end of Ramadan showing U.S. soldiers being shot, apparently by snipers, the military has also been looking more closely at shooting incidents.