By Tom Ashbrook.

We don’t know their names. Three American soldiers were taken in an ambush in which four comrades died, early Saturday morning in Iraq’s so-called “Triangle of Death,” south of Baghdad.

Today, thousands of troops are searching door-to-door, in palm groves and back alleys, in mosques and water tanks.

The US military says an Al Qaeda group has them. Two captured last year, nearby, were brutally tortured and killed.

The story of this ambush says a lot about what’s going on with the U.S. troop surge in Iraq.

This hour On Point: the capture, the rescue mission, and the risk outside Baghdad.

Guests:

Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post Baghdad Bureau Chief

Greg Jaffe, Military Reporter for The Wall Street Journal

Carter Malkasian, Director of the Stability and Development Program at the Center for Naval Analyses

Philip Carter, former Army Captain stationed at a Buaqubah outpost from October 2005 to Semptember 2006