Not Enough Soldiers?

Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael C. Anderson, along with four other soldiers, died in a mortar attack outside of Fallujah. His mother desperately asks:

"What is a builder doing there, staying in a hot spot? He shouldn't have been there. How do they explain that? . . . I think they're running out of soldiers."

Anderson was a part of the Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 14, which is based in Jacksonville, Fla., on mission "fixing sewage problems and electrical and water systems in Iraq." Strange that non-combat Marines would be fixing things in a besieged city that was for a few weeks under American bombardment. Perhaps Anderson's mother is right. It would explain the recent announcement that 47,000 more troops are headed for Iraq.