BAGHDAD, Iraq — Car bombs and drive-by shootings today killed at least 17 people — including two U.S. soldiers — in a series of attacks around central Iraq, officials said.

The U.S. command said the first soldier died from wounds in the early morning hours after his unit came under attack by small arms, while the second was killed after his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad. At least 2,673 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The attacks came after a day that was especially bloody even by Baghdad's standards, when car bombs, mortars and other attacks killed at least 39 people and wounded dozens. Police also uncovered the tortured bodies of 65 men dumped in and around the capital.

The violence persists despite a monthlong security operation by thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops around Baghdad aimed mostly at stopping the killings carried out by Sunni and Shiite death squads.

A car bomb today targeting a police patrol in a Shiite neighborhood of northern Baghdad missed, instead killing a civilian and wounding 13 others, police said.

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The chief judge in Saddam Hussein's genocide trial said today that he does not believe Saddam was a dictator.Judge Abdullah al-Amiri made the remark in a friendly exchange with the deposed leader, a day after the prosecution said the judge should step down because he is biased toward the defense. Saddam and his co-defendants are being tried on charges of committing atrocities against Kurds in northern Iraq nearly two decades ago.Questioning a Kurdish witness today, Saddam said, "I wonder why this man wanted to meet with me, if I am a dictator?"The judge interrupted: "You were not a dictator. People around you made you (look like) a dictator."Two hours after the comment about Saddam, al-Amiri abruptly postponed the session until Monday for what he called "technical reasons," without having heard from a third scheduled witness. No further explanation was given.Previous witnesses said the remains of relatives who went missing during Operation Anfal were found in mass graves several years later. Some recalled how they survived chemical attacks allegedly carried out by Saddam's regime against the Kurdish population.Saddam has accused the Kurdish witnesses of trying to sow ethnic division in Iraq by alleging chemical attacks and mass arrests in their villages during a crackdown in the late 1980s.Saddam and six others, including his cousin "Chemical" Ali al-Majid, have been accused of genocide and other offenses in connection with Operation Anfal.The prosecution alleges that about 180,000 Kurds died — many of them civilians. Saddam and the others could face death by hanging if convicted.