Topping Saddam
How, exactly, are we going to stop the civil war we've obviously unleashed in Iraq? On July 12, Kirk Semple wrote in The New York Times of a three-day death toll of over 100 people in Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence, some in the most horrible ways:
More than 50 people were killed in Baghdad on Tuesday in violence that included a double suicide bombing near busy entrances to the fortified Green Zone, scattered shootings, mortar attacks, a series of car bombs and the ambush of a bus with Shiite mourners returning from a burial.Tuesday’s killings, many of them apparently carried out with sectarian vengeance, raised the three-day death toll in the capital alone to well over 100, magnified the daunting challenges facing the new government and deepened a sense of dread among Iraqis.
Many of the attacks, particularly those in neighborhoods primarily populated by one religious group or another, bore the hallmarks of sectarian militias, both Sunni Arab and Shiite. Militias now appear to be dictating the ebb and flow of life in Iraq, and have left the new government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and his American counterparts scrambling to come up with a military and political strategy to combat them.
...a family of five — a father, mother, grown daughter and two teenage sons — were found beheaded in a predominantly Sunni sector of Dawra, according to an official at Yarmouk Hospital, the main medical facility in western Baghdad.
The police and hospital officials also reported that four car bombs around Baghdad killed at least 7 people and wounded at least 18.
Gunmen raided a company’s offices in the upper-middle-class Mansour neighborhood, killing three employees and wounding three, officials said.
According to the official at Yarmouk Hospital, five bodies were discovered early Tuesday in Jihad, the neighborhood where dozens of people were reportedly executed by marauding gunmen on Sunday. It was unclear when the victims had been killed.
In Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, a time bomb exploded in the clinic of Ameera al-Rubaie, the wife of the governor of Salahuddin Province, according to Agence France-Presse, which quoted the local police. Dr. Rubaie, a gynecologist, was killed and four of her patients were wounded, the police said, according to the wire service.
In Baquba, north of Baghdad, the mayor of the Um Al Nawa district was assassinated by gunmen, the ministry official said. In the Shiite holy city of Karbala, a drive-by shooting killed two workers in the central market, according to the Interior Ministry official.
An engineer and his bodyguard were assassinated on their way to work in Kirkuk on Tuesday morning, according to Col. Adel Zain Alabdin of the Iraqi police. A car bomb in Mosul killed two people and wounded four, the police said.
Wijdan Mikhail Salim, Iraq’s minister of human rights, said in a telephone interview that a government commission had been formed to study the possibility of scrapping a law that granted American troops immunity from Iraqi prosecution.
Remember the days when all the right-wing bloggers and commentators complained that the "MSM" weren't reporting all the happy news about the war? Haven't heard any of those complaints for a while.
Stupid snarky comment. There have always been problems around Baghdad. If you look at other areas of Iraq there is relative peace, at least compaired to Washington D.C., which is on an emergency crime alert.
There was an article a few days ago about the British turning the southern area over to Iraqi control completely. Progress continues in the rest of Iraq as usual.
nash at July 15, 2006 7:51 AM
How, exactly, are we going to stop the civil war we've obviously unleashed in Iraq?
Well, I wish I could say I hadn't expected this. Hey - invading a country "properly" requires a lot more people and effort than has been expended. Let's examine for a minute how two-faced various factions have been about this.
1) The Administration decides to invade Iraq, when nobody from there was involved in 9/11. 2) Congress won't declare war (which would instantly clear up all legal and social "gray areas", and they make noises against our presence in Iraq, but they then don't vote they way they talk. 3) The people repeat slogans like, "Support Our Troops", but they don't realize for an instant that that really means paying for enough troops to send real force years ahead of when they are needed. 4) The military is NOT the police, yet people expect them to observe the rights of Iraqis (by the American Constitution!) when performing this role - for which they are not designed - while activists claim that forcing the American Constitutional model on Iraq is wrong.
Now, after limiting American involvement in Iraq a dozen different ways, there is a complaint that we're not doing enough? It's as though mass schizophrenia has gripped the nation.
Japan and Germany were taken nearly to the Stone Age. Starvation made getting something to eat the primary goal of the survivors. The infrastructure supplying their war machines was destroyed; in Iraq, it's still up, because we set "rules" like in Korea and Vietnam that prevent us from stopping the flow of weapons in to where they kill us - and Iraqis, too.
On top of all this, the usual gang of idiots acts as though Mr. Bush acts alone one day, is a puppet the next; is a criminal mastermind today and a drooling idiot the next.
That's why we have the government we deserve: the voting public is an inconsistent idiot wanting most to vote itself riches.
Radwaste at July 15, 2006 8:07 AM
In addition, Congress has been too worried about important issues like preventing flag burning and preventing gay people from having equal rights to even consider prosecuting the guy who made all the faulty bullet-proof vests. You know, the ones that weren't so bullet-proof that troops were stuck with for nine months into the war.
Amy Alkon at July 15, 2006 8:12 AM
From time to time, I check the blog "Baghdad Buring" : http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/.
It's written by an Iraqi woman who was educated in the States, and now lives in Baghdad. She doesn't post often -- she'll be excused given the circumstances -- but it's been fascinating to witness her feelings evolve, as Iraq goes slowly but surely to Hell.
LA Frog at July 15, 2006 8:53 AM
1. Gay people already have equal rights. See the nearby thread.
2. Wars are not best prevented by keeping the lid on no matter how high the tensions, but byt relieving those tensions. Western liberty and capitalism has proven a powerful took in this pursuit.
MOre later...
Crid at July 15, 2006 6:51 PM
"as Iraq goes slowly to hell"
As opposed to the paradise it was 15 years ago?
Radwaste at July 16, 2006 7:06 AM
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