Iraq Bombing In Karradah: 68 dead, 120 injured
posted in Politics, Social Commentary, Foreign News | | | View blog reactions | Print This PostThis latest mass bombing in a part of Baghdad that has been hailed by the Bush administration as an example of success in improved security, underscores the persistent propaganda still coming out of Iraq from the White House and allies such as presumptive Republican Presidential Nominee John McCain.
For the last few months, “the surge is working” has been the line; a line that the media has willingly gone along with almost no critical analysis, in their continued neglect and dereliction of duty as the fourth institution of checks and balance. It’s the same dereliction of duty that had the media cheerleading us to war in Iraq in the first place; based on false evidence that was exposable as such at the time.
As Barack Obama has rightly noted when asked about this in debates, they make the claim that the surge is going so well by simply moving the goal post for success. I heard it said on the news last week that we’re having “only less than 50” deaths a month in Iraq now; which was given as proof of the surge’s veracity.
WHAT?
Only about 50??? That’s something to celebrate to these people? So if the surge is working to accomplish the purpose we went into Iraq for, then that means we went into Iraq in March of 2003 so that about 570 American soldiers could die in 2008, 5 years later. That was our plan.
Doing a tad bit better than the terrible we were doing in getting political goals accomplished is not a victory, or something to celebrate. It’s a tactical advance that does almost nothing towards achieving the ultimate goal anytime soon.
Iraq: Shiite stronghold is not safe
By JOHN AFFLECK, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD - It was a beautiful evening and the streets of Baghdad’s Karradah neighborhood were packed with shoppers and young people mingling at the start of the Iraqi weekend — then the extremists struck, again.
The death toll from twin bombings Thursday night rose to 68 killed, 120 wounded on Friday and showed just how tough it will be to rejuvenate Iraq’s capital when bombers still hit one of its safer and more vibrant neighborhoods regularly.
The U.S. military blamed al-Qaida in Iraq for the attack Friday, one of the deadliest so far this year. It had all the signs of the radical Sunni group’s previous assaults on Shiite civilians.
A bomb hidden under a vendor stall exploded first, and then in the chaos that followed a suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt detonated, Mohammed al-Rubaie, the head of the Karradah municipality, told the state-run Al-Iraqiya TV. Severed limbs rained down on bystanders.
Striking Karradah, in central Baghdad, has a particular resonance that goes beyond the body count.
The neighborhood is mostly under the influence of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the country’s most powerful Shiite party, led by Abdul-Aziz Al-Hakim. It also is an area with a beating commercial heart — not so easy to find in Baghdad after nearly five years of war.
Everything from domestic appliances to clothes to fruits and vegetables can be purchased there, and shoppers can grab a bite to eat at its kebab and falafel stands, or a drink at its fruit-juice parlors.
Yet while it has several checkpoints, and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council has a strong security presence, Karradah has been targeted repeatedly. The Associated Press counted at least a dozen attacks that killed seven or more people in the area since last April, most before the so-called surge of U.S. troops took full effect. Thursday’s was the deadliest.
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