Karrada Bombing kills 26, 40 Bodies Found
Maliki Threatens Sunni MP
Reuters reports on political violence in Iraq's ongoing civil war.
In Baghdad:
*Police found 40 bodies on Thursday, most of them showing signs of torture.
*Guerrillas set off a car bomb in a shopping district of the Karrada neighborhood of downtown Baghdad, killing 26 persons and wounding 40.
*Guerrillas detonated a car bomb in the Muraidi market of Sadr City (Shiite east Baghdad), killing one person and wounding 13.
*Guerillas fired rockets into the Green Zone in central Baghdad, site of the US embassy and Iraqi government offices. The attack seriously wounded one person and lightly injured 5 others. The Green Zone has often taken mortar fire, but seldom has suffered casualties. That nearly 4 years into the war, the US HQ in Iraq is subjected to rocket fire just underlines how helpless Gulliver is before the supposed Lilliputians.
Guerrillas set off other bombs in Baghdad, some of which killed as many as 4 persons. There were also bombings in Tal Afar and Fallujah, and violence in several other cities.
The NYT reports that PM Nuri al-Maliki presented his security plan to parliament for approval. Sunni Arabs claimed that the plan punished Sunnis and let Shiite militias off the hook. In the course of the debate, he got into a shouting match with a Sunni Arab MP, Abdul Nasser al-Janabi, whom he then accused of being directly involved in the kidnapping of 150 persons from his district.. The PM threatened to release information about the man. The speaker of the house Mahmoud al-Mashahani tried to call for order, then threatened to resign, himself. In the end, the plan was passed by parliament, but only after an ugly scene in which Sunni-Shiite conflict and resentments erupted.
Al-Janabi is a member of the Iraqi Accord Front (Sunni fundamentalists). Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that after the meeting, al-Janabi attempted to approach al-Maliki, but the security would not let him get close.
Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Sadr Movement of Muqtada al-Sadr gave its unstinting support to al-Maliki's security plan. It was speculated that this step is an attempt to avoid a confrontatation with US forces. The London daily also confirms that the Sadrists have appointed a negotiator to talk directly to the Americans on behalf of the commanders of the Mahdi Army militia. It says that some Mahdi Army commanders have scattered to Kut, Babil and Taji or even to neighboring countries, and that al-Maliki has avoided having to choose between his American partners and his Sadrist allies by convincing the Mahdi Army to fade away for the moment. It says US ambassador in Baghdad Zalmay Khalilzad expressed concern that gunmen in Iraq may go into hiding during the US "surge," and then reappear when it is over.
I think that is what Gen. Abizaid tried to warn about when he argued against an escalation.
Iraq is in talks with Chevron and Exxon regarding the building of a $3 bn. oil facility.
When I said that the attack on the US embassy in Athens would prove to have something to do with the Amerian war in Iraq, there were those that scoffed.
posted by Juan Cole @ 1/26/2007 12:36:00 AM
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9 Comments:
Any scoff at the attack on the US Embassy in Athens was not about whether it was unfortunate or inspired by hatred of US policies, but that it was meager and not much different than the sort of events occuring throughout the Cold War, etc. Are we merely lucky there have been no repeat attacks on the scale of the 1993 WTC attack, 1998 Embassy bombings, the 2000 attack on the boat named after your forebear, 9/11 or the Madrid bombing of 2004? Max Boot and Nial Ferguson would probably credit the dimunition of attacks to a deterrent effect of the Iraq invasion. Violence in Iraq itself does not matter in their equation, or even justifies the effort (better there than here, etc). It is sort of like a lull after a witch burning: see, no more trouble, or barely any. Then, when something big happens, time to burn another witch.
CBS's Lara Logan reports from Haifa Street, a mile and a half away from the US Embassy in Baghdad.
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/
main500251.shtml?id=2371456n
-- warning: graphic video --
...and Britain's Channel 4 News has some exceptional footage of the sectarianism. Usually we hear about it in rounded-to-the-nearest-ten body count format. Not this time.
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=6nuMAooG6SM&eurl=
-- warning: graphic video --
h/t's to ex-CIA officer Larry C. Johnson at his No Quarter blog:
http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/
2007/01/mean_streets_tw.html#more
It is an odd insurgency indeed in which the apparant opponants go to Parliament to scream at each other.
Might I conjecture then that Maliki is only complying with the wholsale destruction of Iraq; because he does not want to be left without a seat when the music stops?
For shame Mr. Deputy Maliki.
I thought this offered great insight into the Sadrist camp:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR2007012501384.html?sub=AR
I found it interesting how they affirmed both the neocon and realist American point of view. They know that Americans will not stay the course over the long term and as the neocons fear, we do not have the resolve to carry this Iraq mission through at any cost over any period of time. Second, they are not worried about the surge except as a temporary tactical problem that calls for some planning. They know that they have staying power and that Bush and his cronies are totally outclassed in terms of the geurilla-propaganda nature of this conflict.
If one purpose of the surge is to pacify Baghdad so as to give the Iraqi government an opportunity to deal with issues politically, isn't the "fading away" of militias, even on a temporary basis, a good thing?
Bush Hints It OK To Kill Iranian Diplomatic Personnel In Iraq
"It makes sense that if somebody is trying to harm our troops or stop us from achieving our goals or killing innocent citizens in Iraq, that we will stop them," Bush said. "It's an obligation we all have to protect our folks and achieve our goals."
"...stop us from achieving our goals..."
That's what it means to me...
Bush: U.S. troops may protect selves from Iranians
In Full HERE
It is interesting that the Iraqi minister argues that most of the violence is in Baghdad...
From what we have seen in Nigeria, I think it is safe to assume that if foreign workers start arriving in Iraq, the insurgents will find them, even if they are in oil fields that are hundreds of miles from Baghdad.
"It's an obligation we all have to protect our folks and achieve our goals."
One could put forth a good argument that it's the Bush admin that's the fundamental impasse in protecting and achieving, and that they deserve the same fate as Iranians found doing same.
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