Senate Comes Close to Condemning Iraq Escalation
Twin Bombings kill 11, Wound 65 at Kirkuk
The US Senate came very close to passing a resolution condemning Bush's escalation of the Iraq War. It needed 60 to pass and got 56. Several Republicans voted for the resolution. In fact, if only 4 more had, it would have passed. This vote is very bad news for Bush's Iraq policy, because it seems pretty likely that over the next few months, at least another 4 Republican senators will join the anti-war chorus.
AP reports that a US GI was killed on Friday in al-Anbar province.
The LA Times reports that the large number of wounded Iraqi Vets has overwhelmed the tracking system at Walter Reed Hospital, and that many may have fallen through the cracks. At least 4,000 US GIs have been very seriously injured in Iraq, out of a total of over 20,000.
On Saturday, two huge carbombings that targeted a Kurdish market in the northern oil city of Kirkuk. They killed 11 and wounded 65:
' Police and witnesses said the first blast occurred near shops and a bus depot. Minutes later, a suicide car bomber attacked the same area. The back-to-back blasts shattered about 20 shops and terrified shoppers fled screaming in panic amid burning cars and debris. Restaurant owner Saman Ahmed lay screaming on the sidewalk, his body soaked with hot cooking oil after one of the blasts hurled him onto the curb. '
The Kurdish officials in Kirkuk have been urging Arab families transplanted there by Saddam to leave for the south, raising ethnic tensions in the city.
The report also says that Secretary of State Condi Rice was told on her surprise visit to Baghdad that the Mahdi Army of young nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has decided to cooperate with the security plan and that East Baghdad (Sadr City) is quiet. Why, the al-Maliki government asked, should resources be devoted to an area that is not a problem? This explanation aimed at excusing the sole concentration of the security plan on Sunni Arab areas in West Baghdad.
There were two significant firefights between US troops and Sunni Arab guerrillas in Ramadi, which the US Air Force decided in favor of the US, killing 8 guerrillas.
Reuters reports that there were also significant firefights in the al-Anbar city of Hit between guerrillas and police, with 2 police killed and 8 wounded, and some 50 suspected guerrillas arrested.
Guerrillas also tried to detonate a car bomb at the Shiite holy city of Karbala, but were foiled at a checkpoint, where they set it off instead. Two policemen were wounded. If Sunni guerrillas ever succeeded in hitting the shrine of Imam Husayn at Karbala, that might be the end of Iraq.
posted by Juan Cole @ 2/18/2007 12:32:00 AM
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4 Comments:
There are times you have to shake your head over the military. They spent all of my lifetime supposedely planning to fight world war iii against the soviets. Then, after that they claimed they had to have the capability to fight two regional wars at one time.
So, I just shake my head in wonder at the headline that says that the large number of wounded coming back from Iraq has completely overloaded there systems.
Compared to what they supposedely have been planning to fight for my lifetime, the numbers of dead and wounded coming back from Iraq is actually rather low. If they were really fighting world war iii against the soviets, then they'd certainly be seeing hundreds dead if not thousands dead every day. And with the same propotions of wounded to dead. So there would be orders of magnitude of more wounded coming back.
So its amazing the blinkers the military puts on. They'll plan for years to fight a war. They'll spend trillions on weapons to fight a war. But it never seems to have occurred to anyone to have a system in place to handle the wounded from that war.
The Washington Post also has an article (by Dana Priest) on the disgraceful treatment of some wounded vets . Come to think of it, I think I already saw this scene... in Born on the Fourth of July.
Quite a few blogtopia writers are upset about the treatment of vets, too. I wonder why?
One of the reasons I discontinued my Master's studies of German Language and Literature, was the Vietnam War. I had completed my B.A., but felt the situation in the U.S. was dire, and an unemployed German teacher wouldn't be of much use. I saw a terrible picture in Life Magazine. It was a photo of a quadraplegic Vietnam Veteran at Walter Reed. There was a rat in his room, and an overflowing trash can. That year, I entered Nursing and never looked back. I have taken care of mentally ill veterans. PTSD is a serious disorder. Many are unable to tolerate much human contact, after their wartime experiences. Today, I read an article about Walter Reed Hospital. There is mold, disrepair, dirty floors.....The more things change, the more they stay the same. It is immoral to bring our wounded servicemen and women back to such conditions. Of course, it was immoral to send them to battle in the first place, based on lies, no planning, inadequate equipment and armor,and a parade of ever-changing reasons to remain. The only reason our troops stay in the crossfire of a civil war is to enable George W. Bush to buy time and save face. His plan is to dump his disaster on the next President, and run off to his ranch. For this, we are killing and maiming, traumatizing and exhausting our troops. The "Compassionate Conservatives" then try to cut Veteran's benefits; and short-change the wounded. Surely, this period in U.S. History will go down in infamy.
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