159 Killed or Wounded in Massive Mosul Blast;
Dems take on Bush over Iraq SOFA
Guerrillas were stockpiling munitions in an unoccupied building in the Zanjabili district near the Houston-sized northern city of Mosul. Someone informed the Iraqi security forces of the stockpile, and apparently the guerrillas had good intelligence on such things, so they blew up the arms warehouse to deny it to their foes. It blasted surrounding apartment buildings, killing 17 persons and wounding 132, including women and children. It reverberated through the city as no explosion ever had before. The casualty toll is likely to rise, since there were still people trapped under rubble at the site of the massive explosion.
[What amazes me is that at this late date, the guerrillas still have enormous munitions stockpiles of which the US and the Iraqi government remain ignorant.]
According to al-Bawaba and AP, at Tuz Khurmato, half hour drive outside the northern oil city of Kirkuk, a car bomber killed 7 and wounded 16.
In Baghdad itself, guerrillas attacked an army checkpoint in Bab al-Mudham, east of the Tigris, killing 7 soldiers and wounding 2.
Al-Bawaba adds: "Meanwhile, at least six members of an Iraqi family died in the city of Baquba, reports said Wednesday. The independent Iraqi news agency Voices of Iraq said suspected members of the al-Qaeda network attacked the house in the Behrez area, south of Baquba. They kidnapped the Iraqi civilian and five other members of his family. Security sources later found their corpses in a nearby district, the news agency said. "
The Democrats in Congress are mobilizing to stop Bush from concluding a security agreement with the Iraqi government that may tie the hands of the next president. They insist that any such agreement must pass through Congress. The White House appears to view the pact as a mere Status of Forces Agreement, and such SOFAs are typically concluded by the executive. Congress is interpreting the agreement not as a SOFA but as a mutual security treaty, which would require congressional approval.
Ironically, many in the Iraqi parliament are also upset that PM Nuri al-Maliki may initial the agreement without consulting them.
The real news is that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will visit Baghdad. After the long, gruelling Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, this is the first such high-level from Tehran to Baghdad. Prime ministers Ibrahim Jaafari and Nuri al-Maliki of Iraq have visited Iran.
The news satire is, "In other news, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger surfaced in Baghdad, today, insisting that he was going to introduce Ahmadinejad before the Iraqi parliament. He warned the parliamentarians not to get in his way, or they would be in for quote 'such a tongue-lashing' unquote."
McClatchy reports other political violence in Iraq on Thursday:
' Baghdad
- Around 9 a.m., a roadside bomb exploded at Mansour neighborhood ( west Baghdad) at district 605. Some commercial shops damaged in that incident with no casualties recorded.
- Around 12 p.m., gunmen opened fire on an army check point . . . [see above].
- Around 12.30, a roadside bomb exploded at Zafaraniyah neighborhood (south Baghdad). No casualties reported.
- Around 3 p.m., gunmen assassinated the dean of Dental medicine, Munthir Ridha, at University of Baghdad.
- Police found ( 4 ) unidentified dead bodies . . .
Mosul
- Tuesday evening, gunmen assassinated Ali Suleiman Mohammad, a lecturer at Mosul university on his way home from a mosque to Wihda neighborhood in downtown Mosul .
- Tuesday , a squad of the Iraqi army killed a gunman in Mosul city and confiscated his car. . .
Diyala
- Wednesday afternoon, a roadside bomb targeted AlHay neighborhood ( downtown Baquba) near one of the quarters of the Sahwa [Awakening]council injuring two members of the Sahwa .
Kirkuk - Tuesday evening, a roadside bomb targeted the head of Kirkuk police operation centre, Colonel Yadgar Shukr Abdu Allah . . .
Basra
- Around 7 p.m., gunmen kidnapped an engineer ( Ali Mahmood ) from his house at the Basra international camp ( north west Basra), police said.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 1/24/2008 12:30:00 AM
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4 Comments:
"..Guerrillas were stockpiling munitions....."
It is blatant lie and they are relying on the naivety of Americans to believe it. Jihadist in Kurdish Mosul has no intelligence gathering means and most likely will run away not blow up the stock pile randomly. The one that blown up this stash of explosive in storage is the one that has the electronic spy gears and intelligence capabilities in Mosul that indicated tips came in and have evidence that wants to hide, such as the type and source of explosive stored and do not want to get this evidence exposed lets will lead to the culprits, look for Mossad agents, their Kurdish helpers that Mossad run or those embedded Israeli murder squad embedded with the U.S. forces.
Evidence pointing out from research that over 200 of the bombings accrued in Baghdad, supposedly randomly at innocent civilians in the streets and public places, were in fact targeted killing against a single Iraqi scientist, murdered in an explosion that made to look, and supposed to be random and mass, just for operational cover.
It does not amaze me that the resistance has such weapons stockpiled. In the early days of the US invasion, the US troops broke the seal on one UN monitored site with some MASSIVE explosives stored there. Then the US troops left it unguarded. Over the next few days, trucks pulled up and carted everything off.
This high-explosive bombing materials have (so far) never been used. Maybe that is what blew up in Mosul, but I doubt it.
Imagine if it gets to the US one day and blows up..... wouldn't that be ironic?
From Eric Alterman's Altercation and originally at tomdispatch.com. Read whole thing for expose on just how screwed "Shrub left us and our children's children
Emphasis added
[Going Bankrupt
Why the Debt Crisis Is Now the Greatest Threat to the American Republic
By Chalmers Johnson
The military adventurers of the Bush administration have much in common with the corporate leaders of the defunct energy company Enron. Both groups of men thought that they were the "smartest guys in the room," the title of Alex Gibney's prize-winning film on what went wrong at Enron. The neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon outsmarted themselves. They failed even to address the problem of how to finance their schemes of imperialist wars and global domination.
As a result, going into 2008, the United States finds itself in the anomalous position of being unable to pay for its own elevated living standards or its wasteful, overly large military establishment. Its government no longer even attempts to reduce the ruinous expenses of maintaining huge standing armies, replacing the equipment that seven years of wars have destroyed or worn out, or preparing for a war in outer space against unknown adversaries. Instead, the Bush administration puts off these costs for future generations to pay -- or repudiate. This utter fiscal irresponsibility has been disguised through many manipulative financial schemes (such as causing poorer countries to lend us unprecedented sums of money), but the time of reckoning is fast approaching.
There are three broad aspects to our debt crisis. First, in the current fiscal year (2008) we are spending insane amounts of money on "defense" projects that bear no relationship to the national security of the United States. Simultaneously, we are keeping the income tax burdens on the richest segments of the American population at strikingly low levels.
Second, we continue to believe that we can compensate for the accelerating erosion of our manufacturing base and our loss of jobs to foreign countries through massive military expenditures -- so-called "military Keynesianism," which I discuss in detail in my book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. By military Keynesianism, I mean the mistaken belief that public policies focused on frequent wars, huge expenditures on weapons and munitions, and large standing armies can indefinitely sustain a wealthy capitalist economy. The opposite is actually true.
Third, in our devotion to militarism (despite our limited resources), we are failing to invest in our social infrastructure and other requirements for the long-term health of our country. These are what economists call "opportunity costs," things not done because we spent our money on something else. Our public education system has deteriorated alarmingly. We have failed to provide health care to all our citizens and neglected our responsibilities as the world's number one polluter. Most important, we have lost our competitiveness as a manufacturer for civilian needs -- an infinitely more efficient use of scarce resources than arms manufacturing.]
http://tomdispatch.com/post/174884/chalmers_johnson_how_to_sink_america
Please inform Fareed Zakaria. He has very recently stated that the war in Iraq is over.
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