Reuters has a regular feature that runs each day on the security incidents in Iraq. Most of them, except the for large car bombs or other large scale attacks usually are not reported in the Western press anywhere else that I know of. Here’s the list of items for this Friday:
BAGHDAD – Gunmen kidnapped police commando Colonel Muayyad al-Mashhadani in front of his home in eastern Baghdad, police said.
BAIJI – The bodies of two Iraqi soldiers who were killed by gunmen on Friday were found in Baiji, 180 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, said a source at a U.S.-Iraqi military coordination centre.
MAHMOUDIYA – Four members of a Shi’ite family, including a child, were killed and the mother was critically wounded when gunmen shot them in their house in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad, police said.
KHALIS – Five worshippers were killed and 17 wounded by a bomb planted near a Sunni mosque in the town of Khalis, 60 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD – Police found five bodies, shot, blindfolded and with their hands bound, on the edge of the Shi’ite district of Sadr City, police said.
BAGHDAD – Gunmen killed four bakery workers in a mostly Sunni district of Baghdad and planted an explosive booby-trap that killed a policeman responding to the attack, police said.
BAGHDAD – Three policemen were killed and one wounded when gunmen opened fire on their patrol in western Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD – Police found seven bodies with their hands bound and shot in the head in northern Baghdad. A police source said the bodies were dumped on a street in al-Binouk district.
TAL AFAR – Six children were wounded when a mortar bomb landed in the town of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, police said.
And this was a slow day by Iraqi standards. It’s often far, far worse.
Of all of these incidents, the most telling one is the mortar attack in Tal Afar. You remember Tal Afar, don’t you. That’s the town President Bush bragged about in his recent speeches blaming the media for not telling us about all the good news in Iraq. Tal Afar was his “success story.” The place where the Sheriff (in the form of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment) had cleaned up Dodge and made it safe for all the regular peace-loving folks and their kids to live safely and securely once more.
So much for good news, eh?
And then there is always the Iraqis point of view.
“I say that Bush is 100 percent a liar because the city of Tal Afar has become a ghost town rather than the example Bush spoke about,” said Ali Ibrahim, a Shi’ite Turkmen laborer.
Fucking liar!
I suppose one way of making a place less violent is to get rid of its people. Of course that would at best border on genocidal, although I’ve certainly never known that to stop Bu$hCo.
If we are ever to be honest with ourselves, Americans will someday need to come to grips with the fact that our policies in Iraq over the past 15 years, as you say, “at best border on genocidal.” It’s unlikely it matters much to the mother of a dead child whether or not Bush I, Clinton, or Bush II was in office at the time. Nor if it was a smart bomb, white phosphorus, malnutrition or dysentery that killed her baby. Back in 1998, Denis Halliday, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Baghdad resigned after 34 years with the UN, saying “I don’t want to administer a programme that satisfies the definition of genocide”. It’s only become worse since then. All in the service of ‘regime change.’
Information ClearingHouse has a piece today, Children Continue To Be Main Victims Of U.S. Occupation with more grim figures:
in Palestine, in Afghanistan, Africa, and beyond, but I think that I will resist that temptation today, and just say, yes, I agree, and thank you.
from aloha’s link above
yeah, it looks like it is extremely dangerous to be a policeman in Iraq right now. It basically looks like an impossible situation to even try to police.
If only we all had our very own Bush Bubble that only blocked out all bad news and reality.
nt
When the idiot mentioned Tall Afar as being a success, I knew something was wrong. So I goggled it and found it was populated by ethnic Turkomen, not Sunni Arabs. I do not think bush gets the significance of this.
If Bin Laden’s goal is to so damage us economically that we will have to withdraw from our world’s only superpower agenda. I think he is winning.
How thoughtful, how very thoughtful, of Mr. Bush to help the deadender/terrorists/outside agitators select their next targets like that!
Of course they would still have to decide whether to hit Tal Afar and make Bush look bad, or to leave it alone and make him look good.
The 3rd ACR is where my husband spent the most career time. He served his year in Iraq with them too before we were transplanted to Fort Rucker. His best friend is newly arrived home with them now too. I hated watching Bush’s B fucking Tal Afar S. I’m sure it was nice for the soldiers to hear “their success story” on T.V. like that……but it wasn’t their success story. It wasn’t the honest success story of Tal Afar. Sure Tal Afar is better today than it was 6 months ago……but a bastion of democracy and peace and joyful living with children running and playing in the streets it fucking is not. That fucking asshole Bush! He steals from the residents of Tal Afar and he steals from Iraqi troops who fought for some kind of stability in Tal Afar and he steals from our very own soldiers who fought the same fight for Tal Afar by avoiding the honest truth about Tal Afar. He is an evil liar hurting so many more people with his lies than he will ever ever help!