The American military announced Tuesday that two marines and a sailor had been killed Monday as a result of “enemy action” in Anbar Province, which is home to the Sunni-led insurgency. At least 2,657 American troops have died since the invasion in 2003, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, [. . .]
The toll of Iraqi civilians has been much higher, with nearly 3,500 killed in July alone. Killings of Iraqis continued Tuesday. The worst incident took place in Baquba, the volatile capital of Diyala Province, where gunmen killed 11 people, including 3 policemen, and wounded 22 others in several attacks, police officials said.
In Baghdad, gunmen in the Dora district killed three pilgrims en route to Karbala, a Shiite city, an Interior Ministry official said. Violence has dropped since American and Iraqi forces swept the area in early August, but residents still live in fear.
The above is from Edward Wong's "Iraqi Parliament Adds Month to 2-Year State of Emergency" in this morning's New York Times. "Still live in fear" -- well what else does the Bully Boy have to export at this point?
From the Associated Press:
Two bombs exploded within minutes of each other in north Baghdad Wednesday, killing at least nine people and wounding 39, police said, a day after the president predicted the bloodshed would be mostly over by the end of next year.
The explosions, one a parked car bomb and another a roadside bomb, were targeting a passing Iraqi army patrol at a busy intersection during the morning rush hour as people headed to work, police 1st Lt. Mohammed Khayun said.
The car bomb had been parked in front of a tire repair shop, witness Abdel-Majeed Salah, a local resident, told AP television. He said a minibus with passengers on board had been behind the parked car when it detonated, and all on board had been killed.
The reality we're supposed to ignore. (Just as the Bully Boy ignores it.) Keshawn notes Arianna Huffington's "Why We Need an Epidemic of Fearlessness to Counter the Fearmonger-in-Chief" (The Huffington Post):
The president officially kicked off the big push to the midterms with a fear-triggering speech last week in which he warned, "If we give up the fight in the streets of Baghdad, we will face terrorists in the streets of our own cities." We've seen this movie before. It's "Be Very Afraid" all over again.
It has, after all, been a frighteningly effective sales pitch. Fear is a powerful, universal emotion -- always there to be exploited. And that's why we need a major counteroffensive -- a wide-ranging campaign to help spread fearlessness so as to inoculate the country against this shameful campaign strategy.
Otherwise, we're going to once again succumb to our lizard brains and keep voting our fears -- even as our logical brains (and the latest polls) tell us that the fearmongers in power have made us all less safe.
To this end, HuffPost is today launching a new feature section devoted to promoting fearlessness in all aspects of our lives. Using as its springboard the themes in my new book, On Becoming Fearless, the section contains blog posts, news stories, and special features on relationships, work, parenting, health, sex, food, entertainment...in other words, life.
The lifeblood of HuffPost will always be politics but this new section will be for those times when you want to put politics aside for awhile. And if you are one of those rare creatures that lives and breathes politics 24/7, well then, no need to click on Becoming Fearless.
And for those wanting to be outraged, read Adam Liptak's article about the judge who's going to rule on the illegal, warrantless spying of American citizens . . . after first setting aside the First and Fourth Amendments because who needs something as outdated as the Constitution apparently.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
the new york times
edward wong
arianna huffington