A suicide bomber killed 17 people in Salahuddin Province north of Baghdad on Monday in the latest suicide bombing outside the capital.
Meanwhile, in the wake of a suicide bombing on Sunday near Falluja in Anbar Province local tribesmen burned the house of the young suicide bombger's family and prevented a female cousin from collecting the bomber's head for burial.
The above is from the creative pen of Alissa J. Rubin. In this morning's New York Times, it runs on A10 and is called "Suicide Bomber Kills 17 At Ceremony Near Capital." In the real world, it could be called "Watch Me Avoid Reality, Bore the Readers and Miss the Point."
That second paragraph, those "tribesmen," who are they?
They are the US funded, US backed "Awakening" Council. And who they are is a detail you include from the start.
They are little thugs who became US collaborators to get control of the province, not out of any other concerns but control. And now they've burned a family's home and prevented a burial. For those too young to remember, when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald, there was shock in this country. Rubin can't even register shock from afar. In Iraq, the vigilantes don't just run free, they get US backing.
A teenager attacks the "Awakening" Council on Sunday and the response that follows is to burn his family's home down. The teenager died in the attack. That's not justice, that's retribution and these are the thugs the US got into bed with, armed, trained and funded.
If you're willing to play connect the dots with Rubin's bad article for a bit, you'll grasp that. A real report would say it flat out.
On the Monday bombing, Lloyd notes this perspective from Joshua Partlow's "Suicide Attack at Funeral In Northern Iraq Kills 17" (Washington Post):
The bombing was the latest in a series of attacks that have rocked Iraq's northern provinces. As violence has declined in historically embattled regions such as Baghdad and Anbar provinces, it has migrated north to places such as Salahuddin province.
In late December, a car bomb exploded near a checkpoint outside a housing complex for oil industry employees in Baiji, killing 22 people. In Kirkuk, another northern city, two civilians were injured Monday by a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol, according to police spokesman Col. Adnan Abdullah Abdullah.
Waleed Ibrahim (Reuters) reports that the Iraqi Parliament has decided on a new flag. In real news, Dow Jones reports the following:
An Iraqi Oil Ministry delegation will meet in Amman later this week with senior executives from five oil majors to discuss the possibility of signing technical support agreements to help develop five oil fields, an Iraqi oil ministry spokesman said Tuesday.
Citing an unnamed source, they list the five companies as Chevron, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Total.
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the new york times
alissa j. rubin
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