Sunday, October 13, 2013

Hejira

Violence struck across Iraq today.  AP counts 42 dead from bombings.  Al Jazeera is terming them "serial bombings."  Kareem Raheem, Aref Mohammed, Suadad al-Salhy, Sonya Hepinstall and Mohammad Zargham (Reuters) report, "Leaflets signed by al Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate were distributed in recent days on the streets of Baquba, a city northeast of the capital, telling residents not to send their children to school or they will be killed, residents and police said."  The Iraqi Ministry of the Interior is insisting hardly anyone died today.  All Iraq News states that they're insisting 45 people were killed or wounded -- with over 30 of that 45 being wounded.

If the US government wasn't so damn stupid, things like that wouldn't happen.  See Nouri got his second term because of them but they have refused to stand up to him.  There's no Minister of the Interior and the US looked the other way while, in a power grab, Nouri refused to nominate people to head the security ministries so he could control them.

Which means when the Ministry of the Interior was insulting US trainers in the fall and winter of 2011?  That was with Nouri's full approval because he controls that ministry.  But the idiots in the administration, the dumb bells working in the White House were so slow to catch on.

Regardless of ridiculous claims by Nouri's flunkies, violence was all over Iraq and the death toll was high.


National Iraqi News Agency reports Ziyad Aboud (city council person) was shot dead in western Baghdad, 2 Hilla car bombings left 5 people dead and twenty-seven injured, 2 Basra car bombings left at least fifteen people injured, 1 person was shot dead in Falluja, a Falluja sticky bombing claimed the life of 1 police officer, an armed attack in Falluja left 1 person dead and a police officer injured,  2 Diwaniyah car bombings left 1 person dead and eighteen more injured, a Samarra suicide bomber took his own life and that of 4 police officers leaving an unspecified number of police officers injured and two bystanders wounded, in Samawa the police increased security and searched for a car bomb based on a tip but they did not find it in time and 4 people were left dead while seventeen were left injured, a southern Baghdad bombing left 2 people dead and eight wounded, and a western Baghdad bombing left 1 person dead and eight more injured, 2 southern Baghdad bombings left five people injured.  In addition, All Iraq News notes a primary school was blown up in Wasit (no one was killed or injured in the bombing).

Hou Qiang (Xinhua) offers, "Observers see that the security situation in Iraq began to deteriorate on April 23 after the security forces cracked down on a Sunni Arab protest camp in Iraq's northern city of Hawijah. The crackdown sparked fierce clashes across the country's predominantly Sunni provinces between the Sunni tribes and the security forces."










I'm traveling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shell shock love away
-- "Hejira," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her album of the same name

 The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4488.




The latest from Third went up earlier tonight:






Isaiah's comic goes up after this.  The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.






 








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