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Weekend of slaughter propels Iraq towards all-out civil war

Thread ID: 19197 | Posts: 10 | Started: 2005-07-18

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Quantrill [OP]

2005-07-18 17:24 | User Profile

July 18, 2005 **Weekend of slaughter propels Iraq towards all-out civil war** From James Hider in Baghdad
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Mariam Ghassan, a three-month-old girl, is treated for injuries after one of the Baghdad bombs( PHOTO: MOHAMMMED URAIBI/AP)
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IRAQ is slipping into all-out civil war, a Shia leader declared yesterday, as a devastating onslaught of suicide bombers slaughtered more than 150 people, most of them Shias, around the capital at the weekend. One bomber killed almost 100 people when he blew up a fuel tanker south of Baghdad, an attack aimed at snapping Shia patience and triggering the full-blown sectarian war that al-Qaeda has been trying to foment for almost two years. Iraq’s security forces have been overwhelmed by the scale of the suicide bombings — 11 on Friday alone and many more over the weekend — ordered by the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. “What is truly happening, and what shall happen, is clear: a war against the Shias,” Sheikh Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, a prominent Shia cleric and MP, told the Iraqi parliament. Sheikh al-Saghir is close to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the supreme Shia spiritual leader and moderate who has so far managed to restrain powerful Shia militias from undertaking any outright attack on Sunni insurgents. His warning suggests that the Shia leadership may be losing its grip over Shias who in private often call for an armed backlash against their Sunni assailants. The sheikh also cautioned Sunni clerics supporting the insurgency against American forces and the Shia-Kurdish Government elected in January. “I am very keen to preserve the Sunni blood that would be shed due to the irrational acts of some of their leaders, who do not see that they are leading the country into civil war,” he told the national assembly. On the streets of Baghdad, al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda organisation in Iraq unleashed one suicide bomber after another and promised no respite. “The Hassan Ibrahim al-Zaidi attack continues for the second day in a row, with rigged cars, martyrdom attacks and clashes,” an al-Qaeda internet statement said. “We warn the enemies of God of more to come.” One of the suicide bombers, a Libyan, was arrested at the mass funerals of 32 Shia children killed last week by a car bomber. But the worst attack occurred in the mixed town of Musaib, in the area south of Baghdad known as the Triangle of Death, when a fuel tanker blew up in a crowded market near a mosque on Saturday evening. The death toll rose to 98 yesterday, making it one the deadliest attacks yet. Relatives searched the shattered market for the body parts of missing loved ones. “I saw a lot of burnt bodies after the explosion and many people throwing their children from the windows and balconies because the buildings were on fire,” Ammar al-Qaragouli said. Iraqi soldiers have set up checkpoints to try to rein in the bombers, only to become sitting ducks. Two dozen more people died yesterday in four suicide bombings targeting US and Iraqi security forces. At least one desperate parliamentarian called for the population to form local militias to defend their neighbourhoods — a move that many see as prelude to a sectarian war. “The plans of the Interior and Defence ministries to impose security in Iraq have failed to stop the terrorists. We need to bring back popular security committees,” Khudair al-Khuzai, a senior parliamentarian who claimed that 50 fellow MPs supported him, said. But with the streets of Baghdad seething with fear, anger and rumours of impending conflict, confidence in anything that the Government says has plummeted. A poll in the state-sponsored *al-Sabah* newspaper indicated that 51 per cent of Iraqis see the Government’s performance as weak, while only 32 per cent approved. Fuelling the sectarian tension, leaflets are being distributed in southern Baghdad threatening named Shia “collaborators” with execution. Increasingly hardline Shia militias, such as the outlawed Mahdi Army of the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, are patrolling large parts of Baghdad, often rounding up suspected Sunni insurgents and imprisoning or even killing them. With the country in turmoil, much of the Government, including Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shia Prime Minister, was on a landmark trip to try to repair relations with Iran, where President Khatami hailed a “turning point” in relations between the neighbours. He promised that his country would do all in its power to rebuild Iraq. But closer ties with Iran’s Shia theo- cracy has alarmed Iraqi Sunnis, who accuse Iran of interfering. John Reid, the British Defence Secretary, told CNN yesterday that Britain could start to reduce its troop levels in Iraq over the next 12 months. He said that neither Britain nor America had any imperialist ambitions and were anxious that Iraqi forces should assume responsibility for security. Mr Reid spoke as a report issued yesterday by Chatham House and the Economic and Social Research Council, two British think-tanks, said that British lives had been lost in Iraq and elsewhere because it was seen as “riding pillion” with the United States. The Iraq war “gave a boost to the al-Qaeda network’s propaganda, recruitment and fundraising, caused a major split in the coalition, provided an ideal targeting and training area for al-Qaeda-linked terrorists and deflected resources and assistance that could have been used to . . . bring (Osama) bin Laden to justice,” it said. **72 HOURS OF VIOLENCE** **Friday **10 suicide car bombers kill 26 people and wound more than 100 in apparently co-ordinated attacks on US and Iraqi forces **Saturday **At least 107 people killed and 185 injured in 5 suicide bombings, including the fuel tanker explosion that left 98 dead **Sunday **Bombers kill 19 and wound more than 14 in 4 suicide attacks around Baghdad

[url="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1698308,00.html"]http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1698308,00.html[/url]

xmetalhead

2005-07-18 17:47 | User Profile

It's all Bush & Co's fault. Period.

Angeleyes

2005-07-18 23:43 | User Profile

[QUOTE=xmetalhead]It's all Bush & Co's fault. Period.[/QUOTE]Everytime some fool in Washington claims to the press that "we are making progress, look at how bombings have gone down" I get this gut feeling that someone sees that as a challenge, along the lines of "you ain't seen nuthin' yet, baby!" And mo betta bombs blow up within a week of the official pronouncement.

You can almost set your watch by it.

As to the article, where in the hell has this guy been for the past year? It has been a civil war for well over a year, between the folks who were dispossessed, predominantly Sunni's in central Iraq, the Shiites who are seen as beneficiaries of American largesse, and other sides less well covered by the press. Amidst the scrum, Zarqawi is happy to keep the fires burning because:

Political defeat of American aims is his strategic aim. His playing field is . . . the international media machine, and his stage is in front of The Arab World at large. He's not stupid, or he'd have been dead last summer.

The reporter, Hider, seems to be someone to whom the Iraq Mess is a new endeavour. Or is he one of those fools who thinks an election makes a democracy? Saddam had an election fall of 2002 . . . eh?

[QUOTE] The Iraq war “gave a boost to the al-Qaeda network’s propaganda, recruitment and fundraising, caused a major split in the coalition, provided an ideal targeting and training area for al-Qaeda-linked terrorists and deflected resources and assistance that could have been used to . . . bring (Osama) bin Laden to justice,” it said. [/QUOTE] Old news, but it rings true. When two dimensional thinkers are confronted with three dimensional problems . . .

SteamshipTime

2005-07-19 01:38 | User Profile

At this point, I think the plan is to leave Iraq and let the Shia's handle things the old-fashioned way. And I bet they will enlist the help of Iran to do it.

Quantrill

2005-07-19 11:50 | User Profile

[QUOTE=SteamshipTime]At this point, I think the plan is to leave Iraq and let the Shia's handle things the old-fashioned way. And I bet they will enlist the help of Iran to do it.[/QUOTE] I think you're probably right. So, the US will have succeeded in overthrowing a secular Bathist regime that posed no threat to us, alienating the sizable minority moderate Sunnis, and empowering the rabid Shiites while simultaneously driving them into the arms of Iran. Well done, Bush & Co!

This is especially bizarre to those of us who remember hearing about how dangerous the Shiites in Iran were all during the 80's.

Quantrill

2005-07-19 12:09 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Angeleyes] As to the article, where in the hell has this guy been for the past year? It has been a civil war for well over a year, between the folks who were dispossessed, predominantly Sunni's in central Iraq, the Shiites who are seen as beneficiaries of American largesse, and other sides less well covered by the press.[/QUOTE] AE, I think that is precisely the importance of the article. Those of us who have been paying attention harbor no illusions about the true state of things on the ground in Iraq, even while the media has been pushing the idea that things are improving. However, this article (along with an NBC news report I saw yesterday) marks the second time in two days that I have seen the term 'civil war' used in describing the Iraq situation. It seems to me that a new meme is afoot among the mainstream media, and I consider that a positive development.

Yggdrasil

2005-07-19 19:04 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Quantrill]I think you're probably right. So, the US will have succeeded in overthrowing a secular Bathist regime that posed no threat to us, alienating the sizable minority moderate Sunnis, and empowering the rabid Shiites while simultaneously driving them into the arms of Iran. Well done, Bush & Co![/QUOTE]You know, this poses the fundamental question of whether the IP are so hopelessly deluded that they cannot percieve strategic reality. While Saddam may have lobbed Scuds on Israel in Gulf War One, I have never taken seriously the idea that he would provoke a war with Israel without U.S. troops in the way of Izzy nuclear retaliation.

Saddam was too self-centered and too calculating for that. Plus, he was "bidable" as Rumsfeld certainly knew from firsthand experience.

So now we have Shia armies assembling and forming into the real locus of Iraqi power, rendering the puppet government irrelevant, and in time giving Iran its own front-line buffer state, while U.S. troops fall back into Israel proper, thus making painfully visible to all what is now understood by only a small minority.

And once U.S. troops are in Israel, Izzy's hands will be tied as they must negotiate with us over every military move, a close up and personal interchange which is bound to generate hatred for them among the U.S. military.

Looks to me like Izzy is two moves away from falling into checkmate.

Petr

2005-07-19 19:09 | User Profile

[FONT=Arial][COLOR=Blue][B][I] - "You know, this poses the fundamental question of whether the IP are so hopelessly deluded that they cannot percieve strategic reality. "[/I][/B][/COLOR][/FONT]

May I cite Swedish 17th-century expert in [I]realpolitik[/I], Axel Oxenstierna:

[B][COLOR=Red]""Behold, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed" [/COLOR] [/B]

(in a letter to his offspring written in 1648).

Petr

Ponce

2005-07-19 20:59 | User Profile

"Partial freedom is better than no freedom at all"...... as in the USA.

In Iraq there was partial freedom also till the US went in in order to make it "free" and now there is no freedom at all.

Under Saddam there was food, power, water, schools and a semi-peace type of government but now they don't even have a house to live in and none of the above.

Their women were becoming more free (for an Arab state) and they could walk in safety at night but now they can't even go out in the day time because they are afraid of the "liberators".

If anything the US have created and "division" even among the Iraqi people which means more civil war later on ......as planned by the Zionists.

And even stealing their oil is now more expensive, something like five billions to take one million....but of course the oil going to the state of Israel is for free.

And more than oil you have the lost of human life, over 150,000 innocent civilians and about 6,000 US troops (not according to the US).

And then you have those who will die later because of the "special" ammo used by the army.

Angeleyes

2005-07-21 14:34 | User Profile

You remember that old Viet Nam era quote: "We had to destroy that village to save it?"

Hmmm. Same stuff, different day.

[QUOTE=Ponce]"Partial freedom is better than no freedom at all"...... as in the USA.

In Iraq there was partial freedom also till the US went in in order to make it "free" and now there is no freedom at all.

Under Saddam there was food, power, water, schools and a semi-peace type of government but now they don't even have a house to live in and none of the above.

Their women were becoming more free (for an Arab state) and they could walk in safety at night but now they can't even go out in the day time because they are afraid of the "liberators".

If anything the US have created and "division" even among the Iraqi people which means more civil war later on ......as planned by the Zionists.

And even stealing their oil is now more expensive, something like five billions to take one million....but of course the oil going to the state of Israel is for free.

And more than oil you have the lost of human life, over 150,000 innocent civilians and about 6,000 US troops (not according to the US).

And then you have those who will die later because of the "special" ammo used by the army.[/QUOTE]