U.S. Blamed for Iraq’s ‘Bloody Wednesday’
BAGHDAD - Iraqis blame the U.S. occupation for the failure of two parallel security plans drawn up by U.S. forces and Iraqi troops that failed dramatically with the bombings last week that killed more than 300 people in Baghdad.
Under the security plans additional troops were brought to Baghdad and most city streets closed. But car bombings, operations by death squads and attacks on U.S. troops continue.
The attacks Wednesday last week took a high casualty among Kurdish workers known to work in that area. Kurds in the north have stayed relatively free of the violence and the sectarian Shia-Sunni killings in the rest of the country. Kurds had supported the U.S.-led invasion four years back.
“A car bomb went off in Sadriyah neighborhood in the city center causing death to over 200 people,” Mahmood Abdulla from the Russafa Police Directorate in Baghdad told IPS. “It is not certain that the car was driven by a suicide person, in fact most of us believe it was parked there since early morning.”
Sadriyah is one of the oldest neighbourhoods of Baghdad. It is an area that brings together different ethnic and sectarian groups.
“We do not know who is killing us, but we do know who is responsible for our safety,” Kaka Kadir, who lost a 15-year-old son in the attack told IPS. “All we receive from our government and the Americans is talk, and holding other people accountable, while it is them who should protect us.”
“I do not believe it is al-Qaeda any more,” a woman weeping near the scene of the bombing told IPS. “I do not care any more, I am just losing my loved ones. The last explosion hit my husband and now he is disabled, and this one took my son’s life.”
She referred to a similar bombing two-and-a-half months ago at the same market, which killed 137 and wounded many more.
U.S. leaders and Iraqi government officials again accused “terrorists and the Saddamists” of the bombing. But many people around Baghdad are blaming the occupation forces and the U.S.-backed Iraqi government.
“I noticed that security officers did not carry out any site investigation,” a former police officer who lives in a neighbouring area told IPS on condition of anonymity. “I have also noticed that no such crime has been solved since the first days of the occupation.”
The officer said that “huge crimes like the Samarra shrine explosions (at the al-Askari Shia mosque in Samarra, 90km north of Baghdad in February last year) that led to increasing sectarian dispute, and many other crimes, remain unsolved.”
The focus last week was on the Sadriyah attacks, but many others were carried out.
One explosion was reported near a hospital in Karrada district in southeast Baghdad the same day. The attack seems to have targeted an Iraqi army patrol, and killed at least 11 people, four of them soldiers.
“Karrada is supposed to be very well protected,” 28-year-old Hussein Rathman, a local shop owner who could not reach his shop that day told IPS. “It seems there is no hope, and everyone should think seriously of leaving the country.”
Another explosion the same day killed at least 40 people at Muzaffar Square near Sadr City in east Baghdad. Angry Iraqis demonstrated soon after the bombing against the Iraqi government and occupation forces.
“The problem is that those Americans are still talking about peace and reconciliation in Iraq,” Jabbar Ahmed, a lawyer and human rights activist in Baghdad told IPS. “They should just leave the country after all the disappointment people here feel towards them. All they are doing is lying all the time, while Iraqi blood has become so cheap.”
The killings did not end Wednesday. In attacks the following day 82 people were killed and another 70 injured. Three U.S. soldiers and two British troops were also killed in Thursday’s violence.
According to the U.S. Department of Defence, at least 3,315 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq so far.
Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region.
Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service
i feel less “free” becuase of what the u.s. gov. has done in Iraq.
i thought they are utmost concerned with “freedom”?
The Iraqis suspicions is not at all unreasonable.
I’m no conspiracy theorist, but such attacks on their own people in public marketplaces and mosques is utterly counterproductive and an affront to the religious beliefs of even the most extremist militant factions. Therefore, any theory that holds Iraqi militants as the perpetrators of these acts would be so convoluted that Occams razor - and the question: “Qui bono?” almost dictates that we consider instead that they are CIA-organized operations.
To PJD’s point. When there is an unending war, there is an unending need to finance it. And the war profiteers rejoice. Reid and the dems want to set a time table for ending the bushcon war. Bush protests; I wonder what the real reason is…. We know, don’t we?
Like cancer, there’s too much money in treating the misery then finding a cure.
Before you Poo Poo anything you should ask yourself what got us here to begin with? I wouldn’t put anything past this administration. They have already sold out one CIA agent, lied to Colin Powell, need to review emails, signed off on more than 700 passed laws, listening in on our phones on their own say so, holding people in secret jails, kidnapping . . . hell you know that list as well as I do. What makes you think that they wouldn’t prop themselves up with anything they needed. The ends justify the means with this bunch. Or as Hollywood put “Never Say Never.”
“you’d better explain the counterproductive part to the waring religious factions”
The so-called sun-shiite divide is exaggerated, and to the extent it exists, it is a classic subversive divide-and-rule tactic. To some extent, Shia have become targets of some fanatic factions because they are viewed as collaborators to the occupation, but these horrid atatcks have an ucanny way of happening just after sunni and shia announce cooperation against the occupation.
As far as the CIA being under every bush, as the recent development in the Posada-Carilles case demonstrates, wherever there are people trying to assert their freedom from the USA, the CIA really seems to be under every bush.
Suggested reading: “Kiling Hope - US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II” by William Blum
Follow the money…see who are the folks making off like bandits. Why do you think the clueless VP still insist that iraq and 9/11 are related? The longer the US stays in Iraq, the more Haliburton and gang can rape the US taxpayers. Also, the oil industry are making stupefying amount of profits based on speculations (not facts) about ‘disruptions’ of oil flow. We are being fleeced by the robber barons of the 21st century.
Obviously, the war was for oil. Sectarian strife is the most convenient excuse for U.S. forces to stay in Iraq (and facilitate exploitation the oil). It is therefore in the interests of the “Powers that be” to ensure that sectarian strife continues and even to initiate sectarian strife, if necessary, with “agents provocateur”. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book.
It would be easy enough to do. Blackwater operatives (contractors) are probably willing to do anything for enough money. Or, if you want to run it all on a need-to-know basis (as is customary), just lie to soldiers and say, “Those (Sunni) are Al Queda” or “Those (Shiite) are Al Queda”. “We have intelligence that Al Queda is operating out of such-and-such mosque”.
Noam Chomsky has discussed how previous U.S. black ops have occasionally used car bombs. It’s not at all a stretch to imagine they’d do it again.
That is why the car bomb, and similar incidents in Iraq, are not investigated or solved.
I don’t get the idea that the CIA are doing the bombings - surely Bush wants the violence to stop so that he can claim victory!! If the violence goes on, there is a very good chance that the US forces will be withdrawn - at least when Bush leaves office.
Bush and Blair unleashed some terrible forces when they chose to attack Iraq, and they deserve to be on trial as war criminals, but I just can’t see that there is any reason why they would encourage the violence.
“I do not believe it is al Qaeda anymore”, a woman weeping near the scene of the bombing told IPS.
If yesterday’s first part of a four part New York Times series of articles on the Baghdad surge is any indication, a big PR push is underway right now to attribute as much of the current violence as possible to al Qaeda and Iranian outsiders rather than attributing attacks to any particular religious group, militia, or political faction domestic to Iraq. Once again, as Iraqi opinion on the street shifts in one direction, the US media slants American news coverage in the opposite direction.
If you think about it, pointing fingers at al Qaeda, al Qaeda in Iraq, Zarkawi, Zarkawi’s successor(s) and foreign jihadis has always been an inviting scapegoat tactic.
It’s what the White House wants to hear.
It’s what the perpetrators (if a domestic sectarian faction) would like to project, if they fear US reprisal or reprisal by a rival faction.
It’s what the Iraqi government would like to project, particularly if the attack was perpetrated by one of their own death squads.
And often it’s what the victims’ relatives would like to believe.
If the unnamed weeping woman in this story is saying what other ordinary Iraqi civilians are starting to think, the question is why has it taken so long?
David,
read Project For New American Century’s manifesto. And you will soon start to realize that chaos is their goal, not democracy, peace or whatever other nonsense they are claiming.
Remember it was the shock and awe Bush waged on this life less forgotten that has produced retaliation from a people emerging from his rubble. Being bombed does funny things to people. Once the blood from their ears dries, a formidable adversary wipes the dust off and sees clearly his objective. Trouble is for Bush, he has killed and dismembered so many that he now has a never ending insurgency defeating him. These are not terrorist in the global war on terror you have been fed, it’s simply people who collectively seek revenge. If that wasn’t bad enough, Bush has set factions in the region against each other. He is stirring up the same hornets nest in Iran. He has divided Americans against each other as well. He also has turned the world against us. Contrary to what some believe, these are not the characteristics of a good leader. And the only way we are going to be rid of this guy is to take them all, congress included, away in hand cuffs.
David Bailey, You’re naive if you think Bush wants victory so he can leave. Leaving is the last thing on his mind. If so, why would he be building huge city-sized permanent military bases and a fortress Vatican-sized “embassy”.
This is about the oil, and the rapacious production sharing agreements he’s forcing down the Iraqi throats. Which, to the shame of our Congress, they refuse to address. The neocons have their goals, but Bush and his oil buddies are keeping their eye on the ball.
Read Greg Palast’s “Armed Madhouse” if you want to open your eyes.
Yes, Ahro. The New Middle East whose “birth pangs” that Condoleezza Rice crowed about seeing emerge from Lebanon’s destruction by Israel was to be created by first destabilizing the entire region and then rebuilding it to make, I guess, some idealized version of America where “democracy” and “the free market” comflate to produce, yes, oil and corporate profits without limit.
The New American (Neocon) Dream.
Well Bush certainly does not want his ‘Surge’ to visibly fail! Yes they would like to stay to control the oil, but it is the continual violence that is strengthening the anti-war movement in congress.
Besides - how exactly would the CIA recruit suicide bombers?
I would not deny that the CIA might do this if (a) it was useful to Bush/Cheney (b) they could actually do it, and (c) they could be pretty sure that the truth would never leak out.
Great discussion. I don’t want to discount anything PJD, jjpeter, ahro and others have written.
I would only add another great book to take a look at, Albert Memmi’s classic, “The Colonizer and the Colonized.” It’s in a similar vein to Frantz Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth” and Aime Cesaire’s “Discourse on Colonialism,” but offers some amazing insights of its own.
Memmi was from Tunisia, writing about North African anticolonialist struggles, which he supported. It was published in 1957. In this work, he writes as a social scientist, writing that key components of the anticolonialist struggle in resisting a brutal occupier involves things like “terrorism,” assassinations against “collaborators,” and gruesome public executions (beheadings, burnings, etc). He looks at the dialectical relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, and the trajectories and internal logic of a violent struggle which the invading occupier unleashes.
One thing is surely clear to everyone: The party responsible for the hell on earth that has been unleashed in Iraq is the American government/ruling elite. Every single murder, every single life that is cut short, every hardship and every oppression that nearly everyone in Iraq is forced to endure - the blood in on the US government and their corporate masters’ hands. And every person MUST support the Iraqi anti-colonialist resistance, and not rest in their support until the USA is driven out of Iraq. The Iraqi people are fighting for the world’s freedom - if you don’t believe that, then please consider this: If the Iraqi’s had thrown flowers to the American invaders, the USA would be waging war in Iran long before now.
It might be worth it to take a look at Memmi’s book.
So these poor tragic Iraqi people have to be a firewall for the US behemoth of destruction. One of the most heartbreaking things I read was the Marine general’s report on Haditha saying the commanders have fostered an indifference to Iraqi life. We’re in there occupying their country in order to grab their oil and acting like Nazis. There is nothing we could do that can make up what we’ve done to them. I am not proud to be an American. I am ashamed of what my country is doing.
Here is a great one: “Bush’s Exit Plan: Fomenting Civil War in Iraq?”
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/03/1419259
Those death squads seem to follow Negroponte around…
There is certainly motive to divide Iraq. We benefit, and they suffer. We cannot be trusted to occupy this country any longer. They know this: A poll of Iraqis commissioned by USA Today found 83% of Shiites and 97% of Sunnis oppose the occupation. By a margin of more than 3 to 1, Iraqis say the presence of U.S. forces is making the security situation worse.
All they need to do to recruit “suicide drivers” is put an ad in the Baghdad paper “Drivers Wanted” with the unemployment situation in Iraq there would be no shortage of takers. The “new hire” doesn’t know the cargo or that the cargo is followed by another vehicle carrying the transmitter to detonate the cargo.
They have already been caught in the act. Google “Basra SAS” you’ll see what I mean. I believe USA forces have been discovered doing the same.
Come weep with me
Are the ’suicide bombings’ realy suicide bombings?
Maybe they are black ops:
‘So Who’s Doing All These Demented Deeds?
Khadduri’s report went like this:
A few days ago, an American manned check point confiscated the driver license of a driver and told him to report to an American military camp near Baghdad airport for interrogation and in order to retrieve his license. The next day, the driver did visit the camp and he was allowed in the camp with his car. He was admitted to a room for an interrogation that lasted half an hour.
At the end of the session, the American interrogator told him: ‘OK, there is nothing against you, but you do know that Iraq is now sovereign and is in charge of its own affairs. Hence, we have forwarded your papers and license to al-Kadhimia police station for processing. Therefore, go there with this clearance to reclaim your license. At the police station, ask for Lt. Hussain Mohammed, who is waiting for you now. Go there now quickly, before he leaves his shift work”.
The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was driving as if carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him. He stopped the car and inspected it carefully. He found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat and along the two back doors. ‘
http://www.envirosagainstwar.org/know/read.php?itemid=3235
Re: Haditha - Every military dehumanizes its enemy; its easier to get the grunts to kill them that way. From the “Hun” of WW I to the “Gook” of VietNam, and all slurs of all wars before and after, enemy troops, and more recently, civilian populations are degraded and mocked to make them easier to kill.
For those keeping count (and those who can’t, like Wolfowitz) George W Bush, via his Iraq incursion, has cost us a longer US involvment than WW II, has killed more Americans than bin Laden, has killed more Iraqis than Saddam, and has cost us more treasure than all our other wars put together.
The USA we grew up learning of, the country we celebrated, the America we were promised, probably never existed. But now it assuredly is gone, killed by Reagan, the Bushes, Clinton, and Cheney; sacrificed on the altar of the almighty unchecked “free market”. Until the wealth is redistributed, there will be no democracy anywhere.
I can’t buy into any theory that involves Bush as a mastermind. For a disaster of these proportions, delusions and hubris are at the core.
I don’t buy into the CIA conspiracy theory, but thinking back to the 2 “undercover” British troops that were arrested in Basra, and then busted out of jail by British tanks, it does make you wonder……
How is the killing in Iraq different than the killing that took place in Central and South America, under US guidence?
The solution would be simple, if the US government really want peace. They would withdraw, send to the Iraqi people the billions of dollars we are spending and fix up their infrastructure. There was an old song with lyrics, ‘a hungry man is an angry man.’
Imagine, lack of jobs, schools, electricity, water, food. And you think we can’t rectify that if we wanted to? We don’t want to. What we consider a ‘failed war’ is actually succeeding very well for the Bush/Cheney cronies. They are making their profit, who cares what the cost is.
This war is no more blatant than many in history.
peace, but it won’t work unless we all try.
AG
We invaded, destroyed the infrastructure, let the museums and records of their culture be looted and destroyed. All that mattered at that point was protecting the OIL (Operation Iraqi Liberation).
Divide and Conquer! If all the educated citizens go into exile, it would serve PNAC well.
Whte Rose wrote:
“All they need to do to recruit “suicide drivers” is put an ad in the Baghdad paper ‘Drivers Wanted’”.
Thanks, I forgot about these chilling allegations from some Iraqis.
However, they don’t even need to do this. There is an ample supply of people, having lost their families - desparate and mad with despair - who would willingly commit a suicide mission under orders of someone claiming to be a religious authority. All they’d need to say is “they are the enemy - they killed your children” and assure them that the supreme being would be forgive them.
God DAMN this vile war and the monsters who perpretrate it!
and on another front: even the Iraqi farmers seeds are no lnoger ok to be planted. Only the patented seeds supplied by huge agribusiness conglomerates are ok. Even though the Coalition government has been “replaced” with an Iraqi govt., still the 100 Rules are in place. #81 puts the kabosh on planting your own seeds. Talk about withdrawal? Will the US ever be completely withdrawn from Iraq?
Who else but a benefactor would proclaim that “we have plenty of time to discuss the war.” Let’s pass this money bill now. If any one even feels someone elses pain in this holocast there is no time to discuss it. Action to terminate suffering begins NOW!
Does it make sense that if we just leave (along with our bases and Blackwater), that the void to be filled will want to “win hearts and minds”?
Which means foreign fighters will have no place there!
A novel idea-let them decide. Besides they will have a dozen, or so, well equipped bases they can use, and a BBBBBBBillion dollar Embassy building, they can use for the process. Most likely there are a couple pools, a few bars, and lots of space. Maybe there’s even enough space for someone besides the “contractors” and the lobbyists. Let’s allow the media full access and maybe THEY will make something out of the mess we have made.
Talk about following the money?
Missing cash
$12 billion - cash shipped to Iraq from US in 2003-4
$8.8 billion - total spent by Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and never accounted for
$2.5 billion - Iraqi money spent by CPA from oil-for-food programme without proper accounts
$800m - amount missing from Iraqi defence ministry
$500m-$600m - missing from transport, electricity and interior ministries
$69m - value of fuel missing from oil ministry
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1497038.ece
It appears to me that preparing Iraq security has been savaged by someone?
Why do you think the clueless VP still insist that iraq and 9/11 are related?
I think that is a dead give away perhaps it is related!
In order to understand the extreme damage done not only to the country but especially to the psyche of a people who before the war were just ‘Iraqis’, we have to push our re-set button and face again the footage we have from Iraq before the war, even just the period Jan. - March 2003. Look at the people, look at the streets… we have destroyed much more than a country, we destroyed a nation and worst of all, we ‘devided’ them in order to conquer them after our bombings and the shock and awe of our supremacy seemed to fail. We made some of them collaborators and the newly trained police the enforcer of our will, yes we are blamed for starting the carnage, for the fall-out and its victims as well.
Whilst these scenes are terrible to behold, they give us some very important insights.
Whenever you see such pictures of car bombs, particularly of this size, look carefully at the surroundings, especially the ground. Google some of the many car bombs that have gone of in other conflicts, particularly Northern Ireland.
Do you see many craters??
Then look at some of the more egregious car bombings blamed on various urban terror groups, eg the Bali bomb, and ask yourself why these seem to feature huge, deep craters..
Having only minor direct experience of explosives (a short while when in University) I am no authority. However, as I have been led to believe, when a car bomb goes off, practically all the force of expanding gases follows the course of least resistance.. Up and out, not down.
A crater indicates penetration before detonation..
As in a bomb dropped from a height OR previously buried in teh ground or a drain (look at the pictures of the bomb that killed Aldo Moro In Italy.. that was a bomb in a drain.)
Now, some of these market place bombs will be black/false flag ops, to keep the population angry and divided, but these bombs are also obviously real car bombs and not buried before hand..
Significance??
All the many previous attacks that have encouraged populations to reluctantly back their many governments as they follow the paranoia of the New World Order.
Crazy thought??
Any experienced military/demolition specialists like to comment??
God, this world has a problem!