Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiBaghdad Violence Worst in Year
BAGHDAD - April was the bloodiest month for violence in Baghdad in more than a year, another sign that Iraq's security gains are beginning to reverse.
![[Iraqis run for cover as Iraqi army officers fire in the air to disperse protestors demonstrating against several car bombs that detonated a short while earlier in the market place in Baghdad's eastern Sadr City. The Iraqi army has blamed a wave of near-simultaneous bombings that killed more than 50 people in mostly Shiite districts of Baghdad on loyalists of Saddam Hussein's toppled regime. (AFP/Ahmad al-Rubaye)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/sadrcity_bombings.jpg "sadrcity_bombings.jpg")
President Barack Obama acknowledged Wednesday night that violence has risen in recent weeks, but he said the levels of violence were still below last year's.
Calling recent bombings "a legitimate cause for concern," Obama said "civilian deaths . . . remain very low compared to what was going on last year."
But statistics kept by McClatchy show that in Baghdad alone, more than 200 people have been killed in attacks so far this month, compared with 99 last month and 46 in February, according to a McClatchy count.
The last time McClatchy recorded more than 200 civilian deaths in one month in the capital was more than a year ago, in March 2008.
On Wednesday, a series of explosions killed at least 43 people, including at least 41 who were killed in Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite Muslim slum in east Baghdad. Three bombs hidden in parked cars detonated in quick succession along a busy commercial street around 5 p.m., an official with Iraq's interior ministry said. At least 68 were wounded, and authorities said they expect the death toll to rise.
"It was chaos in the streets," said one witness, Wissam Hassan.
Two more car bombs detonated in Baghdad's Hurriyah neighborhood Wednesday night, killing at least two people and wounding eight.
Large-scale bombings targeting civilians have been on the rise since March, and there is widespread concern among Iraqis that the violence may quickly spread as the U.S. begins to draw down.
American officials have said they don't think the renewed violence marks a serious setback.
During a visit to Baghdad last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters the spike in attacks in not an indication that Iraq is regressing. She said she and Army Gen. Raymond Odierno, the top U.S. commander here, agree that the uptick in bombings shouldn't change American plans for withdrawal.
Outside analysts aren't so optimistic.
Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow and Iraq expert with the Brookings Institution, called the rise in violence "significant."
"There almost surely won't be a complete reversal" in the progress that's been made, he said in an e-mail. "But there could be an end to the progress and even a new, somewhat higher level of ongoing violence."
O'Hanlon speculated that anger among Sunni Muslim militiamen known as the Sons of Iraq may be partly to blame for the rise in attacks. Relations between the militia's members and Iraq's Shiite-led government are at an all-time high.
Rahim al Daraji, a former mayor of Sadr City, said the explosions there prove that Iraq's security forces aren't effective.
"This will push us back to the sectarian violence," he said. "The Shiites will be looking for revenge."
Hakim Mishchil, a 34-year-old nurse who lives in Sadr City, said one of the bombs went off within feet of an Iraqi Army checkpoint.
"What does this tell you?" he asked. "They are not doing their job."
Under an agreement signed last year between Washington and Baghdad, U.S. troops must leave Iraqi cities and hand control to local security forces by the end of June. President Barack Obama has pledged to withdraw most Americans from the country altogether by late 2010.
(Reilly reports for the Merced Sun-Star. Kadhim is a McClatchy special correspondent.)
13 Comments so far
Show Alllicketyglick asks a most important question.
In recent weeks, hard core attacks against shiites, pilgrims from Iran, car bombs and suicide bombers inside protected areas, beyond check points...
According to the NYT's, US troops are withdrawing on schedule except for Mosul-who wants to stop this withdrawal?
The tremendous violence has ONE political impetus-too much chaos, and the US will stay....So, Motive-Who wants the US to stay Iraq, to see Iranians killed, and, in fact, pushed us into the occupation/war in the first place? Means-who has the explosives, the people, the intelligence and capability, Opportunity-Who could get inside those protected, secured areas? Leave cars full of bombs where Iranian Pilgrims and Shia gather?
In my humble opinion, one powerful powerful entity has means motive and opportunity to perpetrate these acts.... And they are not from Iraq. Just a humble pov, peace to all.
Can someone explain to me, because the MSM never seems to at all, who exactly is setting off the bombs and killing innocent people? Why are Iraqis killing other Iraqis instead of US military?
So long as there is oil in Iraq, we will continue to plant bombs and make it seem like we need to stay there. FALSE-FLAG OPERATIONS, my friend. The Zionist media keeps telling us that they are "suicide bombings". Yeah, OK. And the two eggs and banana between my legs are breakfast!
STOP MEDIA CONTROL!!!
Baghdad Violence Worst in Year
Guess that means we have to stay another 25 years and save the poor poor Iraqis from themselves. How will Obysmal phrase this?
The evidence presented in the article contradicts Obama's assertion civil deaths are lower than a year ago, as well as Sec of State Clinton's assertion civil stability is afoot.
Also, the accuracy of Obama's pledge for troop withdrawal was recently challenged by Jeremy Scahill. linked here, http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/28-7
"Relations between the militia's members and Iraq's Shiite-led government are at an all-time high."
What?
Does this sentence mean that Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq are having more sex with each other?
q
Most US government officials seem to believe that we need to "stay the course" in Iraq and Afghanistan, if only to give meaning to the soldiers we've lost and the havoc we've wrought. I can understand that position. Trouble is, nothing good will come out of any war of aggression.
In the case of Iraq, our days of looting their natural resources are numbered, no matter what we do. Iraqis are a proud people with 10,000 years of documented political history under their belt...they won't be fooled by meaningless gestures, and they won't be intimidated by our arsenal, as they know that we are fast losing our political capital/clout because of our reckless, mindless escapade in their country. They know that soon enough, we will run out of cards to play, and they will show us the door. They will overthrow the puppet governments we've installed, and they will exercise self-determination...10,000 years! America is only 200 years old...One can still smell the similac on our national breath.
In the case of Afghanistan, where I hear we are trying to secure and control a pipeline route, we are destined to fail as well, because, as in the case with Iraq, we misrepresent our true motives, which are unacceptable to the indigenous people, and wrong-headedly push "forward", against all logic and intelligent assessments. The Russians, for example, did not fail in Afghanistan because of tactical errors. They failed because Afghanistan comes across as impossible to conquer and hold...a people's history matters, trust me. Afghanistan, Iraq, are not Grenada or Panama. They are civilizations advanced in the art of defending their territory.
I hope that we abandon our dreams of empire as relates to Iraq and Afghanistan...to save lives, on all sides, and to save face...whatever is left of the latter.
Whatever happened to leaving people the f**k alone? Damn, man, we're out killing every day of the week for almost a decade, now. It's time we turn our backs on the violence and the lawlessness...and the FALSE-FLAG operations. The world thursts for a more peaceful, more logical course from the only standing superpower...superpower does not mean "undisputed"...this is not boxing. People will not lie down and play dead because we can light up the night sky. They know that only bravery, balls and one more ball will, in the end, spell security for their children.
Violence can ruin your whole day!
Peace forward!
barackstar: "... civilian deaths ... remain very low compared to what was going on last year." although not in the same category as thomas more's grammar school style play on words, it is a play on words nonetheless.
and last evening's news conference devoted seven minutes to the torture scenario, brushing it aside so we could get to more important topics such as enchantment. if his glow had not begun to fade before last evening's comedy hour, then it certainly will beginning today. disgusting.
meanwhile, across the pond, gordon brown told reporters, regarding british troop withdrawal, that "today iraq is a success story. we owe much of that to the efforts of british troops." like swine flu, the play on words seems to be contagious. some just have a more serious case than others.
This war will go on as it has from the beginning. What do we do, stay there forever, because the Itaqis are still in the same mindset. We are not going to change anything. except the lives of those who have lost loved ones.
Re: title of the article.
Of course Obama is "wrong" on Iraq! That's his job, to put a happy face on situations that he cannot or is not willing to change. Just as it's job to say happy face things about glimmers of hope in the tanking economy so that people will borrow more money to buy more things (it's called consumer confidence) and thus "improve" the economy. Plus he has, of course, his own "approval ratings" to worry about.
Has some right wing asshole taken over Common Dreams? This is still Bush and Cheney's war.
Looks like the surge wasn't really the success John McCain told us it was back in early September 2008. Judging from the polls at the time most Americans believed him.
Fortunately the US economic meltdown occurred in late September. Had the meltdown occurred in November, McCain's image as the prophetic champion of the surge would have landed him and Sarah in the white house.
Was it Jay Leno who said that what Senator McCain meant to say was that the [splurge] worked....