Reports are coming in as I write of seven suicide bombs in Baghdad this morning with a death toll that is already over one hundred and is certain to rise, with over two hundred injured.
A suicide car bomber strikes as bulding workers gather to find work shortly after dawn in the heavily Shiite neighbourhood of Kazimiyah in north Baghdad, killing at least 88 people and wounding 162. Meanwhile the BBC reports that, during the night, gunmen killed 17 people in the nearby town of Taji after dragging them from their homes and shooting them in the street outside. Now there are reports of attacks upon the Green Zone and against US convoys. Up to eleven blasts have been reported so far.
Sectarian violence is the convenient cry of the mainstream media, as if these non-white, olive skinned Muslim arabs deserve their own fate.
Meanwhile, Al Quaeda has just posted on a web site that these bombings are part of a series of attacks that they are instigating in revenge for the massive 8,500-strong Iraqi-U.S. force that has struck at Tal Afar near the Syrian border, followed by the launching of an attack on the Euphrates River town of Haditha and American air strikes in the same region near Qaim, also near the Syrian border.
Don't ask me to explain quite what these Baghdad bombings are truly all about, what they mean and how they can be sorted out. I do not have the information and I cannot listen anymore to the ludicrous statements of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani as he wanders around the USA talking of it being possible to pull out 50,000 US troops without any explanation as to how this can be done without further endangering the security of the people, his people, all the citizens of Iraq whom he is supposed to represent.
I will not learn if I listen to the White House and the Pentagon and their script written to fulfil the neocon Straussian "Noble Lie" that started this ignoble war.
I will not learn it from my TV, radio or television. The bombers of your air force, and maybe ours, have been darkening the skies and three and half thousand of your troops have been engaged with five thousand Iraqis these last few days in attacking towns from which many thousands of civilians appear to have not been evacuated. Another Fallujah but, as I wrote three days ago, where are the reporters, where are the accounts as to what is truly happening on the ground in some of the fiercest fighting since "Mission Accomplished" was first pronounced?
All I am seeing is statements being issued from Baghdad and reported by journalists who, out of fear or military prevention, cannot witness the truth of what is happening on the Syrian border. Nothing seems to be coming from the Pentagon. Because the Iraqi government is in charge, right? The buck does not stop at Bush because it does not reach Bush, right?
I am even getting confused from reading Daily Kos. Armando's friend, and therefore my friend, on a front-page diary here tells me "...don't be afraid to cheer and wave flags and blow kisses" to our troops to avoid an accusation that my detestation of what is happening in Iraq is translated by some as being that I have no concern for the lives of our young men and women charged with pursuing this illegal war.
Let us be clear that hundreds of Iraqis have been killed in the bloodiest year since Bush proclaimed his victory. Let us also be clear about something else, before we get lost in the mire of the detailed debate about sectarian violence and rivalry and civil war amongst the people of this abused nation.
The most under-commented upon fact of the Iraqi invasion has been the deliberate rejection by Bush, before the invasion began, to ensure the security and safety of Iraqi citizens by deploying sufficient troops to that country. I have written on DKos in too many unnoticed diaries over the past months that every military college was teaching the model of Northern Ireland to determine the troop strength required in such a situation. It is a model that did not recommend the 90,000 troops that were sent. It did not recommend the 140,000 that are now there. The vast majority of military strategists, writing on urban insurgency at the time, used this one available real life model to calculate that at least 350,000 troops were required to secure the region in a manner that would have given safety to the citizens of Iraq.
Read the leaked Downing Street documents and see the British Government disbelief at the actual number that were proposed. Then consider that this number was only capable of being justified if you foresaw a situation where you attempted to control the country behind fortified and unassailable military bases, from which you led excursions to combat insurgency strongholds whilst leaving the civilians to cope as best they could with the violence that is now a part of their every day lives
Whilst the media have slowly woken up to the risks that were taken with the lives of the people of New Orleans by the slowness with which Bush responded to their need for security, expect no such gradual realisation in regard to Baghdad. The media will publish the same old chant. Don't blame the Federal Government of Iraq which is really the USA. Instead, blame the local Talabani government and the looters and rapists of the religiously divided factional infighting Iraqis.
Bush wasn't slow in responding to the needs of the citizens of Iraq. He has never responded at all
Don't worry. We are not keeping a headcount of civilian deaths.