Gunman Abduct 21 in Baghdad
BAGHDAD, July 31--Gunmen wearing what appeared to be the camouflaged uniforms of Iraqi soldiers descended on two commercial offices in downtown Baghdad Monday and abducted at least 21 people, including the director of an Iraqi-American trade group, according to police and witnesses.
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The attack on Monday began after 10:00 a.m. Gunmen arrived in a convoy of SUVs at a popular shopping district of Karradah and stormed the headquarters of the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce and Industry. They captured the chamber director Raad Omar; the head of the sales department, Majid Hameed; and the director of the maintenance department, Noman Munthir Al-Khatib, among others, according to Dowaa Mohammed, the organization's head of human resources.
In total, at least seven people, including three security guards, were kidnapped at the office, said Sarmed Saif, a Baghdad police officer who witnessed the abduction.
More mayhem, below
At Least 23 Killed in Ambush
At Least 23 Killed in Ambush Near Baghdad
Gunmen Descend on 3 Minibuses, Shoot Occupants; Military Reports Deaths of 4 Marines in West
By Andy Mosher and Saad al-Izzi
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 31, 2006; Page A11
BAGHDAD, July 30 -- Gunmen killed at least 23 Iraqis on Sunday on a highway south of Baghdad, commandeering three minibuses and herding their occupants into nearby palm groves, where they were lined up and shot, according to police and a witness.
The ambush occurred about 10 miles south of Baghdad where two major highways intersect near the town of al-Rasheed. The witness, Mohammed Mohan al-Janabi, said at least 15 masked gunmen positioned themselves Sunday morning on both sides of the expressway that links western and southern Iraq.
I know that some in the media think we have moved on to a new set of images of war. Iraq is so, yesterday. Or, as Frank Rich put it in his piece The Peculiar Disappearance of the War in Iraq:
AS America fell into the quagmire of Vietnam, the comedian Milton Berle joked that the fastest way to end the war would be to put it on the last-place network, ABC, where it was certain to be canceled. Berle's gallows humor lives on in the quagmire in Iraq. Americans want this war canceled too, and first- and last-place networks alike are more than happy to oblige.
.....
The steady falloff in Iraq coverage isn't happenstance. It's a barometer of the scope of the tragedy. For reporters, the already apocalyptic security situation in Baghdad keeps getting worse, simply making the war more difficult to cover than ever. The audience has its own phobia: Iraq is a bummer. "It is depressing to pay attention to this war on terror," said Fox News's Bill O'Reilly on July 18. "I mean, it's summertime." Americans don't like to lose, whatever the season. They know defeat when they see it, no matter how many new plans for victory are trotted out to obscure that reality.
The specter of defeat is not the only reason Americans have switched off Iraq. The larger issue is that we don't know what we -- or, more specifically, 135,000 brave and vulnerable American troops -- are fighting for. In contrast to the Israel-Hezbollah war, where the stakes for the combatants and American interests are clear, the war in Iraq has no rationale to keep it afloat on television or anywhere else. It's a big, nightmarish story, all right, but one that lacks the thread of a coherent plot.
Or a coherent rationale.
Supporting the troops means keeping Iraq front and center. They can't change the dial. Neither can we.
