Car Bomb at Iraq Police Station Kills 17

Car Bomb at Iraq Police Station Kills 17

By Sameer N. Yacoub
The Associated Press
Sunday, December 14, 2003; 10:54 AM


KHALDIYAH, Iraq - A suspected suicide bomber detonated explosives in a car outside a police station Sunday morning west of Baghdad, killing at least 17 people and wounding 33 more, the U.S. military said.

U.S. troops arriving on the scene blocked off the area and two helicopters hovered overhead. U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police later surveyed the site of the blast, which left a huge crater in the road and collapsed a large section of the building's front wall. Several destroyed cars were scattered in the street nearby.

An emergency room administrator at a hospital in the nearby city of Ramadi put the toll even higher, at 21 people killed and more than 20 injured. Many victims were Iraqi police officers and workers who were sweeping the street outside the district police office, said hospital administrator Haitham Bahar Taha.

No American soldiers were in the area when the bomb exploded and none were hurt in the blast, the U.S. military said.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63252-2003Dec14.html

:eyes:

As the violence continues, or perhaps worsens, the American people will have to face the facts of what the war is really about. American is imposing its rule upon an unwilling nation for geopolitical advantage and economic control of scarce resources. It is not the sort of thing we like to think of ourselves as doing. Iraq can be pacified, but at a great cost. We will have to be every bit as despotic as the dictator we just captured.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=268425

If you look at the original thread, you see this was news before Saddam's capture was announced.

around the same time or shortly after Saddam was captured, but before anybody knew about the capture.

According to reporters on the scene, the crater was massive and a burnt out vehicle nearby that was said to have been the source of the explosion clearly wasn't.

NPR reported - and this is kind of scary - on the paranoia these people are experiencing. The surviving cops - the people who had just lost 17 comrades - were blaming the attack not on Fedayeen but on American troops trying to finegle a reason to continue to occupy the town. Now obviously that's bullshit, but what kind of mentality produces such thoughts?