BAGHDAD, Feb. 27 -- Grisly attacks and other sectarian violence unleashed by last week's bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine have killed more than 1,300 Iraqis, making the past few days the deadliest of the war outside of major U.S. offensives, according to Baghdad's main morgue. The toll was more than three times higher than the figure previously reported by the U.S. military and the news media.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/27/AR2006022701128.htmlBAGHDAD, Iraq - Sunnis and Shiites traded bombings and mortar fire against mainly religious targets in Baghdad well into the night Tuesday, killing at least 68 people a day after authorities lifted a curfew that had briefly calmed a series of sectarian reprisal attacks.
At least six of Tuesday's attacks hit clearly religious targets, concluding with a car bombing after sundown at the Shiite Abdel Hadi Chalabi mosque in the Hurriyah neighborhood that killed 23 and wounded 55. A separate suicide bombing killed 23 people at an east Baghdad gas station, where people had lined up to buy kerosine.
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Separately and in an unusual move, the government issued a statement declaring that 379 people had been killed and 458 wounded as of 4 p.m. Tuesday in the sectarian violence tied to the Askariya bombing.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that more than 1,300 people were killed in the reprisal attacks. The Cabinet statement, however, said "what was reported in a foreign newspaper were inaccurate and exaggerated numbers of victims."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060301/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_060228211652Let's start with the Washington Post story which attributes the death count to witnesses at the Baghdad morgue -- 1300 people killed over about five days. To put it to scale, this would be like well more than 13,000 Americans killed in less than a week by random terroristic murders with no apparent political or strategic goal in mind other than revenge and a lust for anarchy.
Perish that thought, and go along with the Iraqi government and ratchet down the body count to a mere 379 -- the equivalent of 4000 Americans wasted in utterly senseless violence over the course of a long and insane weekend.
Add 68 more stiffs to the pile today. And counting.
Keep in mind that the abattoire that is Baghdad has been under American "control" for 34 months; the current violence provoked a lockdown of the entire city in the form of a "daylight curfew."
Think about that a moment, the whole city put under house arrest. And hundreds of murders take place anyway.
The fretting headlines in the USA wonder whether this will "lead" to "civil war." Contrary to what most of the anti-Bush majority is saying about this situation, I do not think that this is civil war or likely to lead to it.
This, properly understood, is chaos -- a general failure of law and order. Instead of disciplined organizations vying for control of the state or the creation of a new state, you have tens of thousands of bloody minded individuals going berserk with rage and hate in the absence of any credible deterrent from either the Americans or the Iraqi "state" that was "elected" last year by purple pinkie waving citizens eager for liberal democracy.
This nightmare could go on for years -- so long as the civilian population is armed and Saddam's old arsenal of ordinance has melted into the urban landscape, there is nothing to stop the madness other than the eventual fatigue of the murderers, terrorists and assorted lunatics currently running amok.
And the hell of that is this: even as the level of madness waxes and wanes over the months, there is always some new outrage coming to reignite the passion and the blood lust.
Eventually, the citizenry of Iraq will have to be disarmed, on a house to house basis. The campaign will be a nightmare when it finally takes place, but what else is going to reestablish order?
More and more people are catching on that the Bush Administration has no idea of what to do about this failed state that it has created. Unfortunately, the genius of Bush's stupidity has been to get "us" stuck in a spot where unless "we" arrange that house to house oppression of the whole country, it ain't gonna happen.
Things are still looking up for all the contractors making billions off the remaking of Iraq into a Model Democracy.
Once Bush's dopey babbling and Cheney's profane grunting are removed from the stage of history, the problem of CHAOS in Iraq will still be present -- and somebody is going to have to make the decision to let the Sadr militia morph into the new Baath Party or to do something to prevent that eventuality.
Preventing it means MORE troops rather than less. Preventing it means MORE American casualties, probably running well into 5 figures of dead and 6 figures of wounded.
Letting it happen means letting Iraq become exactly the kind of "threat" it was before we started fucking with it in 1990 when Saddam marched into Kuwait.
Anybody got a more plausible yet less bleak prognostication?
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