Iraq deputy PM wounded in suicide attack

Fri Mar 23, 2007 10:06AM EDT

By Waleed Ibrahim

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zobaie, a leading Sunni Arab politician, was wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a hall where he was attending prayers on Friday.

Officials said at least six members of Zobaie's entourage were killed in the second assassination bid on a senior member of the U.S.-backed government in a month.

One of Zobaie's aides named the suicide bomber as Wahab Saadi, one of the deputy prime minister's own guards.

"He's wounded but it's not serious," an official in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's office told Reuters after Maliki visited Zobaie at the U.S. military hospital in Baghdad's international Green Zone.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSPAR34073020070323

I mean, like, the surge isn't working as we'd hoped.

Or, is this some sign that the insurgents are now so desperate that they'll kill anyone -- an indication that they're in their last throes? (Surely Cheney can tell me how to think about this.)

You would think that his own security team would be heavily screened for loyalty, and vetted - but it was still compromised? If they can't guarantee "insurgents" haven't infiltrated the damn secret service, what can they guarantee?

That's an incredible fact right there.