Iraq Shiite 75 others killed in bomb blast

[FoundingFathers]

More from hell on earth (Iraq).... :devil1:



Bomb Explosion in Najaf; Hospital Reports 75 Dead
Among the Dead is Shiite Cleric
By Michael Georgy
Reuters
Friday, August 29, 2003; 1:56 PM


NAJAF, Iraq - A car bombing killed 75 Iraqis, including a top Shiite Muslim leader, Friday in an apparent assassination that dealt another blow to the U.S. occupation and left carnage at the holiest shrine of Shiism.



The blast tore through worshipers as they streamed away from Friday prayers in the Imam Ali mosque in the holy city of Najaf. It was the worst such atrocity in Iraq since the U.S.-led war toppled Saddam Hussein in April.

In the aftermath, Iraqis burrowed into rubble strewn with body parts in a hunt for survivors. Volunteers screaming "God is Great" pulled out a severed foot and dug frantically around a deep crater filled with twisted metal and stinking black water.

Some supporters of the slain Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, 63, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), blamed Saddam loyalists.

But some commentators pointed to bitter faction-fighting among Iraq's long-repressed Shiite majority that has raged in Najaf since the end of the war.

Hakim was for many the leading Shiite figure in Iraq and his cooperation with the U.S.-led administration through its Governing Council was seen as crucial to U.S. efforts to stabilize the country and install democratic rule.

"We have at least 75 dead and that could go up to 80 because of severe injuries. There are 142 wounded," Dr Safaa al-Aneedi, director of the Najaf teaching hospital, told Reuters.

Three gutted cars lay in the street by the mosque. Some witnesses said there had been more than one explosion.

Witnesses said Hakim had been about to drive away from Friday prayers when the blast destroyed his car.

A U.S. military spokesman confirmed there had been a bomb. "No coalition forces were in the area or on the ground because it is considered to be sacred ground," he said.

POWER STRUGGLE

The attack is the latest in a series of bloody incidents in Najaf, several of them aimed at religious leaders of the Shiite branch of Islam followed by a majority of Iraqis.

Sunday, three men were killed in a bombing that injured Hakim's uncle, also a cleric associated with SCIRI. Some SCIRI supporters blamed that bomb on a rival Shiite leader opposed to the presence of foreign troops in Iraq.

The Shiite power struggle in Najaf is viewed as one of the keys to the future of Iraq. Washington is keen to discourage those Shiite leaders who favor Islamic clerical rule like that of Shiite Iran, where many lived in exile during Saddam's rule.

With many Iraqis belonging to Saddam's once dominant Sunni Arab minority or to other ethnic and religious groups like Kurds and Christians, the prospect of domination by the 60 percent Shiite majority is one that many regard with anxiety.

"There is a very serious chance that what we are entering here is a Shiite civil war akin to what happened in Iran in 1979-1980 with rival factions jockeying for power," said Ali Ansari, an expert on Iran at Britain's Durham University.

"The repercussions within the Shiite community will be problematic for the British because they are in control of the south."

Hamid al-Bayati, SCIRI's London representative, said: "It could be either Saddam loyalists using new techniques such as remote control or even suicide bombs, or it could be another extreme group.

"We proposed to the allies a long time ago ... to have a special security organization to protect the holy places and the religious scholars," he said.

"The allies did not respond to this proposal."

At the scene, some called for a stronger American presence around holy places where a few months ago Shiites demonstrated to keep the troops away.

"The world is going to be turned upside down after this. This is our holiest site," said Qusay Jaber. "If the Americans don't secure our sites, anything is possible. We will stage an uprising."

Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim was tortured under Saddam's rule and spent more than 20 years in exile in Iran before returning to Iraq earlier this year after the U.S.-led victory over Saddam.

"We deplore this horrible act of terrorist violence," said a White House official. "We will not be deterred in our efforts to help the Iraqi people rebuild their country and establish a representative democratic government."

U.S. TROOPS AMBUSHED

Further north, guerrillas ambushed a U.S. military convoy with rocket-propelled grenades Friday, killing a soldier and wounding three others amid growing calls for a United Nations force to pacify the country.

A U.S. Army spokesman said the six-vehicle convoy was attacked on a main road near the town of Baquba, part of the so-called "Sunni Triangle" north and west of Baghdad which is a bastion of anti-occupation sentiment.

With the Bush administration signaling for the first time it might agree to a U.N.-sponsored multinational force in Iraq, the United States and Britain are expected to explore a new U.N. resolution to encourage nations to send troops.

In Britain, an opinion poll Friday showed support for Prime Minister Tony Blair had plunged during the controversy surrounding the suicide of a weapons expert caught up in a row between the BBC and the government over the Iraq war.

Blair's much-criticized media spokesman Alastair Campbell announced his resignation Friday.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63157-2003Aug29.html

[FoundingFathers]

The topic of conversation among the American youth is last night's MTV
music award. Our youth watch the glamorization of people with low morals, criminal records, foul language, anti-social behavior, sex obsessions, and medicore talent. This was typified by the performance of Madonna, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera - who interupted their singing to get in some "tonguing".

Richard Russell is dead on.

[FoundingFathers]

Fistfuls of Dollars
By PAUL KRUGMAN


t's all coming true. Before the war, hawks insisted that Iraq was a breeding ground for terrorism. It wasn't then, but it is now. Meanwhile, administration apologists blamed terrorists, not tax cuts, for record budget deficits. In fact, before the war terrorism-related spending was relatively small — less than $40 billion in fiscal 2002. But the costs of a "bring 'em on" foreign policy are now looming large indeed.

The direct military cost of the occupation is $4 billion a month, and there's no end in sight. But that's only part of the bill.

This week Paul Bremer suddenly admitted that Iraq would need "several tens of billions" in aid next year. That remark was probably aimed not at the public but at his masters in Washington; he apparently needed to get their attention.

It's no mystery why. The Coalition Provisional Authority, which has been operating partly on seized Iraqi assets, is about to run out of money. Initial optimism about replenishing the authority's funds with oil revenue has vanished: even if sabotage and looting subside, the dilapidated state of the industry means that for several years much of its earnings will have to be reinvested in repair work.

At a deeper level, the wobbling credibility of the occupation undermines that occupation's financing. American officials still hope to raise money by selling off state-owned enterprises to foreign investors, though they have backed off on proposals to sell power plants and other utilities. But after the bombing of U.N. headquarters, who will buy? Officials have also floated the idea of pledging future oil revenues in return for loans, but it's far from clear whether an occupying power has the right to make such deals, let alone whether they would be honored by whoever is running Iraq a few years from now.

So Mr. Bremer was telling his masters that they can no longer fake it: he needs money, now.

The biggest cost of the Iraq venture, however, may not be Mr. Bremer's problem; it may not even come in Iraq. Our commitment of large forces there creates the need for a bigger military, even as it degrades the effectiveness of our existing forces.

These days it's hard to find a military expert not reporting to Donald Rumsfeld who thinks we have enough soldiers in Iraq. But to those who say, "Send in more troops," the answer is, "What troops?"

Gen. Eric Shinseki, then the Army's chief of staff, prophetically warned that the postwar occupation would require more soldiers than the war itself. In his farewell address he made a broader point, that if we're going to do this sort of thing, we need a bigger military: "Beware the 12-division strategy for a 10-division Army."

The rule of thumb, according to military experts, is that except during crises, only one brigade in three should be deployed abroad. Yet today 21 of the Army's 33 combat brigades are deployed overseas, 16 of them in Iraq. This puts enormous stress on the troops, who find that they have only brief periods of rest and retraining between the times spent in harm's way. For example, most of a brigade of the 82nd Airborne that is about to go to Iraq returned from Afghanistan only six months ago.

So unless we can somehow extricate ourselves from Iraq quickly, or persuade other countries to bear a lot more of the burden, we need a considerably bigger military. And that means spending a lot more money.

For now, the administration is in denial. "There will be no retreat," President Bush says — Churchillian words, but where are the resources to back them up?

Mr. Rumsfeld won't admit that we need more troops in Iraq or anywhere else. We could use help from other countries, but it's doubtful whether the administration will accept the kind of meaningful power-sharing that might lead to a new Security Council resolution on Iraq, which might in turn bring in allied forces.

Still, even the government of a superpower can't simultaneously offer tax cuts equal to 15 percent of revenue, provide all its retirees with prescription drugs and single-handedly take on the world's evildoers — single-handedly because we've alienated our allies. In fact, given the size of our budget deficit, it's not clear that we can afford to do even one of these things. Someday, when the grown-ups are back in charge, they'll have quite a mess to clean up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/29/opinion/29KRUG.html?ex=1062734400&en=8b12a8616802612e&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

[Tachyon Flare]

Pictures From The Bomb Site At Najaf:

http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?p=najaf&n=100&c=news_photos (http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?p=najaf&n=100&c=news_photos)

[Libertarian_Guard]

It's time to play pass the hot potato to the U.N. then blame them for not finishing the job. But seriously at this point the whole Iraqi situation will only resolve itself after a civil war, and what a mess that would be, with neighbors in all directions claiming to have a vested intrest not willing to remain on the sidelines.

[helpful_monkey]

... with neighbors in all directions claiming to have a vested intrest not willing to remain on the sidelines...

Bingo. Total War. Richard Perle's wet dream.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/images/0208/68abc427f59d8815a6ef.jpeg