Tuesday, December 8, 2009

121 Killed In Baghdad Bombings

The beginning of the end of the US presence in Iraq is providing us with a bit of a preview of what we can expect. Baghdad bombings:

A series of devastating car bombings rocked Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 121 people and wounding hundreds more, according to preliminary accounts by witnesses, the police and hospital officials. Five bombs in all, including at least three suicide attacks, struck near a college, a court complex in western Baghdad, a mosque and a market and a neighborhood near the Interior Ministry in what appeared to be a coordinated assault on the capital.

[. . .] The attacks came as Iraq’s Presidency Council announced a date — March 6 — for the country’s long-delayed parliamentary elections. [. . .] Many victims linked the attacks to the protracted political jockeying over holding the election, which was originally scheduled for January. “Are we cursed?” yelled a young woman near the mosque that was struck in Qahira, in northeast Baghdad. She had burns over her arms and legs. “When will we be finished with this election issue?”

(Emphasis supplied.) Of course elections are not the issue. Power is. The struggle between Sunni and Shia, and different factions of Sunni and Shia, will continue long after the US is gone.

That is Iraq's future.

No comments: