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Thursday, January 05, 2006

Here's what a Neo-Con Foreign Policy means in practice

As the likes of Oliver Kamm engage in pedantic arguments over what Chomsky did or didn't say about an event which happened over ten years ago- here's a timely reminder of what happens when neo-conservatives do get their way.
ps I have visited several pro-war webblogs and none of them cover today's events. Harry's Place prefers to post on Paris Hilton and Celebrity Big Brother...

More than 100 people were killed in Iraq today as extreme violence continued for a second successive day.
A suicide bomber detonated his explosives in central Kerbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, near one of the country's holiest Shia sites.
The blast, by the Imam Hussein shrine killed at least 49 people and injured 138. The bomber appeared to have sparked the blast around 30 metres from the shrine in a busy pedestrian area surrounded by shops.
A second suicide bomber blew himself up amid a group of police and army recruits in the western city of Ramadi, killing at least 50 people and wounding more than 70.
Ramadi, the capital of the semi-lawless Anbar province, is a base for the Sunni Arab-led insurgency. US and Iraqi troops have launched a series of offensives in the city over the past few months with the aim of securing western Iraq against the insurgents.
Elsewhere, a roadside bomb south of Kerbala hit a US convoy, killing five soldiers, Iraqi police Captain Rahim Slaho said. The US military refused to comment.
Another roadside bomb killed two US soldiers and two civilians and wounded seven near Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, police said. In Baghdad, a suicide car bomb killed three Iraqi soldiers, Lieutenantt Colonel Thamir al-Gharawi said. Police also reported that gunmen had killed three people in separate incidents.
The Kerbala bomber detonated a vest with about 8kg (17.5lbs) of explosives and several hand grenades, Mr Taie said. Small steel balls that had been packed into the bomber's vest were found at the site along with one unexploded grenade.
According to the US military, the Ramadi bomb exploded at 10.55am (0755 GMT) near the Ramadi glass and ceramics works "where screening for Iraqi police officers was taking place". Kerbala has been relatively free of violence since December 2004, when seven people were killed and 31 wounded in an attack.
In March 2004, coordinated explosions and suicide bombings at the city's holy sites killed at least 85 people and wounded 230.
The blasts happened during the Ashura festival - which marks the seventh century killing of Imam Hussein - as hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and other Shia communities visited the shrines.
They were also centred around the golden-domed shrine where Imam Hussein is buried. Many pilgrims travel to Kerbala on Thursdays to be at the holy site for Friday prayers.
Today's bombings followed a series of attacks in which at least 53 people were killed around Iraq yesterday. The victims included 32 people killed by a suicide bomber at a Shia funeral in Muqdadiya, a town around 60 miles north of Baghdad.
The Guardian 5th January 2006

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I assume your application to join the insurgents and start slaughtering Iraqi citizens for being the wrong kind of Muslim is in the post? Sauce for the goose, and everything...

Anonymous said...

You cannot call yourself a socialist, as Kamm tries to do, and write for The Times. You can tell the truth and admit to being an arse-licking scab, but you can't call yourself a socialist...

Happy New Year, by the way.