Bombings in Baghdad kill scores
April 18, 2007

Bombers in Baghdad on Wednesday killed 171 people in a series of attacks, including 122 in a strike at the Sadriya market. Ninety-four others were wounded when a car detonated at the market, an Interior Ministry official told CNN.

Link

__________________
"Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness."

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)

Hey Johhny McDumbass... wanna head back over and walk around now? Jackass. I love how it comes out later that he had snipers and armed guards everywhere... what a total tool.

__________________
"i live my life in the city"

Plus three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships overhead. I'd feel pretty safe too.

What a fiasco.

__________________
"Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness."

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)

Since you ask (bet you didn't expect to get an answer, didja?):

• Mooky al Sadir has been increasingly marginalized and his coalition has begun to crumble.
• Over 700 members of The Mahdi Army have been killed.
• Numerous signs of reconciliations have emerged between Shia and Sunni sects.
• Joint Security Stations and Joint Combat Outposts have been established throughout Baghdad.
• Anbar, Salahaddin, and Diyala provinces have experienced successful "Clear and Hold" operations destroying al Queda cells.
• PM Maliki, along with several Interior Ministers and the National Security Advisor met with the Anbar Provincial Council in Ramadi and reconstruction projects have begun.

But you probably already knew about that, right? Talking with soldiers coming back from Iraq, reading mil.bloggers, e-mailing boots on the ground, stuff like that, right? I can tell from your in-depth analysis that doesn't sound at all like crime blotter/MSM skimming of stories filed by drunks at the Palestine Hotel Bar.

Yes, John McCain is a jackass. But you do realize that he's an incredibly high value target and to send a U.S. Senator and (at that time) likely POTUS Candidate out on the streets without high security would have drawn much louder caterwauling from liberals than providing him with the secure situation he was afforded?

__________________
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? - Psalm 27:1

Yup, things are going so swimmingly in Iraq that the U.S. has decided to partition Baghdad with a wall separating Shia from Sunni.

Briliant!

What's really going on in Iraq? Dig a little deeper...

Since you brought up Maliki...

As for the troops on the ground, tell me, how do they like having their tours of duty extended to 15 months by the President? I mean, really. We are in the middle of a religous civil war. Our men and women over in Iraq deserve better than being stuck in the middle of this insane blood bath.

I'm glad we agree on McCain being a jackass, but his "Baghdad Market" charade was a deceitful lie. Good luck, Johnny Boy.

__________________
"Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness."

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)

Because statistically, a bomb that may kill 120 people or more is one terrorist/separist/insurgent act, not 120.
Yes, the people are still just as dead, but it's the equivelent of saying we were attack 2,970 times on 9-11.

Our goal in Iraq isn't to install Maliki as permanant PM. It's to establish a stable democracy capable of defending itself against al Queda attacks. If his popularity wanes, and he's replaced by a more popular PM who can better create a coalition of Iraqis, so much the better.

Since most of them were going to sign up for another tour anyway, it doesn't seem to make that much difference to most of them. They don't tend to view it as a civil war or being "stuck" either.

John McCain never had a chance in the primaries, so anything contributing to his political demise is a non-issue. A political opportunist with no abiding values other than "Whatever's better for John politically."

__________________
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? - Psalm 27:1

While I tend to be sensitive to most of your arguments, I think this goal is unrealistic. Iraq is not going to be a democracy the way we hope. Its "constitution" already contains clauses that no law can controvert Islam. Shari'a is inherently incompatible with democracy. Know many democracies in Muslim majority countries? And anyway, what makes Shia terrorists better than al Qaeda?

I wish it were going to happen, but democracy can't be exported like a McDonald's.

It depends on what your exact goal is. Can Iraq become New Hampshire? No way. Can it become a poor man's Turkey/Turkmenistan/Kyrgistan? Possibly. That's what we can hope for.
You may be absolutely right. My fear is that you are. The idea that sharia/or even Islam isn't going to be compatible or even be able to co-exist with Civilized Western Democracies.
God forbid what the solution will be if we ever realize that. I'm willing to try a lot to avoid that level of confrontation.

__________________
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? - Psalm 27:1

Al Qaeda isn't really the issue, except as a White House talking point. The problem is the resistance of the Sunnis -- with whom al Qaeda is allied -- to rule by the majority Shiites. If the Sunnis could accommodate themselves to that fact, al Qaeda would have nothing to do and would lose its local backing and protection.

A stable democracy is more than elections. The better part of democracy (American style) is the forebearance that preserves the rights of the minority no matter what the majority wants. I don't see Iraq having anything more than a simple dictatorship of the majority.

That's not worth the lives or expense. It was just a disastrous decision to go to Iraq from day 1.