Iraqis stubbornly fail to accede to Bobo’s declaration of Mission Accomplished
While David Brooks may have been busy earlier this week publishing the latest “Mission Accomplished” screed in the pages of the New York Times, Reality continues to rear its ugly head, suggesting that whatever improvements teh Surge may have accomplished, they are not enough to justify the level of gratuitous mutual dick-sucking Brooks and other war advocates have engaged in to celebrate the perceived vindication of their costly and still-ruinous war:
Two insurgent bomb blasts struck at pro-American Iraqi targets in Anbar province just west of Baghdad and in the northern city of Mosul on Thursday, and the police said at least 30 people were killed and 80 wounded.
Iraqi police officials said three American marines were among the dead in the Anbar attack, which came just as the American military command was preparing to hand control of the province, once considered the hotbed of the insurgency, over to Iraqi forces.
The bombings extended a pattern of multiple-casualty attacks in recent days that are clearly intended to kill local Iraqi leaders, in particular those who are believed to have collaborated with American forces against insurgents.
Yes, thanks to what Brooks called Bush’s “courageous and astute decision” in Iraq, we’re standing at the brink of victory in Iraq, it is said. Unfortunately Kamil al-Showaili, a judge on one of Iraq’s top two appeals courts, won’t be there to see it:
Top judge assassinated in Baghdad
A leading Iraqi judge has been ambushed and shot dead by gunmen in Baghdad.
Kamil al-Showaili, head of one of the capital’s two appeals courts, was driving home in the east of the city when the attack happened.
Police said masked assailants used two vehicles to block the judge’s path, before opening fire and driving away.
Mr Showaili, who was in his 50s, was one of the country’s most important judges, charged with handing criminal cases for eastern Baghdad.
Imagine if a US Supreme Court Justice was gunned down by assassins, and you get the picture.
And the day following Brooks’ triumphalist wankery, four Americans were killed at a meeting in Sadr City:
Ten people, including two US government workers and two US soldiers, were killed yesterday when a bomb went off at a council meeting in the Baghdad stronghold of the Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Six Iraqis died and 10 were wounded in the attack on a local authority building in Sadr City. The US military blamed the bombing on renegade Shia militias called “special groups” – jargon for rogue elements of Mr Sadr’s Mehdi Army that America claims is supported by Iran. Tehran denies the charges.
To top things off, the GAO report casts doubt on the ability of Iraqi forces to act independent of US military support. More than a year after the surge was announced, it’s been so successful that we’re more committed to continuing our occupation than we were before its started, and have yet to withdraw all the forces committed to increase our troop presence.
