Bombings kill more than 70 in Iraq

[Nikos]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/...iraq.violence/

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Suicide bombers in Iraq launched two deadly attacks Thursday, killing at least 45 people in Diyala province and at least 28 in Baghdad, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said. An attacker set off a suicide vest at a restaurant in Imam Wais, a Diyala provincial security official said. The area is about 43 miles (70 kilometers) northeast of Baquba, capital of the sprawling province that is north and east of Baghdad.
The Diyala bombing, which targeted Iranian pilgrims, also wounded 28, the Interior Ministry official said.
The Diyala security official said the pilgrims -- who had been visiting Shiite shrines -- stopped for lunch at the restaurant when the attack occurred.
Many pilgrims were among the casualties, and the restaurant collapsed after the bombing, the security official said.
In central Baghdad, a bomber clad in a suicide vest attacked a crowd of national police, killing 28 police and civilians and wounding 52. Police had been helping the Red Crescent distribute aid to displaced families in the Karrada district.
Despite the declining levels of violence in Iraq over recent months, the latest strikes reflect what appears to be a slight uptick from March to April of assaults on civilians, U.S. and Iraqi security forces, and the U.S.-backed militias called Awakening Councils or Sons of Iraq.

Hopefully Iraq isn't falling apart once again. What will come of these latest attacks? Are they just the last breath, or the beginning of a new reign of violence in Iraq?

[shadyrome]

When saddam was in charge, atleast these kind of things doesn't happen often.

[motiv-8]

When saddam was in charge, atleast these kind of things doesn't happen often.

Yeah, instead, hundreds of people were imprisoned, tortured, raped, or otherwise "disappeared" every month.

And by "every month" I mean months where Kurds and Shi'a groups weren't being slaughtered or displaced.

[shadyrome]

Yeah, instead, hundreds of people were imprisoned, tortured, raped, or otherwise "disappeared" every month.

And by "every month" I mean months where Kurds and Shi'a groups weren't being slaughtered or displaced.

Yea... And usa treat iraq people perfectly , am i right?

[motiv-8]

Yea... And usa treat iraq people perfectly , am i right?

A hell of a lot better than Saddam did.

Please, continue to type, and prove that you have no idea what you're talking about. Your method of arguing is already pedantic enough.

[shadyrome]

A hell of a lot better than Saddam did.

Please, continue to type, and prove that you have no idea what you're talking about. Your method of arguing is already pedantic enough.

So what did usa did then? beside protecting the oil's

[Erik]

Yeah, instead, hundreds of people were imprisoned, tortured, raped, or otherwise "disappeared" every month.

And by "every month" I mean months where Kurds and Shi'a groups weren't being slaughtered or displaced.

evidence?

[Captain Jin]

evidence?

Here.

Here.

The Baghdad Central Prison, formerly known as Abu Ghraib prison (Arabic: سجن أبو غريب‎; also Abu Ghurayb, meaning 'father of the raven' or 'Place of Ravens') is in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi city 32 km (20 mi) west of Baghdad.
In 2001 the prison is thought to have held as many as 15,000 inmates. Hundreds of Shi'a kurds and Iraqi citizens of Iranian ethnicity had reportedly been held there incommunicado and without charges since the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war. Guards fed shredded plastic to prisoners. There are allegations that some of these detainees were subjected to experiments as part of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons program.

As head of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, Uday oversaw the imprisonment and torture of Iraqi athletes who were deemed not to have performed to expectations. According to widespread reports, torturers beat and caned the soles of the football players' feet — inflicting intense pain without leaving visible marks on the rest of their bodies. Uday reportedly kept scorecards with written instructions on how many times each player should be beaten after a poor showing.[6] One defector reported that jailed football players were forced to kick a concrete ball after failing to reach the 1994 World Cup finals. Another defector claimed that athletes were dragged through a gravel pit and subsequently immersed in a sewage tank to induce infection in the victims' wounds.[7]

Allegedly kidnapping young Iraqi women from the streets in order to rape them. Uday was known to intrude on parties and otherwise "discover" women whom he would later rape. Time published an article in 2003 detailing his sexual brutality.[8] In one such instance, he accosted a young woman who was walking with her husband, where Uday said her husband was a nobody, despite him wearing a uniform showing him to be a captain in the Iraqi Army. Uday then ordered his men to grab the girl, to which her husband struck Uday in defense of his wife, and was apprehended by Uday's bodyguards. The wife was raped and later murdered, and the husband was sentenced to death for "high treason against Saddam".

Allegedly Uday beat an army officer unconscious when the man refused to allow him to dance with his wife; the man later died of his injuries. Uday also shot and killed an army officer who did not salute him

According to a new report, Hussein plotted in 2000 to assassinate a leader of an Iraqi opposition group. The report states Uday wanted to kill Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress.

Al-Anfal Campaign: In 1988, the Hussein regime began a campaign of extermination against the Kurdish people living in Northern Iraq. This is known as the Anfal campaign. The campaign was mostly directed at Shiite kurds (Faili Kurds) who sided with Iranians during the Iraq-Iran War. The attacks resulted in the death of at least 50,000 (some reports estimate as many as 100,000 people), many of them women and children. A team of Human Rights Watch investigators determined, after analyzing eighteen tons of captured Iraqi documents, testing soil samples and carrying out interviews with more than 350 witnesses, that the attacks on the Kurdish people were characterized by gross violations of human rights, including mass executions and disappearances of many tens of thousands of noncombatants, widespread use of chemical weapons including Sarin, mustard gas and nerve agents that killed thousands, the arbitrary imprisoning of tens of thousands of women, children, and elderly people for months in conditions of extreme deprivation, forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of villagers after the demolition of their homes, and the wholesale destruction of nearly two thousand villages along with their schools, mosques, farms, and power stations.[1][2]

In April 1991, after Saddam lost control of Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War, he cracked down ruthlessly against several uprisings in the Kurdish north and the Shia south. His forces committed wholesale massacres and other gross human rights violations against both groups similar to the violations mentioned before. Estimates of deaths during that time range from 20,000 to 100,000 for Kurds, and 60,000 to 130,000 for Shi'ites

In June 1994, the Hussein regime in Iraq established severe penalties, including amputation, branding and the death penalty for criminal offenses such as theft, corruption, currency speculation and military desertion, while government members and Saddam's family members were immune from punishments ranging around these crimes.

[mrmouth]

evidence?

"Along with other human rights organizations, The Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq has compiled documentation on over 600,000 civilian executions in Iraq. Human Rights Watch reports that in one operation alone, the Anfal, Saddam killed 100,000 Kurdish Iraqis. Another 500,000 are estimated to have died in Saddam's needless war with Iran.

"Coldly taken as a daily average for the 24 years of Saddam's reign, these numbers give us a horrifying picture of between 70 and 125 civilian deaths per day for every one of Saddam's 8,000-odd days in power."

http://wais.stanford.edu/Iraq/iraq_d...sein42503.html



People are making too much out of this. It was a couple of guys who blew themselves up, successfully.

The real sign of progress is the fact that the insurgency, which is almost entirely limited to one city, Mosul, and one province, Diyala, are under such pressure, that they cannot even attempt attacks, but a few times a month. And those are often very small scale.

The fact is, 90% of our forces within Iraq have switched from counter insurgency, to counter terror. Its not unlike what multiple countries around the world are dealing with. From Mexico, to Algeria.

The only real issue that remains is how will the groups we have worked alongside, the Sons of Iraq, etc, how will they react to not getting a pay check...

[B5C]

When saddam was in charge, atleast these kind of things doesn't happen often.

Oh yeah, Saddam was a good dictator who loved his people and his people loved him.

[Captain Jin]

Increases in suicide bombings are generally a sign of a desperate insurgency. Classically, when I was there in areas where we saw an increase suicide bombings we soon saw insurgent strength in the area peter out. This isn't always the case, but think of the suicide bomb like the insurgents' nuke. It's a weapon of desperation. Also, don't be quick to believe these suicide bombers are willing participants, that is often not the case.

When saddam was in charge, atleast these kind of things doesn't happen often.

Yeah it was a perfect wonderland devoid of any violence whatsoever.

[Thanatos]

Yeah it was a perfect wonderland devoid of any violence whatsoever.

At least the balance of power was intact. We shouldn't have gone in anyway.

[Stavroforos]

Let's hope the progress that has been made so far is jeopardized, I want to see the troops come home.

[Panzerbear]

ah just wait till Americans pull out .

[Ahlerich]

ah just wait till Americans pull out .

im with the damn russian on this one.

i wont recite my opinion that iraq and afganistan will fall apart once the west pulls out. i did it for 5 years and it gets boring.

i might dig out all my posts about that once i have been unfortunately proven right in 5 years or so and quote them in one post.


haha profilneurose /off

[Barry Goldwater]

This is hopefully the death-rattle of the insurgency, as Captain Jin said this may be a mark of desperation...

[Gumpfendorfer]

This is hopefully the death-rattle of the insurgency, as Captain Jin said this may be a mark of desperation...

Well, could also very well be that Al Qaida wants to tie down as much troops as long as possible in Iraq. A soldier in Iraq is one less in Afghanistan. Spring has arrived, the fighting season in Pakistan and Afghanistan has started again.

[skag]

Let calm down agressive people.

Here's my question :
Do you prefer "freedom", but terrorist attack, war, thousands of death, instability, etc etc etc
Or do you prefer : torture, rape, prison disappearings if you are against the boss ??

Well, do not answer, you don't have the right to do it

Let the Iraki answer ........ as you did not gave them the choice ....... as you decided the choice ;p

[B5C]

Let calm down agressive people.

Here's my question :
Do you prefer "freedom", but terrorist attack, war, thousands of death, instability, etc etc etc
Or do you prefer : torture, rape, prison disappearings if you are against the boss ??

Well, do not answer, you don't have the right to do it

Let the Iraki answer ........ as you did not gave them the choice ....... as you decided the choice ;p

We gave them freedom. Right now Iraqis can go and vote for their leaders and even PROTEST the current government without being shot at or their families murdered.

But hey I guess it wasn't our buisness to free them from Saddam.

[skag]

We gave them freedom. Right now Iraqis can go and vote for their leaders and even PROTEST the current government without being shot at or their families murdered.

But hey I guess it wasn't our buisness to free them from Saddam.

You got it, the worst of all, it that USA people s dying, USA families are crying, Iraqi families are crying a lot more than before

All of that because later they will have freedom and security, and the choice to take the path they want ?

Honestly, that's the point where we do not agree