TODAY CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O INSISTED THAT DEMOCRATS NOT USE THIS TIME TO "LICK THEIR WOUNDS".
IF THEY SPEND TIME LICKING WOUNDS, BARRY O EXPLAINED, THERE WOULD BE LESS TIME TO KISS HIS ASS.
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Today, Iraq is again slammed with bombings resulting in mass fatalities. Fang Yang (Xinhua) reports, "Two car bombs went off at the same time on a bridge named Wadil- Salam which is located east of Karbala, 80 km south of Baghdad, an Iraqi interior ministry source told Xinhua. The two cars loaded with heavy explosives were parked at the two ends of the bridge respectively, said the source who refused to give his name." AFP states it was a mortar bomb. Chelsea J. Carter (AP) reports it was a suicide car bombing immediately followed by the mortar attack. CNN goes with two car bombings. The Washington Post's Ernesto Londono (at the Financial Times of London) explains, "Investigators were trying to determine whether there had been one or two explosions." Skipping the specifics of the bombing types, Al Jazeera notes, "Al Jazeera has learned that three Iraqi army vehicles were also destroyed in the attack." This morning AP counted 27 dead thus far and at least sixty injured. Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) also counted 27 dead but 131 injured while noting that the numbers would likely rise throughout the day -- which they did. Muhanad Mohammed, Sami al-Jumaili, Michael Christie and Jon Boyle (Reuters) report the death toll has now reached "at least 40 people [dead] and wounded 145 others" according to "health officials". The US State Dept released the following statement from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:
The United States condemns the series of bombing attacks against Shi'a pilgrims in Iraq over the past week. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. Attacking men, women and children engaged in religious pilgrimage is reprehensible and exposes the cynical immorality of the terrorists who seek to replace Iraq's hard-won progress with violence and intimidation. They will not succeed in breaking the will of the Iraqi people. Iraqis are committed to realizing the promise of their democracy. There is no better rebuke to those who traffic in terror.
BBC News (link has text and a clip of the aftermath of the bombings) offers, "The BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse in Baghdad says that the stakes are high; a peaceful and credible election would allow the country to draw a line underneath the bloodshed and turbulence of recent years, he says. But, he adds, these recent bombings have raised fears of a return to sectarian violence, just as American forces prepare to withdraw." Jane Arraf (Christian Science Monitor) and Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) explain, "The bombings play to the worst fears of Iraqi and US officials that attacks could re-ignite the kind of sectarian violence that plunged this country into civil war three years ago. They sparked anger even among security officers." Anthony Shadid (New York Times) observes, "There was a sense of fatalism to the attacks, one of dozens this week on pilgrims that the Shiite-led government had girmly predicted but was powerless to stop. The killings have underlined the very meaning of the pilgrimage: a religious ritual to commemorate Imam Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Mohammed whose death in the battlefield in Karbala in A.D. 680 gave Shiite Muslims an ethos of suffering, martyrdom and resistance." Sayed Mahdi al-Modaressi (The New Statesman) explains:
For Shias, Hussein is the ultimate moral exemplar: a man who refused to bow in the face of tyranny and despotism. Shias see his martyrdom as the greatest victory of good over evil, right over wrong, truth over falsehood. In the words of the Urdu poet Muhammad Iqbal: "Imam Hussein uprooted despotism for ever till the Day of Resurrection. He watered the dry garden of freedom with the surging wave of his blood, and indeed he awakened the sleeping Muslim nation . . . Hussein weltered in blood and dust for the sake of truth."
But why would all these people walk for hundreds of miles to remember a painful event that took place over 13 centuries ago? Visitors to the shrine of Hussein and his brother Abbas in Karbala are not driven by emotion alone. They cry because they make a conscious decision to be reminded of the atrocious nature of the loss and, in doing so, they reaffirm their pledge to everything that is virtuous and holy.
The first thing that pilgrims do on facing his shrine is recite the Ziyara, a sacred text addressing Hussein with due respect for his status, position and lineage. In it, the Shia imams who followed him after the massacre in Karbala instruct their followers to begin the address by calling Hussein the "inheritor" and "heir" of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus.
There is something profound in making this proclamation. It shows that Hussein's message of truth and freedom is viewed as an inseparable extension of that list of divinely appointed prophets.
Pilgrims go to Karbala not to admire its physical beauty, or to shop, or to be entertained, or to visit ancient historical sites. They go there to cry. They go to mourn. They go to join the angels in their grief. They enter the sacred shrine weeping and lamenting.
There is something profound in making this proclamation. It shows that Hussein's message of truth and freedom is viewed as an inseparable extension of that list of divinely appointed prophets.
Pilgrims go to Karbala not to admire its physical beauty, or to shop, or to be entertained, or to visit ancient historical sites. They go there to cry. They go to mourn. They go to join the angels in their grief. They enter the sacred shrine weeping and lamenting.
Liz Sly and Caesar Ahmed (Los Angeles Times) provide this context, "Overall, there have been eight suicide bombings in Iraq the past 11 days, targeting hotels and government buildings as well as pilgrims, in a sign that the Sunni extremist insurgency appears to be regrouping in an attempt to destabilize the country ahead of the March 7 election." In other reported violence . . .
Bombings?
Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad roadise bombing which claimed the life of 1 pilgrim and left fifteen more injured.
Shootings?
Reuters notes 1 pilgrim was injured by a Baghdad sniper shooting and that 2 police officers were shot dead in Mosul.
Kidnappings?
Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports Interior Ministry employee Brig Gen Ali Ghalib was kidnapped last night in Baghdad.
Corpses?
Reuters notes 1 corpse was discovered in Mosul ("kidnapping victim riddled with bullets").
The war that never ends. Jake Armstrong (Pasadena Weekly) notes that Tuesday, February 2nd was the 2,405 day of the Iraq War and, using DoD figures, notes 4,378 deaths of US service members in Iraq since the start of the Iraq War. The elections and violence were discussed today on the second hour of The Diane Rehm Show (NPR -- which is archived and you can also podcast) when Diane spoke with Bryan Bender (Boston Globe), Youchi Dreazen (Wall St. Journal) and Elise Labott (CNN).
Diane Rehm: And now let's talk about Iraq and it's election commison which has delayed start of campaigning for Parliamentary elections. How come, Elise?
Elise Labott: Well an Iraqi appeals court this week overturned an effort to bar hundreds of candidates from upcoming elections. Many of these were aligned with Saddam Hussein's former Ba'ath Party. Many of them were members of Parliament to begin with, in previous elections [post-invasion, previous elections] and they had already been vetted. But the ban, you know, really threatened to disenfranchise Sunnis once again and open up possible sectarian tensions that we've seen over the last few years. The court overturned this ban. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had said, you know, no, that's fine, it's a Constitutional -- it's unconstitutional to overturn the ban. And so now they've postponed the elections [she means the start of campaigning for the elections].
Diane Rehm: So what's that going to mean for the whole government, Youchi?
Youchi Dreazen: There's that wonderful line in [Francis Ford Coppola's] The Godfather III where Al Pacino says, "Every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in." And the US, we've thought that the war is over, that the violence has stopped, the sectarian tensions are gone, Maliki's a strong leader, we can focus on something else and pull our troops out. And what's been made clear over the last few weeks -- both politically as Elise talked about but much more horrifically in terms of suicide bombings, one of which destroyed our office -- the [Wall St.] Journal offices and, of course, much worse, many human lives at the Hamra hotel in Baghdad where I lived myself for close to two years.
Diane Rehm: Really.
Youchi Dreazen: The violence is back in force and what you're seeing is the kind of syncronized attacks throughout Baghdad that you saw in the worst days of '06, '07. So this belief that we won was resting, basically, on two pillars. One, violence was gone. Two, sectarian tensions are gone. What we're seeing now is that both are still back.
Bryan Bender: I think the seriousness with which these recent developments are viewed in Washington was evident by the fact that Vice President Joe Biden was sent to Iraq a couple of weeks ago in the wake of this decision to bar these candidates because there's some real concern that the longer the elections are delayed, the more this friction is there -- and the violence increase, that you could see things unravel there.
On the elections, Leila Fadel and Aziz Alwan (Washington Post) report that the ruling -- which didn't clear the 500-plus candidates of charges, only stated the charges would be evaluated after the election -- is questioned by the electoral commission, will result in Little Nouri meeting with "the Presidency Council, the parliamentary speaker and the top judge on the supreme court" and, if needed, with Parliament Sunday. As Nada Bakri (New York Times) points out, already the conflicting back and forth means that election campaigning is now scheduled to start February 12th and Bakri observes: "The latest escalation in the dispute over who is permitted to run in the elections has unsettled the political landscape. Iraqi law remains untested and perhaps bereft of mechanisms to reach a solution just a month before the vote." Anne Barker (Australia's ABC) covers the issue here. Mu Xuequan (Xinhua) reports that the potential Parliament meeting on Sunday is "an extra-ordinary session" Little Nouri is calling and that, meanwhile, other avenues are being stopped such as yesterday when "the seven-judge appeals panel postponed the review of the demands submitted by some of the banned politicians to check their charges till after the March 7 elections, giving a green light to the banned politicians to run in the elections." Should Little Nouri succeed with the supreme court or the Saturday meeting of the Sunday meeting, the banned candidates will once again have to scramble in an attempt to run for office via appeals -- appeals which have currently been stopped. Pakistan's The News reports Iraq's Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi stated in DC yesterday, "The decision taken by the appeal committee should be espected by all parties. Hopefully, it will be debated in the parliament but at the end of the day I think nobody (has) the right to block the decision taken by the committee." Alsumaria TV breaks the news that Nouri's decrying the decision as foreign interference and "State of Law Coalition political committee held on Thursday an urgent meeting attended by head of Party Nuri Al Maliki. The meeting discussed the appeals panel decision and political pressure and interference in this regard." The New York Times editorial board offers the suggestion that Iraq 'get on' with the March 7th election:
Right now, Mr. Maliki and the Parliament should get on with the campaign. Instead of trying to keep competitors off the ballot, Iraq's leaders should be debating their country's many serious problems and telling voters how they will fix them. For Iraq to be stable and to thrive -- and for American troops to safely go home -- the candidate list, and the next Iraqi government, must represent all of Iraq's people.
Right now, Mr. Maliki and the Parliament should get on with the campaign. Instead of trying to keep competitors off the ballot, Iraq's leaders should be debating their country's many serious problems and telling voters how they will fix them. For Iraq to be stable and to thrive -- and for American troops to safely go home -- the candidate list, and the next Iraqi government, must represent all of Iraq's people.
Following a request by the Iraqi Election Commission (IHEC), UNHCR stands ready to facilitate the participation of Iraqi refugees living in the countries neighbouring Iraq in the forthcoming elections. The 7 March elections are considered to be a major opportunity to consolidate national reconciliation.
As of December 2009, UNHCR had on its records some 300,000 Iraqis who are believed to still be present in the region (including over 210,000 in Syria), of whom close to 190,000 are of voting age. Based on host government sources, the total number of Iraqis in the region is much higher, as hundreds of thousands of Iraqis do not register with UNHCR for a variety of reasons.
In close cooperation with the competent Iraqi authorities and the host governments, UNHCR's assistance will be limited to providing demographic data on the registered Iraqis, informing them of their rights to participate in the elections, and providing logistical support that may be needed for a smooth and orderly election process.
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
"At least 27 dead as Iraq slammed with bombings"
"The election confusion continues in Iraq"
"Iraq snapshot"
"Mexican Rice in the Kitchen"
"The budget, our dollars"
"Weekend thoughts"
"Only in Chicago . . . or Iraq"
"The Morning Show"
"Iraqis unheard by the Iraq Inquiry"
"Bully Boy Just Like Dick"
"Brief Friday"
"A hearing, a joke, a non-starting election"
"Frightening"
"Whatever Works does not"
"Did Iraq kill the buzz?"
"Collen Murphy wants the truth about daughter's death"
"Chasing away the gloomy"
"And they wonder why American voters are cyncial"
"Ace"
"Look who crawled out of the sewer"
"Bully Boy Just Like Dick"
"ZNet, Noam Chomsky"
"Ireland and Big Mass"
"DC catfight"
"Sour grapes of a one time press queen"
"THIS JUST IN! NO LONGER THE PRETTIEST!"
