Baghdad Collapsing
14 July 2006 1:20 pm by Taylor Marsh
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To say this day has been busy is an understatement. Not long ago, I did an
interview with a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle on the Lamont
– Lieberman race. Of course, the inevitable subject of Iraq came up, with me
saying the race goes way beyond the war in Iraq, which I then outlined. That
said, even if it were true that it was all about Iraq, which it isn't, I believe
that would still be enough.
Bush and the conservatives' incursion into Iraq has set off a series of events
we are now watching unfold on CNN and beyond. The conservatives' inability to
remain honest brokers in the Middle East is making matters worse. John
Dean's premise is right. Now comes the latest from Baghdad.
One thing that's going to happen in the wake of the latest escalation is that Iraqis are going to start sending money to Hizbullah and the Palenstinians. Get it?
Not being on the ground in Iraq, I can only read these things with wide-eyed
horror and wonder where it's going. There's only one thing to surmise, which
is that if Baghdad collapses, the government of Iraq cannot be far behind.
In just 24 hours before noon yesterday, as parliament convened for another
emergency session, 87 bodies were brought to Baghdad city morgue, 63 of them
unidentified. Since Sunday’s massacre in Jihad, more than 160 people
have been killed, making a total of at least 1,600 since Iraq’s Government
of national unity came to power six weeks ago. Another 2,500 have been wounded.In early June, Nouri al-Maliki, the new Prime Minister, flooded Baghdad’s
streets with tens of thousands of soldiers and police in an effort to restore
order to the capital.More recently, he announced a national reconciliation plan, which promised
an amnesty to Sunni insurgents and the disbandment of Shia militias. Both
initiatives are now in tatters.(snip)
In one of the few comprehensive surveys of how many Iraqis have fled their
country since the US invasion, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants
said last month that there were 644,500 refugees in Syria and Jordan in 2005
— about 2.5 per cent of Iraq’s population. In total, 889,000 Iraqis
had moved abroad, creating “the biggest new flow of refugees in the
world”, according to Lavinia Limon, the committee’s president.And the exodus may only just be starting.
Baghdad
starts to collapse as its people flee a life of death
I just watched a clip of Bush talking about "working really, really hard"
in the region. I swear to God, this guy should now come with a laugh track, except for the fact that conservative foreign policy has set the Middle East on fire.
