November Off To Bloody Start In Iraq

At Least 49 Killed Including 7 In Baghdad Market Attack

(CBS/AP) 
The rigged motorcycle was left in a section of the market that specialized in the sales of secondhand motorbikes and spare parts. Videotape by Associated Press Television News in the aftermath of the bombing showed the mangled skeletons of scores of motorbikes and large pools of blood on the ground.

Gheith Jassim al-Saadi, a 36-year-old laborer, arrived at the scene shortly after the blast. He had planned to go to the market earlier to have two friends repair his motorbike.

“Motorcycles were scattered everywhere, blood was on the ground and crowds of people were looking for their relatives in panic,” he said. “I do not know what happened to my two friends.”

Mahdi Army militiamen, who control the district, arrived quickly to disperse a crowd of onlookers, fearing a second blast targeting rescuers and police as has repeatedly been the case in past bombings.

The slain university dean, Jassim al-Asadi, a Shiite, was returning home after picking up his son from school and his wife from her teaching job, when gunmen drove alongside and sprayed his car with automatic weapons, police Lt. Ahmed Ibrahim said. Al-Asadi's wife and son also were killed, Ibrahim said.

With his death, at least 155 educators have perished since the war began. The academics apparently were singled out for their relatively high public stature, vulnerability and known views on controversial issues in a climate of deepening Islamic fundamentalism.

The savagery against professionals is robbing Iraq of much of its brain trust. The Health Ministry says at least 250 physicians and health workers have been killed since March 2003 and more than 6,000 doctors have fled the country.

As with most murders in Iraq, al-Asadi's killers were unlikely to be captured, leaving their motive a mystery. But he was slain four days after the assassination of a prominent Sunni academic, matching the pattern of tit-for-tat sectarian revenge killings that have shredded Iraqi society.

Geologist Essam al-Rawi, head of the University Professor's Union and a senior member of the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, was gunned down as he left his Baghdad home Monday. The scholars association has links to the Sunni insurgency.

Two Iraqi lawmakers, meanwhile, said the prime minister planned to reshuffle his 39-member Cabinet in a bid to salvage the government's faltering image and deflect criticism that it is ineffective in stopping the sectarian killing, providing services and creating jobs.

“It will cover about a third of the serving ministers, including one with a security brief,” Ali al-Adeeb, a lawmaker of al-Maliki's Dawa Party and a close aide to the prime minister, told the AP.

Hassan al-Suneid, another Dawa lawmaker and al-Maliki confidant, said he expects the Cabinet changes within a month. “It will take place after consultations with the political blocs in parliament,” he said.

The U.S. military said a Baghdad-based soldier was killed Wednesday in a roadside bombing, a second died Monday in a firefight in the capital and a third died Thursday from an unspecified non-combat incident north of the capital, raising to 2,820 the number of U.S. forces who have died in the war.

[pakaal]

And in OTHER other Iraq news, now that things are going so well over there the Bush Administration feels we no longer need to audit our reconstruction company efforts over there, so they're shutting down the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

After all, it's not like they were saying Cheney's old company "KBR, formerly Kellogg Brown & Root, had systematically engaged in practices aimed at veiling the facts around its contracts" or anything. Oh, whoops, they did say it, and I just quoted it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6114132.stm

Once again we see just how much responsibility the Bush Administration wants to take on what they continue to do in Iraq. In other words, none.

[grumpas]

You got it right janem4! Now you are finally starting to get it! You listen to much to the infantile rantings of Dubya and Company and it starts to effect your reasoning ability! People like you have all the answers! Nuke em then ask em what they did wrong! Never mind it cost billions of tax dollars to invade the wrong country! Never mind we are going to be living with the result for the next century(the unbridled hatred)! Never mind we are bound by duty to repair the two countries Bush has destroyed! Never mind your Grandchildren are going to be paying the debt Dubya has racked up! Never mind all the innocent people who get killed! Never mind all the troops who didn't ask to get killed for Dubya's folly! Never mind everyone in this world thinks George Bush is up there with Osama! So, you keep living out there in "LA-LA-Land" with the rest of the neocon's until the roof caves in! If he keeps it up it will! We will be bankrupt as a nation!

[bluestardad]

Dictators is that a Washington Dish that Republican Mark Foley was covertly serving the Congressional pages, Or Is that a Texas Style potato dish that the Bush administration has been feeding the American people for the last few years? Served with a side order of Stay the Course.

[wvopfor81]

Arm chair generals You know only what the media wants you to know, were are your solutions?

[rharrin1]

Mission acomplished sounds real peaceful over there should start bringing troops home any day now.

clestes wrote:

"I do bet he'd like a few minutes alone with Rummy in a sound proof room though...."

Wouldn't we all.

[agnim]

In the 'heat of battle' over emotional humans are likely to do very uncivilized things.
That is why it is so vital to not jump into a war as if one is going to a picnic.

Because these warmongering 'leaders' found it so easy to duck out on the Vietnam war, they have no heart and no conscience in sending young Americans to foolishly die, torture, sodomize and torture other humans.

Karma is a b!tch. In time, these cruel warmongers will certainly get theirs for using the US military as their private army in order to settle personal scores, and further weaken and endanger the nation, while the maniac muslims continue to run around in Pakistan.

[radiob-2009]

The general was one of the scapegoats along with several soldiers for the C.I.A. . The techniques that were used are not a part of military protocol for interrogation.The techniques are similiar to the C.I.A. approach and that of a elite group of special forces.I find it hard to beleive that these types of interrogations were stirred by regular soldiers.The ladder of guilt is much higher and was properly authorized and supervised by C.I.A. agents that posed as officers.The soldiers had the option to refuse an unlawful order but wereprobaly under the illusion that they would be protected and that it was in the national intrest.

[agnim]

See the effects of privilege?

This general can retire from the war, sit, back relax and earn a nice pension!

A little foot soldier goes AWOL in order to 'retire' from the war and he's being persecuted and encouraged to go give up his precious young life.
What a country. LOL

[clestes-2009]

I don't even feel sorry for the general. He knew what he was doing was wrong and went with it anyway. I do bet he'd like a few minutes alone with Rummy in a sound proof room though....

[huskerarmy]

It's the General's fault:

%u201CLet's not blame what's happening in Iraq on Rumsfeld... Secretary Rumsfeld is the best thing that has happened to the military in 25 years... The management of the war in Iraq is being handled by the generals on the ground.%u201D

House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH)

[getcentered]

ozilot.......ohhh! ;)

Wow, I love it!

Thank you for your comment!

[getcentered]

marcelde, nice!

and............:
It's time to vote in some new people. These guys are out of touch.

Republicans OUT!

We are Americans. Americans are dying in a place we should not be.

How did we come to have this HUGE problem called IRAQ?

A member of my family is an officer in the Marines, and wants to know. He is in danger.

What can we tell him? It's too late? That he might die like the rest of the 2700+ US Service men and women because President Bush, "made a mistake"? Is that supposed to raise his moral?

This is the problem.
We will fight a war FOREVER, if we don't believe WHY we're doing it is right and worthy.

We NEED leaders who CAN keep us safe. Leaders who will not cook up reasons for us to die.

Please, get centered, vote.

Scandals, war in Iraq, I'll promote whatever it takes to get these ignorant and corrupt fools out of my government.

"Amongst you whoever is without sin cast the first stone"

[olebd]

Every American in that place is in danger of being a stool pigeon for the Bushies....the torture we put those prisoners through was mild compared to some of our soldiers and citizens being BEHEADED!!!! Nobody in the media talks of this double standard. And hey, I don't even support the war.

[bluestardad]

POOR LITTLE THREE STAR GENERAL, GUESS YOU SHOULD HAVE STUCK YOUR HEAD FARTHER UP RUMMYS HIND END.

[angryliberal-2009]

jhindson1,

I would suggest not talking if unless you will admit the democrat running against Bush is a worse student and more uneducated than Bush...lol.

[angryliberal-2009]

jhindson1, lol, youre gonna like this...lol

Bush C+ 77% average (Yale) Also earned a Harvard MBA

Kerry 76% (Yale) (also looked like a deusch bag - look at his pic on the link below) no higher education

FOUR D's FRESHMAN YEAR....

In 1999, The New Yorker published a transcript indicating that Bush had received a cumulative score of 77 for his first three years at Yale and a roughly similar average under a non-numerical rating system during his senior year.

Kerry, who graduated two years before Bush, got a cumulative 76 for his four years, according to a transcript that Kerry sent to the Navy when he was applying for officer training school. He received four D's in his freshman year out of 10 courses, but improved his average in later years.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/06/07/yale_grades_portray_kerry_as_a_lackluster_student/

So aparently Kerry is a hypocrite liar and a flat out idiot for suggesting he is smarter than Bush.

[angryliberal-2009]

we lost a good man.

[stevex47]

Peterbaldwin and others here: Well said. Just make sure Sanchez' bosses face the Scales of Justice too. No pardons for this administration.

[phatcrayonz]

that is what happens when you fight an illegal war. sucks to be you.