Iraq's Cycle Of Bloodletting Continues

Lara Logan: The Attack In Samarra Is Meant To Push Iraq Into Chaos

(CBS)  I can hear the wind whistling angrily around my hotel as I write. It feels like it would be cold, but I know the moment I step outside I will be hit by a stifling onslaught of hot, dry air that sucks your breath right out of you and dries the water in your eyes.

Somewhere out there, someone is enduring the worst night of their life as the world wonders what this bombing will do to Iraq. Already six Sunni mosques have been torched, and one of them completely destroyed.

Within hours of the Golden Dome attack, mortars were falling on Sunni neighborhoods, and the streets were packed with Iraqi's trying to make it home before the city-wide curfew imposed by the Prime Minister. There wasn't enough time for everyone to make it so the curfew was pushed back a few hours. Then an eerie, unhappy emptiness settled on the streets.

Just as all of this was happening, the call came out over the loudspeaker of a mosque across from our building. It wasn't specific, but to the Iraqis around us the message was very clear. It was an order, they said. This is not the right time of day for the call to prayer. This was an order.

"To do what," I asked, "can you be more specific?"

"An order to start." That was the answer.

Start what?

Start killing on a greater scale than is already going on. Start killing more Sunnis for being Sunni – punish them. Then, more Shia will be killed for being Shia. And so it goes on.

The killing will be on both sides. But the Shia say more of them have been killed and they are only retaliating in self-defense. The Sunnis will say they are fighting for their own survival.

Self-defense. And survival.

It's hard to see that when you know a death squad victim was taken in his pajamas in the dead of night and tortured to death with electric drills. Or when I look at the face of the young Iraqi interpreter sitting on my deak. His Marine Corps ID card tells me he was most likely an interpreter for them. His presence there on my desk reminds me that he was killed for being Sunni after being tried by an Islamic Sharia court run by Shiite militiamen, and his ID card was given to me as proof. Given to me by an Iraqi whose own life was already under threat, along with his pregnant wife and baby son who are already in hiding.

On and on it goes here. It's not even ties between families and friends anymore. It is a spider web of tragedy and loss linking every family.

And, in the midst of it, there are good people, and good soldiers on both sides who are trying so hard to do the right thing.

You see them, and the huge amount of effort and personal sacrifice they are willing to endure. And you see many of them being overwhelmed, but still fighting the good fight every day.

What does it mean when the only way to secure a city is to lock its citizens indoors?

What does it say when people believe the curfew won't protect them because it will give free reign to death squads operating in police uniforms and government vehicles?

What does it mean when Iraqi police and government guards who were guarding the Golden Mosque could not protect one of the most sacred places in the whole of Iraq, especially since it has been threatened before and is clearly still a target?

It means there are no easy solutions. And maybe no good solutions either.

This attack was clearly meant to push Iraq deeper into chaos and ensure the cycle of bloodletting continues.

But, it also exposes the intentions of those who really will stop at nothing to see the U.S. fail in Iraq.

What I see is the face of a young Iraqi man staring up at me from his marine corps ID card, and I wonder if his family even know he is dead.

[sjc_1]

One of the Provisional Coalition Governments' first decrees;

1- disbandment of the Iraqi army

This is a key point. Bremmer did exactly the opposite of what he should have done and then they gave him a medal for it...unbelievable.

Who knows explosives and tactics better than 100,000 ex military men. The phrase is keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Once you fire these guys, they have no income, but Al-Qaeda has lot of money for operations. Iran is more than willing to help out.

What an idiot Bremmer was and is. He is like Brownie at FEMA, brainless, mindless and clueless, but they think they are just great.

That is one heck of a combination for disaster...arrogant and incompetent. I guess when you are as dumb and arrogant as G.W. Bush, you get cronies just like you to pretend to fill the positions.

He said he would "get good people". If anyone says that ask them how they define good people. Ask them if they will actually LISTEN to those people.

He certainly did not listen to Colin Powell. They had Colin in the wood shed from the get go for speaking the truth too often.

[bluestardad]

You can see by the AIPAC advertisement below this PAC is selling influence to American Elected officials. If you follow the money trail you will find that most of those elected officials who support the war in Iraq are under the influence of AIPAC.

http://www.aipac.org/forms/join_aipacClubs.htm

Here are a list of the Republican Senators up for Reelection in 08. Ask them how much AIPAC influences their vote on Iraq? Is their support for Israel more than their duty to the Americans living in their states?


Alexander, Lamar- (R - TN)
Allard, Wayne- (R - CO)
Chambliss, Saxby- (R - GA)
Cochran, Thad- (R - MS)
Coleman, Norm- (R - MN)
Collins, Susan M.- (R - ME)
Cornyn, John- (R - TX)
Craig, Larry E.- (R - ID)
Dole, Elizabeth- (R - NC)
Enzi, Michael B.- (R - WY)
Graham, Lindsey- (R - SC)
Hagel, Chuck- (R - NE)
Inhofe, James M.- (R - OK)
McConnell, Mitch- (R - KY)
Roberts, Pat- (R - KS)
Sessions, Jeff- (R - AL)
Smith, Gordon H.- (R - OR)
Stevens, Ted- (R - AK)
Sununu, John E.- (R - NH)
Warner, John- (R - VA)

[grumpas]

It's amazing how extremist's like notblue manage to spin a web of lie's to cover up their incompetence. While they dutifully ignore the truth of the matter. This war was started on a lie and no amount of spinning is ever going to change that. Anyone with a brain in their head knew this was going to be the end result of taking Saddam Hussein out of power. Why do you think George Sr didn't get into it in the early 90's? Because there was to great of a chance of civil war taking Saddam out. When you have a clash of religions in a country this is often the result. He could see himself mired in a mess for years to come. So, grow up and admit you made a mistake like millions of other's did. When you bought into the lies!

[neoconrcrazy]

Suni's as in the old Bathists, the minority in Baghdad that are causing the unrest, violence and barbarism. All the U.S. did by removinmg Sadaam was give the MAJORITY Iraqis a chance at FREEDOM for the first time in there history.

Posted by notblue at

you fail to address the "why" ?

it was the policy of Rumsfeld's underlings Wolfowitz and Feith which created the sunni insurgency;

they issued the Provisional Coalition Governments' first decrees;

1- disbandment of the iraqi army
2- banning from office all Baathist party members

Their reasoning: saddam/baathism = Hitler/nazism

The results:

1- the iraqi army went home with their weapons
2- the baathist bureaucrats burned down every ministry (except the oli ministry) effectively destroying iraqs' civil administration

The pro-israel hawks used the holocaust as precedent for political decisions in iraq - and failed.

[neoconrcrazy]

Hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of human beings have died because this trash wanted to play power politics.
Posted by Prinzowhales


true - and until this country gets its executive branch under control - more adventures are in store. don't think that the neocons are an isolated or recent event. they've been around in one form or another since 1945, calling for "democractic imperialism", i.e. american dominated world political system.

[sjc_1]

"Guess you don't keep up with current events as it pertains to the deficit."

The deficit is about $250 billion per year, but that does not account for "off budget" items like Iraq, Afghanistan, the S&L bailout and other items like pension insurance defaults.

The actual deficit is more like $500 billion, which is why the DEBT has increased $3 trillion in only 6 years.

[feelfree1]

It appears that Ms. Logan's Bush boosting deception efforts for this event, will be for domestic consumption, at best:

"Both Sunni and Shias Iraqis have accused the U.S. of being behind the bombing the al-Askari shrine in Samarra, one of the holiest Shia religious sites, in order to further incite sectarian violence between the two rival Islamic groups and provide a justification for the American surge."

http://prisonplanet.com/articles/june2007/130607Shrine.htm

The American people seem to be the only ones who remain partially fooled by this neo-con nonsense, but I suspect that we are beginning to awaken.

[prinzowhales]

The Zionists play on the fears of Jews the way the leaders of the Evangelicals play on the fears and hopes of Christians. Boths groups are guided into the service of Finance Capital. So much religious fervor has gone into stirring up the 'Crusade', the 'Holy War' against Islam for the sake of Big Oil and the neo-colonial enterprise known as "Israel."

Now American blood and treasure is being squandered in the sands of the Middle East so that a few vile men--David Rockefellar, George Soros, the Mellons and the Rothschilds to name but a few--can control the oil resources of Iraq...and to best achieve that, they see a region of weak, little states as preferable to strong and relatively powerful states like Iraq. States that are developing in industry, technology with skilled workers and building a prosperous future for their people aren't so easy to intimidate and defraud.

We are in Iraq to destroy it, not to democratize it or even for the freedom of the Iraqis.

[prinzowhales]

It has been the strategic goal of the Israelis to break apart the larger states of the Middle East, at least since the 1970s so as to make them unable to challenge Israel as a regional hegemon. The pipe dream of the extreme Zionist fanatics has always been 'a Greater Israel'... one stretching from Mesapotamia to the Nile... of course, few Arabs could be found who could appreciate the vision of these madmen.

The goal of the Anglo-American leadership has been to play the existing powers off against each other as the Romans played peoples on the borders of their empire off against one another.
We managed to alienate the Iranians by supporting the Shah and his SAVAK torturers. We then used elements of the Ba'athist party around Hussein to fight a war against the revolutionaries who overthrew the Shah. We deceived Hussein, through Amb. April Glaspie's lie to him that the Kuwait question was seen as an inter-Arab matter and not the concern of the United States. Hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of human beings have died because this trash wanted to play power politics.

[prinzowhales]

America, as the occupying power, bares responsibility for the situation in Iraq. Americans are under the impression that we had no plan beyond removing Saddam when we invaded Iraq and opened this front of the Stupid People's War.

The plan from the beginning was to destroy the integrity of the state of Iraq. Immediately the US armed forces shot and killed security personnel guarding State buildings and museums and over loudspeakers encouraged the Shi'ia poor to loot and destroy...saving only the Oil Ministry...afterall, we could not forget why we came there...rather like how we spared the Reichsbank from bombing in World War II...

Virtually the whole of our air campaign was directed at civilian targets--electric and water works, bridges etc....it was a campaign designed to create a dependent people who would gratefully eat out of hand and sing paens to their American liberators....'we will be greeted with flowers' a Bush official said. Flowers, indeed.