Anger against U.S. mounts as Iraq Shiites bury slain MP
BAGHDAD —
Mourners shouted anti-U.S. slogans and torched American and Israeli flags in Baghdad’s Shiite bastion after a radical MP was buried Friday, as fresh attacks killed at least 19 people across Iraq.
“Down with Americans, down with the occupation,” Shiite youngsters shouted while burning U.S. and Israeli flags at a public square in Sadr City after weekly prayers.
Car bombs, roadside blasts and a shooting near the capital and the northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk killed at least 19 people and wounded at least another 66 on Friday, police and security officials said.
The worst single attack was in Baghdad’s mainly Sunni quarter of Dora where a car bomb blast at a crowded market killed 13 people and wounded 27, police and the defense ministry said.
In the northern city of Kirkuk, claimed by Arabs and Kurds, Iraqi journalist Diyar Abbas Ahmed, 28, was gunned down, police Brigadier General Torhan Yusuf said.
Also targeted was an Iraqi military base in Habaniyah, near the city of Fallujah, where a car bomb wounded seven soldiers, two of them seriously.
Earlier in the day, gunfire rattled through the impoverished Shiite stronghold of Sadr City where 41-year-old anti-American Shiite MP Saleh al-Ogayly was killed Thursday in a roadside bomb attack.
Special U.N. representative for Iraq, Staffan de Mistura, denounced the murder in a statement calling it an “outrageous crime aimed at perpetuating instability in Iraq.”
Supporters of the MP from the radical anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s party called for a nationwide “demonstration” on Oct 18 to protest the assassination, the first of an Iraqi lawmaker in 18 months.
Iraqi troops and the U.S. military stepped up security in Sadr City after Thursday’s high-profile bomb attack.
“Americans get out. Americans get out,” shouted mourners as relatives hugged each other and wept while Ogayly’s wooden coffin was brought out of his home draped in the tri-color Iraqi flag.
Ogayly was later buried in the holy shrine city of Najaf.
His party blamed the killing on the U.S. military and said Ogayly had been a vociferous critic of the proposed military pact between the Shiite-led government of Premier Nuri al-Maliki and the Americans.
“What happened indicates that the occupation was behind the attack,” said Sheikh Salah al Obeidi, a spokesman for Sadr.
“He has criticized severely the weakest points in the U.S. agreement which led to the embarrassment of the Americans,” Obeidi said in Najaf. “So we see that it was in their interest to get rid of Ogayly.”
The U.S. military strongly denied any involvement in Ogayly’s killing. “We are not behind this event,” the U.S. military said in response to allegations by Sadr’s faction. The assassination was also condemned by U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, and General Raymond Odierno, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.
The Sadrists have rejected the proposed Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) which would provide the legal basis for a U.S. troop presence beyond December when a U.N. mandate runs out.
Obeidi said Ogayly was a key figure in negotiations with the government on the SOFA.
Prime Minister Maliki, who has condemned the assassination and vowed to get the killers, traveled to Najaf on Friday to discuss the proposed military deal with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most respected Shiite cleric.
Maliki told reporters that Sistani would support a consensus in parliament. Washington has made “big concessions,” but immunity issues remained a problem, he said.
In Sadr City itself, people returned to the streets and markets were packed with people on Friday, the weekly religious holiday, amid tightened security.
The Shiite district was the site of heavy fighting between U.S. troops and Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia in March and April.
Wire reports
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27 Comments
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rjd_jr
And so it goes. No end in sight.
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bushlover
When we don't like someone we admire getting killed we will just go out and kill indiscriminately with car bombs and such. That's logical. It's called blind rage. Very common in Middle Earth.
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SezWho2
rjd jr,
Never mind that. Just get your driver, tee up, swing away and yell, "Fore!"
Technically speaking, I think most of us have an end in sight. It's just that we're using crystal balls and bad Karnak the Great imitations. The common vision is a stable Iraq. The disagreement seems mostly to be over whether or not the stability will be pleasing to the US.
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Everton2
The Iraqis are a bunch of losers, the US should leave them to swim in their own blood. They kill each other and blame the occupation
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coulrophobic
I guess blood and gore still determine for many sites what news to publish on Iraq.
But I have noticed that recently even the NY Times is surprised by the progress in Iraq.
"As Fears Ease, Baghdad Sees Walls Tumble"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/world/middleeast/10walls.html?_r=1&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink&oref=slogin
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rjd_jr
See the problem is, SezWho, there seems to be no form of stability that seems to please the pro Iraq war crowd to a point where all the troops can leave Iraq. General Petraeus and even Condi Rice have recently been downbeat about Iraq, and their visions of a total victory long gone with the wind. Their soundbite now is that security is fragile and could reverse itself at any time. The only thing the surge did was to give a false sense of security (a lot of the calm had as much to do with ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods as it did with the surge of troops). There has to be a point where enough is enough. Thousands of troops were maimed and horrifically injured over a period of 5 years, just to achieve a false sense of security that is so fragile it even has the top American General in Iraq worried. And for this we should keep maintaining a presence in Iraq? And if things do go bad (which I hope they don't), then what, yet another surge? If I had sons in the military, no way would I be happy about sending them to Iraq. If it were a cause worth fighting and dying for sure I would support them, but for Iraq? While the Iraqi politicians and military fool around and sit on billions of oil surplus? Heck no.
It's their country, let the Iraqis die and fight for it, and let them deal with whatever happens after the troops leave. Like I said before the Iraqi politicans and military is like that child of yours that graduated college and goes from job to job and is still living at home, content with the status quo.
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WilliB
Just too typical. Note the "after weekly prayers"... yep, after hearing fire and brimstone messages in their mosque, reminding them of their duty to hate and kill the unbelievers. This happens all over the islamic world. Watch out for the typical "after weekly prayers".
And note the Israeli flags. There are not Jews left in Iraq. Most of these kids wouldn´t even be able to find Israel on a map (and not only because it is so small.)
So Sunni jihadist blow up a Shiite leader, and they blame.... the Joos! Again, entirely typical for the islamic world.
The US should stop this farce immediately. Alas, neither candidate will.
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WilliB
Coultrophobic:
Sorry, but you ignore the big picture, and so does the NYT. The US was successful recently, because they paid the Sunni groups to arm themselves and defend their neighbourhoods. But that, in effect, was a division of Iraq, which (alas) is against the stated policy.
So now, they have handed control over the Sunni groups ("Sons of Iraq" etc.) to the Shiite government. To predictable howls of protest from the Sunnis. Do you believe for a second that the Maliki government will keep paying and protecting the Sunnis? That is ludicrious!
With this move, the US has thrown away all the so-called progress that was made recently. Radical sunni militias will be back, and so will be Al Quaida.
The US is still chasing the impossible fiction of a democratic, pluralistic Iraq under Shiite religious government.
One definition of insanity is repeating the same action, expecting a different result. The US policy in Iraq (and Nato policy in Afghanistan) would fit this.
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teaabe
they might as well just blow the whole place taking everybody plus the oil including occupiers and suiciders, etc. then they'll be no one left to harm or no oil to take.
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taniwha
Iraq, Afghanistan, and now possibly Pakistan, the truth is the war on terror has been one huge unmitigated disaster from beginning to end for absolutely everyone. It was always only a smokescreen to hide the true aim of securing ME oil and gas for the profit of a very few wealthy elite through corporate payback, and by controlling access to those resources to enable the US to maintain the dominance of the dollar. The goals remain historically ignoble and the scale of loss of life that has resulted will be yet to emerge in war crimes hearings one day in the not too distant future.
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SezWho2
rjd jr,
Basically, I agree with you. McCain likes to say that the surge worked and that he called it right. I can't think of anything more misleading.
Violence in Iraq was increasing and we had to do something. Go big or come home. Staying the course was not an option.
The surge fell into the category of doing something to decrease the violence with the hope that political stability would arise. Usually, when you do something, you effect some kind of change. And the surge was no different.
What is true is that the surge has produced a beneficial change. What is false is that "the surge worked". "Working" is calling the pocket where the 8-ball lands, not having it just carom randomly across the table and dropping at random.
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SuperLib
Well it's not like they're going to print this article:
http://www.dailynews.com/ci_10693886
"BAGHDAD - Iraq's prime minister said Friday that the country's most influential Shiite cleric will leave the decision about the future of U.S. troops to the government and parliament - a step that could remove a major obstacle to a deal."
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reddragonguy
They want Ahmadinhajad!!!
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taniwha
The reality is the US led invasion of Iraq was not only immoral but illegal, at least under international law as it stood at the time. No backward re-assessment of morality or legality can change this. But people have been fed an illusion based in large part on complete lies. It was never about bringing democray to the people of Iraq, because improving the lives of Iraqis was never an end goal of the invasion.
Even while the US people are reeling from the shock of realising their dollar is worth next to nothing to them, there are an apparent majority who do not connect their domestic situation with that of the victims in Iraq or Afghanistan. But they are connected. The same bunch in Washington that determined US foreign policy also determined US domestic policy and those reasons underlying both are no different.
The number one aim of America's wealthy elite, the industrialists, the bankers, and essentially the nation's aristocracy making up that thin layer, is to maintain their wealth and power, in short the privilege they have had for so long now.
When Bush, McCain, and the Republicans claimed 'the surge to have worked' what they didn't elaborate on was how drop in violence in Iraq was a direct result of having killed virtually all dissent. They've bled Iraq white, and in the process they have ethnically cleansed virtually the entire nation. Where that was not possible and where conditions meant that they couldn't wait for the proxies they armed to do the job for them, the occupiers erected giant concrete walls dividing up the city of Baghdad.
None of this can last for long. Children grow into youth and want to revenge their families, border wars that are the result of de-stabalization of Iraq mean other countries, Turkey for example enter the picture. Iran is already there, as was always expected because Iraq was supposed to be the staging platform for an invasion of Iran in the first place.
The Shiites then are just one of the main factions of the population that will come back to eject the occupiers. This nationalist struggle has been repeated all over the world. The classic example in American history was Vietnam. History repeats, unfortunately for those who pay no attention to it.
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VOR
Immoral? Illegal? Illusions? Complete lies? wealthy elite? industrialists? the bankers? nation's aristocracy? Wealth, power and privilege? Bush/McCain? The Republicans? Bled Iraq white? Ethnically cleansed Iraq? Proxies? Occupiers? Nationalists? Vietnam? History repeats?
taniwha you said a mouthful without saying much of anything at all.
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taniwha
The key words, well done.
Your post is a good example of how a lot of voters see the issue - confused. But you know all it really takes is time out to think about what has actually happened just in the time since you graduated from High school, which probably wasn't so long ago. Could be a stretch but give it a go.
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VOR
well taniwha help enlighten me and while you show me how smart you are, lets try to stay focused on the topics which are not highly subjective.
You say or repeat the whole Iraq war is illegal mantra. Can you cite which laws; US or International, were broken? Can you explain why no one within the Bush Administration or US Congress has been brought up on charges?
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taniwha
What are you posing as here, a drill sergeant?
Condemnation of the initial invasion of Iraq, declaring it illegal under international law has come from he International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in Geneva, forty-three Australian experts in international law and human rights legislation, 100 US law professors.
Senior officers in the US military have even accused Bush of war crimes in Iraq. Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba (now retired) is one. He served as the deputy commanding general for support for the Third Army for ten months in Kuwait during the early days of the Iraq occupation.
Illegal US facilities such as those detention sites within war zones e.g. Iraq, and at Guantanamo Bay, and so-called CIA black sites around the globe, all violate the US Constitution and international human rights standards e.g. the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture. As do the use of chemical weapons and attacks on ambulances and civilians e.g. Fallujah.
As for the reason no charges have been yet laid as yet, the answer is quite simple. The US is the most powerful military in the world, and it has in the last few years behaved as renegade terrorist state. The protection the war criminals currently enjoy will not last. Hitler's didn't, and neither did Saddam's.
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WilliB
Taniwha:
Come again? Do you mean the ethnic cleansing of the Christian minority in Iraq, as described in another article today? Or something else? Do enlighten us with your marxist wisdom.
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taniwha
An estimated one million people, some of them may have been Christian, who knows now, all of them killed as a result of the invasion of Iraq. And for what?
Three million Iraqi people and counting, some of the are likely to be Christian, refugees since and because of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Enlighten us with your reactionary wit.
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coulrophobic
"An estimated one million people, some of them may have been Christian, who knows now, all of them killed as a result of the invasion of Iraq. And for what?"
The "anti-war" Left's concern for Iraqis never seems to include taking their word on the number of dead, a figure which is about 1/10th of what is cynically and absurdly offered as proof that Iraq was better off under Saddam Hussein.
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SuperLib
Nice to see you debating form your knees... ;)
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taniwha
Haaa. Nice, yes, real nice.
And on your knees financially at least, is likely where you and /or your kin and/or your neighbors will soon be. And guess what, you will never even understand why this is happening to you and yours. But that is the nature of allowing yourself to be sold an illusion, and then clinging to it even when the lie is revealed.
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coulrophobic
"But that is the nature of allowing yourself to be sold an illusion, and then clinging to it even when the lie is revealed."
It is one of the great curiosities to be found in political rhetoric how often dialectic materialists, at the very point where they need to be as specific as possible about the nature of the economic system they oppose, almost invariably start playing the condescending mystagogue and again fail old Karl Marx.
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taniwha
Mind translating all of that, for the rest of us. Like, what exactly do you think 'dialectic materialists' means? You know, really means?
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