the big dick in iraq

as rome baghdad burns
Cheney cites 'phenomenal' Iraqi security progress as bombing kills 40
By Hannah Allam and Qassim Zein McClatchy Newspapers
BAGHDAD — Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday made a surprise visit to Baghdad, where he pledged that U.S. forces would "not quit before the job is done" and said that a massive troop buildup had achieved "phenomenal" improvements in security.
At sunset Monday, however, a female suicide bomber killed at least 40 people and injured more than 50 when she blew herself up in a crowded pedestrian area near a Shiite Muslim shrine in the southern holy city of Karbala, according to government and hospital officials. Among the victims were several Iranian pilgrims who'd come to worship at the Imam Hussein shrine, one of Islam's most sacred sites.
And the U.S. military announced the deaths of two soldiers who were killed Monday when their Humvee struck a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, bringing the number of American troop deaths to at least 3,990 since the war began.
Cheney told a news conference in Baghdad that the invasion of Iraq five years ago this week was a "difficult, challenging, but nonetheless successful endeavor." However, he said that obstacles remain and that the decision on whether to begin reducing forces depends on political reconciliation and the ability to preserve the hard-won security gains of the past year.........

i want to be wrong

i pray i am wrong. i want peace in iraq. i don't want kids killed or even innocent civilians (of which there are more than we imagine). i want the market to be safe. i want all of the displaced iraqis to be able to return home. i want women to be able to walk down the street. i want children to go to school each day.

we ruined their country and it isn't back on track yet no matter what they try to tell you. 'WE' are not WINNING
'WE' are directl responsible for this horror

15 Killed in Baghdad, Shattering Growing Calm
Blast Is Deadliest In City in Months; Nine Die in Mosul


By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
BAGHDAD, Nov. 23 -- The man walked into the crowded al-Ghazl animal market Friday, past police checkpoints and barricades, Humvees and Iraqi soldiers. An hour or so earlier, a U.S. patrol had passed through the market. He carried a bomb, hidden in a box containing birds for sale, witnesses said.
Shortly after 9 a.m., the bomb detonated, killing 15 people and injuring 55, according to Iraqi police, although the U.S. military said the death toll was eight. Those at the market were Iraqi civilians of different sects reviving a tradition that stretched back more than 100 years, when their fathers and grandfathers might have visited al-Ghazl every Friday, often bringing their children. ........................

no name

no face, no charges (that WE know about), no lawyer, no rights, BUT HE'S STILL DEAD

question: how long do you think YOU'D last at gitmo?

Death of Guantanamo Detainee Is Apparent Suicide, Military Says


By Josh WhiteWashington Post Staff Writer

A Saudi detainee at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was found dead in his cell from an apparent suicide yesterday afternoon, military officials said. He would be the fourth detainee to take his own life at the facility in the past year.
Military officials at U.S. Southern Command did not release details about the death or identify the detainee, who was among about 80 Saudi Arabians in custody. Attorneys with the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based law group that represents many Guantanamo detainees, said they had learned no details as of last night and did not have independent confirmation that the death was a suicide..........

we should NOT have to be reading this

Iraq Blast Kills 9 GIs, Injures 20 At Outpost
Suicide Attack in Diyala Among Deadliest of War

yet, we ARE reading it. i cannot believe ANYONE thinks this war is 'justified'. i cannot believe ANYONE thinks we entered into this war for a 'good cause'.

sure, they're killing us now but they sure as heck weren't killing us BEFORE we started this war


BAGHDAD, April 24 -- A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-rigged truck into a U.S. military outpost near Baqubah on Monday, killing nine soldiers and wounding 20 in one of the deadliest single ground attacks on U.S. forces since the start of the war in Iraq, military officials said early Tuesday. Suicide attackers rarely penetrate defenses that surround American troops, but a 10-week-old U.S. counterinsurgency strategy has placed them in outposts and police stations that some soldiers say have made them more vulnerable.........

........As fighters have fled an ongoing security crackdown in Baghdad, attacks have risen against American and Iraqi forces in Diyala, where the U.S. military is sending more than 2,000 additional troops to battle the insurgency. U.S. soldiers have recently moved into at least seven small outposts in and around Baqubah.........