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Terrorism

Iraq: Still crazy after all these years

Carnage continues

A bomb goes off underneath a car in Arkansas, injuring a 54-year-old doctor outside his home as he is US car bomb

Bomb damage to Trent Pierce's car. (AP Photo/The Evening Times, Mike Douglas)

going to work. Paramedics quickly call in a medical helicopter to airlift him to a regional trauma center.

At the hospital, a team of doctors treat his shrapnel wounds for 11 hours. He has suffered damage to his intestines and throat, severe burns on his face and lost his left eye. Two weeks after the Feb. 4 attack, he is still on a ventilator.

In Iraq a woman sets off a suicide bomb among a crowd of Shiite pilgrims in Musayyib. There are 40 victims, 18 of them children and 11 women. The injured are picked up and carried to hospitals by by-standers or in cars. It is doubtful they had the advantage of teams of surgeons and 11 hours of surgery.

Their deaths are added to the 99,000 others carefully listed in the Iraq Body Count public database of violent civilian deaths during and since the 2003 invasion. Data is drawn from cross-checked media reports, hospital, morgue, NGO (non-government organizations) and official figures to produce a credible record of known deaths and incidents. (more in About IBC)

Women in Musayyib mourn the victims of a bombing, which set off an inferno that destroyed dozens of buildings in the town south of Baghdad.
Women in Musayyib mourn the victims of a July 2005 bombing, which set off an inferno that killed up to 100 people. (By Alaa Al-marjani -- Associated Press)

 

Back in the U.S., the Memphis Commercial Appeal reports, "People can't find words to describe it. How do you describe something you've never heard in your life? ... It roared with a deep bass, a thunderous sound that shook windows and caused people for miles away to raise their heads and ask aloud: What was that?"

In Musayyib, south of Baghdad, they are sadly familar with the sound. Suicide bombers have attacked them three times, with up to 150 deaths and untold numbers of injured. Yes, they could tell the people of Tennessee what a bomb sounds like.

 

Something to consider

'No One Values the Victims'

Washington Post, March 12, 2009

Iraq bombing shows how death has become more anonymous as a sense of the ordinary returns.

Anthony Shadid

Issues: 

Bush has successfully defended anti-terrorism policies

Good piece of new analysis about how Bush has been quite successful at defending his torture and wiretapping policies using procedural barriers to prevent lawsuits.

Sadly, Democrats in Congress have thwarted efforts to restrain Bush's policies:

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