A Saturday night bombing in a Shi’ite neighborhood in Baghdad, targeting a marketplace full of people breaking the Ramadan fast, seems like a pretty ordinary story. Since the 2003 US invasion and occupation, Iraq has been hit with countless suicide bombings, and Baghdad has taken more than its share.
The Saturday bombing looms particularly large, however, as it stands as the deadliest single bomb attack in Iraq’s entire history, with the most recent figures saying 292 people were killed and another 200 wounded in the attack.
Many people were pinned under the rubble, some for days, with the initial reports suggesting only scores killed. It was around 150 killed by day’s end, and it’s nearly doubled since. ISIS was quick to claim credit for this, just one of many massive ISIS attacks around the world in recent weeks.
US officials have been desperately trying to spin the huge bombing, with its huge civilian death toll, as a sign of their own military success against ISIS, saying that an increase in ISIS bombings in Iraq is a measure of America’s success.
Locals, however, can’t help but see it as a failure, not just of war policy, but of the Abadi government, which has centered all of its Baghdad security on the Green Zone, and that on keeping public protesters away from government buildings, while ISIS is able to launch record bombings with virtual impunity.
The Abadi government’s main response was to finally ban the ADE-651, a notoriously fake bomb detector which amounted to an empty box that looked like it might have electronics inside, and whose marketing landed its creator, a British businessman, in jail. Despite the device not even feigning functionality, it remained virtually ubiquitous in Iraq for years after it was exposed as fraudulent.
There is no way escaping the neocon trap that controls our minds. Why blame Iraqi government for what the terrorists do? Terrorists took a third of their country — and US is not doing anything serious to attack them. The terrorists have explosives factories that some ody supplies — and ., behold, it is not even an issue. The issue is a fake bomb detector! Supplies flow from Saudi Arabia to ISIS territory in Iraq and Syria — and lwe pretend nothing is happening. Money, food, weapons, ammunition — all flaws unimpeded and fllowlessly. Thousands due in Mediterranean and traversing Balkans. Failed states devouring normal life in whole regions. But all us well in the land that neocons reshaped in their own interest. The most uninteligent and most vicious ere determining the course of our relationship with the world. And in the face of failure in every sphere of statehood — thry are just doubling down, and digging the deeper hole for the rest of us. There is really a dillema — as it appears that we cannot even intellectually break free from their diabolical explanations for the death and destruction they want to continue forever.
ABF. All Bush’s fault.
“…deadliest single bomb attack in Iraq’s entire history…”
You can’t be serious, Jason. Have you been seduced by the Dark Side? Everyone who’s been paying attention knows that the deadliest single terrorist attack perpetrated on the Iraqi people in their entire history began on March 20, 2003 – and the repercussions are on-going and have spread. The US invasion of Iraq was a state sponsored terrorist attack intended to spread fear (of the US and the poodles they coerced to join them). The attack was illegal in any International court of law – can’t say that of the US courts because they’ve been filled with those who do what they’re told to do to protect the terrorists.
So, it was a very big terrorist attack last weekend but it doesn’t rise to the level of terrorist attack that is tearing the Middle East apart – as intended.
“deadliest single bomb attack” /= “deadliest single terrorist attack”
matter of opinion.
Not really.
The invasion of Iraq was a long series of attacks of various types.
The Baghdad attack was a single attack of a single type.
One of the two could conceivably have been the “deadliest single bomb attack in Iraq’s history.”
The other one, by definition, could not have.
No, really. I believe that the US invasion of Iraq and all that the US and it’s poodles have inflicted on the Iraqi people is in fact terrorism waged at the state level. What happened last weekend would most likely have not happened if the US had minded its own business instead of destabilizing the entire ME. I believe that the latest is just a continuation of the first, unintended perhaps but just more of the same plan.
You are, of course, entitled to your opinion and I mine. So, we should just agree to disagree. Believe me, there is nothing you can offer on this subject that will sway me.
“I believe that the US invasion of Iraq and all that the US and it’s poodles have inflicted on the Iraqi people is in fact terrorism waged at the state level”
I agree.
“What happened last weekend would most likely have not happened if the US had minded its own business instead of destabilizing the entire ME. I believe that the latest is just a continuation of the first, unintended perhaps but just more of the same plan.”
I agree as well.
“You are, of course, entitled to your opinion and I mine. So, we should just agree to disagree.”
What we’re disagreeing on isn’t a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of words meaning things. The US invasion and occupation of Iraq was not a “single bomb attack.” Therefore it could not have been “the single deadliest bomb attack in Iraq’s history.”