Car bomb hits busy Baghdad marketAt least 14 people have been killed in a car bombing at a busy market in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, police and hospital officials have said.
At least 64 people were wounded in the explosion, which happened at about 1300 (1000 GMT) in a square crowded with shoppers after Friday prayers.
A police spokesman said the dead were all civilians, including at least one woman and a child.
The wounded were being treated at four hospitals, a medical official said.
The attack took place in Tayaran Square, the scene of other deadly bomb attacks in the past two and a half years.
It lies in a predominantly Shia quarter of the city, which makes it the target of Sunni extremists.
Meanwhile, US military officials reported that coalition forces had killed five insurgents and detained 14 suspects, during operations targeting al-Qaeda in central and northern Iraq.
US officials say violence has been reduced by 60% in Iraq although bombings and other attacks are still frequent.
This one probably was engineered by the Sunnis, considering the two bombs that shredded Sunnis the other day.
The NIE has signaled that the United States is done. Iran and her proxies are going for broke. The American-backed Sunnis will bomb back.
(Thank you, Gen. Hayden. No doubt you are fulfilling “the CIA’s social contract with the American people” by removing the one weapon — a significant probability of conventional escalation — which could have deterred Iran.)
It’s important to remember whose hands are dirty, as Iran reels in southern Iraq. Unless Petraeus all but orders the Sunnis to ‘cut down the tall trees’ and preemptively cleanse Shiites, the NIE lost the war, and Petraeus’s work has been undone.
Oh what an intricate web of deceit and destruction we have woven.
As much as I am concerned by what the Iranians are up to, it’s some small comfort to see them give daily reports on their advancements. It contributes to the belief by some that it’s more sizzle than steak.
Their target audience is the Muslim world first, looking for indicators that they can be considered serious players in the big world. Similarly, the Russians are making a big show of their advanced and enhanced militarization and weapon development. Deflection from pressing domestic concerns with a show of assertiveness has become the way to go in country branding.
When we stop hearing what these regimes are up to, will be the time to really worry.
China holds it’s cards very close, you’ll notice.
Mike Feldman
China has way too many of its own problems to become an international issue. Besides the obvious problems (pollution…) it has raging domestic inflation, which I think is very probably significantly higher than China’s government statistics say.
Also, some China-hawk Westerners have this conception of China as a monolithic, Soviet-style dictatorship that happens to allow capitalism. That’s not the case; the provinces have a lot more control over actual economic policy (or ‘economic policy implementation’ if you want) than Beijing does.
Beijing will need all the capital-markets access it can get in order to deal with its many problems — which means it isn’t going to be starting any wars and quarantining itself from global markets.