Just another day in the life and death of Iraq XXIII

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Actually, it wasn't "just another day". It was worse:

Sunni Muslim insurgents blew up five car bombs and fired mortars into Baghdad's largest Shiite district Thursday, killing at least 161 people and wounding 257 in a dramatic attack that sent the U.S. ambassador racing to meet with Iraqi leaders in an effort to contain the growing sectarian war.

Shiite mortar teams quickly retaliated, firing 10 shells at Sunni Islam's most important shrine in Baghdad, badly damaging the Abu Hanifa mosque and killing one person. Eight more rounds slammed down near the offices of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the top Sunni Muslim organization in Iraq, setting nearby houses on fire.

Two other mortar barrages on Sunni neighborhoods in west Baghdad killed nine and wounded 21, police said late Thursday.

In response, the White House said that it "condemn[s] such acts of senseless violence that are clearly aimed at undermining the Iraqi people's hopes for a peaceful and stable Iraq," but those "hopes," such as there is any hope left, are giving way to an escalation of sectarian violence that is poorly understood by pro-war Americans, including the one in the Oval Office. And that escalation is reflected in steady month-by-month increase in civilian deaths.

There are some, like Power Line's John Hinderaker, who refuse to call Iraq "[a] disaster comparable to a civil war," denying that there is anything like "out-of-control sectarian violence". Iraq is just twice as violent as Washington, D.C., he argues. But how is this in any way comforting? The fact is, the violence is increasing. According to the AP, "The United Nations said [yesterday] that 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October, the highest monthly toll since the March 2003 U.S. invasion and another sign of the severity of Iraq's sectarian bloodbath". And these are just the reported deaths. How many went unreported? And how many Iraqis suffered violent injuries? And what about all the Americans who were killed? It is a sign of the right's desperation, and callousness, and delusion, to compare Iraq to an American city. The violence is simply not the same. And it's getting worse in Iraq. Worse and worse and worse.

(Graph and photo from The New York Times. See link above.)