Just another day in the life and death of Iraq LXXXIV

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I haven't done one of these in a couple of months, for a number of reasons: 1) The U.S. presidential race has occupied most of my blogging time; 2) the violence is down, overall, in Iraq; 3) personal negligence (I should have but didn't); 4) media negligence (Iraq has been relegated to minor news, with much of the violence going largely unreported); and 5) repetition and exhaustion (what can one say about the spilling of blood in Iraq that hasn't been said many times before?).

We've become somewhat desensitized to it all, and violence is down overall for a number of reasons (of which the surge is one, but perhaps not the biggest one), and the media seem to be taking it all for granted (violence in Iraq is no longer much of a story), but make no mistake: Iraq is still an incredibly violent place.

Here's the latest from the NYT:

As Muslims celebrated the close of the fasting month of Ramadan, suicide bombers killed at least 20 people in attacks on two Shiite mosques during early morning prayers in different areas of Baghdad early Thursday, the Interior Ministry said.

The attacks were the second wave this week during a lengthy public holiday covering observances of the Id al-Fitr feast, which is celebrated at different times by Sunnis and Shi'ites at the end of Ramadan.

In the middle-class Zafraniya district, an area of southeast Baghdad with a mixed population of different faiths, a car bomber rammed a taxi into an armored vehicle guarding the entrance to a compound, killing eight people, including two Iraqi soldiers, the Interior Ministry said. The attack took place in neighborhood whose population is heavily Shiite.

In the second attack, a bomber wearing an explosive vest tried to enter a prayer hall in the predominantly Shiite New Baghdad area nearby, killing 12 people and wounding at least 25.

Just more of the same. And a same seemingly without end.