Iraqi’s deputy foreign minister, Bassam Salih Kubba, has been assassinated. From AP:
Bassam Salih Kubba, Iraq’s most senior career diplomat, was mortally wounded in Baghdad’s Azimiyah district, Foreign Ministry spokesman Thamir al-Adhami said. The attack took place in a Sunni Muslim neighborhood where support for Saddam Hussein was strong.
The attack was the second assassination of a senior Iraqi figure in the past month. The head of the now-disbanded Iraqi Governing Council, Izzadine Saleem, was killed in a suicide car-bombing May 17 at an entrance to the heavily guarded Green Zone headquarters of the U.S.-run occupation authority.
Nevertheless, despite mounting evidence that significant forces in Iraq don’t want the democracy that the U.S. is trying to establish, Al-Qaeda’s Zawahiri has identified the chief obstacle to democracy in the Middle East: not the jihadists, but America. From CNN, :
The voice on the audiotape said al Qaeda is against such reforms, and that they would not benefit the Arab world.
“Americans do not want the reforms in the Arab world,” the speaker said. “The Americans will not give us democracy and freedom. Democracy and freedom should come from within us, from our own souls, and our children and young generation will benefit from it.
“The Americans do not want democracy and freedom for Muslims.”
The last audiotaped message believed to come from al Qaeda was from bin Laden, who issued threats against coalition officials in Iraq.
And it seems that they are following through. Is the assassination of coalition leaders an example of the “democracy and freedom that should come from within us, from our own souls”?