Another indication of the fact that the Iraqi adventure was undertaken without sufficient understanding of the realities of Islam, much less of the Sunni/Shi’ite divide, which Condoleeza Rice recently asserted breezily that Middle Easterners would just have to “overcome.” Yes, I’m sure they’ll get right on that.
“45 Iraqis massacred in reprisal attacks,” by Mujahid Mohammed for AFP, :
MOSUL, Iraq (AFP) – Gunmen massacred 45 men in an overnight rampage in apparent revenge for bombings that killed 75 people in a mixed Iraqi town once hailed by US President George W. Bush as a beacon hope.
“We received 45 bodies of handcuffed and blindfolded men from al-Wahada neighbourhood overnight. They were killed yesterday just after the bomb,” said a doctor at Tal Afar hospital in northern Iraq on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The wanton shootings and lethal bombings underscore the raging Sunni-Shiite sectarian warfare that continues to grip the country, as well as a Sunni-led insurgency fighting against the Shiite-led government and its US backers.
Two bomb attacks in Tal Afar on Tuesday killed 75 people and wounded 190 in Shiite districts of the mixed town, which is witnessing its worst violence since Bush in March 2006 held up the onetime militant stronghold as a model for efforts to create a stable Iraq.
In the worst attack, a suicide bomber tricked soldiers into believing he was delivering food supplies to a Shiite area where he detonated his cargo of explosives within a crowd of waiting men and women.