Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Happy Anniversary Iraq
From the New York Times:
Iraq closed a painful decade just as it began: with explosions reverberating around the capital.We've come a long way in 10 years, haven't we?
Beginning in the early morning Tuesday with the assassination of a Ministry of Finance official by a bomb attached to his vehicle and continuing for hours, the attacks were a devastating reminder of the violence that regularly afflicts Iraq. And they somehow seemed more poignant coming on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the American-led invasion, which is being marked in the West by new books, academic studies and polls retesting public attitudes a decade later.
By midmorning, the familiar sight of black smoke rose above a cityscape of palm fronds, turquoise-tiled mosque domes and squat concrete buildings. By midafternoon, the numbers stacked up: 52 dead and nearly 180 wounded in separate attacks that included 16 car bombs, 2 adhesive bombs stuck to cars, and 1 assassination with a silenced gun.
Most attacks hit Shiite neighborhoods, and their targets were varied: restaurants, a bank, a vegetable market and a parking garage. Others were near a courthouse and a university, and some seemed to have no other target than innocent passers-by. Many Iraqis say they are worried about an increase in sectarian tensions, and, while there were no immediate claims of responsibility, the attacks were carried out in the fashion of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni insurgent group left weakened but not vanquished by the American military.
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