While We and the Press Are Absorbed in Foleygate, Iraq Is Getting Worse
By: lauralib
Published On: 10/4/2006 6:08:01 PM
I know that some Virginia political reporters read this blog. Now that our junior senator is traveling to his geographic base, you might want to stir things up a bit and remind him to speak to the issues -- like a place called IRAQ. You know, the place where Allen did a meet and greet with a few troops some months ago?
According to Reuters, http://www.alertnet....
NATO's top general did not dispute on Wednesday a published account saying he described the Iraq war as a debacle and considered resigning over the conflict.
He did say the U.S. was making "progress." Apparently he must have been referring to this development:http://www.alertnet....
BAGHDAD, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Bomb attacks in Baghdad have hit an all-time high, the U.S. military said on Wednesday, as one of the capital's frontline police units was pulled off the streets on suspicion of involvement with sectarian death squads.
Thousands of police face criminal vetting and lie detectors as part of a "retraining" process designed to weed out militia killers who have used the cover of their uniforms to kidnap, torture and commit mass murder, U.S. officials have said.
The other news from Iraq today was what we've come to barely pay attention to, such is its regularity: http://www.alertnet....
BAGHDAD - Four U.S. soldiers were killed in an attack involving "indirect and small-arms fire" northwest of Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement.
AL-BAGHDADI - A roadside bomb on Tuesday near the town of al-Baghdadi, in Anbar province between Ramadi and Haditha, blasted the motorcade of the town's police chief, killing six policemen and seriously wounding their chief, Brigadier Shaaban al-Obeidi, police Major Abdul-Salam al-Hadithi said.
TAL AFAR - A suicide car bomber struck an Iraqi police and army checkpoint in the northern city of Tal Afar, wounding three policemen, two soldiers and nine civilians, police Colonel Kareem Khalaf said.
BAGHDAD - At least 14 people were killed and 75 wounded in a car bomb attack in central Baghdad which interior ministry sources said targeted the convoy of Iraq's industry minister. A spokeswoman for Fawzi al-Hariri said drivers and bodyguards for one of his deputies were taking the cars for fuel when the attack happened. She said two of the bodyguards were killed.
Meanwhile, in that othe country, Afghanistan, the one where we went to find Osama, then started to rebuild the country but stopped to go after WMDs in Iraq, here's what happened today:
PANJWAI, 4 October (IRIN) - Internally displaced persons (IDPs) in southern Afghanistan who have left their homes due to fighting say they urgently need more assistance.
Recent fierce fighting between NATO, government and Taliban militants forced 40-year-old Bibe Gula to flee her home in Zangawat village in the district of Panjwai, some 30 km west of Kandahar city. She stood among dozens of other displaced villagers including men, women and children in Panjwai bazaar hoping to get assistance from the government.
"I lost everything in the fighting. My house was demolished during the air strikes and my two beloved brothers have lost their lives," Gula said.
The fighting has forced some 15,000 families to flee their homes in three southern Afghan provinces since July, according to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
UNHCR spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis said in Geneva on Tuesday that the refugee agency was concerned about this displacement GÇô amounting to approximately 80,000-90,000 people GÇô in Kandahar, Uruzgan and Helmand provinces. She said it had added "new hardship to a population already hosting 116,400 people earlier uprooted by conflict and drought".
http://www.alertnet....
So if anyone from the RTD or the Post is reading this, ask some questions about these issues instead of the character issues.
And the Post might consider putting a foreign relations person on Allen's beat to grill him about Iraq. I bet Allen doesn't know squat about the issue.
Comments
Are There Any Real Journalists Out There? (Catzmaw - 10/6/2006 10:56:21 PM)
Thank you for putting this out there. Watching the CNN interview really frosted my pumpkin. There was Wolf Blitzer, totally focused on whether Jim Webb said something mean about women, then about whether Webb thinks Allen is a racist, while all the time Webb kept trying to get him to focus on something that means something, like Iraq. I don't know what it will take to get the media to start asking questions like real journalists. Why, oh why, are they so obsessed with what someone wrote 27 years ago? Why are they allowing themselves to be manipulated by Allen's slick ad campaign? Honestly, what difference does it actually make on Webb's fitness for the job if some time in the last century he made a few regrettable comments? Actions speak louder than words.
Webb Needs to Give Allen A Lecture On the Horrors of War During the Debate (PM - 10/7/2006 5:40:52 PM)
KIRKUK, Iraq, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Thousands of Iraqi police and soldiers swept through the restive Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk on Saturday, searching homes for weapons and insurgents after all residents were ordered off the streets.
In northern Tal Afar, northwest of Kirkuk, a suicide car bomber killed 14 people in an attack on an Iraqi army checkpoint, the latest in a series of deadly suicide bombings in the town since the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
U.S. military officials had predicted a surge in violence over Ramadan.
The Interior Ministry said 51 bodies had been found in Baghdad in the past 24 hours, many tortured and bound, a typical feature of sectarian death squad killings.
Cost of War Redux (Catzmaw - 10/7/2006 5:58:22 PM)
Geez, that poor little kid. Yes, let's not forget the cost of this little adventure to the people of Iraq.