22 US Troops Announced Killed
29 Bodies Found in Baghdad
Reuters reports that police found 29 bodies in Baghdad on Saturday and 5 more in the northern city of Mosul.
There was other major violence, with bombings, mortar attacks and assassinations in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Mosul and elsewhere.
A suicide bomber attempted to get a car full of explosives into the Green Zone where US diplomatic and Iraqi government offices are located.
AP reports that the killings of 22 US troops were announced on Saturday. Thirteen died in a helicopter crash in Diyala Province that may or may not have been a shoot-down. Diyala is the scene of a great deal of political violence and guerrilla activity. Militiamen at the Shiite holy city of Karbala south of the capital killed another 5. Guerrillas killed two more on Saturday, one in Baghdad and one in Mosul. Another two were announced killed on Friday, one in Mosul and another in al-Anbar province.
The killing of US troops in Shiite Najaf and Karbala has been a rare event since hostilities ending in late August 2004 between the American military and the Mahdi Army of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The resurgence of lethal hostility in this Shiite area almost certainly has to do with the ongoing US crackdown on the Sadr Movement.
Shiite militiamen also killed a British soldier with a roadside bomb.
68 percent of Americans oppose Bush’s escalation of the Iraq War.
John Edwards called on Congress to oppose the “troop surge.”
The current draft of the proposed Iraqi petroleum bill vests decisions in the central government, as the Sunni Arabs had wanted. The Kurds had argued for a more decentralized system.
Qatar-based Sunni preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi called on Iran to cease trying to “Shiitize” the region and accused it of playing an unhelpful role in Iraq. Al-Qaradawi was for a long time party of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
Tom Engelhardt discusses the US war on Islam. It is well worth reading.