Iraq Blasts May Have Killed More Than 100

AP via Yahoo! ^ | 1Feb04 | SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI, Associated Press Writer

[Indie]

Spare me the semantic diatribe on Sunday morning. They are murderers [def: killing innocents in cold blood]. Period. The fact I even had to say that really chaps my $ss.

[Dog]

I'm afraid so Luis. This is going to get very bloody. And I suspect the Saddam loyalists have left the field .....and it's us and AlQaeda squaring off.

[a_Turk]

Turkey Gets U.S. Support Against Rebels
Fri Jan 30, 2:28 PM ET
By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer

WASHINGTON - Turkey's prime minister has been given assurances of U.S. support in that country's campaign against Turkish Kurdish rebels holed up in the mountains of northern Iraq (news - web sites), a Turkish diplomat said Friday.

But it was not immediately clear whether U.S. troops in Iraq were prepared to use force against the Kurdistan Workers Party, which now operates under different names.

Turkish newspapers reported U.S. forces had raided an office of the Democratic Solution Party Wednesday while Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was meeting with President Bush (news - web sites) at the White House.

The Turkish diplomat told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that the United States promised to take serious action against the rebels, holed up in the Qnadil mountains on the Iraqi-Iranian border.

At the same time, administration officials asked Erdogan to extend an offer of amnesty to the Kurdish rebels, promising they would not be harmed if they disarmed and returned to Turkey, the official said.

Until now, Turkey has provided a limited form of amnesty, offering assurances only to Kurds who were cleared of allegations of promoting terrorism. A few hundred Kurds have taken advantage of the offer.

Turkey regards the rebel group, which has an estimated 5,000 fighters, as a constant threat. Also, Turkey, Syria and Iran, all of whom have sizable Kurdish minorities, fear Kurds in Iraq might gain independence and inspire revolts in the countries.

The Bush administration frequently has declared it did not wish to see Iraq cut up. It also has said it was up to Iraq to decide how to deal with Kurdish complaints that its traditional areas were "Arabized" by former President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) to diminish Kurdish autonomy.

Erdogan said Thursday that a premature U.S. departure from Iraq would deprive the country of a chance at a democratic outcome after long years of dictatorship.

Turkey disappointed the United States last year by not supporting the U.S.-led war to depose Sadam. But Erodgan said it was important that the United States not walk away from the situation it has created.

"There is a step that has been taken," Erdogan said, referring to the ouster of Saddam's government.

"I believe it's necessary to actually go through the process. If that process is disrupted and everybody is left to their own means, then there is no meaning of the initial action in the first place," he said.

The United States plans a transfer of power to Iraqi control by July 1. American troops are expected to remain in Iraq well beyond that date in support of steps toward democratization.

Erdogan spoke at the American Enterprise Institute, a research group.

[Dog]

I don't ever remember AQ using walking suicide bombers.....you ever seen them do this before?

[jpl]

The terrorists are getting increasingly desperate, as they're resorting to killing their fellow Middle Easterners in greater and greater numbers.

[AdmSmith]

The prime suspect is Ansar al-Islam, but Iranian hands or Turkish could be be excluded. The killers were dressed as clerics and not searched.

I have met some of the murdered persons and they were nice people. I fear that some of my friends have fatal wounds.

[nuconvert]

Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that.
My condolences.

[Luis Gonzalez]

That's why we're there to begin with.

To bring the war to the warriors, and away from our cities and towns.

[Austin Willard Wright]

Wrong....we are primarily there to implement a Wilsonian dream of transforming Iraq into a unified/democratic counterweight to Saudi Arabia and thus make Baghdad into a Middle Eastern version of Kansas City.

[a_Turk]

>> I don't ever remember AQ using walking suicide bombers

Suicide bomb blasts downtown Istanbul

ca. 1999, but there are other examples of this

Reuters

Daren Butler ISTANBUL

A suspected Kurdish rebel suicide bomber killed herself and injured 10 other people Saturday in a dramatic attack at the heart of Turkey's commercial capital Istanbul. Turkey has been hit by a wave of violent protests since the capture of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan last month.

The semi-official Anatolian news agency said a woman carrying hand grenades on her body and in a bag carried out the attack near a riot police bus in bustling Taksim Square, the main shopping and entertainment quarter of the city's European section.

Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit blamed Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) for the attack.

"The PKK's use of young girls as living bombs shows just how inhuman their methods have become," the news agency quoted Ecevit as saying.

Some of the woman's grenades did not go off and were later detonated by bomb experts. Three policemen were among the wounded.

The NTV television channel showed pictures of some of the wounded lying bleeding on the ground.

Witnesses described a scene of chaos.

"I heard a big explosion as I crossed the square. When I turned around there were five people lying on the ground," said Olcay Kirac.

The blast, which occurred during peak shopping hours, sent crowds fleeing from the square, the city's main pedestrian shopping center. Shattered paving stones littered the scene of the explosion.

Turkey's main human rights watchdog condemned the attack. "We are once again protesting such attacks whoever they come from...at a time when the society needs peace," Anatolian quoted the Human Right Association as saying in a statement.

The agency said police all over the city were put on alert against any other possible bomb attacks.

Turkey had already tightened security after Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels vowed to escalate violence in protest against the capture of their leader.

Finance Minister Nami Cagan said the police vigilance prevented further injury. "As a result of the high sensitivity of security, a huge disaster was prevented in Istanbul. Four other bombs (were) left behind unexploded," the agency quoted him as saying.

Ocalan is incarcerated on an isolated prison island awaiting a trial for treason. Turkey holds him responsible for the deaths of more than 29,000 people in the PKK's 14-year-old armed campaign for Kurdish self-rule.

The guerrilla leader faces the death penalty, but Turkey has not carried out capital punishment since 1984.

Saturday's blast was similar to a suicide bomb attack in the province of Van last week when a suspected PKK member killed himself and wounded three others.

[yonif]

I support giving the Kurds a state.

In addition, terrorism will not end in Iraq until the militant Islamic ideology is eliminated, which is driving foreign terrorists to come in and fight Americans.

[Luis Gonzalez]

OK...you go ahead and buy into that crap, come by later, I have a bridge I may want to sell.

[wayoverontheright]

The question is who did this. This was in the kurdish section. 99 percent of the Kurds support us. Maybe Arabs infiltrated the area. Will have to wait to see who did this.

If it is al-Qaeda, then they just made themselves the enemy within not just Iraq, but many countries in the region. This being an attack on Iraqis and not American soldiers will cause the nation as a whole to oppose them, and could conceivably serve to galvanize the warring factions in a way no amount of diplomacy could.

[Glenn]

The fact I even had to say that really chaps my $ss.

Thanks for the lecture, Pops. Put some ice on it.

[RightWhale]

they're resorting to killing their fellow Middle Easterners

Nothing special. Rational pluralism is relatively new in the world of ideas.

[Indie]

That's why we're there to begin with. To bring the war to the warriors, and away from our cities and towns.

Agreed.

Wrong....we are primarily there to implement a Wilsonian dream of transforming Iraq into a unified/democratic counterweight to Saudi Arabia and thus make Baghdad into a Middle Eastern version of Kansas City.

Not worth a comment.

[Don Joe]

Get it riught. These are HOMICIDE bombers.

As opposed to what other kind of bombers?

Suicide is an appropriate qualifier for bomber , since homicide is the point of most bombings, whether in wartime or peacetime, by terrorists or soldiers. What makes these bombings unique, their unique qualifier, is that the means of delivery is a suicide.

Bingo.

I find Republican Political Correctness no less disturbing than that of the left, and perhaps moreso, because we ought to know better.

The doctrinaire call for using the absurd term of art, "homicide bomber," reflects poorly on us. As you point out, homicide is the point of most bombings. I guess we can exclude "bug bomb" and "stink bomb" practitioners, but since these discussions never seem to revolve around the doings of the Orkin Man or my Rottie, it's a pointless distinction.

In reality, what makes the bombers under discussion the most despicable, inhumane, and deranged is the suicide aspect. To downplay it with a Politically Correct neologism merely serves to reduce a brutal act into a euphemism.

So why do people persist in using the term?

The only reason I can come up with is that Bush told 'em to use it. And that's a frightenlingly poor rationale, when one considers the implications.

[Don Joe]

Suicude is singular. Homcide is singular/plural.

Um, no, "homicide" is not the plural of "suicide."

[freedumb2003]

Sick people, in need of a Physician who need to be put down like the rabid curs they are.

[Don Joe]

Suicide is singular.

How could it be plural???

Jim Jones demonstrated one method.