Explosions in Bagdad and possibly Karbala as well (At Least 85 Killed)

CNN ^ | 2 march 2004 | CNN

[Eurotwit]

just breaking on CNN...seems to be targetting Shias. Many people out for their holy celebrations..

[swarthyguy]

Death Toll rising in both places....

Quetta upto almost 40, and sure to go higher.

Musharraf's erstwhile allies(hopefully) are pulling out their Pakistani Civil War Scenario to thwart America's efforts to clean up the mess that is Pak.

Reuters Latest ----
QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - At least 37 Shi'ites have been killed in southwestern Pakistan as suspected Sunni Muslim radicals attacked their rivals with automatic rifles and grenades, as the minority sect marked one of its holiest days.

Hospital sources said more than 150 people were wounded in the suicide attacks in the city of Quetta, which came as at least 143 people were killed in bomb blasts in Iraq's holy Shi'ite city of Kerbala and in Baghdad.

Quetta's military hospital had 18 dead and at least 115 wounded, 30 of them in serious condition, a doctor there said.

A doctor at the Civil Hospital said 19 people, including two attackers, were brought dead there and there were 41 wounded, five of them seriously.

"Most of the casualties were from gunfire, explosions and stampede," he said on Tuesday.

In a separate incident in Pakistan, a provincial leader of an outlawed Shi'ite group was gunned down and more than 30 Shi'ites were wounded in a clash with majority Sunnis, police said.

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=468369&section=news


This is like massacring Christians on Christmas.

[Dog]

Fox News is reporting 11 arrested in connecting with the attacks in Iraq.....including 6 Suicide Bombers with bomb vest on...

[swarthyguy]

>>Odd spot to mount an attack Quetta Pakistan

Not if you want to create as s**tstorm that would negatively affect the Pakistani campaign against the jihadis on the border.

Look how close Quetta is to Waziristan etc. Traditionally a gateway to Afghanistan from Pakistan.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I don't understand self-flaggelation as being good for the soul!

[swarthyguy]

Sounds in Pakistan at least, the start of the much heralded and threatened Spring Offensive by Hekmatyr and the One Eyed Mullah.

The Iraqi were attacks are really large scale.

The Quetta attack, doesn't seem to be a suicide attack, but a conventional ambush of the Shia parade. It could be a sign of desperation at recent events. Grin~

[TexKat]

An Iraqi Shi'ite man shouts, covered by blood, as thousands of Shi'ite Moslems celebrate the last day of Ashura religious festival in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, March 2, 2004. An estimated two million Shi'ites from Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and as far away as Canada have descended on the holy city of Kerbala to mark Ashura, which commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, who was killed in battle more than 1,300 years ago. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

[kinghorse]

These people are on par with the way Americans thought 140 years ago. Watch Open Range. It's a movie that I think Costner kept as close to reality as the historians have shown. The Saloon was was not like the Saloon in Gunsmoke. No Kitty at the Bar. That was a liberal concoction. No, the Saloon was the express domain of the male. The female was considered to be held in too high a moral standard to be exposed to such roughness. It's the same way the Muslim views the female today. It is beneath her dignity and beauty to be exposed to things like a workplace or a market unaccompanied by a male.

The muslims hate our guts because of our liberalism. The same liberalism that will guarantee any red blooded male safety and sanctuary from a mean ole Cop if the male makes the simple statement "I am gay, I know my rights".

The muslims hate us because we have gone over the cliff in their eyes. In my eyes as well. Not as pertains to the notice of womanhood but definitely in the other example given. Comments welcome.

[TexKat]

I don't understand self-flaggelation as being good for the soul!

There is a lot that I do not understand about those people. The blowing yourself up and everyone around you they believe is good for the soul and the men get a bonus (72 virgins). The traveling to Saudi Arabia to worship a structure of stone while trampling to death hundreds of people, and on and on.

Do the Sunnis and Shia's travel to Saudi Arabia for the pilgrimage to worship together or is it broken up on a weekly basis or do the Shia get to attend at all?

[claudiustg]

---Well, for what it's worth, an Hezbollah spokesman said that the bombings had all the hallmarks of an American plot.---

Let's see. the Imam on the PA system starts blaming the Americans, practically while the explosions are still going off and Sistani is in seclusion on the holiest day of the Shiite calendar.

[TexKat]

The muslims hate us because we have gone over the cliff in their eyes. In my eyes as well.

And also in mine. Sometimes I think with all this going on is God trying to get our attention.

The experience of 9/11 has faded or very distant in a lot of Americans minds.

[claudiustg]

---US Baghdad Commander Brig. Kimmit ascribes Karbala-Baghdad attacks in which 143 Shiites killed to suicide bombers controlled by al Qaeda operative Musab Zarqawi in conjunction with Lebanese Hizballah.---

Hiballah or Hezbollah is Shiite.

[kinghorse]

He tried with the Romans and it didn't work out to well for Nero and the gang. They also went off the cliff as respects putting deviants on a higher plane than the common person. And they lost it all in the process.

[Dog]

Lebanese Hizballah

They have strong ties to Iran......that is the key to today's attacks.

[TexKat]

Haiti is another very, very strange place. I can't remember whether it was on CNN or Fox last night, but one of the news correspondents attended a voodoo session in Haiti. They still believe in zombies. Matter of fact witch doctors practice turning some individuals accused of commiting crimes into zombies.

They showed two individuals that had been turned into zombies in Haiti and explained how this happens. They take some part from some type of fish (an ugly mop head looking fish) and grind the part up and whatever else they do to it and feed it to the individual that they want to declare a zombie. This renders the individual mentally inept. After this drug takes hold the individual (zombie) walks around in la-la land for life. The two zombies that they showed last night even though they were out and about walking around the news correspondent was shown the zombies death certificates. One of the zombies death certificate was signed by two doctors (one Haitian and one American).

You can go to Haiti, I'll be here when and if you get back. See ya.

[kinghorse]

One of my friends is Haitian. Nice guy. Normal guy with a great job. Ignorant people do ignorant things. Doesn't mean all Haitians are ignorant.

[RightWhale]

we have gone over the cliff in their eyes. In my eyes as well.

Going over, constantly going over, but never having gone over; nothing is taken to the extreme nationwide. Fundamentally conservative, yet everything is tried--a lot of experiments don't work out and then are abandoned.

[Zack Nguyen]

He said the draft charter will recognize Islam as "a source of legislation" -- rather than "the" source as some officials had sought -- and that no law will be passed that violates the tenets of the Muslim religion.

This makes me extremely nervous. I am no expert, but it seems to me that it is against the Muslim religion to allow any ohter religions to preactice or exist at all. That is not too far from jihad. I'm wondering if this whole democracy push is going to work in Iraq.

[Zack Nguyen]

Those "religious rites" are barbarism personified. How can democracy ever come to Iraq?

[Zack Nguyen]

Keep in mind that they hate us because of our religion - Christianity and Judaism. In Islam there is no room at all for religious freedom. To kill the infidel is divine in their eyes.

[TexKat]

Iran may check the influence of Iraqi Shiites

Opinion DS 01/03/04

Iran’s crucial role in shaping the future of Iraq was conveyed in a subtle threat made this week by the country’s key power broker, former President Hashemi Rafsanjani. The United States is “stuck in the mud in Iraq, and they know that if Iran wanted to, it could make their problems even worse,” Rafsanjani said in an interview with the Tehran daily, Kayhan. He coyly opened the door to a Washington-Tehran dialogue about Iraq and other issues, saying: “For me, talking is not a problem.”

The hard-line mullahs in Tehran are sitting pretty these days: America has toppled their historic foe, Saddam Hussein, and is now struggling with a nasty post-war insurgency. Meanwhile, an Iranian-born Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has emerged as the dominant figure in the new Iraq.

Sistani this month forced US civilian administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, to abandon his plan for regional caucuses to select a transitional government. The cleric said last Thursday he would accept an interim government if elections were held by the end of this year. But his statement cautioned that the interim government shouldn’t make “binding” decisions. This could prevent it from approving a future US military role in Iraq ­ as American officials had hoped.

The Iranian mullahs have consolidated political control at home, too. Determined to crush opposition, they simply vetoed reform candidates from running in the recent parliamentary elections. It was a naked power grab, and it worked.

Anyone in the White House who imagines that the Iranians are running scared because over 100,000 US troops are bivouacked next door hasn’t been reading the papers. From Iran’s standpoint, the US is pinned down and vulnerable. And because of Tehran’s overt and covert influence among Iraq’s Shiite majority, the mullahs may actually be in a position to shape the terms and timing of America’s departure.

“To have America in a difficult but not impossible situation in Iraq is good for Iran,” says Olivier Roy, a French professor who is a leading analyst of Iranian affairs. “They are absolutely convinced that America will not try for a ‘regime change’ in Iran now. They think it’s too late for that.”

Tehran wants to keep the pot boiling in Iraq, rather than allow a smooth transition to a pro-Western democracy. “They don’t want to see a strong Iraq return, even if it’s headed by Shiites,” explains Roy, whose new book, Globalized Islam, will be published this year. Iran has an array of tools to influence Iraq. Revolutionary Guards and Iranian intelligence officers have been operating in Iraq for years, and they have deep and durable networks. If nothing else, these Iranian agents can get tens of thousands of Iraqi Shiites on the streets to protest the US occupation.

The hotheaded young Iraqi mullah, Moqtada al-Sadr, is also useful to Tehran. US officials had hoped to break the back of Sadr’s movement with a crackdown on his followers late last year. They were even thinking of arresting him for complicity in the murder of pro-Western Shiite cleric Abdul Majid al-Khoei, who was killed in Najaf on April 10. But the arrest hasn’t happened, perhaps because of fears it would upset Iraqi Shiites.

A more benign friend of Tehran is Iraqi opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi, who serves on Iraq’s Governing Council and has allied himself in recent weeks with Sistani. Though he has long been the Pentagon’s favorite Iraqi politician, Chalabi has cultivated good relations with Tehran, visiting there before and after the US invasion of Iraq. Indeed, some of the Shiite militiamen Chalabi brought with him to Iraq last April are said to have been trained in Iran. “Our cooperation with Iran is very good. One can argue that Iran has cooperated with us more than any other neighbor,” Chalabi told the Iranian Student News Agency in December, according to the online newsletter Stratfor.

Finally, there is the bearded figure of Ayatollah Sistani. His website, www.sistani.org, certainly is focused on religious issues, rather than politics. The site answers questions on everything from sex to gambling. Sistani’s supporters stress that his “quietist” version of Shiite Islam is the opposite of the Iranian model of clerical rule. By successfully defying Bremer, Sistani is now Iraq’s key political personality. Western liberals fear he will create a Shiite-dominated Iraq that imposes Sharia law and curtails human rights. The main check on this consolidation of Iraqi Shiite power, strange as it sounds, may be Tehran. For now, the Iranians don’t seem to have an interest in a stable Iraq, no matter who leads it. But as Rafsanjani’s comment suggests, they may be ready to bargain.

David Ignatius, a Paris-based syndicated columnist, is published regularly by THE DAILY STAR