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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (36114)	7/18/2004 1:42:49 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Respond to of 81568

Attacks on leaders more than jihad By Paul McGeough Chief Herald Correspondent July 19, 2004 <font size=3> An Iraqi security officer guards the site of a car bomb which was detonated near the convoy of Iraqi Justice Minister Malik Dohan al-Hassan in Baghdad, Iraq. Al-Hassan was unhurt but five bodyguards were killed. Photo: AP Malik Dohan Al-Hassan, Iraq's Justice Minister, was within a hair's breadth of joining the Baghdad litany of the dead when a weekend suicide bomber killed four of his bodyguards as his convoy pulled away from his home. After a lull since the June 28 handover of power in Iraq, the rate of deadly attacks by the insurgents has picked up in the past week with devastating effect. Another attack on Saturday, at Mahmoudia, south of Baghdad, killed two Iraqis and injured 50 others outside a National Guard recruitment centre; and two vital oil pipelines were ruptured, bringing to 130 the number of such strikes this year. Similar attacks last week took the life of the Governor of Nineveh, a northern province that encompasses Iraq's third biggest city - Mosul; two senior officials from the industry and foreign ministries were shot dead; and 11 Iraqis died and 40 were injured as a huge car bomb exploded at the main entrance to Baghdad's "green zone", the heavily fortified government and diplomatic bunker in the heart of Baghdad. Another foreign hostage was beheaded and, despite pressure from Washington and Baghdad, the Government of the Philippines surrendered to the demands of hostage-takers to pull its troops out of Iraq earlier than planned - to save the life of one of its nationals who faced execution. In the swirls of Iraqi history, Saturday was the anniversary of the 1968 Baath Party coup that positioned Saddam Hussein to take over the country; and the worst of last week's attacks marked Thursday's anniversary of the bloody 1958 overthrow of the British-appointed monarchy. The insurgents have made priority targets of all Iraqi officials, penetrating tight security cordons to mount sophisticated attacks, which, like that on the 84-year-old Justice Minister, often include secondary explosions to cause more death or mayhem among the crowd of emergency services personnel and civilian onlookers drawn by the initial attack. Since the fall of Baghdad at least one other provincial governor has been assassinated; the president and another member of the former Iraqi Governing Council died in a downtown car-bomb attack; eight police chiefs have been executed; and an unknown number of ministerial and other officials have been killed. Such are the convulsions in Baghdad that the death of six municipal councillors since the handover of power, and a consequent wave of debilitating fear in local politics, has been hardly noticed.t they marked a steep rise in a strike rate that has taken the lives of 61 of the capital's 750 local councillors in less than a year. Almost 100 Iraqis and about 40 Americans have died since the June 28 handover. A more realistic picture of the insurgency is emerging. US and Iraqi officials have consistently portrayed it as the foreign supporters of al-Qaeda and so-called Saddam "dead enders", thereby bolstering their argument that Iraq is rightly a part of the war on terror. But since taking office Iyad Allawi has acknowledged that <font color=red>a significant number of those resisting are secular and nationalist Iraqis angered by the US military presence in Iraq; <font color=black>and recently senior American officials in Iraq have acknowledged for the first time that the make-up and number of insurgents "mean they cannot be defeated militarily". contd....http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/18/1090089035893.html#