Bombing in Hilla Kills at Least 125
Bombing in Hilla kills at least 125 (CNN)
A suicide car bomber Monday morning drove into a crowd of Iraqis outside a government medical office in Hilla, killing at least 125 and wounding up to 200 others, Iraqi government and health officials said. Iraqi police recruits were lining up outside the building to be given physicals, officials said. Hilla is located about 55 miles south of Baghdad. A second car bomb exploded about 15 miles to the north in Musayyib. Iraq’s Interior Ministry said it had reports of wounded but no other details.
This bombing should hasten the demise of the insurgency. With an elected Iraqi government shaping up, it is increasingly difficult to make the case that these police recruits are pawns of the Americans. Whatever sympathy these terrorists have among the general populace has to be evaporating.
Update (0932): Cori Dauber seems to agree:
Remember after 9/11 it was heavily discussed that al Queda had made a terrible mistake by assuming that such a devastating blow would lead the American people to react one way, when in fact we reacted another way entirely. There’s been an assumption that Iraqis would respond by being afraid and intimidated, when the election seems to indicate they’ve reacted by being determined and resolved. Why is that so hard for Americans of all people to get?
Exactly.
The killer(s) targeted “a crowd of people waiting outside the health center to get certificates needed to apply for government jobs” (Reuters). I can’t help but wonder if Ward Churchill’s [despicable] philosophy wouldn’t regard this as a justified pre-emptive strike against Iraq’s own, home-grown “little Eichmans.”
The only people who give a rat’s ass about what Ward Churchill thinks are Right wing bloggers who are making the guy out to be more influential then he ever was or would have ever been had it not been for the publicity of, rather ironically, right wing blogs and pundits.