Iraqi Governing Council President Killed

From the Washington Post:

The president of the Iraqi Governing Council was killed early Monday in a huge explosion set off by a suicide bomber outside the headquarters of the U.S.-led occupation authority here.

At least 10 Iraqis were killed and six were wounded, and two U.S. soldiers were slightly injured, in a devastating attack on Iraq?s political leaders six weeks before the scheduled handover of limited political power to a new Iraqi government.

Izzedine Salim was a Basra-based leader of the Dawa Party, a Shiite political faction. He'd held the rotating presidency of the Governing Council since May 1.

Whole thing here.

Comments

[Stinks of Toady Things]

We were attacked on 9/11 because the terrorists wanted us out of the Gulf and out of Saudi Arabia. We were there because of Saddam. That's why we decided it was time to remove him.

[Ruthless]

Instead of "rotating" the presidency, sounds like they need to "twirl" the presidency.

[Raymond the Hawk]

Stinks-

Invading Iraq definitely enabled us to leave SA and perhaps win a few more "hearts and minds" in the Muslim world. However, in the longer-term, we lost crucial bases in the country that we will ultimately need to deal with in the next ten years. From that perspective, pulling out of SA was a mistake. If it gets a few people a little less angry it gives us a little respite, but it will make the most important battle that much harder.

Still, the short-term goals need to be invading Iran and Syria. Syria will give us a better chance at controlling the situation with the Israelis and Palestinians, and Iran is necessary to make sure that oil will still flow during a war with Saudi Arabia. The Saudis will turn off their oil spigot once we invade, so we need to make sure that Iran's oil is secure.

It's all about thinking at least 5 moves ahead. Otherwise we have no chance of winning this war against Islamo-fascism.

[Brainfang]

Raymond: "You can't defeat people who have big plans just by thinking small and limiting your goals to swatting whatever fly happens to have launched the most recent attack."
If that's truly the best approach, then shouldn't we invade Pakistan next? Saudi Arabia? The problem with "thinking big" against terrorism is, none of these governments, except the former Taliban, are proven to have given al Qaeda refuge or support. It would seem we have to use more devious means to flush out these bastards than simply invading an entire freaking nation.
As for the statement about the eventuality of a post-Hussein Iraq falling to the mullahs: Your speculation is worth considering, but I would then guess that NATO and/or the U.N. would react militarily, with plenty of US support, to prevent Iraq from falling into the wrong hands. Now, we can only hope the rest of the world will want to help deal with the mess "we" created.

[Brainfang]

OH, I posted too soon. Raymond IS thinking big!

Dude, you must want World War 3. Invading Iran and Syria to go after, what, a few hundred terrorists? Bring it On!!

[raymond the hawk]

We can't invade SA yet. We need to lay the ground-work first. Securing the Syrian border and Iranian oil supply is crucial.

Pakistan will also be easier once we've invaded Iran and finished the job in Afghanistan, or at least finished up as much as we can given the status quo in Pakistan. Securing Pakistan's border with Iran will also be important, since our enemies will try to use Iran to enter Pakistan otherwise. The big problem in Pakistan will be China, but that's a separate issue.

[thoreau]

I didn't declare World War III. The terrorists did. They've made it quite clear that they hate modernity and the West, and that they're prepared to kill as many people as they can. Any government that even tolerates their plotting is an abomination that must be removed.

[thoreau]

Whoever just posted that last one, it wasn't me. I would have been much more over-the-top in my rhetoric if I were trying to mock the hawks. I probably would have tossed in some rhetorical bombs against "wussy liberals who hate America".

Don't believe me? Just look at other posts where I've adopted a hawkish tone. Somebody is copying me. It happened last night, in fact, in a thread where I double-posted by mistake and then apologized. Somebody started echoing my posts to make it look like I was still double-posting.

[james ard]

What fun would H&R be without a consistent Thoreau? I haven't been around long, but I knew that first post was bogus.

[raymond the hawk]

Whoever posted the bogus "thoreau" message, the sentiment was still more or less accurate. We don't have a choice in the matter, we have to confront these people and the governments that shelter them.

[james ard]

Sons of bitches. You'd think we'd have secured the government building, at least. This is going to undermine Iraqi confidence and greatly reduce the number of sane people willing to lead the new government.

[andy]

Not good...

[dlc]

Walter-

If you outlaw autos, only outlaws will have autos....or suicide jittney bombs.

[Frank]

raymond is a very clever troll.

just thinking five steps ahead...

[Evan Williams]

Kinda hard to hand over power to the IGC if it's gone.

But yes, yes, Iraq's ready for "Democracy". Surely.

[joe]

Holy crap!

[Fred Gillette]

I ran for county legislator once and got crushed 2:1. If I ran for president of Iraq, do you think I'd stand a chance of winning? (sound of crickets in the background)

[Walter Wallis]

Until car bombings stop, free transit by private cars has to stop.

[joe]

Very sage, Walter.

What do you suggest we do about school shootings?

[matt]

One down and something like 6 more to go? I thought the 'handover' was going to a group other than the Governing Council anyway. The only real effect here is to highlight the poor security in Iraq.

[The Serpent]

Evans Williams: But yes, yes, Iraq's ready for "Democracy". Surely.

So you are asserting that Iraqi?s don?t possess the required mental capacity for Democracy?

Are Iraqi?s less evolved that Americans and Europeans somehow?

Do Iraqi?s living in the U.S. have the capacity for Democracy?

[Fred Gillette]

From Ironic Times:

ALSO IN THE NEWS . . .
U.S. Drops H-Bomb on Mecca, Kills Millions
Incident ?likely? to worsen relations with Muslims, says expert.

Well, guess it's all over now. It's gotta be true because it wasn't writen by Seymour Hersh.

[Walter Wallis]

School shootings? Outlaw them, of course, joe. But I didn't think they were a problem in Iraq, the subject of this article.
Private autos should be restricted to outlying area parking with jitney service in downtoewn areas in Baghdad and other contended cities. This would limit explosive size to what one can carry rather than what can be stuffed into a car.

[joe]

Outlaw WHAT?

[raymond the hawk]

This is obviously a setback, but in the grand scheme of what we need to accomplish it doesn't mean much, as long as we keep our resolve. Most people on this forum are thinking at most 2 steps ahead. The administration is thinking more like 5 steps ahead in this chess game against the Islamo-fascists.

The Islamo-fascists ultimate goal is the creation of a worldwide Islamic theocracy and kill anybody who doesn't share this goal. That includes married gays, for all you lefties out there.

You can't defeat people who have big plans just by thinking small and limiting your goals to swatting whatever fly happens to have launched the most recent attack.

We attacked Afghanistan because we obviously had to. But once we went on the offensive rather than the defensive, Iraq was an interesting first target Why Iraq? The doves here say that Al Qaeda wasn't very active in Iraq, or at least not the parts controlled by Saddam. They also remind us that Al Qaeda was an enemy of Saddam. And that is true. Al Qaeda was kept in check by Saddam. But as we've learned after invading Iraq, there are a lot of fundamentalist nutballs who hate the West running around in Iraq. At some point Hussein's regime was going to crumble, and if it hadn't been done by the US then these people would have picked up the pieces themselves and created an even worse situation than we already had. We had to invade Iraq to make sure that the regime fell on our terms rather than the terms of the mullahs.

If you think about it, we didn't just liberate Iraq from the Baathists. We also prevented it from falling into the hands of the even more dangerous religious terrorists. That's a win for our President. And it's a point that most hawks on this forum aren't making. We aren't just transforming a region, we're pre-emptively denying the Islamo-fascists the chance to conquer Iraq.

The important thing is to stay the course. Instead of announcing that we want to exit even sooner, we should make it clear that we'll stay even longer if we have to, and that the more they attack the longer we'll stay. We're in a very long struggle against a very dangerous movement, and we can't waver. Up till now our President seems to have been thinking several steps ahead, and I hope he doesn't start wavering. We still have at least 2 more countries to invade before we go after the big prize.

[raymond the hawk]

Frank,

How am I trolling? I've been laying out the case we must confront terrorism at its root before it confronts us. I may be a little more aggressive in my vision than most posters here, but I'm hardly the only one who thinks that we need to change the situation in the Middle East to guarantee our security.

[Will]

Raymond:

Don't let the bastards grind you down.

(Noli arrogantium iniurias pati.)

This is a clash of civilizations. It is pathetic that some under-informed people actually believe that the enemy are "just kidding" about their stated beliefs.

[abraham]

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