This is Bad.
By Leon H Wolf Posted in War — Comments (32) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Stories like this don't make me feel warm and fuzzy:
BAGHDAD (AP) -- A suspected suicide bomber blew himself up Thursday in the Iraqi parliament's cafeteria in a stunning assault in the heart of the heavily fortified, U.S.-protected Green Zone, killing at least two lawmakers and wounding 10 other people.
I have only one observation to make about this. Yesterday, I had to travel to downtown Nashville to visit a small and peripheral Davidson County courtroom. Before I could make it three steps inside the building, I had to empty out all my pockets, walk through a metal detector, get passed over with a wand, and lift up my arms and turn around. This, despite the fact that downtown Nashville has not been the subject of hundreds of terrorist attacks over the last 4 years. What I want to know is how a guy got all the way in to the cafeteria of the frigging national Parliament building with a bomb???
I'm sure we'll get details over the next couple of days; I sure hope they're better than what I expect.
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target. The reporting on this will be interesting.
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Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.
Between the guy blowing himself up at the entrance to the building, and the guy blowing himself up in the middle of the cafeteria. I'm just not buying this. If it's "inside job" as IJB suggests, then that makes it at least defensible, if still not very good.
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[F]or by the fundamental law of Nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred...
-John Locke
It is really hard. This is the first incident since the Iraqi parliament was elected. I will be worried if this starts to happen on a more regular basis. It is bad enough. It certainly is a victory for the insurgents. The question is how big?
How do you get explosives into a heavily fortified area - only by one means: a inside job.
IIRC, the attack in that U.S. base's cafeteria a year or two back was also an inside job.
I'm sure this one will turn out to be too.
What will be interesting to see is whether the two killed lawmakers were the intended targets all along. This may have been a targetted assassination, rather than indiscriminate terrorism.
And a fairly well-educated fellow too, IIRC. Just the kind of guy who'd be likely to find a way to get through the Green Zone defenses.
Hmmm...lots of Islamist militant noises from Saudi Arabia lately, too. Just a thought.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1609521,00.html
"The metal detectors at the entrance to the Baghdad Convention Center, where Parliament is housed, were not operating Thursday, said the Interior Ministry official, who was suspicious of a wider plot. Two weeks ago, Coalition forces found two suicide vests inside the Green Zone and there was speculation about the presence of a third in the area.
Within an hour of the explosion, a message from the al-Qaeda-controlled Islamic State in Iraq was posted on a prominent militant website, muslm.net, calling the blast a "message" to anyone who cooperates with "the occupier and its agents." It said ominously, "We will reach you wherever you are""
Oh man, this is scary. Samarra bombing anyone?
Scary would be if AQII was able to blow up the entire Parliament building, and everyone in it.
Taking out two lawmakers is just AQII picking at the edges. It's not meaningfully significant.
And that's assuming I believe that AQII was actually behind this. I still suspect it'll turn out to be either sectional or clan rivalries showing itself in the form of a targetted assassination.
AQII hasn't been able to pull off anything truly meaningful since Samarra.
I'm reluctant to endorse just yet that it was trying to target government/insurgency negotiations, though.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
Regardless of who it was, suicide bombers were able to inflitrate the Green Zone during the middle of the intense security crackdown and murder 8 people. I don't see how anyone blowing themselves up and taking two members of the government with them is anything less significant. Killing members of Parliament is not "picking at the edges." It's going right at the heart of the government. Further, one of the MPs (if that's what they're called) was "an official with the office of Iraq's speaker of parliament." This is a huge blow to the Iraqi government.
How big a deal this is will be determined by how and why it happened. If this is a demonstration of AQ's newfound ability to strike at will, anywhere, yes, it is a huge blow - and we'll know soon enough when the Iraqi government disintegrates. If this was a specific operation that could only be accomplished through the burning of existing assets it will only be a big deal if people panic.
So don't, 'kay?
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
but I've become accustomed to such thinking during the last four years. But I will try to reserve judgment on its effects. My inclination, however, is this will be damaging no matter who carried out the attack.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/04/12/iraq.main/index.html
8 dead, 20 wounded.
"Today's suicide attack in Iraq's parliament building killed eight people and wounded 20, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said. The dead include at least two lawmakers, a Sunni and a Shiite, according to Muhanned Jabbar, an official with the office of Iraq's speaker of parliament."
If you were an Iraqi in Baghdad, wouldn't you be scared if the most heavily fortified part of the city was infiltrated? God knows I would be if a coffee shop on the Hill was bombed.
As a "man on the street", popping off politicians in the green zone doesn't effect me. Suicide bombers blowing up shopping malls down the street from my house scare the heck out me.
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Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.
It sounds like security was increased this morning, apparently because they got some intelligence. That could explain why they exploded it in the wrong room. As one Iraqi minister said, the bomb exploded in a rather deserted cafeteria, but if they had done it in the Assembly Room a few minutes before, AQ could have taken out most of Parliament.
There have been close calls other times in the Green Zone. Parliaments of other countries have been bombed. After years of trying AQ got someone on the inside.
It seems like AQ is trying to generate a burst of activity, with the Iraq Bridge bombing, Algeria, and this one.
I still see AQ as being very weak militarily, unable to do nothing more than explode suicide bombs. If everyone in the West just shrugged their shoulders and moved on, AQ would lose most of their power over society. It's like other types of criminals. When society hears about murders, it doesn't give up or despair. Just tracks down the criminals and tries to prevent other ones.
Like last week. AQ sends a woman suicide bomber to blow up a bunch of civilians. I'm supposed to be impressed by that? Think they're tough guys? Scared of them?
I would imagine that 98% of the American public has forgotten that a gunman entered the US CAPITOL BUILDING and murdered two people only 12 years ago.
When you have Al Qaeda doing everything they can to create senational attacks- what do you expect? We can't have 100% success until we win the war. That will take time. Don't tell me that you are getting weak kneed like the libs. Why not post one of the articles where the UK killed off 23 Mahdi Army fighters yesterday?
United States Air Force
http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com
And they caught the guy at the entrance, where the two people he shot were police. If that was the story coming out of Baghdad, that would be a much smaller deal than this is.
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[F]or by the fundamental law of Nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred...
-John Locke
Please don't take this as an attack, just an observation: it's likely not a good idea to sign your comment "United States Air Force" without clarification. A reader could conceivably construe this as intent to portray personal opinion as the view of a service branch. Perhaps another phrasing would be more circumspect...
In my well mispent youth, I often endeavored to enter installations of various types and sizes. The bigger the installation, the easier it was to penetrate and, once within the outer shell, the "George Effect" would begin to work in my favor.
People would assume that, as I was within the security perimeter, I had a right to be there because "George" as in "let George do it" had cleared me. The Green Zone is a massive installation and must have more than one blind spots in which a competent infiltrator could enter the outer security ring. Once inside, the chance of being spotted is quite low.
There are only two entrances to the Convention Center compound (not including the sealed off underground entrances) and several entrances to the Center itself. I know, I was there when we liberated it. There are at least three layers of security to get through before you can get to the Center. Searches are involved in all three. So just because one set of metal detectors were broken doesn't explain missing the explosives before that point.
There is only ONE way that this happened. It was an inside job.
Caveat: I haven't been to the Center in just over a year, so something may have changed... though I can't imagine that security relaxed in that time.
on his website. One thing that has cahnged since you were there may be that the US turned over security for the center to the Iraqis a little over a year ago. Also the MSM stories say this attack happened in the heart of the green zone, and actually the building is on the outer NW edge of the international zone.
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2007/04/the_real_story_.html
You’re a persistent cuss, pilgrim.
John Wayne to Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
if insurgents/AQ/whoever has struck in the Green Zone before? I know that they regularly launch mortars and rockets and such, but have they actually hit infiltrated it before?
because they will want a democrat to be elected so life will be easier for them. The suicide bombings will be on a daily basis once the primaries are over.
The trickle of good news from the surge could blunted by the idea that we can't harden the green zone. That's potentially a Tet moment.
or...
The fact that Al Qaeda is our there saying they did this because they are unhappy about the recent developments in Iraq. That's potentially a steeling moment.
The media will call it a Tet Moment.
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We would also like to know your advice for somebody like my daughter, who's going to graduate in two years, advice that you would give a young person.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Advice for a young person. Study history.
...Prime Minister's offices because the Algerian military has some AQ bigs surrounded in the hinterlands. If AQ is trying shots to the head out of desperation in Algeria, you may be right about their motive in Iraq.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/04/12/iraq.main/index.html
The second link on this CNN report is footage of an interview with the bombing in the background.
"A loud blast shook the room, and an orange flash appeared behind the lawmaker, Jalal al-Deen al-Saghir, who quickly ducked. The sound of the explosion was followed by the rattling of broken glass.
The camera shook, but the photographer continued filming and traveled through the smoke-filled hallways. People shouting in Arabic could be heard in the background.
Video footage of the cafeteria showed tables and chairs destroyed and body parts among the wreckage."
There is no impenetrable defense. If you are committed enough and willing to pay the price, you can find a way through anything.