Insurgents kill 18 in attacks across Iraq (and the killing continues)

[rodeodance]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8615916/

Insurgents kill 18 in attacks across Iraq

Violence will not hinder progress toward democracy, government says

Updated: 1:35 p.m. ET July 18, 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents killed 18 police and government workers in a series of shootings across central Iraq, and the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday the recent wave of suicide bombings won't derail progress toward democracy.

Insurgents killed eight policemen in a gunbattle in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Khadra, police said. It was not clear if any insurgents were killed.

Gunmen also killed six police officers, including a colonel, in five attacks in Baghdad, police and hospital officials said. Another policeman died in a shootout between insurgents and security forces just north of Baghdad in Taji, police said.........

[merwin]

1. Would this be Rumsfeld's 'violent last throes'?

[VegasWolf]

2. More like "birth pains" of a new massive entity. nt

[warsager]

4. That was Cheney

[phrenzy]

6. Making Friends With Horror

"We'd left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't say. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile, a pile of little arms, and I remember, I...I...I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized like I was shot, like I was shot with a diamond, a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, 'My God, the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure! And then I realized they were stronger than me because they could stand it. These were not monsters. These were men -- trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts who have families, who have children, who are filled with love - that they had the strength, the strength to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill - without feeling, without passion, without judgment - without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us."

[deutsey]

3. 1767 dead US troops; 22 US casualties in July alone so far

http://icasualties.org/oif/

In addition to the slaughter of Iraqi civilians.

Nothing to see here, though. Why can't we just focus on all the good things happening Iraq? :sarcasm:

[leftchick]

5. Gunmen Kill at Least 24 in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen killed at least 24 police, soldiers and government workers in Iraq on Monday, and an Iraqi general said about 50 suspected insurgents were captured in the first days of a new security operation in Baghdad.

The latest bloodshed occurred in a series of smallscale ambushes and shootings, as Baghdad received a respite Monday from the wave of suicide bombings that killed 22 people in the embattled capital the day before.

However, a car bomb targeted U.S. and Iraqi troops in Rawah, 175 miles northwest of Baghdad, witnesses reported. At least one person, believed to have been a civilian, was killed, the witnesses said.

The deadliest attack Monday was in the western Baghdad district of Khadra, where eight policemen died in a gunbattle with insurgents, police said. It was unclear if the insurgents suffered casualties.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050718/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_050718190346;_ylt=Apu30q38OyIvpGjyPtJ.O1dX6GMA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

[Bo]

7. Iraqnam in full downward spiral

Nothing to do there except pull out