Blasts heard near Baghdad airport

[Mari333]

things are getting worse. This is so terrifying to me.

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8764037%255E1702,00.html

[donco6]

1. Isn't your son there?

Hope he's OK.

[Mari333]

2. yes and it seems like the closer we get to June 1st

the worse it might get..civil war seems to be brewing..I cant not know whats going on there. I refuse to live in denial.

http://uttm.com/stories/2003/02/24/iraq/main541815.shtml

[donco6]

3. I hate to say it . . .

. . . but I think you're right about the civil war. What a mess. And the troops just caught in the middle. This is all just so wrong.

[proud patriot]

4. hugs

:hug:

[Mari333]

6. this site helps a little

http://www.motherspeak.org/

this is disconcerting tho





My son, Nick, is deployed with the 82nd to a large base north of Baghdad. He left January 9, 04; on Jan 26, I followed him there. Crazy? Possibly. Nick certainly thought so. But I really needed to have a context for the place my son working. He'd spend almost 9 months in Afghanistan last year (Jan - Sept, 03) and I didn't feel quite the same level of anxiety for his well being.
I'm also trying to honor my son's efforts, and the efforts of all our soldiers, by creating a book of interviews with mothers -- Amerian and Iraqi.
Baghdad is a sad place. And a dangerous place. The US military, once welcomed by Iraqi and Baghdadis, is no longer welcome. Our policies and practices in the country are creating great resentments amongst the local people, especially the Muslim. Policies such as smashing in the doors of residences as families sleep and dragging the family out into the street in their nightclothes (very shameful for Muslim families -- especially women -- to appear like this in public); humiliating Iraqi men in front of their families -- creates huge insecurities and traumas in family members; random shootings of civilians in the streets due to stress or lack of proper training in military personnel; arrests and detentions without due process and without allowing family members to know the whereabouts of arrested. (As someone who grew up in Apartheid South AFrica I'm familiar with these sorts of arrests but I never thought I'd see American military practicing them!!)
Lots more to share. What would you like to know?
And, yes, I visited with my son. Sheer luck...had very little help (actually NONE!) from military leadership to do it but

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. Rumsfeld is in the region

He was in Kuwait this morning. I wonder if the Iraqis formed a welcoming committee?

[Mari333]

7. Rumsfield and the missionaries and Bremer

everytime they show up the soldiers get the worst of it..why dont they just stay there and bring the troops home..
you can bet Rummy isnt in a goddamn inadequate Humvee.

[leftchick]

8. For the first time a pipeline has been hit in the south...

HeLLOOO americans, things are getting WORSE! Bring out troops home NOW!

<Snip>EXPLOSIONS have been heard in Baghdad following a weekend of trouble that saw an oil pipeline sabotaged in southern Iraq and deadly violence in the north.

A series of blasts were heard in the vicinity of the capital's airport, but the cause was not immediately known, said a US airforce spokeswoman at the facility, which is used as a military base, today.

Meanwhile, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned on his way to the Gulf that al-Qaeda was sowing seeds of destruction in Iraq.

In the first attack of its kind in the south since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, an oil pipeline was targeted near Karbala, 110 kilometres from Baghdad, an official Iraqi source said.

"An explosion damaged the pipeline and we don't know who the saboteurs are," said local Karbala official Hamid Salah al-Shebib.