Fifty Iraqi football fans killed

[malaise]

by a bomb during celebrations as Iraq reached the finals of the Asia Cup.
WTF!!!

[karlrschneider]

1. Damn. More "last throes", I guess.

:grr:

[TheBaldyMan]

2. Al Qaeda has just pissed off billions of football fans

I still can't understand how the West can't outwit these animals. They videotape beheadings, commit mass-murder and our response is more repression and supporting similar groups who are just as despised.

[malaise]

3. The West are animals too

or have you missed their part in this genocide.

[Benhurst]

5. Haven't you learned by now, malaise, that 700,000 dead and

God only knows how many hundreds of thousands more maimed and wounded Iraqi men, women and children don't count?

[malaise]

8. Probably closer to a million dead Iraqis by now n/t

[TheBaldyMan]

9. that's what I mean, massive violent over reaction makes things worse.

btw I agree with you 100% about the genocide in Iraq. It's a disgrace.

[malaise]

11. Cool n/t

[TwilightGardener]

4. Curious as to why you think it's AQ--Yahoo said it was Sunni militants.

[MidwestTransplant]

6. OBVIOUSLY you haven't been listening to the WH. Every act of violence in Iraq is not AQ.

[TheBaldyMan]

10. AQ are Sunni (Wahabi) militants

probably funded by Saudi's plutocracy. Most of the foreign extremist groups in Iraq are. They began to recruit locally after the downfall of Saddam using the chaos and lawlessness to their advantage.

[TwilightGardener]

12. I understand that AQ is mostly comprised of Sunni. But not all Sunni militants are AQ.

I'm not saying you're wrong, just that I won't automatically jump to the AQ conclusion--there's been too much of that lately.

[TheBaldyMan]

13. well, AQ in Iraq aren't really the Osama Bin Laden AQ

but they do get their money from similar sources and they did start around a cadre of Sunni extremists. I think it's just a convenient label slapped on any hardline Sunni fundamentalists who see ordinary Iraqis as legitimate targets according to their warped theology.

These and similar groups are now being backed by the US as a bulwark against Hizbollah and Hamas, unfortunately there has already been blowback in Lebanon.

[MidwestTransplant]

14. AQ in Iraq may be Sunni as are all AQ but most Suni militants aren't AQ and most AQ aren't Iraqi

Most of the Suni militants are Baathists who were/are pretty secular. The AQ in Iraq guys are largely foreign.

[TheBaldyMan]

15. AQinIraq do recruit locally as well, this doesn't make them a popular movement

If AQ was recruiting in the UK or US they could always find some impressionable souls to join up. Having said that the whole Iraqi resistance to occupation is overwhelmingly Iraqi. AQ in Iraq is a tiny proportion of the total. Even counting all hard-line fundamentalist Sunni groups together and saying they are "Al Qaida" they are only a small fraction. By hard-line I mean groups that look on (all?) other muslims as degenerate apostates.

I suspect that the use of a bombing to target ordinary muslims has the hallmark of one of these groups. I can't remember the term such groups use to denote (jaheel?) muslims who are not ultra-orthodox. In the eyes of these extremists they are every bit as bad as the foreign occupation forces.

The definition depends on the religious outlook rather than nationality. Going OT, such groups are the ones that recent US policy has chosen to be proxies in the fight against Hamas and Hizbollah. This is exteremly short-sighted and will prove disastrous. Bush and the State department should dump these madmen and start talking to Hamas and Hizbollah. They have to stop seeing them as boogeymen and start treating them as legitimate parties with genuine grievances. The cure will prove worse than the disease if this blinkered policy continues.

[PurityOfEssence]

7. As if religion isn't enough, they had to add sports to this mess.

Maybe the Brits should import some football hooligans to join the fun.