It's not even a top news story. Dozens dead in bloody attack or Gov't office in Iraq

[cali]

Bloody Attack in Iraqi City Leaves Scores Dead, Including Gunmen and Hostages
By TIM ARANGO
Published: March 29, 2011



BAGHDAD — Gunmen dressed in police uniforms and suicide vests stormed the provincial council office in the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit on Tuesday and seized hostages in a brazen attack that left dozens of people dead , officials in Tikrit said.
The New York Times


The assault in Tikrit, the hometown of the toppled former president, Saddam Hussein, was so serious that United States military forces stationed nearby responded — an unusual intervention for the Americans in Iraq these days — and some American soldiers sustained minor injuries.

The assault turned into a hostage standoff that lasted for hours on Tuesday afternoon, until Iraqi security forces retook the building in the early evening using grenades and small arms fire, with American warplanes overhead, according to an eyewitness. The American military did not take part in the retaking of the building, but observed from nearby, according to a military spokesman. All of the gunmen and all of their hostages, who numbered about 30, were dead, according to officials in Tikrit.

The attack in Kirkuk, the bloodiest in Iraq in months, is likely to increase pressure on the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to win confirmation for new heads of the ministries of the interior and defense. The delay in those appointments has hampered negotiations over a possible continued American military involvement in Iraq beyond its scheduled exit at the end of the year. The lack of new security ministers also exposes Mr. Maliki to criticism from his political opponents, especially in the wake of new attacks.

<snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/world/middleeast/30iraq.html

[cali]

1. and just as it's not a top news story, there is zero interest on DU

I knew this thread would sink like a stone. It's as if we've erased Iraq from our collective conscious.

[Blue_Tires]

2. Iraq?? That was TWO invasions ago...

Get with the times, man!:sarcasm:

[The Magistrate]

3. Not Enough In This, Ma'am, Even To Make A Sensible Guess Who Did It

[cali]

5. That doesn't negate it's importance

And it's hardly the only example of the political violence that is still rife in that country.

[The Magistrate]

7. Makes It Hard To Comment On, Though, Ma'am

Civil war will become more apparent in Iraq, in proportion to the reduction of our activity there. This is pretty widely known, and not particularly interesting except to specialists and connoisseurs.

[cali]

8. I find it pretty compelling despite being neither a connoisseur or a specialist

I suspect I am not alone.

[Adsos Letter]

11. I also find it compelling...

Since one of the warnings I have heard repeated is that the US removal of Saddam cleared the way for civil war in Iraq, whether intentional or not. They had something very nearly like it going on during the middle of the last decade.

Once we're out I expect the anticipated civil war to reignite, as many others have suggested. The nature of the Iraq which will emerge from that is anyone's guess.

The repercussions of the Bush invasion are far from over in Iraq.

[cali]

12. exactly. it's a disaster in slow motion

[gimama]

4. I care. Very much..

Afghanistan also goin' through.

thank You for posting this.

[zalinda]

6. Now that it's 'official' that our war with Iraq is over

why report on it? :sarcasm:

zalinda

[sad sally]

9. $1.075 TRILLION dollars as of Jan 2010 spent on Bush/Obama old wars

and the story of these wars seems to have fallen off the radar.

WASHINGTON | Tue Jan 26, 2010 5:56pm EST
Jan 26 (Reuters) - The cost to U.S. taxpayers of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 has topped $1 trillion, and President Barack Obama is expected to request another $33 billion to fund more U.S. troops this year.

About two-thirds of the money has been spent on the conflict in Iraq since 2003. This year is the first in which more funds are being spent in Afghanistan than Iraq, as the pace of U.S. military operations slows in Iraq and quickens in Afghanistan.

Congress has approved $1.075 trillion dollars for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and "war-related activities" since 2001, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It included the costs in its budget outlook Tuesday.

The war expense topped $1 trillion in December 2009, when U.S. lawmakers approved the fiscal 2010 defense spending bill that included about $130 billion to be spent on the two conflicts through Sept. 30, 2010.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/01/26/afghanistan-iraq-usa-cost-idUSN2611591520100126?du

And how about the several hundred thousand soldiers who either have or will develop PTSD, not to mention the life-changing physical wounds they'll have for the rest of their lives? What about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan people who have PTSD and physical wounds from the years and years of bombing they've suffered. Makes me sick to think the moral country the President says we are cares so little about the carnage the US inflicts when it decides war is the only answer.

Hundreds of thousands of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will struggle with the potentially debilitating psychological effects of war.

At least 638,000 soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have been deployed more than once, according to the Department of Defense(DoD). The Army’s Mental Health Advisory Team most recent report from 2008 said that soldiers who deployed to Iraq more than once were much more likely to develop PTSD.

“The deployment tempo is just burning through these service members and their families,” said Dr. Jonathan Shay, a leading PTSD psychologist and clinician at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) outpatient clinic in Boston, Mass.

“They are just being chewed up and spit out and destroyed,” he said.

A 2009 study by researchers at Stanford University estimates that by 2023, roughly 40 percent of the active Army and Marines and 32 percent of the Army reserve that deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom will develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

http://www.longmarchhome.org/cost_of_war.html?du

[Baclava]

10. Of course not - we got a NEW war to fawn over - it's like NEW love

New hotness vs. old and busted.

[bvar22]

13. If these insurgents...

...are opposing the established government....
THAT makes them "The Rebels".

The least we could do is enforce a No Fly Zone to protect them.

[MerryBlooms]

14. 24/7 news access

So much information supplied and then digested - I'm spent by the end of the day, but it's pretty doggone sad a tragedy like this isn't top news. So much slips under the wire because of the 'big' news. Man, how do we take all in what's given us - let alone, the important stuff we have to search for? Oy.

[SoCalDem]

15. Iraq? Iraq? hmm sounds vaguely familiar..

Oh yes.. that was so last decade.. media has moved on don't-cha-know?

Lindsay Lohan has apparently dropped her last name
Charlie Sheen is winnnnnnnn-ning
A dangerous snake is missing
There is "new" tsunami footage every day (of course we online-ers saw it last week)
Somewhere it's cold outside & may snow
Somewhere else it's quite warm

There is no time to report about massacres...it's such a "downer"..
If you are a gorgeous woman in a tight satin/spandex top, you could get wrinkles by having to do a "pretend serious face" too many times on camera..

[sarcasmo]

16. How much do we spend in Iraq a day?