Eutrusca
15-07-2005, 19:44
COMMENTARY: In what could be the beginning of the end to the so-called "insurgency" in Iraq, most Iraqis are outraged over the deliberate targeting of children. As the history of "insurgencies" has taught us, when a putative insugency loses a significant portion of their support among the population, they are almost always in serious trouble.
Populace shocked by massacre of 18 local children
July 15, 2005
From combined dispatches
BAGHDAD -- Massive mourning tents were raised yesterday on a street still stained with the blood of 18 Iraqi children who died Wednesday in an attack so appalling that even Iraq's most notorious terror group denounced it.
Human remains were still visible on the street as mourning relatives -- some despondent, others in tears -- seemed deaf to words of comfort their friends offered.
"What did these children do, other than scamper to get a ball or a bar of chocolate?" asked 22-year-old taxi driver Firas Hadi, whose 10-year-old brother, Hamza, was nearly split in half by a suicide car bomb the previous day.
"Is that a crime that deserves death?" he asked, before bursting into tears.
The attack, which came as U.S. soldiers handed candy and toys to a crowd of children, killed at least 27 persons and provoked outrage from Iraqis of all political persuasions.
Al Qaeda in Iraq, the terror group led by Abu Musab Zarqawi that has taken responsibility for a wave of grisly beheadings and other horrors, quickly dissociated itself from the atrocity.
"We in al Qaeda in Iraq announce that we have no link whatsoever to the operation in New Baghdad, which took place on Wednesday," it said on the Internet.
Zarqawi, "who supervises personally all operations from planning to execution, is very keen on making sure that ordinary people are not targeted," it added without accounting for the thousands of Iraqis who have died in the terrorists' attacks.
The statement suggests that the group is aware of the backlash against the Sunni-led insurgency that the killing of so many children could generate -- even among Iraqis who oppose the presence of U.S.-led forces.
"Such action has nothing to do with religion," said Inaam Hassan, 38, of the attack. "This tarnishes the image of the true resistance. I demand that the terrorists be executed in public to avenge the mothers who have lost their children."
[ Page one of two. Read the entire article here (http://www.military.com/earlybrief). ]
Populace shocked by massacre of 18 local children
July 15, 2005
From combined dispatches
BAGHDAD -- Massive mourning tents were raised yesterday on a street still stained with the blood of 18 Iraqi children who died Wednesday in an attack so appalling that even Iraq's most notorious terror group denounced it.
Human remains were still visible on the street as mourning relatives -- some despondent, others in tears -- seemed deaf to words of comfort their friends offered.
"What did these children do, other than scamper to get a ball or a bar of chocolate?" asked 22-year-old taxi driver Firas Hadi, whose 10-year-old brother, Hamza, was nearly split in half by a suicide car bomb the previous day.
"Is that a crime that deserves death?" he asked, before bursting into tears.
The attack, which came as U.S. soldiers handed candy and toys to a crowd of children, killed at least 27 persons and provoked outrage from Iraqis of all political persuasions.
Al Qaeda in Iraq, the terror group led by Abu Musab Zarqawi that has taken responsibility for a wave of grisly beheadings and other horrors, quickly dissociated itself from the atrocity.
"We in al Qaeda in Iraq announce that we have no link whatsoever to the operation in New Baghdad, which took place on Wednesday," it said on the Internet.
Zarqawi, "who supervises personally all operations from planning to execution, is very keen on making sure that ordinary people are not targeted," it added without accounting for the thousands of Iraqis who have died in the terrorists' attacks.
The statement suggests that the group is aware of the backlash against the Sunni-led insurgency that the killing of so many children could generate -- even among Iraqis who oppose the presence of U.S.-led forces.
"Such action has nothing to do with religion," said Inaam Hassan, 38, of the attack. "This tarnishes the image of the true resistance. I demand that the terrorists be executed in public to avenge the mothers who have lost their children."
[ Page one of two. Read the entire article here (http://www.military.com/earlybrief). ]